Ludington Vacation Part 3

　
August 4　
                So another day has come and gone (and I am suddenly seeing ever so slight wisps of smoke floating slightly above my hands so I turn my gaze curiously to the candles I have flickering all around me, since I can’t use the lamp next to me because I’m using that plug for my laptop) and we’re all tired.
               It was a good day (typed as a fly runs into my neck because it’s attracted to the light of the screen so I move a candle closer to try and bribe it away to a firey death). After waking up at my cursed hour of 9am, (specifically because Paul was being noisy) I sat in my sleeping bag for a few minutes and just watched as two hummingbirds came and went, squabbled with each other, then came and went to the feeder. (at one point one of the hummingbirds was being chased away by a bee that was visiting the feeder but it eventually managed to come to some sort of agreement with the bee so that they could both drink from the feeder).
                   Dad stopped by the window and waved at me and I tiredly waved back before I got up. After working out breakfast and folding the bed back into the couch, I worked on my crossword book for a while (courtesy of Grandma Ade who gave it to me back when I was in the hospital.) They’re fun to do, and I get mom and dad involved, testing their knowledge on questions and clues I don’t know a thing about. Dad likes helping me out and mom seems to enjoy it too. Can’t wait to tease their brains on the three hour trip back home (it does seem to help the time fly by too).
             Before we realized it, it was nearly noon so we had to put the puzzle we were on on hold. I quickly went down to take some pics of the river (to document how much lower it had gotten since yesterday) and then quickly rushed to the van because everyone was waiting.
           We went to Silver Lake today. Mom and I got dropped off at the beach where Little Sable lighthouse is located and then Dad and the boys went to the Mac Woods Dune Rides (because of my neck I didn’t go and mom stayed with me by her own choice).
           The lighthouse is now open to be climbed (for a small fee of course, and it really is small) and is run by the Lighthouse Seekers Association (but the light itself is still maintained and owned by the Coast Guard, the L.S.A. just runs it) but we passed on the opportunity (though mom and Shawn did climb it last year), I was just as happy taking photos from different views of the tower. (We overheard a few facts about the lighthouse later when we were about to leave, such as a house used to be attached to the tower lighthouse, as I’ve always wondered why Little Sable was just a tower, and learned that the house got torn down back in the mid 1900’s by the Coast Guard, but the tower remains and blinks on and off at night)
              Mom and I made camp on the beach, sprayed on the SPF50 and got ready to just stare at the beach. I briefly noticed a Ring-billed Gull, closer to the beach grass and small dunes at our back, acting somewhat strange, but then ignored it. Quite abruptly a young asian-looking man just dropped to sit in the sand next to mom for a chit-chat. We learned his name was Rich and that this was his first time ever here and he was on vacation. (we also learned he was out of college, he had ridden the Dune Rides before coming to the beach, and that he’s crazy about film photography, lenses, and owns 10 different SLR film cameras)
             We talked a while, and then I noticed a group of kids surrounded the before-mentioned-gull on the beach so I went to check it out. Some kids were trying to help the gull which seemed to be in bad sorts. (by help I mean feed it dead fish they had found in the water, and because the gull was just sitting there with its beak wide open and panting, a little girl managed to slide a fish into it’s mouth but the gull shook its head and spat the fish out in rejection, and I reasoned to the girl that gulls go after fresh fish in the water for a reason. Though they are scavenger birds of the beaches…) A man eventually came, a father to a few of the children, and together he and I looked it over. It’s feet and wings weren’t broken, its eyes were clear and it didn’t appear to be bleeding. It was a young gull, just turning mature with spots still on its head. It didn’t even put up a fight when the man opened its wings or even picked up the gull. We borrowed the kid’s bucket of water and dead fish and the man picked the gull up and offered it the water and the gull drank as if it hadn’t for days, poor thing.
           We offered it water over and over and it continued to drink. (poor thing was probably dehydrated). A woman, grandmother to some of the children trying to help the gull, went up to the lighthouse to tell one of the workers about the gull to see if we couldn’t get the DNR to come down and see it. In the meantime, with the man’s help and the kids, we made a little tent shelter for it out of a towel (borrowed from the lady) and then got it more water while I carried it to the shelter in the cooler wet sand and set it in the shade made by the blanket.
             I promised the kids I’d stay with the bird until the DNR came and took over the duties of picking up the bird so it could drink from the bucket and making sure no one else touched or came near it. After nearly 10- 15 minutes two ladies came down from the park service, checked the bird out, then said they’d get someone from the DNR to come take a look. After about 10 minutes one of the ladies returned with a guy who looked very much like a park ranger. After picking up the bird to show him how, physically, it looked ok (by now me and the man from earlier had deduced that it was probably ill or poisoned by something it ate) and even how the bird would drink, the DNR man broke the news to us that there really was nothing he could do for the bird except let nature run its course and then autopsy the bird to find out what had caused it to expire. (The bird wasn’t taking as much water now, had its beak mostly closed, and was panting quite heavily)
            Dad and the boys had arrived at the beach by now and Shawn and David were there wondering what was gonna happen, with David insisting that the DNR guy do something (and of course I had to argue back that there was nothing he could do, that it was just the way it was, and that it’s not very painful on the Ring-billed gull population in America as a whole anyway.)
