October

Childhood's Saturday Morning

Three children sitting on a log over a stream,
Watch the drift and dream their dreams.
Just as 100 years ago they might have been,
Sitting a brother, a sister, and a friend,
Dangling their feet above chilly waters.

Shooed outside, by a mother inside,
Wishing she could run with them to find
The leaves red and yellow and paling green,

And the blue sky, wide, wide, wide
And smelling of October.

The day is theirs, uninterrupted,
Hours to wander unstunted,
Having not yet learned the business of busyness
That makes it seem as though October flies
Like the geese, but ever much faster.

Forget that school's begun again,
There are promises the wind sends
the exhilarating smell of wet earth,
carrying the hopes of crickets who
dropped their songs at first frost
Leaving hints of opportunity for adventure.

ECO

Marvelous Mayhem

"...admit that the waters around you have grown/ If you don't get out soon, you'll be soaked to the bone/ For the times they are rapidly changing..."  ~Bob Dylan

Time for an optimist post!  Recently I have heard a great deal of dismay over how little time kids these days spend outdoors and how much time they spend bonding with their technology.
     "What will the next generation be like?" we ask with asperity.  By I have a secret to share with you: the times mat have changed but children haven't.  Give a kid a pile of mud, and he or she will go home filthy.

Consumer, producer, or decomposer?

Last week I assisted with a field trip for 5th graders.  Hypothetically our goal was to observe how many consumers vs. producers vs. decomposers were in a local riparian zone.  What actually transpired was that the kids turned over logs, poked the high-running creek with useless nets, and discovered a very dead garter snake.
   "Can you smell the decomposition?!"  I cried, faithfully trying to tie the adventure back in to curriculum.  (I certainly could smell it any rate.)  It was a hopeless task.  I am pretty sure that the only message the kids took away from me was that I was no fun at all because I would not let them throw the snake in the river.  My motives were: 1. It seemed disrespectful and 2. I wanted the other groups to be able to find the delightfully disgusting snake as well.  What I told the kids was #2 plus "something might eat the snake if we leave it here."  (Minus bugs and bacteria, I actually sincerely doubt that.) Motivated by the joy of watching a rotten carcass swept along in a fast current, possibly even to fall apart, the kids did not find my reasons convincing, but since I was nominally in charge, they let the soggy thing be.
 
Later in the day, a class got rained on.  It was only a light drizzle when their teacher asked if they minded getting wet and would he have angry parents calling if he sent them home that way.  A rousing chorus of no's convinced him to let them stay.  No one was shivering, and as it was the last class of the day, we figured they could dry off as soon as they got home.   Well, about 10 minutes into our mini hike, it started to pour.  Journal-less and invigorated by the storm, the kids ran around poking things with the biggest sticks I would let them carry and shrieking at every centipede I managed to unearth to try and draw their attention back to the food chain.  Of course I and my co-worker/boss both cut our hikes short at that point, but it was a fruitless effort to keep them dry by then.  The downpour had drenched our classes within 30 seconds of starting.   Dripping and bedraggled, I made them chant as we walked back to their teacher.
 "When I get home: when I get home. I will put on dry clothes: I will put on dry clothes. I will drink a warm drink....."
No one kid in the whole class, not even the girl who admitted she wasn't going home: she was going to a friend's house, complained about the wet.  We hurried them back to school without a wrap-up discussion, and I'm not sure they learned much text-book knowledge about the riparian zone, but I do not doubt that it was a memorable field trip.

There have always been kids who would rather be inside than out.  Back in the day, they just occupied themselves with books or dolls or whatever instead of ipods or TV.  (I have plenty of thoughts about books or dolls vs. an ipod, but this is not the place to get in to all that.)  Conversely, there have always been kids fascinated by the natural world and being outdoors.  Some kids of course, like some cats, are both indoor and outdoor kids.  Based on my observations of the last 5 years, there are still plenty of kids who need no more than a stick and some dirt to keep them occupied and happy.  They just need the opportunity to realize that this type of play is an option.

Unlike his cousin, Wolverine do care.

