03 THE AGENCIES
Stockton, California
Working for the United States Department of Agriculture may sound like an easy, laid-back job for some. But for Michael McCarthy, working for the Department is fast-paced, exciting job that has no limits. A Farm Inspector for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a subdivision of the Department of Agriculture, his job routinely involves fieldwork on farms; constantly on the lookout for anything from genetically engineered invasive species to agricultural bioterrorism. The primary objectives of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection service are a broad spectrum from protecting animal health and well-being to regulating new biotechnology. It is a busy job that must keep in pace with the changing times. In addition, job rules and regulations are oftentimes complicated by collaboration with the U.S. Customs and Borders Protection, which started in 2003. Overall, Mike believes that little tweak simply adds to the excitement, and occasional general confusion that accompanies the action.
Mike routinely wakes up at 6:30am and showers before heading to the local Department office located on 1308 West Robinhood Drive, Stockton, California. After a quick breakfast he drives the twenty minutes from his home to the office in his hybrid Nissan Altima. While he did receive a few funny remarks from his co-workers for its color, which happened to be green; by now they have gotten over it and accept the fact that the car has a somewhat fitting color for the job. He revels in having free reign over his house during weekdays, as that gives him the freedom to come home as late as necessary and leave early during morning rush hours without too much hassle.
At six feet and three inches Mike towers over most of his fellow Californians. Mike generally tries to exercise every other day, but sometimes the schedule breaks and a day will be skipped. Nonetheless, for his forty-two years he is in fairly fit condition, with no beer belly and sizable biceps, a product of his gym time. His son, Jake, who has recently turned eleven does not share his dirty blond hair even though he does have the same blue eyes. Jake usually comes over on weekends, where he spends most of the days with the neighbor’s kids. During weekdays Jake stays at his mother’s house and goes to school in her neighborhood. Mike’s ex-wife Stefanie lives near Sacramento in Rocklin, a predominantly suburb town. She drives Jake over every Friday and picks him up on Sunday evenings. He also does the drive on occasion, but nonetheless over the past three years it turned up to be him doing thirty percent of the drives and Stefanie doing seventy percent of them. One day she is going to bring this up, he knows, but so far she hasn’t. Just one more contentious issue that will ruin a day. Although for now she understands that it will be difficult changing the Friday drive, probably why the issue hasn’t been brought up yet.
Checking the mirror for traffic, Mike drives along the highway at the posted speed limit, letting the usual rush-hour speed freaks pass him by. After twenty minutes on the highway from Elk Grove, Mike pulls into the parking lot of the APHIS building. The building is a large rectangular two-floored concrete building located on the northern edge of the San Joaquin Delta College, a small community college primarily focused on career-oriented A.S. degrees. Once inside, Mike is immediately greeted by Laurie, a co-worker of his. “Hi Mike, how’s it going?!” “Morning Laurie! Excellent, a Tuesday as usual. Anything new today?”. “Actually, yes, you’d be interested in this. Brand new stuff. John would want you to check it out. He actually asked if you were in today, although you know he’s pretty familiar with your schedule.” “Really?”, asks Mike, “let me just put this stuff on my desk and I’ll be right over”. John was the boss of the Stockton office, Mike goes over to his office, A-3, and puts down his light briefcase and workbook.. Spraying his office plant with water, Mike turns on his Dell Dimension 9100. The Dimension 9100 was added two years ago but nonetheless still has a reputation as a high performance dual-core standard computer for deskwork. I wonder what's up if John wants me to look at something this early? Maybe it came in yesterday and since I was home early I didn’t see it? Logging on to his e-mail, Mike sees two notes from John.
Opening the first one he read: [Hi Mike, please see me in my office when you get here. We have a developing situation near Bakersfield. See attached File]. Mike opens the file, and sends it to the printer. Grabbing the short two page report he heads out of the office door. After walking past another office to the right he knocks on A-1’s door. “Mike! Come on in!”, exclaims John. John Wilgram, Officer in charge of Scranton APHIS office, is a heavyset bald man in his early sixties. After having worked for the Department of Agriculture for over twenty five years, John has had a desk job for the past decade and rarely left the office for any kind of fieldwork. That was usually left to Michael McCarthy.
