Wildest Nature and Amazing Animals - select readings

 

• Crows don't forget a face
• Mosquitoes Kill More Humans Than Human Murderers Do
• In the eye of the beholder
• Stikiness
• Behind the Scenes at the National Zoo With the World’s Most Dangerous Bird
• Meet The Indian Giant Squirrel That Looks Like A Dr. Seuss Concoction
• The Extraordinary Life of the Freed Slave Who Taught Darwin Taxidermy
• The Vital and Surprising Role of Driftwood
• Twenty-six Real Animals That Shouldn’t Exist, But Do Anyway
• A Gift of Nature
• All but ageless, Turtles face their biggest threat: Humans
• All dogs go to heaven
• Animal world's communication kings
• Are they Ravens or Crows?
• Clint Eastwood versus Mr. Ed
• Collars Reveal Just How Extreme Cheetahs Can Be
• In an NC swamp, researcher finds tree older than Christianity. Could there be more?
• Interview with Sir David Attenborough
• Lyre Birds imitate construction work sounds and chainsaws
• Meet The Brown Bear Serving A Life Sentence In A Kazakh Prison
• Moment in Nature - Idaho Hot Springs
• North American birds interactive migration map
• Obscure mountain ranges of southern Idaho, NW Utah, and Eastern Nevada
• Swarm of bees follow grandmother's car for over 24 hours attempting to rescue their queen
• Vultures of Pennsylvania: Black vs. turkey, their differences and similarities
• Why nightingales are snubbing Berkeley Square for the Tiergarten
• Why Scientists Are Starting to Care About Cultures That Talk to Whales
• Wildest Nature
• Woman keeps same pet tortoise for 56 years
• World's Tallest Man Saves Dolphin

Springtime predictions from the animal world

2009 version

Plenty of Idaho criers have warned about  about the wolves being dangerous, but it’s still more perilous to cross the human highway than it is to waltz out one of our yodeling canyons.

With this menace in mind, I consulted with my oracle: John Cougar Mellowcat, who kindly channeled for us, some other spring-fever animal predictions:

Besides the wolf this year, its predicted rattlers will be more docile. Good time, to gather some snapping worms for dynamic fishing. 

Badger’s are lonelier and will need more human-applied scruffs behind their fuzzy ears.

Local cubby-bears will rise up with great desire for thick elderberry mead, so please baste your grease buckets and leave them warmly wafting under West Ketchum birdfeeders. 

Albino deer appreciate late season snows and hope Baldy stays open through Memorial Day.

Increasing numbers of aged cougars will descend from the Elkhorn hills to infiltrate nearly-innocents at the dew-daw room. 

Butterflies will continue to flaunt their illegal ignoring of voter district lines.

While Mormon crickets will continue their selfless mission of filling in Highway 20’s potholes, positively chirping beetles will munch over Galena pass, making the area more avalanche-prone, which will lead to a receptive public outcry for a safety-beacon cell tower on the hill.

Wise hoot owls will continue being mostly serious, and make gains towards unraveling unsolved mysteries. 

Local dogs will continue worming their way into local hearts, while an ahead-of-the-curve ISU scientist will uncover compelling canine evidence that they sometimes laugh at us silly cats.

2019 version
 

Plentiful Idaho criers warn of dangerous wolves, but ‘tis more perilous to cross  human highway, than to waltz out slow Yodeling Canyon.

With this menace in mind I consult an oracle: John Cougar Mellowcat, who ferverishly channels some other spring animal predictions:

Besides the wolf this year, he predicts rattlers will become docile. This prime snapping worm gathering time will bring gains to dynamic fishing.

Badger’s become more lonesome, requiring human hand scruffs behind fuzz ears.

Local cubs rise up with desire for thick elderberry mead, so baste grease buckets, leaving them wafting beneath Ketchum birdfeeders.

Albino deer appreciate late season snows, with high hopes for Baldy to remain operable through Memorial Day.

Increasingly aged cougars descend from Elkhorn hills to infiltrate near-innocents at the Peter Duchin room.

Butterflies continue flaunting their illicit ignorance of voter district lines.

Mormon crickets will continue with their selfless mission for filling in Highway 20 potholes.

Positively hungry chirp beetles munch over Galena pass, creating avalanche proneness, which leads to receptive public outcries for increased safety-beacon cells.

Hoot owls continue being wisely serious, making great gains toward unraveling mysteries.

Local dogs will worm their way into local hearts, while an ahead-of-the-curve ISU scientist unearths compelling canine evidence, they sometimes laugh with us silly cats.

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The Blueberry of Angryness

I got bit by a neighbor’s dog over the weekend.

 I was walking out of the shed, and as my back was turned, Blueberry sprinted out from the dog door, gained an amazing vertical leap, and sunk a couple of fangs into my shoulder. This is the first time I have experienced a dog bite for almost forty years. The last time was on my Washington Post paper route over on Swinton Drive in Kings Park West, where a dog ran out from one of the few houses that did not receive the paper, jumped up and nipped me in the midsection, and then dashed back inside the house, where the woman would not answer the door to address my complaint!

