High Sierra Music Festival, 2012

High Sierra Music Festival is a 5 day drinking binge decorated with so many colors and patterns you feel like you're on drugs just by watching the people who definitely are. It takes place in Quincy, California, a place which is deceptive in that it has mountains and trees yet is somehow scaldingly hot nonetheless. My friend Kelly grew up there, my friend Emmy works near there, and so I found myself driving 9 hours without any idea what I was getting myself into. The following are a few highlights, low points, and general observations.

1) Dear Bands: I am all about the coordinated dance routines that you teach us. That is fantastic, and it limits some of the dangerous elbow flailing and therefore minimizes the risk of black eyes (my eyes are elbow height). However, for the love of god, please keep in mind your audience when designing these dances: under no circumstances should a dance routine at a hippie music fest involve everyone in the crowd lifting their arms over their heads simultaneously and then wafting back and forth. This is a surefire way of overwhelming people unto unconsciousness via overpowering body odor.

2) A woman gave a man a free organic banana, but told him that it was only free if he ate it while making eye contact with a stranger. Said gentleman was dressed in a jean vest sans shirt, a pair of leopard print booty shorts/underwear (hard to tell which), a bandana, and high-top converse. I later found out he played the trumpet for the MarchFourth Marching Band. At the time, however, he was just some dude staring me deep in the eyes, deep throating a banana while posing in a way that emphasized what he had in his animal print speedo. And yet, this was not the strangest thing that happened to me while there.

3) If Crayola came out with a crayon color based on my current lack of tan, that color would be Raw Marshmallow. To all those who suffered itchy eyes and painful, blurry vision after spotting me in shorts, please go directly to the first aid tent to get treated for snow blindness.

4) A man told me that eating Palm Oil isn't vegan, because they killed orangutangs in order to clear cut the forest to grow the necessary vegetation to make it. I didn't have the heart to tell him that all agriculture kills animals in much the same habitat-reducing ways, or that I was not a vegan and therefore didn't give a shit. He also told me to check out the last five minutes of the Blue Fin Tuna Sea Sheppard episode because he's in it, and I decided not to tell him that I thought dolphins and whales should be killed until they got their shit together and started making weapons (I do not encourage laziness).

5) Apparently there are alternative physical therapists as well! I met a gentleman wearing a lovely burro necklace who works in Nevada helping people learn how to stand properly, and guiding them into appropriate motion... which I think was hippie speak for "I tell people to stand up straight, and they pay me for it."

Oh shit, someone forgot their hula hoop!

Chemical Sprayer Santa

 SO NOT ON DRUGS.

ALSO SO NOT ON DRUGS.

If Stu speaks for the trees, he needs to enunciate.

So when I arrived at camp a couple weeks ago, I found that while we couldn’t really say the birds were well trained, they had certainly trained us. Here are some things the birds had trained us to do (and you may notice a theme):

STU: If I hang upside down from my cage like a demented bat, you will leave!

K2: If I fly around like I’m trying to escape a very localized tornado, you will leave! And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll just fly at your head and then you will leave!

MARIAH: If I hiss, clack my beak, and run away from you, you will leave!

Why have previous caretakers left the cages during these behaviors (other than, of course, personal safety)? I’m guessing it’s because they had trouble recognizing the difference between “I’m being an asshole” in birdspeak and “I’m genuinely stressed out.” Mariah was very good at this, partly because she wasn’t consistent: if she was really hungry, she’d tone it down a bit, and whoever was handling her would think “wow, she’s having a great day” and in comparison assume she must be completely freaked out on the days she behaved like a feral cat.

The trouble with these behaviors is that is very difficult to get rid of them, particularly if they’ve been effective over the long term. Once can attempt to put them on cue, and hope that silence will reign in the absence of the cue, or one can just stop rewarding the behavior. This latter approach is called extinction, and it requires consistency. Even with K2 divebombing my head, I can’t leave. I can, however, spray him in the face with water, which is both cathartic and hilarious: for a bird, he’s got a very expressive confused face.