“Sit down. I’m not going to offer you coffee, but how about some cookies? They’re new.” “Sure, I’ll try one”, replies Mike, grabbing a cookie from the tray on John’s desk, “what seems to be this so-called 'odd' situation that came up?”. John sits back in the black leather executive chair, gathering his thoughts, “Well, it's like this. We have a farmer out near Bakersfield who lost all of his worms. According to the report, all the worms are coming out of the ground and dying within a few hours of exposure. We don’t know why or how, which is why I want you down there ASAP. The guys over at Bakersfield sent someone over to investigate- name is Peter LaJoy. As you saw, he wrote the preliminary report. But their job over at Bakerfield is Plant Protection and Quarantine. They won’t help with this, unless we need to quarantine something. If that happens, call them directly. Anyways, Laurie and Mark will be going with you as well.” Mike thinks it through for a moment, before responding, “Ok. Worms are dying, we’ll need to bring the lab equipment. Could it be a new herbicide, or a chemical spill in the water aquifer?” “No, I don't know. Just take what you need. Bring samples back here”, says John. “Of course. Its’ like a three hour ride though. By the time we get there-" “Doesn’t matter, so long as you guys take off within the hour” replies John curtly. “Alright, we’ll get on it right away”.
With that, Mike takes one more cookie and leaves John’s office. Mike goes over to A-6, knocking on the door before entering. “Mike! Talk to John already?” Laurie smiles as she looks up from her desk. Tall, thin, with brunette hair curled in a bun and tight dark work-outfit, Laurie was a friendly, outgoing personality who also appealed to many men. At thirty, she was everything a man could want in a woman, despite wearing glasses instead of the contacts which many women prefer for aesthetic reasons. Mike, however, had more of an appeal for work during the last several years and so far their relationship had been a very friendly, but professional one. A recent Ph.D graduate from UC Berkeley in Soil Ecology and Physiological ecology, Laurie has been a regular member of this Stockton APHIS office for over three years. Leaning on the door frame, Mike quickly explains the situation, “Yeah. We’re going down to Bakersfield. Or near it, anyway. We have to check out a farm on 6 Lake Road. Some sort of contamination”, he explains to Laurie. “Ok, what time do you want to leave?”. "Uhh, if we can get all the stuff in the van, in about twenty minutes”, replies Mike. “That quick?. . . don’t worry- I’ll do it, as you know!” “I know, I know! See you in twenty!”, ends Mike with a smile. Pushing himself off the door frame, Mike heads down the hallway to the lab. Time to get Mark. The office’s laboratory is a small yet well-lit room that houses the usual assortment of microscopes, freezers, burettes, petri dishes, calorimeters, cages, spectrophotometers, incubators, and homogenizers that one would find in a lab intended for work on plants and animals.
Mike found the former college football player sitting at a computer terminal going over some unspecified information. A large man of 6’1”, Mark’s seemingly only real interests in life were football and zoology. Mark played football for UCLA while he studied biology for a B.S, hoping to be a veterinarian. Afterwards he changed his mind and pursued a Ph.D in molecular physiology, intent on working on animal physiology. Soon afterwards he started working for AHPIS in dealing with animal heal
th issues, invasive species, and even animal welfare. APHIS eventually recognized that not everyone could be matched correctly with their field in a changing work environment although Mark still found some fun in his job. For the past six years Mark has been a regular at the Stockton office.
“What’re you working on?” asks Mike, barging through the door. He had a common habit of not knocking on people’s doors, unless it was important. It really depended on the person. Mark would never get the courtesy of a knock, John would. Mark looked up from the screen, straightening his back from the slight hunch that he would develop in front of computers, an yawned, “Not much, just going over these Med-fly stats. Well, you know I’m writing that report on the fly quarantine program that they’re doing in San Diego. So you know the story. Flies are found. First we quarantine the area and treat it with the usual mixture of pesticides and bait. Then we start SIT”. “SIT?”, asks Mike. “SIT- stands for Sterile Insect Technique. We grow a lot more fruit flies in a safe location and irradiate them all. Then we release them into the wild and let them mate with the wild ones. Within a generation or two there shouldn’t be any left. Question I’m working on is this- Can we improve this process? Like seriously, why don’t we cut back on the pesticides first. Release the irradiated flies out into the wild first. After three generations, there shouldn’t be any left- they’ve been taken care of through attrition. We should only use the pesticides if they survive the SIT approach. Basically I’ve been working on this paper for two weeks”.
