Snip:
Oh, whoa--I'm being given way too much credit again. I wouldn't know the difference between a UAV and a rectal thermometer. To me, an electrical wall outlet is a mystery and a television program is the result of magic. I know TES owns or rents very sophisticated equipment, but the only time I'm aware of the actual name of something is when it breaks and Tim is worried about the cost of repair.
This isn't to imply that I'm not deeply committed to what we do, but I'm more useful, and more compentent, when I'm in the background or on the sidelines. In truth, I've only been present during one search, which was in Orlando in October, and my it was not my finest hour. LOL
In fact, I kept a copy of a post about it, so here it is: "My One Day Career as a True TES Searcher." .........
If you haven't actually been at any of these search sites, forget the mowed fields we saw on Murt's cameras and forget the media's aerial shots of picturesque clearings surrounded by woods and bounded by pretty vegetation.
The reality is that Orlando has sprouted up in the midst of hundreds of thousands of acres of swampy, alligator-infested, snake-infested areas of dense foliage and trees that resemble jungles more than woods.
When you're up close and personal, standing at the edge of that barrier of dense tropical woods, things look a lot different and a lot more foreboding.
To give you an idea, last month, on a sunny cheerful morning, I was privileged to be alone with 8 TES and LE people at the site where the Size 6 Disney dress was discovered. The site bordered a perfectly civilized 2 lane road directly behind an industrial complex, and while LE's amazing dogs darted in and out along the road, I realized that Tim and Lisa had picked up some long sticks and were poking and prodding the underbrush along the road. I decided I should make myself useful and do a little "searching" too.
I walked right up to that impenetrable barrier of thick green, shoved some branches aside, stepped forward, and realized that 20 feet in front of me there was an enchanting little pond surrounded by rocks and shaded with overhanging branches. I started to take another step forward when John Allen pleasantly insisted, Lets throw a couple stones in there. He handed me a stone roughly the size and shape of a hockey puck and kept a similar stone in his hand for himself.
Privately, I thought this was a very inappropriate time for us to have a skipping stones contest, but I acquiesced because, after all, hes LE, and so I obediently flung my stone at the pond. I overshot the pond by an embarrassing distance, probably because my heart wasnt in the game, or more likely, because I have lousy depth perception. Your turn, I told him, expecting him to mock my clumsy attempt, but all he did was hurl his own stone directly into the underbrush surrounding the edge of the pond. His shot wasnt a whole lot better than mine, and I was going to mention that to him, but as his rock landed he whispered sort of imperatively, Listen.
I heard it immediately--a mysterious, exotic orchestra of Latin maracas. Im a city girl, and I was enchanted by this unprecedented glimpse into Floridas flora, fauna, and especially these delightfully noisy insects or frogs or whatever. Whats making that sound? I asked in a reverent whisper, tiptoeing forward another step.
He put a restraining hand on my arm. Rattlesnakes.
An Olympic medalist could not have caught up with me in the "Screaming While Running" event that took place next.
