I sometimes think that people would be amazed how much of my time running a nature center is spent killing things.  I think most people in another line of work would imagine that I spend my days petting rabbits, teaching birds to fly or some other warm and fuzzy task.  Instead, I spend a surprising amount of time killing plants.  I suppose I should clarify, the plants I’m killing are weeds or plants that just don’t belong at a prairie.  I’ve spent a large amount of time removing plants like Canada Thistle, Burdock, and Teasel. 

But this past week I had the joy of removing brush and trees from the prairie.  This is actually one of the more rewarding killing tasks at the prairie.  This is because woody plants are fairly scattered and rare at the prairie so the job includes more breaks to walk from one plant to the next.  Also, rather than pulling the plants out of the ground we typically cut them with hand pruners.  These two facts make this task considerably less strenuous than other killing tasks. 

So all in all, after several days of killing things I’m left feeling pretty positive.  I have a number of scrapes and scratches from all the thorny bushes and I’ve found at least one tick so far, but all in all, it’s been another good week.  I can look at the prairie and see where my efforts have made a real difference and helped improve the condition of the area.