Today I was stationed at the front desk pretty much all day. Turns out it wasn't all that boring though. About 10 o'clock Liz comes downstairs from the craft room with one of the cardboard rolls from the commercial toilet paper rolls (the huge ones) and basically tell me to brainstorm. Maybe you didn't know, but I adore brainstorming. Thank you, PLATO. We have a million of these things, and we need to entertain several hundred kids with crafts for Coast Day coming up this Saturday. Joan, the volunteer, and Renee from Eastern National were at the desk with me, and there were very few visitors in the Center because it's the first sunny day in forever, so everyone's out on the island. So, we got to it. I carried this toilet paper tube around with me for the next hour, turning it over and basically looking like a dork. Tube came along to feed the fish. Tube came along to turn the camping sign to "Vacancy". Tube swept sand from the beach combing room with me. Tube answered questions about surf fishing. Okay, the tube couldn't actually talk, but it was on my hand pretending to be a hermit crab shell while I talked about surf fishing. Here is the list I came up with:
Hermit crab
Sea anemone (Rene deserves credit for this)
Whelk, or shell complete with Feather Blenny poking out.
Whelk egg case (if cut into strips)
Puffer fish
Horse
I then made a field trip up to the craft room and raided everything that might be useful: popsicle sticks, dowels, pipe-cleaners, construction paper, clothes pins, goggly-eyes (you can never have enough googly-eyes in my profession), little foam balls, scissors. An the three of us set about deciding on a prototype. I started thinking about the hermit crab, and it would be pretty awesome as a hand puppet (fingers as claws!) but didn't really work with our craft supplies. The sea anemone would be adorable, but I decided to give the horse a try. After all, what child on Assateague Island wouldn't get excited about a horse? And let me tell you, this horse is the cutest thing to grace the National Park Service in years. It's belly is the infamous tube (which is perfect because of the salt-bloating), it has popsicle sticks for legs, a dowel for a neck, and a clothes pin as a head, complete with ears and a mouth. Joan and Jackie came up with the idea for matching pipe-cleaner manes and tails. This thing is win.
My prototype horse came with a price, though: a blood sacrifice a la the cave of the Slytherin locket (turns out everyone gets Harry Potter references in this generation.) That, or maybe I'm still four years old and can't be trusted with a pair of scissors. The funny thing is I didn't even notice that I managed to cut open the pad of my finger drilling holes in cardboard with a pair scissors until I realized that "my finger feels sticky". By then, there was already a nice blood-spot on the horse. So, I named him Vampire. Joan thinks he's too cute to be a blood-sucker and that I should call him Tubby. Tubby Bloodsworth, perhaps?
Any excuse is a good one to practice my First Responder certification, though. So, I wrapped that thing up in gauze and tape. Yeah, take that.
Anyway, Jess and I decided that if the Ranger had already annihilated a finger on this project, we had better do some prep work for the innocent children. So, she acquired a power drill and a box cutter from the maintenance crew, and we went to work. I know, right? I guess I didn't draw enough blood with the common scissors, so they gave me the power tools. Surprisingly, though, I am actually very good at using power tools, thanks to a year in the Brown Engineering lab, so no need to worry. Jess took care of that for you, anyway. Especially when, for lack of a clamp or a work table, I had to hold the tubes with my knees in order to drill them. I managed to drill ten small holes in each of 70 tubes without planting an 1/8th inch drill bit in my thigh. Yuck, talk about an unclean puncture wound. Oh well, what's a job without a little perilous adventure?
Tubby Bloodspot the Vampire Horse is a cutie, though, so the day was a certain success. Plus, I had a great time at the desk.
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