       This is a bit of a spin off of my last blog post, the one on wonder.  Tonight I went to a program on potential re-introduction of wolverines in Colorado.  The matter is still very much in the research and discussion phase.  A friend of mine there asked how much the program was likely to cost, and, especially with this sequester now in place, I too wondered if the budget would be there.  As I chatted with the friend after, she raised a valid question, "Is this really worth the money right now?"

     Since then, I have been considering her question, which was, I believe only partially a rhetorical question.  I don't know the answer.  On one hand, I can see her point.  With the country in debt and all government funds being stretched in 19 directions at once, is it practical to be spending some of that money re-introducing an animal that has not been reported in this region since 1919? (Exception: there is one lone, male wolverine who made his way to Colorado from Wyoming, over 500 miles, in less than a month.  These animals are extraordinary ramblers. But one lone dude can't reproduce and make a viable population all by his lonesome.)  Would it be better to wait until there's money to spare?

    On the other hand, there are two counterpoints, both worth considering.  The first point is that, especially with climate change decreasing spring snow pack, if we don't help re-establish new populations now, it may be too late to do so by the time we get around to deciding it is a good time.    What is put off for today is easily put off tomorrow as well and put off again the day after that.  If we are always waiting for a more convenient time to fund projects like this, we are sending the message that biological diversity is low priority.   The second point is the wonder factor.  Admittedly, the wolverine is not a keystone species.  They tend to roam over large ranges and never really end up living in densities where they would have a huge impact on prey or plant distribution or the like.  But they are one weird and wild animal.  They can and do capture people's imaginations.

       Looking like dog-sized, shaggy bears they pad along the white tundra on broad snowshoe feet armed with grizzly claws, and, oh yes, they have been known to chase grizzlies and even wolves from a carcass.  Yet very little is known about wolverines and studies on them are few and far between.  Can you imagine what it would feel like to run across one in the wild?

     Funding projects like this supplies jobs to people who are entranced by nature and wild animals.  Admittedly, I would love one of those jobs myself, so I am biased, but I think fueling that kind of fascination is healthy and that the wonder and love from those projects trickles back into society in beneficial ways.  We are, though it is easy to forget sometimes, linked to nature and all living things through the composition of our cells, through our history, through the foods we eat.  Even a the bits and pieces of a computer started out as metals in the earth, or compounds that were the ingredients for a new man-made material.  Understanding the world around us is means of discovering who and what and where we are and how we best should live.   There is also value just in the knowledge itself, and te curiosity that wolverines engender.  Based on the crowd at the public program tonight, I would say that projects like this reintroduction program feed a hunger for stories and foster a love of learning in general.

     Last but not least, is the reason that compels me the most, though it may be the least logically sound. They're wolverines.  Isn't it exciting just to know something so awesome is lumbering through our world?

In the Company of Silence

  I once led a program called "Endangered Night."  It was about the stars and how light pollution is making the constellations increasingly difficult to see.  Many people are aware of the tragedy of our brightened skies, but what about "endangered silence?"

   Two years ago, I was in the desert at this time, living in a tent near an RV, helping with a research project.  It wasn't an easy time for me.  I was going through a great deal of inner searching and was in a new place with new people.  I wasn't certain where I stood in relation to anyone there.  At night or in the mornings, I was often terribly lonely, lost, and uncertain.  But during the days, I loved the desert, and I loved the solitude.

There are not many places in developed countries where you don't have ambient sound drifting about at the edge of your consciousness: cell phones, distant traffic, the buzzing of electric lines.  Even on a hike, the nearest road or the conversation of other hikers may hum on the edge of your hearing.  Hiking around in the desert was some of the greatest quiet I have ever found.  Even the jackrabbits seem to be masters of silence, sitting still in the heat watching you from large, orange, unmoving eyes.  It is easy to pass by a jackrabbit if you are not looking for them.  Even bounding away in long-legged strides, they make hardly any noise in their hurry.  Sometimes watching them, I found that the wide spaces made it seem that a part of my spirit was made to go bounding too, through the long places like a jackrabbit.

