Somewhere around three o'clock Tuesday afternoon, I figured I should check to see what time I needed to be in Jackalope Town on Wednesday, for our annual two-day wildlifers' meeting.

08:30.

Wonderful. And it's a little over a three hour drive. Do I hurry to pack, miss the youth meeting, and head off tonight? After only a couple hours of sleep following the meteor watching?

Or get up dark and early and head out Wednesday morning?

Wednesday it was. Left a little after five, and was halfway there when dawn started to break:

Managed to get to the meeting center with a half hour to spare. I need to learn to make room reservations for these things earlier, rather than upon arrival. Then I won't get stuck in smoking rooms.

Those of you out there who smoke. Say what you will about your personal choices, but your habit stinks.

While heading into the meeting room for the first session, my shoulder was grabbed by none other than GF-123. What a pleasant surprise. He was his usual, jovial self, even though his profile has been alterred, somewhat. They say there was no brain damage, despite the horrific crushing of the facial bones, and the separation of the back of the skull from the front. One pupil more dilated than the other, but no facial scars. He says he has a couple operations yet to undergo to get his teeth to mesh properly.

Good to have him there.We're all in awe at his rapid recovery, he thinks he's been laying around much too long.

Not sure if he'll go up and fly again, though. This plane was the same one he crashed in before, 11 years ago. (Has it been that long? I thought it was just a few years back that he was showing off pics of his first wreck.)

When people come to your meetings, do they always leave the entire front row of seats empty? Like pews in a church? They do at ours.

The moderator of the first morning session confessed that after ten years of working in the field, he still did not know what the session's topic, "Conservation Strategies", meant.

And neither did the speakers he contacted to discuss the topic.

A presentation on IBAs (Important Bird Areas) reported such had been identified in 51 European countries.

Now, I've counted on my fingers several times, and depending on what you do with semi-nations like Scotland and Wales, and whether or not you consider Iceland and Russia to be "European Nations", I can only come up with 30-some countries. (And yes, I remembered little Liechtenstein, and even included the Vatican, although the only birds they would have to protect would be pigeons, and I think there's not much you need to do to support that species.)

So who are these other European Countries? Gonna have to check a map, now.

The presenter, a long time active member of this professional organization, mentioned her new duties seem "like a big job, and it is," and then proceeded to contort to pat herself on her back.

After a detailed and professional presentation, a questioner asked if she had the tally on the total acreage involved in her program yet.

Her response?

"No, damn you."

Apparently something she hadn't time to tally, and was hoping would not come up.

Been going to these annual meetings, and many others like them, for many years, and today heard something I had never heard at one before.

A baby.

It was gently amused cooing, not cries or complaints about being bored, but the first time anyone ever brought a baby to one of these. Kid stuck around for both days of meetings, and only had to be taken outside the room maybe twice or thrice.

Sat up front in an aisle seat, so I could stretch out, and couldn't get a good head count. They say we had 110 registered attendees. My quick survey of the front of the room found 29 males and 12 females.

Batteries for the remote for the powerpoint projector died during the Townsend's big-eared bat presentation. Every speaker had a powerpoint presentation. No slides. Someone else remarked how unusual that was.

Before getting into the data slides, speaker warned us that was "the end of the cool bat pictures." Townsend's are local migrants, not making the long journies to winter in Mexico "although that sounds good to me" according to the speaker.

If you didn't know, baby bats are called "pups."

Every agency and organization has their own system for prioritizing rare species. You need to learn this stuff eventually. If you care, Townsend's are NSS2, R2-R4, sensitive, G4/SIB, and S2N.

Most are aware of the problems with waterfowl and other birds dying or being poisoned by waste pits at gas and oil wells. Apparently bats have the same problems, skimming the ponds to get a drink from the surface (where all the waste oils end up floating). No real solutions offered.

Got an update on how our wolves are doing. Biologically, they have met all the criteria needed to be delisted. Populations grew at about 22% a year. As of last week our state had 21 packs, of which 18 are breeding. Roughly two-thirds inside Yellowstone, the others outside. The Druid pack, which had grown to over 40 wolves, has split into three. Expect to have over 300 wolves this year.

Speaker has been attending public meetings presenting our wolf plan, and asked if we checked out his butt as he walked up to the podium, saying "I don't have much left."

A couple in the audience were from Wisconsin-country, and considered it kind of ridiculous for folks in our state to be panicking over 300 wolves, when Wisconsin is getting by with over 4,000.

The same speaker was to update us on the grizzly bear situation. The moderator facetiously introduced the second talk by announcing "We'll let your backside scab over, and go to the more 'uncontroversial' topic of grizzly bears."

Now, when you go to a meeting, do folks offer you the opportunity to go outside by the dumpster during the 20-minute break and cut up dead deer heads?

They did at ours.

Naturally, I passed up the coffee, juice and rolls for the chance to carve into the remains of dead deer. They had six heads that had been turned in for CWD testing (by folks who knew the disease guys would be at this meeting), so we got to suit up and learn how to cut in for the samples they need (the brain right where the spinal cord comes in, and the two lymph glands just below that).

You lay the head upside down, slice across the neck right at the back end of the jaw, deep in to the spine, which if you did it right (I did), is right where the first vertebrae connects to the skull. Trim out the greyish lymph glands (one to formalin, one to a cooler), then flex the neck back to get to the rear of the skull. Scoop out the part of the brain you need, place the wide part in formalin, and refrigerate the other piece. Pretty quick and slick.

I and my neighbor did just fine. Expect to get lots of practice soon, as this year's samples found a deer with CWD in his country, right where so many of my locals hunt.

Early in the fourth presentation the laptop being used for powerpoint presentations started a loud beeping.

Seems, if you don't want to run down the internal batteries, you need to remember to plug it in.

The researcher working with midget faded prairie rattlesnakes was trying to find out why some snakes live by the den all summer long, and others take off into the prairie. Checking to see if they were attracted to food, he set cages with live mice in the paths of telemetered migrants.

The female rattlers circled the cages for several days, trying to figure out how to eat the mouse, before giving up and moving on.

The male snakes camped out on top of the cages, and stayed there. For the full 21 days of the experiment.

That says something about the differences between the sexes, but I'm not sure what.

Imagine being that mouse. Do you hide timidly shivering for 21 days, or do you go out and taunt the snake at every opportunity?

Since it turns out that there is more prey available by the dens, rather than out in the prairie where some snakes spend the summer, the questions still arises. Why do they go there? One possible theory is that the sexually receptive females head out into the sage, as a test for the eager males who follow. They may look into that.

Stay tuned.

When asked what species of bird it was that a rattler was swallowing in one photograph, the speaker's response was "I'm not a bird guy." His professional identification of the sparrow?

"A little brown jobbie."

Wednesday's final presentation was the student chapter's annual report. Among many other things, they spent a week floating the Green River. Looking for river otter "latrine sites."

Really.

They spent a week floating (and fishing) on a river, looking for otter shit.

And you thought you had a good career.

And I think it was a slip of the tongue, but I believe she said they performed a necropsy of their banquet speaker. Perhaps she meant their banquet speaker performed a necropsy.

Or maybe she said it right. You never know with wildlifers.