She Works Hard For Her Money

On days that I have to work, but school's aren't here and we aren't doing training, I have to do maintenance. This could be anything from cleaning boat bottoms to picking weeds or painting bunk beds. For example, I have become a professional floor stripper and waxer. Anyways, this week we have had kids at camp, but I couldn't teach because all the schools overlap with the wedding I'm going to this weekend. (Yay for Kelly and Craig!) Since I've been on maintenance by myself these past two days, I've been given odd tasks around property to do.

Yesterday, I had to rearrange the wall of the shark pond.

Part of the wall is made up of cinderblocks and rocks. The blocks are removed when it's time for the sharks to leave so that they can swim out on their own. I had to readjust the blocks and the rocks so the water could flow more easily in and out of the shark pond.

This only took about 20 minutes, so afterwards I was told that I could wade around the back wall and collect organisms since it was such a lovely day out and I already had on my water shoes. The back wall is the area to the right of the shark pond where we can go fishing. There are always lots of lobsters hiding under the rocks, so I was pretty excited to see what else I could find. This little critter was under the first rock I lifted up:

(top)     

(bottom)

It's a sea cucumber!! They are really cool because they can change their shape and when you pick it up out of the water it goes all mushy in your hands. This little guy was short and fat when i found him, but in this picture he's longer and leaner.

I saw a bunch of lobsters and some blue crabs. I also saw some really pretty neon blue worms and some mangrove snappers. I kept finding sea anemones attached to rocks. Finally I found this beautiful purple anemone in a sandier patch so I could collect it easily without harming it:

It looked much better in real life, but I'm not a photographer so it looks more dull here. It's tentacles kept sticking to my fingers and my hand.

When I got out of the water, I looked back in the ocean and realized that Charlie Cuda had been following me around. Charlie is our resident barracuda that spents the majority of his time around camp, either by the backwall or in the harbor or the swim canal. He's nearly 5 feet long and much rounder and fatter than any normal barracuda I've ever seen.



The rest of the day was spent sweeping the marina wall and doing the lost and found laundry. It wasn't nearly as exciting as my morning, but it could have been worse.