Category Archives: Environment

Talking about the weather, terrain, flora, fauna, etc…

The Critter Getter

Environment, Snapshots

For those of you who don’t know me very well I want to let you in on a little secret, I’m kind of a nerd.  OK, maybe a little more than kind of a nerd.  I have always loved biology, especially those creepy-crawly things that normally terrify others.  Here in south Texas there are plenty of little misunderstood creatures all over our dig site.  Usually, people’s first response to something like a tarantula in their excavation hole is to smash it with a shovel.  I would hate to see any harm come to them out of misplaced fear and ignorance, so I have tasked myself as the resident “Critter Getter.”

My "Marshmallow" Toad
My “Marshmallow” Toad

Since I have been here I have liberated countless spiders, including dozens of tarantulas and a few brown recluses (I usually don’t tell anyone about the brown recluses for fear of dangerous freakouts).  I’ve also freed a few snakes, dug out a fire ant hives, and shooed away a bevy of other bugs from the clothing of my fellow excavators.  I usually don’t have the free time to photo-document every beautiful bug or splendid snake that I find, but occasionally I’m allowed to geek out about geckos and capture some caterpillars.  So if you will, come with me on a Tour-de-Nerd of some of the local creatures that inhabit Sacred Heart Burial Park.  I will spare you the spiders and scorpions, and only show some of my lesser seen friends.  I ensure you that none of them can hurt you, at least not via the internet.

The Silver Serpent
The Silver Serpent

Day four was the day of toads.  We were able to save about seven of these adorable little marshmallows, and move them into a safer section of the cemetery.

Day six contained the widest array of critters.  We freed a couple small silver snakes.  These snakes were so small that even Erica managed to find them charming (Get it?  Snake-Charming?).  I also happened upon a patch of small caterpillars.  This little beauty will later metamorphose into a pipevined swallowtail butterfly.  Ryan also managed to help me capture a tiny whiptail lizard, which was no small feat considering how fast they are and how tired we were.

I hope you never change, caterpillar.
I hope you never change, caterpillar.

My favorite find happened yesterday.  This lovely lady is the larval stage female from the family Phenogodidae, better known as a glow worm.  In this stage of their life, the females are predators of other insects like centipedes and ants.  Best of all, they are bioluminescent, meaning they glow at night!

Green lizard looking at the camera out of a yellow glove
Tiny Whiptail Lizard

I don’t expect everyone to care about my little pals in the same way that I do, but I do hope that they might make a little effort to understand them.  It is not unreasonable to fear spiders and snakes (in fact it is often wise), but here in South Texas we are invading their homes.  They likely fear us more than we do them.  Next time you find one of these tiny buggers, admire it instead of reaching for the shovel.  You might be surprised at how truly amazing they actually are. ~Justin

Orange and black caterpillar
The Glorious Glowworm

Justin

Demolishing Our Roadblocks

Community, Environment, Reflections

The past couple days have been filled with frustrations and successes, making the highs and lows of a day so dramatic it is difficult to adapt emotionally.  We have three days left of excavations in the cemetery.  It seems like we just got started this year and already it is coming to a close.  It seems as if we never left last year.

Justin dumping a bucket of dirt with an unknown remains burial marker closer to the camera

University of Indianapolis photo by Guy Housewright

Yesterday we completed our first quadrant.  This time last year we were on quadrant 3 or 4, and they were larger areas.  It is frustrating because we all feel we should be doing more, be more efficient, work harder, work longer, take less breaks, clear more area in far less time.  It is difficult to keep in mind that the area we are in this year is completely open with less shade, smaller so that teams are on top of one another, and that the ground is harder with more compact soil than takes more effort to cut through.

It is also difficult to remember that we are human too, and can only do so much in one day.  We move all the dirt we shovel and trowel by hand.  We also have to carry it further because of the small area confining the locations we can pile our cleared dirt.  We have to take frequent breaks that we see as inconveniences, just so that we can stay hydrated so we can work harder and longer, and so the indescribable Texas sun does not make us collapse in defeat.

In addition to this we are all in leadership roles because of our experience and training.  We love this, but it is yet another difficulty we face when we try to measure our success by how much area we have cleared of unknown individuals.  The more we can recover and clear, the more that have a chance at being identified.  It is so important to work slowly and methodically, and to be 100% positive that we miss no one.  If we do it may be years before we can get back to go through that section, if ever.  We consider it unacceptable.

