Category: Environment

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Critters

Down the path walked three…

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Since techie woman does not live by beating up on techie men, alone, I thought I would get outside, have a nice walk.

Powder Valley was my choice of destination today, but in addition to the Ridge trail, I also walked the little 1/3 mile Tanglewood Trail. Since the latter is handicap accessible, it makes a nice gentle walk for cooling down from the peaks and valleys of the other trails at PV.

Along the Tanglewood, the rangers had stationed implementations of projects you can work on to make your backyard wildlife friendly. Projects like creating brush heaps, planting wild grape, or building backyard ponds. An effective use of trail space to educate people into taking responsibility for the environment.

At the end of the trail is the the restrooms with a sitting area and a wild bird habitat. As I neared it, I noticed movement on the trail in front of me. Three wild turkeys were walking towards me, looking like so many other walkers I’ve met along the paths. Except those walkers didn’t have feathers. And things hanging underneath their chins.

The turkeys moved off the trail as I approached, but didn’t go far. I was close enough to the birds to smell the stuffing and see the marshmallows bubbling on the sweet potatoes.

In my mind, I named the birds, but I’m not going to tell you whose names I used.

Categories
Environment

Beautiful poison

I haven’t been to Powder Valley in a time so went for a walk this morning. I needed the fresh air, and it was a beautiful day — clear skies, cool winds, and warm sunshine.

Since the leaves are off all the trees now, I could see details of the forest not previously seen. One small valley had about 30 different bird species flying about, looking for food, singing. You forget how blue a true bluebird can be until you see one next to the dry rust brown of the trees. Or how loud woodpeckers can be without the muffling of the leaves.

In and around the trees was life of a different kind: feathery bushes with bright red berries and fallen trees providing home for mushrooms and other fungi. The mushrooms were all of a kind — fan shaped, thin, and delicate, sprouting out in orderly lines, like so many rows of shy maidens.

“Red berries will make you sick. Never touch”

“Never eat a mushroom you find in the forest.”

When we were kids we were told not to pick the pretty red berries, or the tempting mushrooms. However, it was okay to eat the plain purple/black berries, and to gather the hard shelled, inedible looking nuts from the forest floor.

Purple/black, okay to eat. Red, not. Leave the mushroom shapes alone. Don’t you wish people had these outward markings of bad and good? Then you could tell when to touch, and when not to touch.

Categories
Critters

Clothes cat

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Others may have their cleaning utensils, their tools of formidable appearance, design, and power. However, I have something far greater — a cat that helps me do laundry.

Well, sort of.

zoe lying all over the wash

Categories
Environment Political

Clean sweep cleans forests

The first environmental impact from November’s Clean Sweep is the Bush Administration’s proposal to:

… give managers of the nation’s 155 national forests greater leeway to approve logging and commercial activities with less examination of potential environmental damages.

Regional managers are easily influenced by timber interests, who tend to have as much interest in the good of the environment as the, um, oil people do. In addition, this new proposal removes many of the required environmental impact checks, and decreases visibility of the decisions being made about the public’s forests.

Have you hugged a tree today? Better do it quick, because that thing is toothpicks on the hoof.

Categories
Critters Weblogging

The white mouse

Coming back from dinner tonight, in the grass next to one of the dumpsters was a white mouse. Not a small white mouse, a larger one, almost as big as a small rat. And its fur was luminescent and shiny— softly glowing against the dark wet of the ground.

This is something you don’t see everyday, a white mouse. It’s not a rat because I know rats; I had to work with rats when I was getting my Psychology degree. In fact, I became fairly adept working with rats. For instance, I found that the trick to getting a rat that’ll make you look good in your research is to use a fat rat. Fat rats are fat because they learn quickly in order to get the most food.

This rat selection strategy backfired on me one day, though. I was working with a nicely plump rat, conditioning him to wait for a signal to press a lever; if he did, he would get some food. However, if he pressed the lever before or a second or two after the signal — no food.

He sat there passively until I pressed the signal for the first time, then jumped to his feet and raced to the lever: pushing on it with all of his might. My teacher saw this and insisted I use a new rat because I was the one who was supposed to be learning how to work with rats, and a too-smart rat was a bit of a cheat. Unfortunately, all that was left by this time were skinny creatures with vacant eyes who couldn’t find food if you shoved their noses into it.

Anyway, back to the white mouse. As far as I know, white mice aren’t naturally occurring, so I have no idea where this one came from. I imagine someone could have dumped a pet, but white mice are not supposed to be good pets. In fact, white mice are almost always bred for testing within chemical or biological research facilities.

I know that Monsanto is only a few miles away. Makes me wonder about that luminescent quality of the mouse.

As I was researching the white mouse, I stumbled on to an interestingly different, somewhat macabre story, White mice and Dead Cats. Written by a weblogger.

Mice and webloggers do proliferate, don’t they?