Porky blasting

SO, MONDAY morning I get up and get dressed for work.  Work in my situation can involve anything from getting called out in the field to inspect a sewer overflow, to meeting with members of the City Council or other government officials, or merely sitting in the office holding down my chair for eight hours, so as you can imagine, getting dressed appropriately is sometimes a dicey proposition.  Not too fancy, not too casual.  It's a hard line to straddle.  If I know I'm going out and about, I'm usually in jeans and a nice-ish couple of layers (think LL Bean), and I wear my trusty work boots (most comfy footwear in the world).  If I have a scheduled meeting, I'm in my blazer and a pair of slacks.  And once in a while, usually on the days I've designated "Uncasual Fridays", I'll slip back into one of my nice skirts or dresses, just to remind myself that I'm still a woman.  Never underestimate the power of a pair of heels to rule the world!!

So  Monday, thinking that it was going to be one of those hang-out-on-the-puter all day days, since it was in that awful tweener-week in the valley between two major holidays, when every SANE person has thought to put in for the week off and the place looks like a ghost town, I split the difference, threw on my jeans and a pair of loafers, figuring that confort reigned.  Alas, that is just tempting the fashion fates.

I had one sip from my cup of coffee and was settling comfortably into checking my work email favorite blog sites and filling out my timesheet seeing if there was a new Dilbert strip when the phone rang.  It was my maintenance supervisor, J.   J is my cohort in our maintenance office; while I handle the paperwork and the bureaucracy, J handles the day to day operation of our utility.  He's the one who schedules the street crews to plow snow, or lay deicer, or, as today, "other duties as assigned". 

"So, do you have the handheld GPS unit ready for the guys to come pick up?"

Say what??  I look over at the GPS unit, sitting on my desk.  It's charged and ready, but nobody's had the chance to play with it to make sure we knew how to use it since we purchased it this summer.  I knew we were going to need it in a few weeks, since we always go out to do outfall inspections in mid-January, so I've scheduled a time to tackle this chore next week.  "Today?"

"Yeah," J says.  "There's been no snow and things are slow up here, so I'm going to send the guys out on outfall inspections this morning.  They're going to be down in a few minutes to pick it up."

This sends me scrambling. I normally go with the guys and do all the paperwork and take annual photos, but my boots are still in my nice warm closet at home.  I have my coveralls, but with these fancy little loafers, I'd slide like a greased penguin down the frozen lakebanks that we have to scale to get to the outfalls.  I look forward to this inspection time, but this time I have to take a pass.  The guys come down to my office, and we muddle our way through figuring out the GPS unit.  I hand them the clipboard, teach them how to fill out the inspection forms, and send them on their way. 

In the afternoon, I get another call.  It's J again.  He's sending the guys back down to bring the GPS unit back.  Evidently one of them slipped and fell down a bank and hit a key on the way down, so they've rendered it useless, since nobody knew how to get back to the main menu.  Clearly we need to have more time to work with this piece of equipment. 

"By the way," J says "They didn't get very far.  There's a porky in the very first line.  D bent over to straighten the grate in front, and something hissed at him.  We're going to borrow the flush truck from the Sewer department tomorrow and go in and flush him out."

"I want to come!" I say immediately, sensing a fun and exciting adventure.  I make him promise to call me when they are on their way out.

TUESDAY

I get a call from J telling me they will be ready to meet on site at 1 p.m. after everyone gets back from lunch.  I suit up in my insulated coveralls and race out to the site, camera in hand.  When I get there, J and two of his crew are there, plus Daisy from the Sewer Department with the flush truck.  Daisy is the only woman in her department, and she's an absolute sweetie.  She gives me a grin and a shout hello as she drops her flush hose into the catch basin grate upstream of the outfall. 

For the unfamiliar, a catch basin is the storm grate you normally see at the curb on the street.  It takes runoff water from the streets and drains it via a pipe to wherever you want it to go.  In this case, this one goes under someone's yard and out to an outfall: an open ended pipe that discharges water into the lake. 

The pic to the left is the outfall to the lake.  This one has a 10" pipe and a concrete hood around the mouth that keeps the flow from eroding the bank where it comes out.  Typically these concrete hoods have a grate over them to keep debris and animals from getting into the pipe and blocking flow.  Here, the grate has been malfunctioning, allowing Mr. Porky to move in.  You can see porcupine poop all around the mouth of the structure.  They have an elongated scat pellet similar to a deer.  Looks like this guy has been here a while - this is the inspection pic from last winter's inspection, although he wasn't home when we looked at it last.

As the guys and I cluster around the outfall (but not too close!), D turns on her hose about a quarter of the way.  In this pic, I am standing uphill, so you can barely see the outfall hidden in the grass.  It's to the left of that rebar hoop.

We see the water beginning to come out of the hole, but after a few minutes, it becomes evident that it isn't sufficient to evict Mr. Porky.  J shouts up to Daisy to turn er up a notch.  

She turns the pressure up about halfway, and we begin to see porky butt, but this guy is holding on tight (how can he hold his breath that long??)  J tells her to turn it up again, full blast.

She cranks the pressure up all the way and finally he begins to emerge, the water pressure pushing him to the edge of the outfall.  The water is hitting him in the face and jetting upward, splashing out about fifteen feet into the lakebed below.  He wavers, clutches onto the concrete for dear life, and digs in.

After a few minutes of this, though, he's had it.  He lets go and backs away to catch his breath.  We've got him now.   The guys warn each other not to get too close, because we don't know what he'll do.  One of J's guys jumps in with the shovel and bangs on the concrete.  "Shoo!"  He tells the porky.  "Go on now!"

Mr. Porky has had enough of us.  He moves slowly off to the side a few feet and into the base of a nearby tree.  He is truly the most pathetic looking creature I've seen in my life.  He sits there absolutely soaked, looking back at us as if to say "I hate you guys..."  There's no menacing attack; he's sodden and shivering and miserable.     While Daisy shuts down the truck and comes down to join us, the guys work on getting the grate fixed and bolted back into place.  The porky sits in the crotch of the tree and watches us.  Both Daisy and I feel sorry for him, having to find a new place to live in the middle of the winter, and sopping wet to boot, but it can't be helped. 

While the guys work on their stuff, I sneak around on the lakebed and take a pic of Mr. Porky from the backside, where I can get a better shot.  He turns around to look at me after a while.  He or she is a pretty good sized beast - I hadn't realized they were actually that big.

Eventually he decides that we're too much trouble, shakes himself off, and begins to amble away down the lakeshore.  Standing on the lakebed, I get a few more good shots.  I am surprised by its nonchalance - it really doesn't seem much afraid of us, despite what we've just done.

As the guys gather up their shovels, the porky shuffles off into the underbrush.  At times like these I"m glad I don't speak porcupine, because I'm sure he was cussing us out all the way!

When I got back to the office, I read up on porcupines.  It turns out that they have great longevity, so the scat we have been finding for the last several years in this outfall was probably his/hers.  I hope it finds a new den quickly and is able to cover for the winter and recover from its dousing.  I feel bad about having to evict it from what was probably a really nice warm den, but when snowmelt occurs, the flooding upstream can be a big problem. 

It's not every day that we have exciting days at work, and it's not everyone that can say that they spent their day porky blasting!  Today it's back to tackling the foot high stack of paperwork that needs filing that I've been procrastinating all year long.  I'll be just waiting for the next call, when I can zip up my coveralls, hop into my truck, and jet off on another STORMWATER ADVENTURE!