Elly has been making clothes faster than a five-year-old in a Nike sweatshop lately, even selling some of her stuff to her online friends. Like the wonderful supportive husband I am, I offered to take Tova off her hands one Friday when a deadline was looming especially large.
Tova and I are like the Steve and Bindi of our little universe, except that I don't hump alligators on TV and she doesn't sing weird rap songs about saving the planet. What I mean is, we like to spend every spare minute outdoors in pursuit of some sort of animal encounter. Since poking cats through the cages at PetSmart has lost its allure, we have had to resort to longer and more serious treks. For instance, we spent an entire Sunday afternoon at the Sawhill ponds looking for fox or coyote tracks in the snow. And this past autumn, we lost some pink Barbie sunglasses wading in the Big Thompson in pursuit of rising trout (I've since learned to lash important articles to the kid-carrier with 3x tippet at least).
This time, we resolved to make our Rocky Mountain National Park pass pay for itself by visiting the park for the second time this year. That's right, two times in the park more than seven days apart, and your annual pass has paid for itself. So we got in the car and made the hour drive to the park with some Trentemoller blasting (she likes it more than I do). I had too much coffee and had to stop at the park entrance to use the facilities. Of course, this means an obligatory stop at the park gift shop to squeeze all of the noise-making stuffed birds and read all the books with pictures in them. I was lucky to get out of there with only a bugling elk for $7.
Back in the car, entering the park, just as I was beginning to regret my purchase (as the 37th bugle in as many seconds rang out from the backseat), we came upon three different news vans parked along the side of the road. I pulled over to see what was going on, and across the meadow there was a group of people, some with news cameras, surrounding a few people kneeling in the grass.
Of course we got out, and I asked a fellow onlooker what we were looking at. "They've got an elk down there, and they're asking that everyone be really quiet."
The $7 bugling elk would have to remain in the car, but Tova and I hurried out join the group in the meadow. Sure enough, as we got closer, we saw that they had an adult cow elk tranquilized in the middle of a semi-circle of news people and park officials. One of the biologists held the cow's head up and kept a blindfold around its eyes while two others took samples from all over (Tova asked, "What is he doing to its butt?"). There were injections being made and syringes of blood being drawn. We had no idea what was going on until a news cameraman approached us.
"Do you know what they're doing here?" he asked, pointing the camera directly at us. I mumbled something about having no clue and how we just drove up and walked over. He informed us that they were testing for chronic wasting disease and also trying out a new contraceptive that might help in controlling the herd sizes. I said something about that being cool and interesting, and hoped that no other camera-people would approach me.
Just then another camera guy asked for an interview (I guess, as one of the few tourists there we were great candidates for that evening's soundbyte). I said sure and walked a few feeet away from the elk-watchers so that I could babble at the news camera without disturbing the Animal Planet moment that was taking place a few feet away.
If you've never been interviewed by a news cameraman, let me tell you, it is strange. Fortunately, I was confused and boring enough not to make it on the news that evening, but I worried all day that my fifteen minutes of fame would be nothing more than me Mr. Magoo-ing it about how seeing the elk was cool and neat and Gee Whiz! Cool Story Doug Fales.
Tova and I watched for a few more minutes until she was shaking from the cold, and then they let the elk go. We backed away as she stood up, started to trot, stopped, and then turned toward the herd and ran to join it. It was really very cool.
We ran back to the car to get warm and go to McDonald's, where I called everyone I could think of to tell them what we had just seen. I was lucky to have Elly's camera, so I got some great shots.
Here it is on the local news: http://cbs4denver.com/video/?id=38216@kcnc.dayport.com.
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