Extinction also requires the bird to be clever enough to put that behavior away for a while for others. With Mariah, who has perfected her bad behavior over the decades, this doesn’t seem to be working well. I try to be diligent about not reinforcing her poor behavior: when she hisses, I won’t leave until she’s quiet; when she runs away I make sure to catch her anyway; and when she bites me, I touch her until she stops. I know that extinction has worked for her in the past, because a few years ago Mariah used to bate whenever I brought her back into the cage. When I figured out that I was reinforcing her behavior by then untying her and putting her on the ground, I stopped. I made her get back on the glove and sit patiently for a few moments, then went forward as normal. Now, two years later, this behavior is still gone.

Extinction has definitely worked well for Stu. Unless Stu is seriously angry at me, he won’t play batbird, and even then he won’t do it for more than a minute (compared to the 10 minutes I had to wait initially for gravity to overwhelm his stubborn streak). K2 has learned, too, that I want him to spin on his perch rather than fly off, though we’ll both admit he’s not sure WHEN I want it… and sometimes he does it repetitively in order to get me to leave (which I won’t).

These behaviors have had results, and make sense. But some others I am more prone to calling superstitions, because frankly I don’t recall them ever having worked, and the fact that the animal still insists on trying them is bizarre and hilarious.

K2 comes up with a lot of new behavior. He is only now beginning to grasp the concept of clicker training as a way of getting him to do the same thing every time; before, he thought that my presence with the whistle meant “Behave as batshit crazy as possible.” On day 5, he started displaying one of my least favorite behaviors, which I referred to as WFBP, or “Fly at the wall, the floor, the bow perch, and the other perch!” What was most confusing about this behavior was it wasn’t something I was deliberately rewarding: he would do it immediately after the whistle, as I was placing the mouse, so by the time he got back to the main perch there would be a mouse. I just had no way of informing him that he was getting the mouse WITH the whistle, not with the WFBP insanity.

Stu is pretty convinced that if he hops back and forth between the ground and the stump a few times, something magical will happen. I’m not sure if he does his little Lorax impression to get more mice (as he is voracious) or if he does it to get me to leave, but sometimes he’ll look at me expectantly and then increase the distance he jumps like if he just jumps far enough, I’ll give him whatever it is that he wants.

The only superstition I can identify of Mariah’s is that she will occasionally hoot when she gets a mouse. Since that just makes whoever’s feeding her smile and stare fondly at her (versus leaving, or giving her another mouse) I can’t imagine what she think s she’s going to accomplish with that one. It is adorable, though.

Covered in Mouse Blood, Sexually Harrassing Birds

So to make a long story substantially shorter, I’m currently volunteering to train two Great Horned Owls and a Red-Tailed Hawk. Mariah is an owl with only one wing, who’s developing cataracts due to her decrepit age (at least ten years older than the 13 most GHOs reach in the wild) and the fact that her favorite hobby involves staring directly into the sun while clacking her beak contentedly. She will get on the glove and tolerate presentations, but not without a great deal of hissing, biting, and general malevolence. Also, she thinks she can fly (she is wrong), so spends a lot of time proving that disabled owls have landing abilities that are the exact opposite of a house cat.

Mariah: Needs to Wear A Helmet

Stu is the other owl, who’s less than a decade and possesses slightly less than two full wings. He’s my favorite, because nobody thought he could be trained and I am proving them wrong, and because his feathers above his eyes are black like eyebrows which makes him have the most ridiculous expressions of any animal I’ve ever met. Right now, he tolerates my touching him, albeit with the air of a sexually harassed secretary that is just putting up with it for the promotion. Sometimes he makes little cheeping sounds, which makes me feel even more like a molester.

Stu: Short for Stupid.

Finally, there is K2, or KATU, or as I like to call him: Captain Asshat. He has both wings, a very unfortunate fact for me, and is blind in one eye. That means that when, like today, he takes offense at my actions and decides to fly at my face, I’m not sure if he misses on purpose or because his blood-thirsty behavior is sidetracked by his complete lack of depth perception. Right now, I’m working on curbing Asshat’s tendency to fly around his cage like a trapped wasp whenever I enter it; I have somehow successfully taught him to twirl instead.

