Is this in my Job Description???

Hello All!!

It is that time again! This week has been one of the most interesting I have ever had. In all honesty I have had to do some things this week that I just didn't know would be a part of the job. However, I'm going to leave y'all in suspense and go about this week in a timeline fashion, because I find it more fun that way :) (NO skipping to the bottom! That is just plain cheating, and I won't stand for it.) :)
I'll begin with July 4th; I hope you all had a wonderful time partying and cooking out in the warm summer sun enjoying this great country of ours. I'd like to think I was able to do the same thing but in a different way. In the morning I met up with Jenny Garrison's (a good friend from Clemson) friends who were working on their own cross country road trip. Being the good southern man that I am, I could not let them pass through without showing some sort of hospitality. We hiked to the top of Mt. Washburn, which stands at 10,243 ft. (my first time ever hiking that high). It was a great hike and I think a good experience for everyone. Unfortunately, as you all know July 4th fell on a Saturday this year, which is my Monday, so I had to cut the time at the top short and hike back down. As we parted I gave them whatever pointers I could about my district since they were already there. It was really great to spend some time with people my age from the south again; I have missed that a lot. So a big thank you to Jenny for pointing them my way. I had a great time and I think they did too. (Jenny is in Africa and I'm not sure if she gets email, so if anyone hears from her, please pass along my thanks). Back at work I unfortunately had to work the late shift, so I was on from 1:30 till 10pm and I missed our little cookout we had for the Tower and Lamar Districts, but I did make a peach cobbler that seemed to go over well because there was none left when I got home. The 5th was a relatively calm day. I worked the late shift again, which was fine because we get a little extra pay for working Sundays and for working at night. The 6th is when the fun started to happen. On the 6th I worked the campground duty, which means I go collect fees from all of the campgrounds and help with any animal jams that may occur while on duty. The day was going normal until around 6pm as I was leaving my last campground to head back to my station. A visitor pulled up beside me and said there was a BIG grizzly and a deer carcass about 300 yards from the campground. Two alarms automatically go off in your head when you get this information: 1) Grizzlies rarely come to our district, much less that close to a campground; 2) When a bear gets on a carcass, it becomes very aggressive about anything near that carcass. So I head to where the sighting was reported and talk to the visitors who are watching the bear. They showed me the location of both the bear and the carcass (which was about 10 ft off the road). After they gave me the information, I called dispatch and told them I needed Law Enforcement and Bear Management immediately and asked the visitors to continue down the road for their safety. Somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes later, LE rolled up with three Rangers. Let me try to give you a mental image of the situation. You are on a East/West running road. On the North side, roughly 200 yards away, is a full size male grizzly. On the South side is a deer carcass 10 ft off the road. The Rangers on scene include one LE Ranger with a fully load 12 gauge shotgun, tazer, standard issue handgun, and two cans of bear spray; one LE Ranger with a fully loaded M-14, tazer, revolver, and two cans of bear spray; one LE Ranger with a tazer, standard issue handgun, and two cans of bear spray; and finally one VUA Ranger (me!), with one can of bear spray and a radio (I count that as a weapon). You can assume where I was in relation to the others. Now the bear was not advancing on the carcass, so the best situation was to remove the carcass before the bear gets to it. No food = no bear, very simple. Guess who gets to get rid of the carcass! :) You understand the subject line now! So we load the carcass into the back of my truck and I head up to what is called the Gut Road. The Gut Road is off limits to visitors and is probably the coolest road I have ever driven on. It is a dirt road that runs along the edge of a valley. At the top of this road about 500 yards in from the main road is a meadow that reminds you of the elephant graveyard from the Lion King. And this is where I left the deer for the bears to find. An interesting sight and smell that I will probably never forget. (Details are available upon request).
The fun continued on the 7th, without a doubt. On the 7th I was on Resource Management, which in this Park means wildlife management (wildlife includes humans; you'd understand if you were here). Anywho! the day went on as normal until about 3:30pm when I was dispatched to the Petrified Tree Road. Normally a quiet part of the park, it had exploded with people because of a Black Bear in the valley below the road. Now this is business as usual: watch the bear, watch the people, and get traffic moving again. Business as usual ended about an hour into the jam. The Ranger that had responded with me had to drive some hikers back to the Roosevelt Lodge because the bear was too close to the trail back. This, however, did not stop people from coming down the trail from Roosevelt Lodge. Not too look after the other Ranger left, the bear made his way to the trail and started to walk toward Roosevelt, and just after that, a large family came around the corner heading right for the bear. This was a new situation! I got up on the guardrail and yelled and motioned to the family to stop and back up. (MOM, you should probably skip the rest of the paragraph). After I had the people turned around, I radioed for assistance, told the people in the parking lot not to move, and asked them to spot for me. If the bear went left or right, I wanted them to yell it to me; see, I was going down the valley to the trail to get the family out... For only the second time since getting here, I once again drew my bear spray and headed toward the family, which had walked back around the corner. When I made it to the bottom of the valley the other Ranger had arrived. A five year veteran, he directed me on what to do. With him and the people spotting, I walked around the corner and found the family. They were visibly shaken but all were okay. The bear had made its way up the hill about 30 yards off the trail, but still in a very dangerous position. I told the family to get in a big group, with the children in the center, and I escorted the family out of the valley keeping an eye on the bear as we walked. Again, extracting people from close encounters was not necessarily on the Job Description but it is a part of my job. My instincts proved to be helpful -when I returned to the parking lot, the other Ranger told me I had done everything very well and correctly. Pretty good for my first time if I do say so myself! :) Finally, to close out my week, I had a medical emergency at the gate yesterday. I was walking along the road to change a sign when a man yelled at me from his car, his wife was in extreme pain. I immediately ran back to the station and called dispatch for an EMT and asked one of my co-workers who was also first aid trained to see what she could do for the woman. To be honest I knew that there was nothing we could do to help her but keep her comfortable 'til we could get her to a hospital. While my co-worker comforted the woman, I took on a logistical roll. After calling dispatch, I got a more detail patient history and asked whether they were requesting an ambulance. After I had that information, I relayed it to the Day Shift Supervisor for the LE Rangers and the EMT who had been dispatched to our site. (Important Information: Although we have an ambulance at the Northeast, there is no one trained to drive it or any EMTs or paramedics on duty here; although 4 or 5 live here they patrol lower in the valley). After this I got in contact with the construction people (they are rebuilding the road from Cooke City to the park) and told them an ambulance was coming through and that we needed traffic stopped as soon as it arrived. The ambulance arrived after an off duty Ranger got it out and brought it down. Until the EMTs arrived I helped her with the stretcher (which has to be like a whole day of training because that thing is a machine). Finally, two EMTs arrived and we all loaded the woman into the ambulance and it headed to Cody, WY and the nearest hospital. I don't know what happened to the woman but based on the information I gathered, it seems like she had a blown appendix.
So that was my crazy week. I will say this it was a huge week for experiences that I will not soon forget. If I do come back to work here next summer, I will be sure to get some sort of higher training than just CPR/FirstAid because while it was helpful, I feel more training would be better for the Park.
I hope everyone had a wonderful week, anything going on? I know about the Governor but anything else the Post & Courier is talking about that I haven't heard??? Sorry it was a long one again but I tell you, so much goes on between my opportunities to write to everyone.
The sign off last week was something they used to do in the Civil War, I thought it was fun.

Until the next installment,
-- Brent Everitt
Visitor Use Assistant
Northeast Entrance Station
Yellowstone National Park