“I see. That’s fascinating. I know about the fruit fly quarantines, but the SIT?- . . I don’t know, I guess I work too much on ecology these days to take notice of other things. Listen- you got the message from John?” “Yeah, I did”, replies Mark, “I’m working on it. Let me just get a few field kits in the van. What time do you want to leave?” Mike checks his watch before answering, “How does 8:45 work for you? We need to be on the road there as soon as possible”. “Works for me”. “Alright, then. See you at the van. I’ve gotta finish up some things myself, and then we’ll be going there soon”. Mike walks out of the lab, pausing to take a look at the fruit flies held in a container along the side wall. The hundreds of flies literally covered most of the space in the large plastic-composite container. Some were flying around like no tomorrow while others sat perched on twigs and obstructions in the structure. Mike watched as one particularly large one came up to the glass, surrounded by hundreds of others. The large red bulbous eyes stared at him, scanning for any signs of life. The Mediterranean fruit fly looks basically like a large bumblebee. The only difference is that it has red eyes, a red and orange striped abdomen, much less “fur” on its black spotted thorax, and like all flies no conspicuous antennae structures on its forehead. After another several seconds of staring at the creature Mike turns and walks out of the lab.
Worm contamination near Bakersfield. Hmmm, interesting. Have we ever had a scenario like this before? Cause if we did, I don’t remember it. Mike keeps going over all the information that the report contained and that John mentioned to him. It looks like this might be another long day. At the rate this day started, I’m not going to be home before 7:00pm at the earliest. Coming back into his office and falling into the chair, Mike reopens his e-mail window. Mail from USDA, several message from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on farm conditions and quality in the region, and an inquiry from the Agricultural Research Service on the status of a forest conservation program intended to protect the Giant Sequoias from invasive insect species. That shouldn’t be here, I haven’t been working on that project in months. Forwarding a copy of that last e-mail to John, Mike turns to the task at hand. Exiting the building from the left side rear door, he walks across a small parking lot to a parked Dodge Sprinter van that the office uses for what are jokingly referred to as “excursions”- really field work.
Mike walks around the van and unlocks the back door. Pulling the door open he reveals the assortment of field equipment that is usually kept in the vehicle. Plastic carry-kits and boxes full of hygrometers, TDS testers, water samplers, thermometers, pH indicators, temperature and oxygen tracer meters, and a mobile dissection kit are all amongst the tools typically found in the van’s cargo hold. We need some quarantine containers for getting samples back. Field radios? None? We should get some of those as well. Closing the doors and heading back into the building Mike sees Mark comes out of the other side’s rear exit door carrying two boxes. He walks up to the van, puts the boxes on the ground, and starts opening the van’s doors. Mike goes in through the same door he came out of and walks down the hallway to his A-3 office. Making a right, he heads to Storage Room 2. Taking a key chain out of his jeans pocket, Mike flips through the oftentimes confusing set of keys until he finds the large one with 2 small ridges. Opening the door he enters and begins looking through the racks to find what he is looking for. Containers, quarantine containers. . . we always kept them on the second shelf! Grabbing three, a large one, and two smaller sized ones, Mike leaves the storage room and closes the door behind him.
Taking the boxes outside the office building, he leaves them on the ground. He then goes in and nearly bumps into Laurie who is also walking down the hallway with a lap-top in her hands. “Woah! Haha sorry. Good thinking, almost forgot- We’ll definitely need that!”, exclaims Mike on seeing her. “Bet you would forget”. Laurie glides past him and goes out the door. Mike goes back to grab some walkie-talkies from the storage. Now remembering which is the key for the storage room, the process goes much quicker than before. He then walks back out with four compact walkie-talkies and heads out for the van. Laurie, coming back by now, see him pass again. “I’ll get those containers”. “Thanks!” Man, that definitely helps a little. Within another three minutes everything that they will need for the field work is in the van, and Mike is ready to take off.
After going to the bathroom and taking several empty file folders from his desk Mike heads out to the van at exactly 8:43am. Laurie is already by the van waiting. “You have everything?” “Yeah, all set to go. Where’s Mark?” Just then Mark emerges from the left side rear door of the office and walks over. “Hey guys, I’ve got everything I need. Are we all set?”. “Course. Been for a while now! Lets get in”, replies Mike. Mike gets in the driver’s seat, while Laurie and Mark enter through the passenger side. Laurie takes the middle seat, while Mark takes the right passenger seat. Mike starts the van while everyone puts on their seat belts.
Well aware that it is going to be a four hour drive, Mike realizes that they will have to stop every hour to stretch legs and get food and use the bathrooms. A relatively long road trip. Fortunately Interstate 5 usually runs quickly and has over five parallel lanes on some stretches. We won’t get there before 1:30 or even 2pm. But we should get there around that time. We may need to lodge in Bakersfield for more than one night as well, especially if this investigation goes on longer than expected. Mike pushes on the accelerator and they drive off onto Lakeview Road. After about twenty minutes of driving through late-stage morning rush hour traffic through the downtown city streets of Stockton, the APHIS team makes it to Interstate 5 and begins the journey southwards.