I was fortunate enough to be able to leave the confines of my windowless cube-shaped office on Friday and escape into the Otay Mountain wilderness, just north of the US-Mexico border. A couple of us went on a tecate cypress reconnaissance mission for a monitoring program we’re developing for the Thorne’s hairstreak, a rare butterfly that lives in tecate cypress stands. It was a super nice day, and trekking through very dense prickly stabby vegetation left me sweaty, covered in charcoal (some of the stands we visited had burned recently), scratched, and minorly impaled. Needless to say, I was happy – I really do like being out in areas where I’m more likely to be speared by some sort of yucca plant than shot by a stray bullet (as is the case at home) or succumb to a severe case of carpel tunnel syndrome (as is the case at work).Actually, it was kind of sketchy – we came across numerous signs of illegal immigrants who cross the border and travel through the mountains (sneaker-not boot-tracks, empty waterbottles), and the brush is so dense that you’d practically be on top of someone before you knew they were there. Luckily, we didn’t run into any trouble, but we did set off at least two of the Border Patrol’s ground sensors, who deployed a helicopter to investigate us on two separate occasions. And holy balls – we saw a lot of BP agents, all driving brand-new trucks. Our government spends a lot of money trying to keep people from crossing the border, but I can’t see how it’s really worth it. We went to take a look at the border fence – we went all the way to the end of it – and people cut through it and tunnel under it, and the feds just patch the fence and wait for them to do it again. It’s just a cat and mouse game, and we keep spending the money to play. Pointless – we could be doing so much more with those dollars! Sigh…

Oh well – enjoy some pictures I took…

I spotted this burrowing owl from the road – the first one I’ve ever seen in the wild!