All in a day's work

"What a bizarre last 24 hours," reads my journal.

In that timespan, I snake hunted, sang karaoke and danced around the top of the bar at a going away party, participated in manually clearing out the septic tank with the male volunteers dressed in outfits bordering on drag and assisted in impromptu pelican wing surgery with the assistance of a German vet we somehow rounded up.

Sending someone with a recently discovered fear of garter snakes out to track down a Bimini Boa was likely and thankfully the reason Team Commonwealth failed at their assigned task. Adding to my fear was the certainity that I was going to drown standing up in the forest. A torrential downpour passed though as we were searching. Having received advanced warning on the radio, we thought the palm trees would provide adequate coverage. They may look like nature's umbrellas, but in actuality, they are giant funnels that gladly pour the rain on the ill-prepared Canadians and Brits hiding underneath them.



Not inclined to public embarrassment, it's a great mystery how I ended up on the bar - the smooth Bahamian lagers might be responsible for most of that...



The majority of the partyers slightly to extremely hungover, we grabbed old shirts from the free clothes pile and went around the back of the lab. The male volunteers elected to dress in women's wear.



A massive hole had been hand dug across the road.



The lab managers proceeded to crack the top of our outdated septic tank. Words will never describe the stench, but it is forever etched in my nostrils.






Bucket by bucket, the contents of the septic were shoveled out and dumped into the prepared hole until only liquid remained. An industrial strength pump slurped up most of what remained and delivered it firehose style to the hole.



A few final bucket loads and filling in the now full hole concluded Shit Pit.

Following a bleach bath on the back beach, locals brought an injured pelican to our front porch. We got word there was a vet at the resort down the road. Interrupting her lunch, the briskly efficient German vet bandaged up the pelican's wing under very unsterile conditions with the lab's first aid supplies.



We made the large, prehistoric looking bird comfortable in a shark transport tub. Intentioned to be a healing tub, it unfortunately ended up being the pelican's grave.