Today I took part in the Neuse River Cleanup here in Raleigh. It made me think about volunteering and littering. (Well, I was out there picking up trash not usually within conversation range of anyone else for about 4 hours!)
I am a big believer in giving back to the community. I thought about that a lot today. Because I was knee deep in wet vegetation on a Saturday morning. And I am out doing volunteer work on many Saturday mornings. Maybe I should spend more time doing things for myself? None of my pals volunteer to the extent that I do, and so perhaps I am missing some sort of self indulgent element of life? But you know, I volunteer because I want to. In a different way than getting a massage is self indulgent, but, it makes me happy. Plus, you get that warm fuzzy feeling of doing something good. Best of all even with a small number of people (we had 7 folks from Wake Audubon to do our section of the river) you can get stuff done. Our section certainly looks much nicer than it did yesterday.
Ok, on to littering. First of all, people who litter drink a lot of Nu-Grape. Who drinks Nu-Grape? No one I know. I don’t think I have ever tried it myself. They also drink a lot of alcohol, but that is to be expected. We picked up 48 bags of trash, 3 tires, a bike (I found another but it was so buried in the mud it is now part of the ecological web), a metal frame for towing a car on a trailer, a tennis racket, a purple martin house, and a saw blade for a table saw.
As a bonus I saw my first Blue Grey Gnatcatcher of the year!! Also heard Blue-headed Vireo and a few warblers I could not identify. I need to refresh my birding by ear, clearly.
