Cave Tales

My new job as a photographer down in the cave at Silver Dollar City is going pretty dern well. Outside of the fact that my accent has increased to full hillbilly mode, anyway. The cave is cold, dark, but filled with cool things like bats and fun people. Because I am totally exhausted after I work ten hours a day with an hour commute each way and multiple trips through the cave of 700 stairs, my life now consists of cave and home. Fortunately, the cave is rather entertaining. Here are a few bits and pieces from my day:

Jordan, the intelligent and witty 19 yr-old girl who trained me, told me in defense of herself today, "Really, I'm generally pretty much a jackass." Not a good person, but a jackass. Self-proclaimed. :) It was defense because she thought people should know that by now and not take her seriously.

An example of her jackassiness:
Okay, so the cave is cold. It's about 56 degrees where I work and there's lots of dripping water. There are signs that tell you it's cold. Regardless, people still go on the water rides at Silver Dollar City, then come into the cave soaking wet.
A very skinny girl wearing a very skimpy tank top and shirts walks in on a tour and acts like she doesn't want to be there the entire time. As her family poses for pictures, she makes it very clear that she is too good for this cave. She says to Jordan, "I'm so cold," as if it's Jordan's fault and she should somehow fix it. Jordan looks her straight in the face with a huge smile and says, "Well, the next room isn't quite as cool, so you should warm up when you get there. If you don't, you'll know the cold is buried deep in your soul and it will eat away at you until it brings you to your bitter death. Say cheese!" And goes the camera.

Yep, that's Jordan.

I followed a tour out today that had two little girls, approximately ages 6 and 11, with their parents. upon being told to hush because she yelled, the older girl said she liked the echo. "Where's the echo?" asked the little girl, hesitantly. The father told her it was all around them. The little girl then covers her head and proceeds begrudgingly through the tunnel with a horrified look on her face. Her father asked her what was wrong, and she told him that she was afraid of the echo. When asked why, she said, "because they bite." The best part...the parents didn't explain that echos were not bats.

Best story...an obnoxious boy hangs back at the end of the tour without his parents and won't stop asking me questions long enough to catch up to the group. We go past a tarp that's covering work being done on a water pump in the bottom of the cave and he asks what it is. I tell him, in a very suspicious tone, of course, that he wasn't supposed to see that, and ask him to walk forward. As all boys would, he asks again and begs me to tell him, promising that he won't tell anybody. So I told him that under that tarp is the body of a boy who got stuck in the cave last night because his tour group left him. The bats attacked him and caused him to fall to his death. We weren't allowed to move the body until his parents were identified, so we just covered him with a tarp.
Yeah, that shut him up for the rest of the tour.
Was even more fun when, later on, I pointed up, "Look, there's a nest of bats!"

So, the job is fun. :)