Spring Coast Trip

Wow I am late posting this! Sorry! Well since it is so late I will probably forget some of the stuff that we did so I am apologising for that now and if anyone has anything to include then please let me know.

We left on a Friday, with no vans so we took our personal cars. Mrs. LeJeune and Mr. Johnson left with a group that morning and Felicia and I left after lunch, headed down to Merrill, MS for our weekend trip. The group that left that morning spent the day marking Gopher Tortoise burrows.

We had a small accident on the way down and busted the grill out of my car. We still made it by that afternoon. Well that evening we were supposed to meet up with a lady from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to help with a bat study she was conduction in the Pascagoula River wetlands.

We went on a long wild goose chase! We rode for an hour and a half looking for the group we were supposed to meet. Needless to say we saw some interesting country side but no research team.

We really roughed it that night, our camping was in the Nature Conservancy office with an A/C.

Saturday morning after breakfast, we loaded up and drove down to the Audubon Center at Moss Point. They were having a wildlife festival that day. They had some wonderful speakers and great demonstrations. There was a falconer there with his red tailed hawk, we did find the bat lady that day, and there were other great booths set up with valuable information.

We went on a McCoy's Swamp tour from the Audubon center. That was a great experience. Mr. Benny McCoy is so knowledgeable of that area. He knows all the plants and animals, along with history associated with them. It is definitely worth the money.


We finally finished up and headed back to the Nature Conservancy. That night after supper, we did meet up with the bat lady and she took us out with her research team where we set up nets and waited. We were hoping the bats would fly into the nets and we would go capture the bats, take a tissue sample so they could extract the DNA, and mark them, then release the bats. This did not happen. We started around 5:00pm when we put the nets up, we got back in the car at 12:00am without catching a bat. We did learn a lot on the trip and had fun. Of course we were hungry,so at nearly 1:00am, we popped a pizza in the oven and enjoyed eating it.

Sunday morning after all the showers, breakfast, loading our cars, and cleaning, we headed out. For the trip home we took a detour to the Wolf River, just north of Pass Christian, MS. We rented canoes and spent a couple hours paddling the river. This was a great ending to our trip. We picked up trash along the way, stopped for lunch, and just had a great time on the water.

One thing I failed to mention earlier in this post is, Felicia, my wife, was going on eight months pregnant during this trip. She managed the trip very well I would have to say.

This was a wonderful coast trip, and we enjoyed our last real outing for the semester and the last trip we will have with Mr. Johnson as a ECEC sponsor. We will try to get him to go on some other trips with us in the upcoming years.

Camping and work at Okatibbee

This past Friday and Saturday our environmental club headed over to Okatibbee Reservoir for two days of work and a one night camp out. We got there on Friday between 2:00-2:30 where we met up with Mr. Gary Hardin with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He demonstrated to us the proper ways to check and clean around a bluebird box. The job was to remove any limbs or brush that may be around the blue bird boxes, and also to remove the old nest.

In the steps of doing that; the first thing to do is tap on the box in case there are any flying squirrels in them. That way they don't surprise you when they come out when you open the box. Next we were to cut any branches or brush that may be around the box so the birds will have a clean entrance and exit. Most of the boxes did have old nests in them which gives hope that the blue birds are using the boxes that we replaced last year.

We finished checking the boxes around 4:30 so we set up camp and started a fire. That is a reoccurring theme with this group, fire. While some were getting the fire started others went fishing. Below you see Brad ready to catch a big one. I think Matt was the first to put his line in the water and as soon as he did, he caught a 3 pound bass. The next question he has was "Can we cook it?". Only if you clean it. We settled in and roasted some hot dogs and hot links over the fire, and when Matt finished fishing he cleaned and cooked his fish, then generously shared it with the rest of us.

We sat around the campfire sharing funny stories of all sorts, went for a walk, gazed at the stars, and returned to the campfire for more of Mr. Johnsons' entertainment. He demonstrated the magic of a fiery stick (refer to the pictures). We sat around a had a wonderful time laughing and listening to stories. Finely, 1... 2.... 3... we went to bed, some of us did. The others stayed up and talked for a few more hours. Now let me say; when the temperature is 25 degrees, there is a difference between going to bed and going to sleep. Everyone eventually went to bed, not sure how many actually slept. I did not.