       Even in February, the desert is hot during the day--a nice clean, dry heat.  Somehow the bright sunshine seems to still everything and turn time back to a less hurried age.  The rocks and sparse plants, everything pokey or spikey, seem to infuse the place with an arid nostalgia.  Yet, I enjoyed being on my own for parts of the day.  "By my onesome" is a better description of how I felt on those explorations than "by my lonesome".  Even with company, when we spoke, it did not feel noisy, and when we were not speaking, the silence was anything but unnatural.  We could listen instead to the crunch of the gravel under our feet in the dry washes, or the slide of a bank crumbling under our boots.

     At night, coyotes sounded distant and the clop-clop of the wild burros sound close, so loud, like someone's footsteps coming close to investigate.  When they were near by I would wake wide-away, heart thumping, although burros would be unlikely to bother us.  When the sound of their hooves died away, the sound of the night was so beautiful that it was like a a clear night with no moon, and the comings and goings of sounds were like the stars, highlighted by the surrounding velvet of night.

   The cities of Arizona are growing by leaps and bounds.  Aside from the fact that water there is scarce, there is something rare and wild that will be lost if the cities creep in on the rocks and the acacias.  Not just the jackrabbits and the roadrunners, not just the gila monsters and the cougars and mountain goats, not just the small determined desert flowers will be lost.  There is a stillness in the desert not often elsewhere found.

Torpor, Hibernation, and Why It's Good I'm Not a Bear

   

Anonymous student unsuccessfully attempts torpor.

It's fully winter now, and yet again I have failed as a mammal.  I was unable to store sufficient weight to save me the trouble of foraging all winter long.  My grocery bills are higher, if anything, than they were in the summer.  I suppose this is not truly my fault; humans are not really built to hibernate.  What a shame though.  Based on how much I love to sleep (an amount I will not openly describe on any even remotely public forum), I think I could be quite good at hibernation.   My friend and I once dressed up as "Torpor and Hibernation" for a costume party.  We showed up in jammies and blankets and from time to time lay down on the floor to rest.  "What? It's part of the costume."  It didn't really work though--we couldn't get our heart rates low enough.

Torpor and hibernation are really pretty cool adaptations.  Torpor and hibernation are confusingly similar.  In both, the animal in question drops its hear rate and metabolism and hangs out is a sleep like state to conserve energy during winter, while food is scarce.  They differ from sleep in that way less energy is used by the body.  Think of it this way: if you climbed into bed in November and tried to stay there asleep until March, would you survive?  No.   (Although some might find the suggestion tempting).  Even while you sleep, you are using energy to stay alive, keep your heart beating, ect.  In torpor or hibernation, the animal can go a longer time without food, or living on the reserves of its fat, because their heart rate and metabolism are so low (body temperature drops as well) that they are hardly burning energy at all.  So even if you ballooned your belly like a bear every fall, I'm sorry, but you will never be able to hibernate.  You don't have the ability to drop your functions down like that.

The difference between the torpor and hibernation mostly relates to timing and the related degree of temperature or metabolism drop necessary.  Torpor is a state that may last only a few hours or a few days.  Hibernation is much longer term, months on end, with few, short waking periods if any, so the changes a body undergoes for hibernation are likely to be more intense.

I will warn you right now that those are very basic explanations of torpor and hibernation.  In the wild and wooly world of science there are always heated debates going on over terminology and who truly hibernates and who is a faker that deserves a different term.  (Watch those thinly veiled derisive repartees fly! No wonder science is so fun!)  There's also a summer version of torpor called estivation, but we won't get into that right now because I would rather talk about Arctic Ground Squirrels.

image : Jim McCarthy, USFWS; license : public domain

Arctic Ground Squirrels are a ridiculously adapted little rodent that live ridiculously cold places like the perma-frosted peaks of Denali, Alaska.  When ground squirrels go into hibernation, their bodies do something called supercooling, dropping their body temperatures below freezing (32 degrees F).  Every several weeks, the squirrels warm back up to a more typical mammal temperature of 98 degrees F by shivering and shaking for 12 hours at a stretch.  Then they drop back into their cold, dormant state.  Unsurprisingly scientists are perplexed about this unusual adaptation, and are still trying to figure out why and how it works.

