The Midnight Census
A fog-choked tidal marsh on the Outer Banks of North Carolina at 2:09 AM, where headlamps carve weak yellow tunnels through the mist and something large just splashed sixty feet to the left.
Double and Bust are volunteer counters for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's annual red wolf census, wading thigh-deep through black water in a marsh that hasn't been surveyed since 2019 because the last team got lost for eleven hours. Their GPS unit is showing them 0.4 miles from a den site where a breeding pair was spotted on trail cam last Tuesday — but the trail cam also caught a 400-pound black bear using the same game trail, and the only route forward crosses a tidal creek that's risen nine inches in the last twenty minutes. The survey window closes at dawn, and this is the last known breeding pair in the wild.
“There are seven red wolves left that can make puppies and we're arguing about wet socks. We walk.”
“The creek has risen nine inches in twenty minutes, the bear is using our exact path, and our 'backup' is a grad student asleep in a Subaru two miles away.”
They crossed the tidal creek chest-deep, Double holding the GPS above his head like a tiny electronic torch of liberty, and found not only the breeding pair but five pups — the first documented wild litter in three years. The 400-pound bear turned out to be asleep under a wax myrtle forty feet from the den, and never stirred, though Bust's heartbeat was audible on the audio recorder for the entire encounter.
Five puppies, Bust. Five. I'd wade through a volcano for those odds.
I have the only confirmed recording of a human heart hitting 210 BPM without exercise, and Fish and Wildlife wants to use it in a training video about what not to do.