*B U R S T*

J. J. H U D S O N

On July 8, 2004, USA Today reported that 47% of American adults read "literature"(poems, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Thosereading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57%, down from 61%.Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association, an organizationrepresenting an industry which sold 23 million fewer books last year than the year before,was quoted in this same article as saying that, "we need to look into what kinds of partnerships we can get into to encourage literacy and the immediacy of the literaryexperience.""Bursts" are literal immediacy. Like life, they are short and imperfect. First lift, then read,and wash your sweet potatoes.Copyright 2005

A Wet Team Publication

Career Choices in Ornithology

Five hundred volts is what I'm told it takes to kill an average human being. That iswhy the Nebraska state prison system surrounds each of their high security lock-ups witha five thousand-volt electric fence. The state leaves nothing to chance when it comes tomaking guests feel welcome.Still, any lover of freedom would have to work to get this far, up here to the juicethat is. The fifteen humming live wires are sandwiched between two 15-foot chain link fences, the top two feet of which are razor wire. If one gets over the innermost fence,they've got the electricity to contend with. If one gets past the electric fence, then it isanother fifty feet to the next chain link fence and the last obstacle between them andliberty, which is a two mile span of cornfields up to the highway.But nobody is getting past the electric fence.It comes with a guarantee that the warden has framed and hung in his office. Heshowed me once. It looks just like a warranty you would find at the bottom of a box for anew camera or TV. He apologized to me saying that perhaps the fence was too effective.Some deaths had not been anticipated.Here is what I do about these deaths. In my logbook I first make a notation of thedate and time of the discovery and the location of the subject using a GPS locator. I loghow far away from the fence the body was discovered, and I take a photo of the victim. Inote any damage to the fence such as appendages still connected to the wires. I then place