Where has the Time Gone?

The boat will be arriving tomorrow, your today I imagine! Sometimes I just felt like I have been on this island forever, probably due to the lack of new stimuli. Like, nothing really changes here. I have lived and worked with the same four people for the past seven months.

I am ready for some changes. Like people, movies, news, a space larger than this island. The boat is supposed to pull in at eight am. We are going to do an island tour with the newbies. Later in the day, it is the plan to show them how to make and disperse bait. I think the next day we are going to do an early morning ant survey and then go to one of the outer islands to explore!

Not sure what the exact plan is, but sometime during the next five days we will show them our ant survey routes, the ant farms, how to work the compost toilets, how to make drinking water, the marine survey routes, how to go queening, how to do bird banding, how to search and destroy an invasive plant here, ant ID, where to take their trash, how to do the slop bucket runs, how to do dishes, how the oven works, changing propane tanks, how to conduct bird MICs, how the sea turtle survey works, and how to do the weekly and monthly chores.

We are going to be busy. This was our view of the island coming in. I wonder how it will feel seeing a boat coming to our remote island!

Pink is for Pooping

When it is time to go you must first flip the sign.  You have to change it from the green side, “Olive is for Open” to the pink side, “Pink is for Pooping.”  We call it the pooper, as in, “I am going to use the pooper.”  It is important to know that everyone knows you are popping, but it is also good to know that everyone poops.  It was awkward at first, but now I feel that we all are comfortable with everyone’s poop schedule.  

 

The pooper is just a short walk from the bunker we hang out in.  Not too many steps.  It is covered with a tarp and it drapes down on two of the sides for privacy.  When you get there, it is good practice to lift the lid and the seat to check to see if you have cockroach friends.  I also like to pull out the crank handle, located just under the seat, used for dumping the towel to see if there is a gecko in there.  Oh, also the toilet paper roll tube. It has a nice view when you are using it.  Sometimes the white terns (birds) come by and say hi.  When you are finished pooping, you put your toilet paper in and also a couple of scoops of bulking material, which are like wood chips.  Grab some hand sanitizer on the way out and don’t forget to flip the sign back to “Olive is for Open” for the next person.  

The whole thing works with microbes.  They like eat the poop or something.  Kyle is in charge of pooper maintenance.  He gives the poop a spin inside the toilet, using that handle, three times a week to aerate the microbes.  He says he can hear the contents thumping as it spins.  There also vents from the toilets to keep them from overheating.  After the toilet is full (takes about two months for five people to fill), the toilet sits there for two months while the microbes do their thing.  Then it gets dumped into the compost pile.  We used a different toilet in the meantime.  I will need to remember to thank my toilet when I get home in December for all it does for me.