It was an interesting way to spend a meeting.

A dozen folks or so, all brought together from widely different walks of life (as wide as you can get out here, that is) for a common purpose. A purpose plainly stated. Keep sage grouse off the Endangered Species List.

But I'm not one of the dozen. Just an observer to see how the process will work, and what I might learn. So, throughout the day, I keep my mouth shut. And fetch a pamphlet from my truck when someone wanted it, or race another to the napkins when a speaker spilled his water.

But hey, I finally got one of those half-pint water bottles I've been wanting, without having to pay a ridiculous price for it.

Now, if I could just remember why in the world I was so eager to have a half-pint sized plastic bottle...

About the only significant fact I learned came during a break. Our Columbian sharptails may not be Columbians at all. Preliminary genetic tests found no difference between the sharptails who live in our mountains and the Plains subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse. Since there have been petitions to list our "Columbians" as a threatened subspecies, finding out that they are just plains birds who decided to move to the mountains kinda puts a damper on that idea.

But samples were small. Hence the request for us to hang on to any sharptail wings we may collect from hunters this fall, for more DNA tests.

The other interesting point of the day? There were 18 of us in the meeting room, including four females. Two of these females were partially running the meeting (well, one was running it, the other learning how so she can run it in the future). These two women do not work for the same employers, do not live in the same towns (or even same states, for that matter), and did no coordination with each other prior to the meeting.

And yet arrived wearing the same outfit.