Saturday morning we rambled out of bed, cleaned up, and headed over to Collinsville beach where we met back up with Mr. Gary. This morning they served us hot sausage and biscuits from McDonald's, with some OJ. A good breakfast before work. After students from a local high school came, we all headed over to Cypress Loop where we put out some Christmas trees and tied cement blocks to them. This is to help build fish habitat so the smaller fish can have some shelter. When we finished at Cypress Loop, our group headed back over to Collinsville beach where we put our more trees.

Some where we changed our focus from dragging trees, cement blocks, and tying them on; to putting them in trucks and hauling them closer to the edge so the many high school students would not have as far to drag them. We filled that cove area up pretty fast, so we started hauling them over to a cove north of the boat ramp.

Our first trip across that area proved to be wet (almost left ruts), so I came in about forty yards from there where I had very little problem. That is until I backed up to drop the trees off on the third run. Got just a little stuck, but not bad. With five people pushing, the truck came right out. Not the same case for the guy driving the OTHER truck. A big F-250, 4X4, tried taking the same route I did on my first run, yea the wet area. At first the truck was barely stuck, but that wasn't good enough. He didn't quit until the truck was nearly on the frame. Good laughs!

Well we ate, won some great door prizes donated by local businesses and headed home.

The entire trip was fantastic. Thanks to everyone that was there and a special thanks to Evan James for the pictures.

UWA Priarie Burn

On Thursday February 5, 24 Environmental Club members made the journey to the University of West Alabama. We started off in the Cafeteria, which is a very nice building but I'll let you comment on the food, where we met up with Dr. Wymer and his crew. Once we finished eating, they gave a presentation on the importance of prairies and fire. Our students also received some information about the college and scholarships and such.

After lunch we headed over to the ALFA center where we walked out to the portion of the prairie that we were going to burn. Robbie Limerick, from UWA, discussed fire safety and then appointed various jobs for the members of our group. After the phone call to the Alabama Forest Service, he lit the torch and the burning began.

He started by doing a backfire which creates a buffer zone. This is backing the fire against the wind so it will move slowly through the prairie grasses. We stood around with buckets of water and cedar tops waiting just in case we were needed. We did make a wet line just in front of the area that we were burning, to help contain any loose flames. Once the buffer area was established, we started a head fire over a small area just so everyone could see what to expect when we were ready to burn the rest of the prairie. The flames reached heights of about 10 feet at times and moved very fast across the open prairie. During the burning we saw numerous rats and field mice escaping, about four deer, and a gray fox.

Next they handed me the drip torch and allowed me to burn off a small area. Wait, I know you are thinking, Mr. Skipper and fire, what were they thinking. Yes, I know I'm awesome.

After the burn, we headed back to the main part of campus where the students walked across the old covered bridge. Then we toured the Natural Sciences building (Bibb Graves Hall). Dr. Wymer, Dr. Shumaker, Dr. Stanton, Dr. Rindsberg, and Dr. McCall all spoke to our students and gave us a wonderful tour of the Natural Sciences classrooms and labs.

We ended our stay in Livingston by stopping at Tres Hermanos or Mexico if you are from West Alabama. After filling up on cheese dip, nachos, and other various foods, we headed back to EC.

What a great trip. Sorry there are no pictures. No one gave me any to put up. If some come later then I will post them.

Highway Cleanup on Short Notice

It is a hectic part of the semester. First we plan a fish removal from Lake LU (on the UWA campus). It is canceled for some reason. So we change plans for a prairie burn, guess what, canceled due to weather. For some strange reason we can't burn the prairie while it is raining. So we plan our next Adopt-a-Stream river monitoring event. It rains, snows and the river is out of its banks. CANCELED! So we plan a Highway clean up and success strikes us at last.

The Highway clean up was planed on short notice, so we did not have many ECEC members present, actually (not counting me) Caiti was the only ECEC member there. That's OK because I had seven service learning students trying to finish their hours. So what do I tell them, no you can't work now but meet me at 10:00 Tuesday and you can finish those hours. I don't know what our record time for a highway clean up is, but I'll bet we came pretty close today. From leaving Cross Hall, setting up signs, handing out the wonderful orange vests and trash bags, to finishing, it took us approximately 45 minutes to clean our mile stretch of highway.

