Not long after TeamKluane left this island another of our island friends returned, Cameron Eckert, Yukon Parks Biologist, carrying with him a special package all wrapped up in a yellow manila envelope addressed to TeamShrub.

This special delivery was an amazing care package sent us by our new Qikiqtaruk friend Gillian also from Yukon Parks who is leading the consultation and writing of the 10-year management plan.  We unwrapped the present with holiday-like excitement – wow!!! What will be inside?

1. A pirate puzzle – to while away the hours of waiting for the fog to clear so we can fly our drones. We passed on this puzzle to a new friend of ours Noé from the Top-to-Top expedition with a few other presents for his birthday party!

2. Four rubber ducks – for our dips in the Arctic Ocean

3. Yukon gold bubble gum – what a treasure

4. Fancy Denman Island chocolate – much more delicious than our other field chocolate – mmm mamaqtuq!

5. Poppers – a great way to annoy your boss when she is trying hard to concentrate – those poppers really stress her out!

6. Four parachutes to attach to our drones for safety

7. An air freshener – we don’t smell that bad do we?

8. Super cool multicoloured “I love Yukon Parks” stickers. There may or may not have been a fight over the particularly cool golden sticker – currently in my possession, but if I die, I have bequeathed the sticker to Santo in my will.

9. An intellectual magazine – the Orion

10. A drone magazine for our reading pleasure!! No we can never get sick of drones!!! And who wouldn’t want to read about Mr. Steele the FPV (first person view) racing drone pilot

10. And our new TeamShrub mascot – a stuffed version of Otto the walrus – that we shall forever treasure!

Thanks Gillian for providing hours worth of entertainment for TeamShrub, getting us through the last couple of weeks on the island.  We don’t think we were going crazy… but then maybe in retrospect we were starting to lose it.  But your package kept us entertained and a bit more sane – or perhaps pushed us over the edge when we had our rubber duck race while swimming in the frigid ocean waters and had to resort to significant cheating to get out of the water before we froze to death.

We are now packing up all of our stuff and getting ready to leave the island in just a few more days.  The fall weather has arrived on the island and the Arctic fog has rolled in, so there hasn’t been as much drone flying of late – but we are very hopeful that the fog will clear and we will be able get our last data collect in tomorrow…  fingers crossed…  here’s hoping!

Oh sigh… the hoping was in vane, but more on our last two weeks on the Island in future blog post.

By Isla