I woke up this morning to find a photo of mine on the National Geographic website. I screamed. This totally beats my previous high-point of having this blog on CNN.com. Unfortunately, my scream scared my cat, who had her paw on my neck, which then tugged away quickly, ruining the brand new gold chain my mother got me for my birthday. But really, a gold chain is nothing compared to National Geographic, and the scream was well worth its price in gold.

The cat needed blood work done today, so she came to work with me. As a result, instead of only dogs licking my feet under my desk, I also had my darling kitty shedding her hair all over my computer screen. It was glorious. The dogs are on vacation for a week starting tomorrow, so the next week will become “bring your cat to work day week” for me.

Then, this afternoon, I am called over to birds to take some photos. When I arrive, I am really unhappy about the photo they have called me over to take… a photo of a horrible, selfish woman potentially reversing everything we have spent months working for. And well, then it turns out it was all a ruse to get me over there… for a surprise birthday party and ice cream cake. Mmmm, mmmm! As happy as the party made me, I was more happy that that awful woman wasn’t there.

Upon arriving back at my office, melting cake left-overs in hand, Miss Molly passes me the new Dogtown book… my very first book. Of course, not all the photos are mine, but many are and I am absolutely thrilled to be able to add books to the list of items containing my photos.

I then come home and treat myself to a Totino’s Party Pizza. It was only fitting.

Other good birthday news include the fact that work is paying $650 of my $850 rent this month because the new tiling job on the house I was supposed to move into this weekend won’t be done for another month now. Also, my sick bird (whose health took a nosedive the other day and even required a late-night emergency visit from the vet) has pepped up and is looking good. My birds have passed their average expiration date by over ten years and I hope to make it twenty.

Ah yes, life is good.

I saw my first rattlesnake ever today. I almost smooshed it with my car. It is probably a good thing that I know what they look like now. When I was five, my family and I camped just a few feet from a rattlesnake pit in the Badlands. Of course, we arrived at night and didn’t realize this until morning. Oops. Let’s hope I don’t make the same mistake sometime.

After taking this photo of the hidden kitty this morning, I peeked inside the bear box to meet the furry friend I had just photographed. I was delighted to see that it was my beloved Cooper, one of my absolute favorite felines at work. I actually squealed a little bit. I didn’t recognize him in that little box nor expect to see him there. Since he first arrived at Best Friends from a massive hoarding situation, he had been living in the yurts (where all the cats from that rescue have been), but was recently moved to a different building. The last time I went to see him in the yurts, he wasn’t there and I didn’t know where he was. I wish he had been adopted, but at the same time, I was very happy to see him today. Like whoa. Cooper is my boy. I LOVE him… my little black bear.

Today I got my first bite. Five months into the job, and I got bit. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but freakin’ A man, I was not expecting it, and it HURT. I’m doped up on ibuprofen right now, so I’m feeling alright, but I could not say the same thing when it happened.

I will preface the story by telling you how high my tolerance for physical pain is. It wasn’t always high, but over the past few years, I’ve become amazed at the things I can endure without a single tear… things like concussions, breaking my thumb, bashing my face with skis (and trees), etc. The only physical pain I can recall in recent years that actually made me cry was giardia (holy unbearable pain). So you know it has to be bad when a bird bite hurts me so bad that tears flow like a tidal wave within two seconds, my vision goes foggy, and I feel faint.

I got bit by an Amazon. Thing is, I was not holding it, or even trying to touch it. I was simply walking by it (sitting atop its cage) when it lunged onto my shoulder blade (me wearing a tank-top) and bit me. It hurt immediately, I screamed, but it wasn’t until a second or two later, that it became unbearable. As soon as it was off of me, I reached my hand around to my back, sure to find myself gushing blood and missing a chunk of muscle, but that wasn’t the case. She barely broke the skin, but instead pinched my shoulder muscle so hard, I couldn’t move it until the souped up Excedrin and ibuprofen combo finally kicked in two hours later and an icepack numbed my feeling there. Those two hours were awful though. I would compose myself, only to randomly start crying as my muscle spasmed and everything went cloudy again. I felt like a big baby.

Parrots have hundreds of pounds of pressure in their beaks, and I have a new-found respect for the parrot caregivers at work who are bit on a regular basis. They get chunks taken out of them, and I will merely have but a bruise and a small cut (and perhaps a little apprehensiveness when walking by cages). They are tough cookies in the bird department, I can tell you that.

This week, Micah (half of my 80s prom date) headed south to my neck of the woods for the obligatory off-season trip south. I took Friday off work so I could show him around Zion. I headed there Thursday after work and we decided to hike Angels Landing at sunset. We started a little later than we would have liked to (the shuttle buses delayed our start time quite a bit), but we hit the trail around 7:30, when the sun was striking the east side of the canyon with glorious light. We knew it’d be dark on our way down, but as long as we were off the spine by dark, doing the rest of the hike in the dark was no big deal (we had our headlamps). The problem was getting back in time for the last shuttle.

This weekend, Miss Molly (henceforth referred to as Bitter Princess of the Forest) and I voyaged to the remote northwestern Kolob Canyons area of Zion. Originally planned as a long 14-mile day hike to the Kolob Arch, we instead opted to turn it into an overnight backpack to help us prep for our 40-mile backpack next month.

We were underway around noon on Saturday and returned 16 miles and 24 hours later. The main attraction was the Kolob Arch, the second-longest arch in the world, but it was so unimpressive that I’m not even including a photo here. Luckily, we stumbled upon a waterhole that made the entire hike well worth every single fly bite we endured (hundreds).