Maybe, I let my guard down this time, as I did have a confident record of working as a meter reader for seven years, entering thousands of customer yards with dogs, and although there were a few close calls over that long span, I never got bit once.

It comes largely as an emotional shock, as I had been imagining for a long while, that as much as I am fond of most dogs and enjoy their company, that greater and noble dog-manity was loyally by my side.

It’s true that Blueberry, the dog that bit me, has a sketchy past and a questionable upbringing. But I have been communicating with him much over the past year or two, in the kindest voice and intentions that I could muster up. Now, I’m finding this incident to be disconcerting.

When incidents like these happen, I often turn to the Animal Medicine cards, to see if I can gain a bit of wisdom from there. In this particular case, it feels fitting to examine the card from the contrary position. I haven’t looked at it yet, but my stronger intuition is saying that maybe now is not a good time to turn my back on someone who I believe is aloyal friend, and then be deceived.

Let’s see now what it really says:

http://scottfoglesong.printandwebdesign.com/14-dog.pdf

Whale Tale

Whale Tale

Jim Banholzer

A Dozen years back, a whale beached itself directly in front of my Brother David’s apartment, on one of the rare occasions that he was out of town. We considered this uncanny event symbolic, since David is a top-notch Wildlife Protector for the State of North Carolina. While he has a rascally background, Officer Banholzer takes his job as seriously as I do mine -as if our lives depended on them.

Once a whale beaches itself, that’s about it for the creature. The weight of its own body, used to being buoyant, crushes itself without the encompassing ocean-water to buttress its gravity. Many people wonder why so many of these creatures continuously thrust themselves onto our shores.

Some say that whales are becoming disoriented by modern sea vessel sonar and other mitigating factors –known and unknown. Ever since TV first radiated, it seems that technology gets placed on fancy pedestals while impact studies are mostly burning afterthoughts.

Could it be that the whales are sending us a bottled message from the once crystal seas, that they now mourn the earth? Their self-sacrifice is looked at as a clarion call for better caretaking by some, while laughed off meaninglessly by others.

Occasionally I read North Carolina newspapers. In fact, a “Mountain Xpress” comes out every Wednesday in the enlightened mountain town of Asheville. When the entire hullabaloo came into our hollar, about a rancher in Mackay who legally shot a local man’s dogs chasing his cows, I found a fascinating story in this seemingly parallel paper. It shows that the ways in which we treat animals, reveals much about ourselves. (See: In the eye of the beholder / Mountain Xpress / Asheville, NC)

After serendipitously discovering this story, I remembered another passage in Carson’s / Sam’s Medicine Cards, speaking about the loyalty of dogs:

“If Dog has been yelled at or paddled, it still returns love to the person who was the source of its bad treatment. This does not come from stupidity, but rather from a deep and compassionate understanding of human shortcomings. It is as if a tolerant spirit dwells in the heart of every canine that asks only to be of service.”

David gets to bark up all sorts of trees as a Wildlife Officer. If gunshots of unknown origin are heard, in the cover of night, he gets called first, in under the assumption that poachers are out spotlighting again. He rescues deer caught in barbed wire fences, using the same wrassling moves, I was only too eager to use on him, before he joined the Marines. In between teaching hunter safety courses, David occasionally captures and relocates wayward alligators away from Golf Course Links.

One dark night David caught a preacher illegally shooting deer in the dark. The preacher shrieked, in an inhuman voice, “I can’t help it; it’s a disease!” After his conviction, the preacher continued crying shrilly from his pulpit, that his parishioners “may have read some things in the newspaper, but that they are all fallacious.” Soonafter, people attending worship came to David and asked, “What is the truth?” David told them that in this case they should be believers –of the news of record accounts, of their leader’s conviction.

It seems that half the populace will try to take the easy way out. When they think that there is no

watchdog, many do not abide by the simple rules. David says that of the potential “violators” he surveils; fully one-half eventually litter something during the course of an afternoon. I have asked him about this often and he says that this statistic remains static.

Ironically in North Carolina, newspapers and political signage are not considered trash, even if they are stained full of things more unseemly than bloody poaching convictions, before being tossed aside into un-receptacled areas. Imagine the sausage-like mechanisms that went into passage of a law like that.

David sometimes finds fish choked in plastic, discarded from six packs. Some wormy fishermen find this funny. I suppose then for them, a keg of beer gone overboard, blocking up a whales blowhole is about as good as it gets.

Perhaps the real reason the ocean is so saline is that every animal on earth has been filling it with saltwater tears, trying to rinse clear their eyes from how wrongly man has war-shipped the earth, ever since that first rotten apple core was tossed aside, violating that foremost pristine garden.