Additionally, K2 has a cut on his foot that we’re worried may get infected. That means that every morning before dawn I creep into his cage (dressed in a big red coat in hopes that he doesn’t associate regular-me with the evil Santa Claus that violates his zen in the AM) and grab him in a towel in order to scrub out and Neosporin-up his foot. I also get to inject his mice with antibiotics; it’s all very mad scientist.

Basically, what this all boils down to is that I am constantly covered in mouse blood, and all I ever talk about is birds. This is not that much different from my life prior to this particular career track - just different nouns.

Not obvious from this photo: mouse guts in my fanny pack.

This Post Is Brought To You By The Letter "D," For Dramamine!

Man, I sure do love listening to Melody & Josh argue about who’s on time and who’s right. For example, having the entire trip to the airport to head to Chiang Mai province filled with the sounds of squabbling (interjected with a heavy dose of “I know, shmurr pants but I think,” and “you know I love you, but”) is only surpassed by the fact that they often burst into song at the first sign of potential victory.

Both of them are surprisingly tuneless for people who do so well with stringed instruments.

MELODY: “I’m right, I’m right, I’m always right, doo doo doo!”

JOSH: “I’m awesome, so awesome, I’m awesome, yeah!”

ME: “….”

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From the air, Bangkok is a vast, interconnected gridlock of farmland and houses. Cannals run parallel to main roads, following paths that make shallow, irregular turns together into the distance. The land sections are regular and rectangular with few exceptions. Farm rectangles are intermixed with wetlands and tightly knitted housing complexes. The roaring streets and sky-high towers are nowhere to be seen; we are too far from the bass-pumping heartlands of Khao San for such extravagance.

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We have our first meal at an authentic “looks-like-food-poisoning” restaurant, which is basically the staple of restaurants in Asia. If there’s not a 70% likelihood of seeing a rat, or a cockroach as large as a rat, you’re probably in a tourist trap. It is as delicious as always, and we spend some time playing with the bizarre plastic cage that turns out to have been designed to keep flies out of their sauces. It reminds me of that game my mother never bought for me, Mousetrap.

Fuck off flies, this is my playdoh!

There aren’t enough seats on the minibus for us to ride together, so Melo & I go first with Josh coming an hour later. I spend the first half of the ride in the back all fucked up and loopy on Dramamine, with a small boy falling asleep on me, which is kind of cute. Then I spend the second half of the drive with an old man doing the same which is a lot less cute, especially with all the coughing and the catheter. When he wasn’t sneezing, he was noring… on my shoulder. Also, please see the previous sentence for the use of the word CATHETER. Ugh. I keep trying to shove him subtly to the other side before finally giving his assistant a very desperate look. Language barrier my ass – she promptly loops a finger in his pocket and keeps him upright the rest of the journey. Not quick enough to avoid mental trauma, but at least it happened before his catheter touched me, right?

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A note to the unwary: a mini-bus is basically a van that they shove a ton of people in. It’s slightly more expensive but has air-conditioning, and lets the driver go supremely fast around terrifyingly curvy roads. It is fast, efficient, and if you have a case of constipation it is a sure-fire way of making you shit your pants in fear! PACK DRAMAMINE.

Ahem.

We arrive at Suppong, a small town in Chiang Mai province, and Josh is not there. Here is a deconstructed timeline of what happened, as best we can put together.

1:30        Meaghan and Melo depart Chiang Mai

2:30        Josh departs Chiang Mai

6:10        Meaghan and Melo arrive in Suppong, reeking of sweat, and try to find the “motortaxi” but fail as they appear to be out for dinner.

6:25        Josh arrives in Suppong, somehow sneaks by Meaghan and Melody, gets hassled by someone who wants to make Josh his pretty Caucasian princess

6:30        Meaghan and Melo go to a restaurant, are told it’s closed, then are told it’s not, and confusedly order some tea and coffee.

6:45        Josh arrives at Cavelodge with his dubious virtues intact, and wonders where the fuck Meaghan and Melody are

7:00        Meaghan and Melody drink some iced coffee and tea, and wonder where the fuck Josh is.

7:30        Meaghan decides to see if her phone works. She calls Josh. He is at the Cavelodge. Anger at self ensues.

8:00        Meaghan and Melody bargain down a random lady for a ride from 400 to 300 baht, by accident and out of genuine irritation.

