Dirty Jobs

Mike and the crew start this episode on Mackinac Island, Michigan (pronounced MACK-in-aw) on Lake Huron. Mackinac Island is only accessible by air or water. It's three miles from the mainland of Michigan and home to the famous Grand Hotel, a popular tourist destination. In 1875 most of the island was designated as a national park and later it became a state park. In 1896 horseless carriages were banned because they startled the horses. To this day, privately owned motorized vehicles are not allowed on the island. Therefore, the main modes of transportation are bicycle or horse.



Mike meets Herman whose job is to cruise the island on a bike with a shovel picking up horse poo. It is Herman's 6th season doing this job. He estimates that there are between 500-600 horses on the island. Most of the horses are Percheron - a type of horse noted for its large Herman thinks these horses have a heavier consistency of poo compared with smaller horses that have smaller poo. He says that the horses tend to poo twice a day and start around 9:30AM.



The horses come in on a ferry. It's only a 16 minute ride to Mackinac Island from the mainland. Passenger and freight ferries arrive every hour. We meet Keith and Frank who are farriers that work on the island taking care of horses. Early in the season they also meet the ferries to bring the horses to the barns. Today they'll be leading 11 horses about a mile up the hill from the docks to the barn. Mike is told he shouldn't have worn steel toe boots. These horses weigh enough to smash the metal and crush a person's foot. Mike is given four horses to lead and he has a hard time keeping control of them. He's afraid they'll take off on him - or worse, step on his foot.



Once the horses are put away, we then meet George and his horses Phil and Barney. George is going to get a slop wagon full of waste that came from the Grand Hotel's dining room. He'll be taking this, plus some horse manure, to the compost site. The Mackinac Island community is committed to protecting the environment of the island. Half of the biodegradable waste generated by the hotels and residents (plus poo from 600 horses) is composted and recycled back into the island. What cannot be recycled is hauled to a state approved landfill on the mainland. There are 120 horse drawn vehicles and 523 permanent residents on the island. During the summer there is an average of 15,000 tourists per day in the six square miles of the island.



The compost facility takes food scraps, paper products and grease. We meet Dave who tells us this is one of the few licensed facilities for all these types of material. Basically all Mike and George have to do is dump the barrels from the slop wagon into a pile. Dave will then use the bulldozer to push the garbage into the pile. Besides the fire truck and ambulance, the bulldozer at the compost heap is one of the few allowed motorized vehicles on the island. A layer of poo on top of the food helps keep the seagulls away, plus it will properly mix the compost.



Next Mike and the crew travel to Bethel, Alaska (population 6,262). Bethel is the main city in western Alaska. It is also home to the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, the largest refuge of its kind in the US. We meet Karl, who is the pilot of a 1959 de Havilland Beaver bush plane. Karl and his brother Steve run PaPa Bear Adventures. They will bring Mike and the crew to the people they are meeting from the Fish and Wildlife Department. Karl obtained this plane from a military museum and he has over 2000 hours flying it. Despite the experience of the pilot, Mike is still nervous about the flight.



They guys are being taken 120 miles to the town of Kongiganak. From there they will fly even further out to get to the geese. Karl tells Mike that once they get there, they'll probably be banding geese and putting a Q-tip up the butt looking for potential H5N1 virus, a deadly avian flu.



Karl is a bush pilot that flies in food and supplies to the locals in extreme weather. During the flight we see tundra fires set by lightning from recent thunderstorm activity. The tundra is really dry this year and burns easily like a grass fire. Ten months during the year the Yukon Delta is buried underneath snow. During the short summer we can see where the permafrost has partially melted, creating lakes and streams.



Kongiganak is a camp used by the fish and wildlife dept for research. Ten people live there in four small cabins. The crew will be set up in bunk beds and sleeping bags. Mike shows us the outhouse where there also is an oven where the poo collected during the week is hauled out and set on fire.



We meet Mike Reardon, the refuge manager for the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, who will take Mike in small two person airplane to look at the tide, wind and mud. They are there to study Cackling geese. The entire world population of these geese nest in the Yukon Delta. No one knows where they've been before or if they've contacted the flu along the way which is why they're being tested. At this time of the year they are molting which means they are losing and growing new feathers. All of their feathers are falling off so they can't fly. It's the only chance for the researchers to catch them.



Out here we meet Bryce, another researcher. To catch the geese, they are going to put out about a half mile of fencing parallel to the river. This will be strung with some heavy netting. They plan to drive the geese into the trap by scaring them with the noise of airplanes and boats. Once the geese run inside, the people positioned on the ground will close the trap.



The geese like to eat the local vegetaion. The researchers also have count the geese poo measure of how intensely the geese graze the area. It's time to get the gear out and set up the fencing, however, the Dirty Jobs crew can't get through the mud. It almost looks like they won't be able to get to dry ground before the tide comes up. Finally they get to the spot, and roll out the fencing and net. Mike comments that the mud stinks. It's rotten from the vegetation, dead insects, and of course, goose poo.



Once the trap is set, they decide to come back in the morning to catch the geese. Mike prefers to sleep on the floor rather than bunk with producer, Dave Barsky. The next day they walk across the tundra to the spot where they're going to wrangle the geese. Mike Reardon is up in a plane. He and the helicopters are going to scare the geese with the noise from about a half mile away into the direction of the net. People lie in the grass and wait and wait for the birds to come their way. Finally they have the geese in sight. As soon as they cross the river, the people get up and run the geese toward the net. They'll grab them individually if they go astray. Once they collect 100 geese they'll have an adequate sample. Unfortunately the geese are too fast for Mike and he doesn't catch any.



Now that they're caught, it's time to band and swab the geese. Mike is told to hold them by the backs of the wings where it won't hurt them. In that spot it won't strain the muscles in their wings. He also should keep them close to his body so they don't flop around. Mike notes that they have some sort of sharp thing on their leg that he needs to avoid. The first step is to determine if they're male or female. To do that, they fold the tail back and check the butthole. Next Bryce holds the bird for researcher Deb to swab the butthole. She sticks it in and goes around the outside the cloaca to capture the cells.



After birds are swabbed, the samples are shipped frozen in liquid nitrogen to the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin. The birds are then banded with ID tags on the leg so they can be found again if necessary. A wire tag is crimped onto the right or left leg. So far, there's been no detection of the deadly bird flu in Alaska. If there was a threat, poultry farms in the area would be protected from contact with the wild birds.



Robert is a reasearcher who has lived in the Yukon Delta his entire life. He tells Mike how important these geese are to the life of the people in the area. In the spring, the waterfowl come into the delta and for about a month the indiginous people of the river use them for food. It's very important to them from a cultural, spiritual and nutritional standpoint.