Fishing for lizards

Long day, and i'm reely tired. We got our damn truck stuck in sand today, as a mild form of protest over being demoted to 2-wheel drive. i've said too much.

I'm now quite handy at catching lizards! I was budgeted to build myself a 'lizard stick' - a retractable metal rod with a noose of fly backing on the end, around which to snare lizards. Little buggers are about the size of your finger and incredibly fast. I cannot emphasize enough how ungodly fast those little things are.

Why do we catch them?? Well, the sand dune lizard is a species under consideration for being listed as "endangered"--which, of course, comes with many a legal ramification. Our job (myself and the two guys I work with) is to prove or disprove the existence of these lizards in various locations, to assess where they are. The data gets heaped along with that of other years, and someone higher up (i suppose) decides whether or not to list these guys.

Basically, my typical day at work is something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1bRfLHA3A

I lied. that would be awesome though.

I'm really excited for this weekend. It will afford me a chance to sleep past 5am, yes, but also it's Roswell's 4th of July UFO festival--woo! Roswell has a steady tourism industry. In that, there's a constant stream of downright weird people who visit Roswell simply because it's Roswell, New Mexico. Alien skeptics, believers, freaky-believers, and of course the whole aluminum-hat crowd converge here for the festivities. I'm excited to people watch, and to take some pics.
Any real gems, I'll stick somewhere online. I know for a fact people dress up for this thing... be excited.