8:05        Meaghan, in the bed of this random lady’s truck, realizes she has successfully bargained for the first time ever. Gives herself a mental high five, then remembers she didn’t think her cell phone worked in Asia and that they could have been at the Cavelodge an hour ago if she had. Anger at self continues to rage on.

8:30        Meaghan and Melody arrive at the Cavelodge. It is pretty great.

10:00     Melody and Josh set up the telescope while Meaghan opens a bottle of liquor with the dubious title of “S-Brandy.” It smells great. It tastes like shoe polish.

11:30     Post S-Brandy, everyone has deep and slurry discussions about God and stuff.

Notice the distinct lack of motorbike taxis.

This is where I bought the "s-brandy." I think S stands for strawberry, or maybe sucker. I don't know what the brandy stands for.

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Despite its flaws the trip here was gorgeous. The countryside was meandering tropical forests that ranged heavily in elevation and rainfall. At times it was all pine, at others lush greenery, but almost always deep and faintly feral. We passed many gorgeous viewpoints, but taking a scooter – while freeing – would have been terrifying with people like our mini-bus driver on the road. He weaved in and out of traffic like a man who has made peace with his lot in life and is now ACTIVELY TAUNTING GOD.

Bless you Dramamine.

Bless you.

Come buy some motorbikes, and listen to our captive birds!!! Strange advertising scheme.

Colorblind to Six Foot Signs

NOTE: The ratio of silly string purchased to silly string in my hair DOES NOT ADD UP. Either we proved Newton wrong last night, or we were attacked by outside forces.  However, it turns out that shampoo and conditioner are more than sufficient to remove silly string, no matter how entrenched it is in your hair, pores, and psyche.

Josh spends most of the day in the pizza-scented lair of darkness that his hotel room turns into. Melo and I make excursions for food, T-shirts and a solution to the fact that while my bag has arrived, it turns out I packed lots of white shirts and only black bras.

Josh hiding in his temporary mancave, reading comics on his kindle.

I see my first gecko, and am a little underwhelmed.

Later, their friend John/Brett (both names are used, story currently lacking) shows up and tells us of his encounters with the Indian fortuntellers. These men line Khao San road, dressed in attire that is so traditional looking it has to be a costume instead of actual menswear, and single out gullible looking foreigners. At 5’8” and approximately 130 pounds, the Caucasian, very American JohnBrett apparently matched their search image perfectly. Despite JohnBrett’s assertions that he would NOT pay them 5000 baht they demanded for reading his fortune – or rather, for ‘figuring out’ his mother’s name, and the name of his first love(both of which he already knew) – the fortune tellers insisted on prying lots of personal details from JohnBrett and then attempting to weave together some sort of  grand reveal. When JohnBrett refused to give up the money he had specifically told them he would not give them, they chased him a bit, and then “cursed “ him. I choose to believe none of these fortune tellers approached me because they could sense that I was too clever to fall for their schtick, rather than the fact that I look like I may not actually have 5000 baht. I’ve got white tank tops to wear under my white shirts now to conceal my black bras; I could totally be the sort that carries around close to 200$ in their wallet, right?

We go to the Indian food restaurant (not affiliated). I am pleased to find a kindred spirit; just as I could not find the 12 ft tall green D&D Inn sign, Andy was somehow confused by the huge “Indian Food” and “Chilly Chills” signs into believing this shop was was a Mexican restaurant. I order palak paneer; it comes with something that may be a chilli pepper, or may be a cockroach*.

Later, a milestone: I win at pool against a boy! Melody “helps” and is aghast at my use of quotation marks in this sentence. More fundamental to our/my victory was Andy’s set of rules, which remind me of my nickname as a child – “Meaggie Makes up the Rules as She Goes Along.” For a series of mystically connected events, the next player somehow got two turns. Despite numerous attempts at clarification from Andy, I never do really discern what those events were, but I do benefit from them a great deal so I suppose I can’t complain.

Andy promising that his rules are 'legit' and that everyone in South Africa plays by them. BULLSHIT.

BUG BITES: 5

FACT: Tuk is much better than Melo at shithead.

*I am too hungry to bother checking.