We hiked past the campgrounds and up into the hills today, and everybody held up pretty well. On the way, we found a tiny, jewel-like, Blue Tailed Skink. It could have curled up on a nickel. Two and a half hours after we started, we arrived back at our table and proceeded to inspect owl pellets, carefully clearing away matted rodent fur to discover the fragile little bones inside. I found feathers in the one I took apart, but no bird skull. It was almost as if some lucky owl had eaten a feathered mouse. hmmm. Feathered mice are quite rare. Most of the kids enjoyed doing this. The kid who doesn't listen spent another day wandering off and trying to climb things.
The Gopher snake that I had relocated to the garden has stubbornly found his way back over to the lawn. He was discovered with his head in a small hole, looking for small hole dwellers. One of the other instructors pointed him out to me, and I reached down and touched him, causing him to back out of the hole to see who was bothering him. As we stood over him and talked, he looked uncertain about whether to go back to inspecting the hole or not. By the time I left, he had made up his mind and was back in the hole. I hope they don't mow the lawn often.

The van has a broken air intake and needs the transmission fluid changed. That's a lot better news than it could have been.

cds I listened to while being even later and staying up way past my bedtime: Swans "Children of God/World of Skin" and "Die Tur Ist Zu", and Skepticism "Farmakon"