Our computer is still ailing.

This week's group of campers is even more rambunctious than the last group, but the location is better, being up in the hills and in amongst the trees. I even had a "teachable moment" (as they say in the education business) with half a dead newt. One of the kids walked up to me holding this little, dried out husk of a newt, minus back legs and tail. I got all of the kids to pretend that they were paleontologists, and that the newt was a new discovery. We then reconstructed what this "discovery" must have looked like by substituting bits of twig for the missing appendages, in much the same way that many scientists must fill in the blanks with dinosaur skeletons.

Near the end of the second day of camp, as I was juggling two activities at our table, a woman approached me and asked me my name. I told her, and she responded by telling me that she'd just been stung by an insect (a yellowjacket, she thought) and was having an allergic reaction. I quickly walked her inside to the office attached to the visitor's center. By this time, she had raised welts all over her body, and was having difficulty breathing. I found out from her that this was the first time she'd ever been stung, and that she wasn't sure whether it had been a wasp or a bee. The woman who was in charge of the center called the ranger, and 911. I could tell she was afraid, and my heart went out to her. She said that she'd been trying to deal with it herself, but it had just kept getting worse. I can relate to that. When I get injured or sick, I'll do my best not to involve doctors (this is only partially due to the fact that I don't have medical insurance). This woman was swiftly coming to (or had already come to) the realization that this was a bit too serious to keep to herself. The paramedics showed up quickly, and I had to get back to my campers, and then on to my afternoon duties at the museum.
Today I found out that the woman's husband had stopped by the center later on in the afternoon to say thanks for helping save his wife's life. It turns out that she'd been camping up the hill at one of the parks campgrounds, and wasn't the mother of one of our campers, which is what I'd assumed. At any rate, I'm glad that she's okay, because I was pretty worried about her. It feels good to have had a part, however small, in helping somebody like that. It makes me want to go take CPR classes so that I can be of use in similar situations in the future.

Time to go for now.