#fieldworkfail BINGO

This space has been fairly quiet this year, and while I'd like to blame my lack of posting on work, the truth is that most of the blame falls on ye olde personal life, which has been in a dumpster since early November. But rather than going into the sordid details here, I'm going to post on something that was big on Twitter a couple months ago, thereby continuing my present trend of running behind (on the blog — thankfully not elsewhere).

Yes, that's it: #fieldworkfail BINGO. I present an unadorned, unplayed BINGO card:

It was Kat Black who presented this Bingo card to fieldwork-Twitter (largely but not entirely composed of biologists and geologists of various flavors), back on the 30th of March. Most of the entire ensuing Twitter convo can be read here (though I don't know how long Twitter-search keeps things available, so maybe the link will fail in the future).

Thinking about my field work history in some detail, I created this BINGO card from my experiences. As you can see, I did get a BINGO. Without the free space in the middle, though, I wouldn't have made it.

By way of a little explanation, I've added a few details in the next version of the same Bingo card:

You might notice that I replaced "Animal attack" with "Plant attack" and added an extra mark. While I've been stared at closely by 3 to 4 coyotes at once and also by a protective stallion once or twice —  the former causing me to unnecessarily grab my rock hammer and the latter causing me to give up on that canyon for that day —  I've never been attacked. I have, however, been mercilessly attacked by wild cholla balls, which definitely have a mind of their own and can be quite persistent in trying to attach themselves to parts of your body, especially feet and legs.

(I've had a few close encounters with wild cats — mountain lions, bobcats, and a possible jaguar — and I've come closer than I prefer to snakes several times, and closer than they prefer judging by their rattles or swift slitherings away from me — but these were merely close encounters, with none of them resulting in anything resembling an attack.)

In my line of work, especially when doing mineral exploration recon, a moderately routine hazard not listed would be getting shot at or being run off a property with a gun, which has happened to me once (American Girl), maybe twice or thrice —  although the second time was unclear and so probably doesn't count (Old Woman Mountains), and the third time was merely a threat without any visible gun brandishment (Tumco). In addition, there can be various helicopter-related hazards, the least hazardous of which might be being left out by the helicopter pilot, who for various reasons, including forgetting part of the crew (me!), might not pick you up —  a story that was told in brief here.