Wild Turkeys, Wine, and Magnets

This morning, I got to work, drove to the other side, parked my car, and walked up to unlock the gate. And saw a whole family of wild turkeys.

There were three adults and 5 or 6 juveniles. So Damn Cute! It reminded me of Massachusetts. I remember driving around the back roads near my parents house in Barre and suddenly having to stop as a flock of turkeys stumbled across the road. I do love the random animals and wildlife at this job. Mostly I see osprey. So many that it's become mundane. They're gorgeous though. There's at least two nests on each side of the river, and they're swooping down to catch fish or cruising the air currents all day. In the morning, I hear fish jumping out of the river constantly. There are extremely friendly cats that will rub up against your leg if you stand up on the ramp. And tonight there were two neighborhood dogs playing near the boat, and the sweetest old chocolate lab wanted so much to jump into my car with me. Aww.

When my coworker B came down today, he had a list of tasks to accomplish. He spends one day a week as a "shop day," and 3 days operating the ferry. He spends his shop day doing whatever the boss decides needs to get done. Today, he hopped in the work boat, and navigated over to some snags near the boat. He had a small chainsaw on a long pole, and it was waterproof. So he was able to cut down the underwater snags that could get in the way of the boat. Once that was done, he went fishing with magnets. When the guys were dredging, the managed to drop a metal piece of the dredging setup in the water. I think it was on top of one of the barges, and it fell off when they pulled the barge out of the water. From what I can tell, it's a large L shaped piece of welded metal. It's somewhere on the ramp, under about 6 feet of water. We tried to hook it with the spike pole. We tried a grappling hook. Today B came prepared with a magnet meant to hold 250 lbs. That should totally do it, right? So he attached the magnet (which looked like this) to a length of rope, and managed to stick it to the metal. Then he started to pull it slowly. And suddenly, pop! the rope came back up. The magnet was stuck tight to the metal, but the ibolt on top had sheared off! So now the piece of metal and the magnet are stuck together at the bottom of the river. I have no idea what the boss will come up with next to get it out, but if someone has to go swimming to get it, it's not going to be me!