Those who love weird animal adaptations like the ground squirrels' should consider researching the awesomeness of wood frogs--possibly my favorite animal of all time.  They have an alcohol in their cells that allows them to essentially "freeze solid" in the winter, then thaw in such a way that their inside thaws at about the same rate as their outsides!  (Actually, the fact that there is alcohol in the tissues means that they don't truly freeze solid because alcohols generally must be at a lower temperature to solidify than water.)  If this didn't happen, the extremities, like feet, would thaw before the heart did and, therefore, before there is blood flow to keep them from becoming frost-bitten and dead.  I wonder if it would be possible to keep a pet wood frog and let it "overwinter" in your freezer each year?  Hypothetically it would be possible, but ethically it might be dubious.

"Wood frog embryos in an icy wetland"

Mark Roth , U.S. Geological Survey, http://gallery.usgs.gov

Charles Darwin in the Morning

Enthusiasm busting out in the subtle form of punctuation,

You spilled your heart between the commas

And the exclamation you just couldn't resist.

A part of that curious time,

Change sweeping in like a new-fangled flying machine 

Or a fast-running current or a tide.

Terrifying. Wonderful.

Discovery of ancient life leading to a world of new eyes,

Guesses & skepticism & hope, & fearing accusations of lies--

The foundations of science,

All roiling and growling and growing and growing and growling.

The West wasn't the only Wild,

In the soil of the lawn, in the mosses and the trees, 

in earthworms and everything singing,

Mysteries sprang up everywhere.

So much to learn, a whole field to explore!

Always learning, always working, wondering more,

Yet known for just one thing.

ECO

"Throw up a handful of feathers, and all must fall to the ground according to definite laws; but how simple is this problem compared to the action and reaction of innumerable plants and animals which have determined, in the course of centuries, the proportional numbers and kinds of trees now growing on an old Indian ruin!"

~Charles Darwin, On Natural Selection 

Snow

Snow is an incredibly important part of nature.  Without sufficient snowpack, a pika can actually freeze to death. Snow provides insulation from the colder air temperatures above it.)  Snow hides animals that turn white in the winter (more on them later), and provides a chance for mice and other small creatures to create a secret tunnel system hidden from predators--visually hidden that is, unfortunately for the mice, owls have excellent hearing.  AND snow splits the ground into 3 layers that have great scientific names: the Sub-nivean (under the snow, like a hibernating bug), the nivean (in the snow, like a mouse), and supra-nivean (on top of the snow, like you snowshoeing while dressed as a superhero).  Yes, snow is pretty darn cool.

Arctic hare in snow and bushes lepus arcticus public domain image picture

About animals that change color in the winter:  If you are a little tan weasel running all over the place in a field or forest, you will be sure to stand out once the ground turns white.  Standing out in nature is usually fatal.  It's like a chocolate-ship cookie on a white plate.  It's going to be spotted quickly, and once it is spotted it will be eaten.  The solution?  Change your coat.  Short-tailed weasels (ermines), some ptarmigans, the ridiculously cute-looking little arctic fox, and others all change the color of their coats (or plumage) to be better camouflaged in winter.

These were the thoughts that ran through my head when I saw the snow this morning, and my resultign questions was how do animals change the color of their fur?

Here is what I found:

      Mammals that change color do not change the color of pre-existing fur.  They shed out their old coat (think of how much fur a dog leaves around the house at the start of summer) and when the new one grows in, it grows in as a different color.  I am still looking for a satisfactory answer as to how (on a more cellular level) their body produces a different fur color.  Perhaps, I'll answer that question next time.  Now, it's time to go play in the snow!

Like a security blanket,

The snow has dropped from the sky,

Tucking us in, thick and white.

Now the pikas need not freeze,

And the mice may travel in tunnel-- 

Just in time, for owl breeding has begun.

Now the skiers may coast,

And the dreamers may dream,

And adventurers may follow soft-edged trails,

Secret stories in the snow.

Who is running?

Who is hiding?

Who fell in just here?

They are busy,

We are busy,

Wide awake in the new found snow.

ECO