I left for work at the usual time last night, but was turned back at the bottom of the road leading up to camp. It seems that some trees and mud had conspired to cover the road, leading to a group of brightly-garbed humans having to spend the better part of the day sawing trunks and shoveling mud.

I went back home and watched the movie version of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and found it a rather harrowing experience. Not quite as harrowing as the book, but well worth watching. The scene where Sitting Bull tells off Senator Dawes was especially well done, I thought. It got me thinking about my own visit to Wounded Knee, but that is a story for another time because I'm tired right now.

I'm tired because when I finally got to work there was a feverish girl waiting for her dad to show up, and because the power had been out at camp for most of the day. There's a backup generator, but it doesn't supply power to the outlying buildings, including the Nature Lab where the reptiles are kept. I ended up having to move the python, using my body heat to warm him back up before putting him to bed in a dog carrier in a heated room.

It's pretty hard to stuff an 8.5 foot python under your jacket. After doing this, I must have resembled Quasimodo, shambling around all lumpy and misshapen. It didn't help that the python looped a coil around one of my legs, affecting my gait. Good thing no homesick kids showed up during this time.

The upshot of all of this is that I got to sleep late.

In the morning, driving back down the hill, I snapped a few photos of the cleared road.