The Bear Wrestler

All of the Junior Rangers are now officially afraid of me. Today was William Johnson day at Junior Ranger Camp, and I happened to be the ranger working down there all day. Tim told all of the kids that Ranger Tiffany is from Utah and she wrestles bears, panthers, and mountain lions, and also lives by herself in the mountains. Mississippi kids must be really gullible because some of them actually believed him. Do I really look like I could wrestle a bear? Come on kids, most of you are bigger than me.

After the kids left this afternoon, it got a little quiet there, so I started flipping through the new "10th Anniversary" phone books we received. All of the rangers were wondering what it is the 10th anniversary of--maybe when phones first appeared in Natchez? I was back in the yellow pages, and I happened to run across the "Churches" section. I don't think I've ever seen so many church categories in my life. Under "Churches" there were the African Methodist Episcopal, Apostolic, Assemblies of God, Baptist (which had the most listings of any church), Baptist Independent, Baptist-Missionary, Baptist-Southern, Bible Missionary, Catholic, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of God-Anderson, Indiana (I don't get that one), Church of God in Christ, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hooray! although we were the only category that only had one listing under it), Episcopal, Full Gospel, Interdenominational, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran, Methodist, Methodist-United, Missionary-Baptist, Non-denominational, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Seventh-day Adventist. Whew! That's a lot of different types of churches! It kind of makes me think of Palmyra, New York at the time of Joseph Smith's First Vision. I think it was called the "burned-over district." My favorite church name in the yellow pages was St. Peter Rock #1 Baptist Church. I also found it amusing that there were five separate "First Baptist" churches. Anyway, at least people around here are very religious. I was watching a show on the History channel the other night about Mississippi, and reportedly 57% of Mississippians say they go to some kind of church, and the largest Bible bindery in the world is located in Mississippi!

Mayhem at Melrose

If you had come to Melrose this morning, you would have found policemen at the back of the house, policemen driving on the grass in front of the house, kids running everywhere, and a large bus full of senior citizens--not to mention the Melrose Garden Friends in the garden and the park rangers dashing all over the place. How did this happen, you may ask. Well, it all started when the burglar alarm at the slave cabin was accidentally set off, then the alarm company tried calling the visitor center, but we didn't catch their call because we were madly trying to sell tickets for the large tour bus that arrived at 8:45 a.m. (we don't open up until 9:00), parents were dropping their junior rangers off, and the Garden Friends (who plant flowers in the gardens) were trying to get themselves together. So, when the alarm company can't reach us, they call the police. The police roll into the parking lot, and then everyone starts freaking out. Then we call the alarm people and tell the policemen that we are fine. Then, Kathleen (our park superintendent) was out in front of the house, when another police car rolls up the old driveway (where cars aren't supposed to go). I was afraid she was going to fire everyone when she came into the visitor center, but she said we'd have to try harder than that to get fired. Needless to say, by 8:57 this morning, I was pooped and felt like I'd put in a full day of work!

Other than the craziness this morning, today has been a good day. Here's a surprise--I got up and made breakfast for Angie and myself this morning (no, contrary to what you may be thinking, I did not fix cold cereal). I whipped up some eggs, hash browns, bacon, cantaloupe, and blueberry toast with cinnamon butter! I thought as long as Angie was having "Breakfast at Tiffany's," I ought to make it good. Angie and I had fun hanging out last night. We went to Magnolia Grill for dinner (the place that we park rangers named as having the best bread pudding in Natchez last year) and had some tasty food and, of course, bread pudding. Then we watched "Night at the Museum"--one of my latest favorite movies. Good times!

Things have been going well with taking care of the Wesselman's animals. Yesterday Cocoa got out right when I needed to leave, so I was chasing him all over the yard, but now I have discovered that the trick is to walk inside like you're locking him out, and then he wants to come in. Last night I discovered this poor little hummingbird who was stuck out by the geraniums. I picked him up with a towel and tried to help him, but I think he was really old. I set him down in the garden, surrounded by flowers, and then I think he died. I hope he was at least happy when he died. Poor little guy. At least he's in a better place now.

Invasion!