If that wasn't enough, the Phi Theta Kappa mile stretch was also due. So what do we do, load up all those students and head down Highway 15 South. Our one PTK member (again not counting me) Caiti, helped lead the charge down our stretch of highway. This stretch for some reason is a little longer than ECEC's. It is mostly because ECEC's goes in front of the school and more houses. Which means cleaner ditches and road sides. The PTK stretch also had more trash. It took about one hour.

So we left Cross Hall around 10:00 and returned about 12:00. To me that's not bad. Cleaning up two miles of highway in two hours. Thank you service learning!

We do have several projects in mind for the Spring Semester. They include; a trip (hopefully a camp out) to Okatibbee to put up and replace bluebird boxes and martin houses, more Highway cleanups, a river cleanup, Adopt-a-stream water monitoring, prairie burn, and some Spring trip(probably back to the Coast). Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Curt Skipper

National Public Lands Day

Back on September 13 ECEC went to participate in National Public Lands Day at Okatibbee Resivour. We met up with Mr. Gary Hardin at Okatibbee. Mr. Hardin works for the U.S. Army Core of Engineers there at Okatibbee. He is our liaison with Okatibbee. He always has wonderful projects for us and works so well with our students, making sure to teach them the ecological importance of whatever project it is that he has for us that day. Let me go ahead and say that we really appreciate him.

This year at NPLD the group worked on setting up Bluebird boxes. Mr. Gary had the boxes built and ready for us, so all we had to do was put them up. We used T posts, drove them in the ground, and attached the bird boxes to the post. We put up between 20-30 bluebird boxes.

After the hard work was finished we met up at Cove's Nest Marina for lunch. We ate some hot dogs, chips, and cokes. Afterward we won door prizes, they ranged from t-shirts to fishin' poles.

All in all we had a great time at National Public Lands Day. We always do.

If anyone has anything to add to this then e-mail me.

Curt Skipper

International Coast Clean up

This weekend the Environmental Club teamed up with Phi Theta Kappa to go participate in the International Coast Clean up. To start things off, the van we used for the trip was EC's Brand Spankin' New 12 passenger van. When I picked it up, it had 94 miles on it. I could not believe the van was entrusted to us on its maiden voyage.

We had three fantastic students join along in the journey. We also had two special guests, two of ECEC's alum's and better than that, they are both past presidents; Annie Strohm and Steven Cullen. Annie met us at EC and rode with us. Steven came over from Mobile, AL where he is working on his co-op portion for his degree. Both have always been extremely active ECEC members and even now as alums they join in on everything they can. Mrs. Robin Johnson and Mrs. Felicia Skipper also joined us on this outing.

Friday night we camped at the Audubon Center in Pascagoula. They have always given us a place to stay when we need it. That night we followed ECEC tradition and had a feast. This time we grilled tilapia, shrimp kabobs, boyscout style potatoes, and the Johnson's famous peach cobbler. Afterward we sat around a campfire, listened to some guitar playing, stories, and then we moved in for some games.

Saturday morning came early, 5:00 am to be exact. It took a few minutes, but we all began scampering around getting read for our day. Mr. J and Steven started on breakfast, I'm sure others helped so I'm not trying to leave anyone out, where we ate pancakes and sausage. After everyone cleaned up and we packed up, everyone jumped in a vehicle and headed toward Gulfport to start the beach clean up. Along the way we had a real close view of a sand-hill crane, beautiful bird that did cross the road, and made it all the way across thankfully.

We made it to the clean up site where we joined the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Phi Theta Kappa students. Everyone jumped in and did a great job cleaning the beach. We actually cleaned nearly a mile past what we were supposed to do. We did pick up a bag of cans that made it back to EC and we had about three bags of plastic to be recycled that we left for MGCCC.

Eventful as that was the day was about to get more interesting. Under the careful observation of Cody, a motorcyclist was stalled out and needed assistance pushing her bike out of traffic. So we helped her get her bike on the sidewalk. Well what actually happened was, she was about to turn and the front wheel hit a pile of sand, the bike turned over and she scraped her knee. Well under Cody's suggestion she checked the scrape and it was a huge gaping gash. With the help of a first aid kit and Annie practicing her vet skills, we cleaned and bandaged the wound. Hopefully she did go to the hospital for sticthes. After all of that we went and ate, then made the trek back to Decatur.

Thanks to everyone that helped on this trip. I had a great time and hope you did to. If any of you have anything you would like to add to this or editing then let me know.

Curt Skipper

ECEC is now on the web

I would like to take this opportunity for any ECEC members to send info for our new blog spot.