                I was able to make the DNR guy’s trip worthwhile though, because near this gull we had spotted the body of another gull (probably a two or three weeks dead) and the guy was able to take the bird with him (wearing rubber gloves of course) and assured us this was the kind of thing they could study to find out what killed it.
          So after a few more minutes and offering the gull more water, we left it in the shade of the towel (the lady and her grandkids had by now left but she told us that she’d leave the towel and bucket behind for us to use. What a nice lady) At this point, though, the gull had done a strange thing with its head, where it bent it back as far as it could go (which meant it laid it on its back) and then rolled his head back and forth like a windshield wiper. After a while, he just left his head back like that and would do it periodically, and a little while after that he started doing something very seizure-like, several times. The bird was definitely expiring right before our eyes (Which meant I’d win the bet I made to the man who had helped me earlier, because he came back after a time to see if anything else had happened to the gull since we had contacted the park service people, and I bet him that the bird would die before I left the beach to go home after hearing what the DNR guy had told me.) And nearly ten minutes before we packed up, David came running up to me to say the bird had died (he ran up to me because I had ended up spotting a bird I didn’t recognize and so was standing on top of a small, blazing hot sand dune to take photos of the bird and others of the scenery and lighthouse)
            Indeed the bird had died, so I went to find the ladies from earlier, and ended up having to walk all the way to the entrance gate (not that far if i had just crossed over the sand dune but the sand was scorching!) to find one of them because the other had switched for her shift, and ran into another guy (obviously worked there too) who asked me, after I told the girl that the gull had kicked it so the DNR could now freely take it, if it was the same bird he had been hearing about for the past week. Yup, seems this gull had been suffering some sort of slow death, but at least we managed to make his (or maybe hers, hard to tell with Ring-billed gulls unless you can look up to see the shape of the line in their butt holes) last moments more comfortable. Although it makes me wonder what exactly happened to it…
           In the time between leaving the gull as it slowly died, and before we left, we had lunch (which were sandwiches we had made and packed) and got in the water. I stepped into water for the first time in over a year, but didn’t swim. Unfortunatly there was a LOT of algae and I didn’t really feel like getting my suit full of the stuff. On the other hand, sticking to the shallows worked in my favor, since I nearly crossed paths with a confused Steelhead (essentially a rainbow salmon/trout that lives in the Great Lakes and doesn’t migrate from the ocean).
         Two or three people were following this enormous fish as it swam through the water, swimming sometimes in circles before contuing down the shore, and as I realized what it was, standing in the water as I was, I rushed out (mostly reacting to the fact that a fish with teeth and nearly 2 feet long was swimming right at me) and yelled at mom to “quick! Get my camera!”
                   Soon a small group of people, including myself, were following the fish down the beach. A man I ended up chatting with moments before suddenly jumped in and attempted to catch the fish barehanded, and succeeded. I got quite a few shots of him and the fish (the thing had teeth!) It was a good, healthy, and very large fish, with a lot of kick in it. We reasoned that it had probably got stuck between the sandbars and the guy carried it out a ways, but the dumb fish ended up swimming back to shore. The guy, Rick, ended up catching it again (he commented later that it had been tired, else it wouldn’t have been so easy to catch) and taking it further out before releasing it where it finally headed into deeper waters, and hopefully stayed. (I later got Rick’s e-mail address so I could send him the pictures of him and the fish, else his ‘nephew might not believe he caught this fish bare-handed’ - I quote).
            So after all this excitement, we eventually headed for home, and on the way Paul got to choose what we had for dinner, considering tomorrow he turns 6-years-old. Yikes, he’s getting bigger! He was obsessed with Arby’s at first, but because none was in sight soon, he ended up choosing the first place he saw which turned out to be McDonalds. After ordering enough food to feet a batallion, we headed for home at last.
         We arrived, got showers (of course, upon my coming out of the shower got told a little story of David locking Whip-or-will because he was throwing a little tantrum of being angry with his brothers or something, and ended up locking the door knob which we don’t have a key to. So dad ended up having to break into a window and sent Paul through it to unlock the door, and probably gave David a stern lecture of some sort about tantrums) and then dad and I had ice cream while mom tried to reassure David and calm him down because he would not stop crying (dad did not help with a few comments he made, which only increased David’s crying (David has a tendency to not let things that are dealt with go, that and to make mountains out of molehills), and yet before dad got in to take his shower he said good night to dad, unfortunately dad didn’t hear him when he said because he was distracted so I ended up relaying the message)
           After some candle lighting and cleaning up, I rubbed the other medication ( a gel) for my acne reaction onto my face, took my pill, and now I’m ready for my last night in Pere Hollow. Hope it’s as good as the others have been. I’ve feel really fortunate to sleep on the porch; being able to fall asleep to the sounds of the river………..