All of these factors, and more, put a lot of additional pressures on our team.  It affects us all differently.  We have written several posts on what we think the migrants face when they arrive in Brooks County, yet we have no idea really.  What we perceive they face is probably very different than what they actually face.  That alone is difficult to absorb.  We have not really written much on ourselves.  Due to the fact we get extremely uncomfortable and awkward when speaking of ourselves, our feelings, our emotions, and our experiences.  It is hard because we just think our words simply can’t convey it adequately.

For my team, we need to remember that we have an incomparable work ethic, our motivations and drive will never fail us, and we cannot be deterred by simple frustrations, no matter how they may pile up.  We have our goals, and we will complete them because there is no other option.  We will adapt to our daily challenges and overcome every one of them because we do work so well as a unit.  Our physical and emotional capacities, while they may be strained, will also not fail us, they instead grow and strengthen with every person we meet in this journey, particularly those already mentioned throughout these blog pages.  What we have achieved so far is incredible, and we are not done yet.

Group picture in work clothes with sister PamThanks to the support from all the wonderful people we have met (and will meet) and encouraged us every day.  A special mention to Sister Pam who joined us for a couple days and has asked us questions we haven’t thought to answer since we first got involved with this crisis in Falfurrias.  She has been so moved by what we are doing she has actually reminded us of our motivations at a time when we greatly needed it.

–Jessica

Broken

Environment, Human Rights, Migrant Death, Reflections
Metal burial Marker reading "Unknown Person May 16 2008"

University of Indianapolis photo by Guy Housewright

Yesterday I said I was broken. My Day 6 post from yesterday was superficial and to the point because I was afraid of completely breaking down.  The physical exhaustion is numbing. Every muscle in my body hurts. My hands throb from holding a shovel or a trowel all day. My legs are so swollen that I don’t have ankles and I am covered in bruises. There are times in the field that I just can’t physically stand up without help. But the emotional exhaustion is worse. I was once told that my passion would be my greatest success and my greatest downfall. My passion is what keeps me going and drives me to succeed. But it wasn’t really until yesterday that I understood the second part. My passion is what naively leads me to believe that everyone loves the way I do and feels the way I do about being fair and being humble. My passion is what drives me to build and mentor the people around me (students) because I am only a successful teacher if they succeed. My passion is what brings me here to try to give a voice to the invisible and the forgotten. But my passion is what makes my heart heavy when I hear the stories and witness the reality of what is happening here.

Previously Cheneta reflected on the sense of accomplishment migrants might feel once they get all the way to Brooks County. Yesterday we met a woman in the cemetery that was visiting her mother’s grave. She asked what we were doing and told us she worked on a ranch. She said she sees people coming through regularly and they are desperate for food and water.  She said she tells them the only thing she can do is call Border Patrol because there’s too many, she can’t help them all. She tells them they will die unless she gets the Border Patrol. Many say they are headed to Houston and want to know how far. She says six hours by car and watches their hearts break as they realize their dream of a better life is likely over. Many ask her to call Border Patrol because they know there is no hope. Others walk into the desert with the passion for a new life burning inside. Those are the ones whose bodies we find.

I am a forensic anthropologist and have worked many crime scenes. Some of them grisly homicides that show the dark side of what one person can do to another.  But here it’s different. These deaths aren’t the result of one bad person, they are the result of a dream. They are the result of being born on the wrong side of an imaginary line drawn in the dirt. They are preventable. At the ranch recovery I was in awe of how beautiful the landscape was. The blue sky and big white clouds. I thought about how nice it would be to lay out a blanket and look up at the big beautiful sky and relax. Then it hit me that this was the last thing that individual saw in their lifetime. To this person the blue sky represented oppressive heat and the green grass represented a thorny and dangerous path toward a new life. Something so beautiful to me is in fact killing people in staggering numbers.

Today I watched as the media that came to talk about the mistreatment of these individuals during life disrespect them during death. They interrupted our work, attempted to put tripods and equipment in the holes we were digging and in effect exploited and sensationalized them. I wondered how they could report on this story without really feeling it. That was almost my breaking point. I had to walk away. I ran into Chief Benny. He deals with this issue everyday. He told me it was OK to cry and that I needed to or I would break. He said there are days that he reaches his breaking point and that it’s natural with what we see here. But he told me I needed to pull it together and lead my team through the day because so many people were relying on me. I have had the utmost respect for Chief Benny since the day I met him. I didn’t think I could respect him any more, but today that level of respect went even higher. He is a smart man and I took his advice. I walked back to the grid and went back to work.

I went back and forth on whether I should post this. If it was too much about me or too heavy. But I decided to do it because I see other people at the cemetery breaking and I want them to know it’s OK. I want to tell them it’s OK to cry. Just like Chief Benny told me.

~KEL