We had already set up camp and continued hiking (sans heavy backpacks) for a few miles when we stumbled on the swampy area. All of a sudden, strange noises started echoing in the air. At first I thought it was some sort of machinery, even though I found it hard to believe machinery could make its way that far into the backcountry. It must be some sort of weird bird mating call then, but no. We eventually realized that the incredibly loud noises were actually coming from the waterhole immediately to our left. Frogs. Dozens of them. I still can’t believe that loud of a noise can come from such a tiny animal, but there they were, singing their mating call in full glory. We spent about half an hour hanging out with these frogs, watching everything from a post-coital cuddle to a full-blown rape.

We hiked back out early to avoid the high, mid-day temperatures, but we still got a whiff of it. The last leg of the hike is, of course, the hardest part… a steep, mile-long uphill. Combined with a big-ass backpack and a full-on assault by an army of flies, I think it’s safe to say I wanted to kill myself (well, really just those damn flies). But well, considering I escaped the trip with nothing more than bug bites and calves only a little tight, I’d say it was a very good trip. As always, photos…

That’s me. I found out tonight that I made the front page of the outdoors section of the southern Utah newspaper! My name is no stranger to print, but it is a rare occasion when a photo of me, not by me, makes its way in.

(photo by Garrett)

It is days like today that I fully appreciate the act of sitting. I hurt. I went to yoga yesterday after not going in over a month, and now I hurt. My abs and hamstrings have been ripped in half. Though I may ache the good hurt right now, I was feeling limber right after class yesterday and decided I’d do a small hike in Zion. Well, it started as a small hike at least…

I figured I’d head up to Hidden Canyon. I hear it’s great, and I’ve never been. I slugged straight up the Weeping Rock switchbacks for a grueling mile in full sun, and when I got to the turn-off to go to Hidden Canyon, I saw so many people that there was no way I was going in there. I decided I’d continue on the trail to Observation Point instead, but turn around once I got to Echo Canyon. It’d be a nice resting spot, and a good turn-around for a quick (albeit steep and ass-kicking) hike. But when I arrived at Echo Canyon, I found a group of Europeans hogging the place. So I kept going for a while… and a while more… and a little more after that. And well, by the time I was ready to turn around, I figured I might as well go all the way to the top… to Observation Point. I’m not quite sure why I decided this… I wasn’t even half-way up, but well, I did it. I didn’t have nearly enough energy to make the hike at all enjoyable on the way up, but as the clouds started to roll over, the wind picked up, and after eating some of my Clif Bar, it got a little easier… still slow, but easier. I got to the top, and finally, four and something hours later, back to the trailhead where I basked in the awesomeness that is sitting.

Grueling and exhausting as it was, some good came from my ridiculously active day. 1. I was so stretched out from yoga that I’m not sore from the hike at all, only from those ab-busting and hamstring-ripping yoga poses. This made it possible to be at least semi-functional (though still lazy) today. 2. It was incredibly refreshing to do a stormy-weather hike, even if it never rained on me (though I did feel an occasional drop). And 3. I added another eight miles to my YTD hike mileage when I only planned on adding about three.

For those who don’t know, my goal is to hike at least 300 miles this year and bag peaks in at least five different mountain ranges. I’m currently at 79 miles (not too shabby for only two months of hiking) and zero peaks (but I got tentative plans to do the first next weekend in the Pine Valley Mountains). Having goals like this is a good excuse to make sure I get out. I hope to actually do a lot more miles and peaks than the goal requires, but I wanted a reasonable goal that I can actually attain, without being too easy (hence the five different ranges, not simply five peaks).

Anyway, here are some photos from yesterday’s eight-mile addition…

Two very special birds arrived from California this week… a Hyacinth macaw and a Major Mitchell cockatoo. Birds like Joey (the Hyacinth) and Honey (Major Mitchell) don’t usually find themselves in rescues, because they are very rare and fetch a very high price in the bird market. But luckily, a very kind couple did the right thing when they found themselves not able to give enough attention to their birds anymore… they handed them over to us (a noble thing since they could sell those birds for as much as half my yearly salary).

These two birds are going straight into our education program, meaning they won’t be available for adoption. We don’t want to advertise these incredibly beautiful birds as pets. Through the illegal pet trade, the Hyacinth’s numbers have diminished in the wild to the extent of being classified as endangered. Over 10,000 were taken from the wild in the 1980s alone, and today, only 2,000-5,000 of the world’s largest parrot species remain in the wild.

I love birds. I have two. Everyone in the bird department loves birds. But what people probably don’t realize is that we wish pet birds didn’t exist. Parrots belong in the wild. We take in the birds that are already pets, and will love and care for them, but in an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to. The parrot trade is no different than puppy mills, where dogs are kept in cages for the sole purpose of breeding more and more pet dogs… pet dogs that are so overpopulated that thousands are killed in shelters every year. The pet bird population continues to grow as well, leaving more and more birds homeless as they are very hard to take care of, and people are often ill-prepared. Over their head, people also don’t seem to realize that most parrots can live as long as a human. Did I mention that I’ve had my birds since I was three years old?

Birds have not been domesticated for thousands of years like cats and dogs. Even if raised as a pet, living life in a cage, wings clipped is highly unnatural for them. Pet birds are deprived of everything they were meant for, and though they can live a good, happy life as a pet, they usually don’t. These birds that we view as “pets” here in America are wild, native species in other areas of the world. Would you support the sale of eagles or a hawks as pets? It’s no different.