Natchez National Historical Park has officially been invaded by crazy kids! Today was the first day of the first of four weeks of Junior Ranger history camp for kids ages 8-12. It was my day off, but I went in and worked a little overtime since we were a little short on staff. There were kids getting poked by pencils, spilling water all over the visitor center, etc., etc.--typical Jr. Ranger activities. Sydney is back again this year--she's the one who poked herself in her eye with her water bottle last year. We'll have to keep a close eye on her (no pun intended). Today for lunch I went to this funny little place called Express Po-Boys. Po-boys are basically the Southern version of subway sandwiches. I had a Cajun steak po-boy, and it was awesome! The restaurant is run by these funny ladies. I could here them talking in the back and one of them said, "You don't know how to dance." The other replied, "I do too!" Then the first one said, "Yeah, the 'shake ya booty!'" Typical restaurant conversation in the South. The funniest thing about the restaurant, however, was that behind the cash register, they had this big Mormonad poster--one of the old New Era mormonads like you can buy at the Distribution Center. It was the one about frogs and princes. I was so surprised to see it! I wonder where they got it.

Tonight Angie is going to stay at my house because she has to go to a meeting this evening and be up early in the morning, so she figured that would be a lot easier than driving up to Vicksburg to sleep for a couple of hours and then drive back. We're going to go to dinner somewhere fun this evening, and I'm planning to whip up something for breakfast tomorrow. It will be fun to have her here tonight--much more enjoyable than just being here by myself. I got the house all cleaned up today. Catherine said that the sheets on the beds in the guest bedroom were clean, but I checked them out today, and if those are the clean sheets, I'd hate to see the dirty ones! I've got those in the washer right now. It's a good thing I checked!

Different Slugs for Different Bugs

Natchez is currently under a severe thunderstorm warning. It's pretty windy outside. The problem with wind is that a lot of the trees around here are super old, and it doesn't take much to cause their branches (sometimes really big branches) to come crashing to the ground. We'll just hope that they stick with falling to the ground--and not falling on the car or the house.

It was so fun to get to go to church today! After church I went over to the Wesselman's house--they are one of the cute families in the ward--to get the rundown on how to take care of their pets while they are out of town for the next ten days. They have numerous pets: Shelly and Milo, the cats; Gracie and Cocoa, the dogs; two turtles; and one fish. So it's quite the crowd there, but it will be fun to hang out with them for the next week and a half. After I got home this afternoon, I had a nice long nap . . . until the thunder woke me up!

I've been having quite the bug zapping adventures last night and today and have found that what will kill one bug won't necessarily kill another. My hairspray worked great on the cockroach in the bathtub a couple of weeks ago, but when I tried that on this flying cockroach thing I had in here last week, it didn't work, so I had to resort to using the Raid. Raid did the job really fast, but the problem was that even just a couple of sprays stunk up my room for quite a while. So, last night when this really weird beetle-horsefly-looking creature flew into my room, I decided to try to get it without Raid. I first tried hairspray, but it had no effect. Then I tried this really potent air freshener spray that was in the bathroom when I moved into the house--still no effect. Then I tried my Benadryl anti-itch spray, also to no avail. Then, I tried Windex. The Windex seemed to stun it to the point where I could then whip out the fly swatter and get it. I think my room probably smelled worse after all of that than it would have if I had just used the Raid. This morning I tried my hairspray on a spider, and the spider ran away, so I guess it kind of worked for that. Oooh, it's getting quite thundery outside. Yikes! Tomorrow is my second day off, but I'll go into work for a little while around lunch time to help out, as tomorrow is the first day of Junior Ranger Camp.

Weekend Crowd

This morning at 8:50 a.m. (we don't open until 9:00), there were people beating down the door at the William Johnson house! So much for a quiet day to just get things done there! It's been super busy there all morning--it must be the weekend crowd. There were some kind of wild kids that came by this morning, and they kept wanting to buy things just after their parents bought something for one of the other kids, so by the time they blew in and blew out, I was out of $10 and $5 dollar bills. You can only do so much with $20s and $1s! Luckily Angie saved me and brought down some more change. Then these really nice people came in--it was a grandpa who lives here in town, and his granddaughter from Jackson. She was such a nice little girl! She was probably about 10 years old and was interested in everything. She was doing all of the activity sheets that we have there, and she was asking really good questions about everything. Then, she and her grandpa came back down after they left and brought me some fudge from Darby's on Main Street! How nice is that!! They said, "Here is a little present for being so nice and answering our questions today." I love nice people. Then it was really quiet until just before I was going to close for lunch--isn't that how it always goes--and all these people kept coming in, but I told them to come back at 1:00. So, I'm on my little lunch break right now, and I imagine that it's going to be a busy afternoon. No naps for me! I am really excited because I get the day off tomorrow so I can go to church--hooray!