Whenever my daughter or I lose something, we put our heads down, shut our mouths, and try to find it. Because the only alternative is to yell, “Mom!? Have you seen my (insert missing item)?” to which my wife will always respond, “Have you looked under stuff and behind stuff? Because I’ll come in there and find it for you, but when I do, I am going to throw it at you.”
Of course she would never actually throw our precious treasures at us. But she will stop what she is doing, walk in the room, look right at the stack of books covered by a pile of jackets, pull out the third-to-last book in the stack, turn right to page 62, and find the driver’s license we haven’t seen in a week. It’s as astonishing as it is humiliating; It’s almost like she put it there herself just to… hey… wait a second… did she…
In last week’s reading The Plover Park Derby, I shared the good news that we hit a record number of piping plovers nests in Barnegat Light. Since there was seemingly no way to top that, I even did the complicated maths, calculating the number of birds, pairs, chicks, and even the percentage of the global population of piping plovers we now represent, knowing, like the last day of algebra class before graduation, I’d never have to do that again.
Well, it’s a good thing I have a fresh eraser because I need to rub it all out and start over again from scratch: While we were out yesterday for the Mother’s Day banding extravaganza, Michelle found another record-setting piping plover nest in Plover Park!
Apparently, Michelle’s still got it. Unfortunately, whatever she got she took from me, because it was at two eggs when she found it which means I clearly missed it the day before.
In the park, we call this “Getting Povered.” Todd Pover, who built Plover Park, is pretty much regarded as the greatest nest-finder of all time. Everyone who has worked around Todd has a story of him finding all the nests effortlessly, especially those that others have missed or are particularly impossible. Nest finding is a lot of skill, a smidge of luck, but people like Todd prove that there is even something more to it… an instinct? A sixth sense? A little voodoo magic?
“Getting Povered” usually comes in the form of a message like this:
“Hey guys. I was at the park today and I think there might be a new nest. I wasn’t in the fence, but I was on the jetty giving a talk to about thirty people, and while I was talking, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was about a 1/2 mile away so I’m not totally sure, but you should check it out. Oh, and it’s 3 eggs, one of them is slightly more pale than the other two, and here are the GPS coordinates. Thanks”
It’s shamefully humiliating when this happens, to the point that we all live in fear of Todd’s visits.
Well, apparently, not only has Michelle still got it, but she’s somehow jumped to the next level and will soon be Povering people all over New Jersey.
What was most infuriating about her find is that, while I was busy dealing with some oystercatchers, she very nonchalantly said “Where is the button again to put GPS coords into NestStory? Because I just found a new piping plover nest over here.”
Between the oystercatchers, Michelle casually finding a record-setting nest I’d been looking for for two days, and her somehow not remembering how to add GPS nest coordinates to NestStory, a software I built, literally, for her, the lede got buried: We just hit another record in Barnegat Light!
And it still hadn’t really hit, even when I got home, because I was so upset that I neglected to get a pic of Michelle at the nest, making her “I just found a new nest” face. And of course, to add insult to injury, there was an instant message from Todd Pover; “Looks like we have an 8th nest in the park! But it’s credited to Michelle?” I got double Povered!
And then, worst of all, the reality really sunk in. The number of nests is growing so exponentially, I don’t know how much longer I can do the maths. And I lost my calculator.
And I’m not going to ask my wife where it is because she might throw it at me.
Say something kind