Monthly Archives: September 2013

Little Rodney

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One of the things we are constantly on the look out for are little known facts about the wildlife we encounter every day. Things that the every day, run of the mill person doesn’t see, or if they do see it they don’t understand it and then we get the cards and letters asking “WTF dude, How come it does that?”

As part of the public service we are obligated to provide here at the Institute, because we foolishly accepted money from the government in the form of a grant to do just that, is answer these kind of asinine questions as accurately as possible. We struggle with providing the information to our ungrateful but demanding public, I mean, curious but inquisitive letter writers.

We recently received the following letter from little Rodney asking one of the dumbest , I mean, most interesting WTF questions we have received here at the mailroom in some time. He asked and we’ll  publish his letter in its entirety so you have some idea of what we have to deal with here.

Dear Mr. Director, My name is little Rodney and I’m 34½ years old but my mom says I’m big for my age. I have a 19″ TV in my room in the basement next to all my Star Wars stuff and I watch a lot of TV. Recently on a wildlife movie I saw an elk standing in the water with just his antlers in the sun. WTF? Yours curiously, Little Rodney

Well little Rodney that’s a pretty big question from a young fellow like you but we can answer it for you. You see, every year in the fall when a bull elk gets his new antlers and the velvet covering them comes off, they are stark, bone white and quite soft, unless you see them right after the velvet comes off, then they can be pinkish or reddish because of all the really gory blood that’s under the velvet. But it goes away quick and doesn’t hurt the bull elk at all. However, and this is a big however, the antlers are not finished yet, they have to be annealed. Annealed, which is a hard word that just means hardened and toughened up and made less brittle. This has to happen, the hardening I mean, because soon these great big 900 pound lummoxes are going to be slamming their heads together at close to 45 miles per hour and they have to make sure they don’t break their new antlers off. They do this because they want to get girls. If you not sure why they would want to get girls, have a long talk with your mom, or maybe the guys down at the garage where you get air put in your bike tires. Just know that the bulls want to get girls really bad, so they want extra strong, really, really hard antlers.

How they get those really strong antlers has been a secret for a long time and we have just figured out how they do it. That’s what we do at the Institute, figure out hard stuff. It is so simple that it has been overlooked by all these so-called experts who get paid big bucks, by the way, to figure out stuff like this. They should be ashamed of themselves and have their grants revoked and that money  given to us because we figured it out, right Rodney? Ask your mom to write a letter to the government telling them to give us that money instead, and if she has any extra or you can find any extra money around the house, send it to us quick so we can do more good work like this. OK? But we were talking about hard elk antlers, and how they get that way. Alright then, here it is, They stick their antlers, just the antlers, nothing else, out into the sun and even though it burns like crazy they keep them there until they can’t stand it any more. They do this over and over until they have the toughest antlers you can get. Really tough ones, slamming them into trees, tough. Tearing up shrubbery and throwing it in the air, tough. They don’t even care where it lands because they’re tough and because who’s going to mess with a bull elk that has antlers that tough anyway. I know, right, nobody. When they’re done with sticking those antlers out in the sun they’re now, remember that hard word, right, annealed. Now they can fight with anybody they like and get girls. Cool, huh?

There you go, now you know what a lot of other people don’t and that’s going to make you cool. You might even get girls Rodney. Remember, have your mom write that letter and send us some money ok. OK. Thanks for your letter and your very good question. Sincerely, Mr. Director at your favorite Institute

P.S. Look under the couch cushions, Rodney sometimes there’s money there, ok then, bye.

9-11

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9-11

If feelings could be put into colors this picture might begin to speak to how I feel about this day. But only slightly. The deep somber tones of this image tell of the sadness that this memory creates in me every time I see a reference to the twin Chocolate, banana, mint, orange, black current etc.  towers in an old movie or photo, but it also has an expression of strength and resolve and endurance that goes to the very bedrock of our beliefs that we will not be over come by temporary tragedy, no matter how large or how terrible. It was a very, very bad day for us but it didn’t break us and that makes me proud.

Two Sides

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Monument valley for all its beauty is a harsh environment for those who live there. It doesn’t rain much here and consequently the grass is difficult to find and sometimes you don’t find it at all. This horse herd spends all of it’s waking hours searching for it and when they find it isn’t all that nourishing.

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This colt is new to the herd and isn’t old enough to figure out that these are tough times. As far as he’s concerned every days a Sunday in Monument valley. When he’s hungry all he has to do is find mom and the magic udders and he’s home free.

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But sometimes there is a problem. Mom is doing her best to make milk but that takes grass and if she doesn’t find enough the well goes dry. Two Sides tries this side only to find there is no milk at the inn.

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Undeterred he knows another place that is open and he races to get there before he can’t stand being hungry one more second. The second side always works.

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Success and he loads up because he’s got running around to do and that takes energy. Right now he looks as good as he will probably ever look as it won’t be long and he’ll be hunting for grass just like the rest of the herd. Then it’ll be time for some hard lessons.

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But right now life is pretty good when you’re young.

 

Monday Morning Sunrise

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Sunrise in the Canyon. Does it matter that it’s a Monday when you can see this as the start of your day. When your week looks like it might be a replay of WWll and it would take herculean effort on your part just to yell at the neighbor because his dog has been rooting around in your begonias again, you always have the Canyon.

Standing on the abyss, feeling the bite of the cool early morning air, hearing the sound of a raven calling for its mate come up out of the depths, watching as the sun begins the daily unveiling of the shapes and colors of this magnificent place makes everything else seem trivial. Yeah I know, you got to get the kids off to school, there’s appointments to keep, the pressure’s starting but here at the edge of the canyon its quiet, and you can breathe. Take a moment, fill that place where you go to for calmness, the day will still be there when you get back.

Our Remodel

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It’s nearly, almost, finally completed. Our new addition here at the Institute is in it’s absolutely final phase. All we need to do now is polish up the Pergo and hang some paintings and we’re done.

Many of our concerned readers have been writing in asking “When will the remodel be over so you can quit screwing around and get back to writing good posts?” Well our answer is soon. As you know we periodically remodel parts of the headquarters building here at the Institute for our own benefit, I mean to improve working conditions, and for months we’ve been having to walk down this dismal hallway to use the executive washroom. It was dark, dingy, drab and the old paisley wallpaper was beginning to flake off the walls. It was time for a re-do, a complete make-over, let in some more light, dress the place up some and as you can see the results were nice.

As you know the Institute is totally funded by the Government grants we get for our bogus, I mean valuable research projects and from the support and generous donations of our loyal readers. As this is your money, both as a taxpayer and as a generous contributor, we make certain that it is money put to good use. At least some small amount of every single one of the dollars we get, from either our grant programs or from you, generous reader, is put towards one program or another that we are currently undertaking. Without giving away financial information our critics and competitors would dearly love to have, we can say with the utmost confidence, that entire teeny tiny amounts of nearly every dollar, and we’re talking two possibly even three teeny tiny amounts goes directly to fund some important program that brings untold benefits to the citizens of our great country. I’m talking America folks, where you can pull a scam like this, I mean perform a useful service to your fellow taxpayer, and they can’t stop you. Is this a great country or what.

To totally complete the project and tie up those pesky loose ends that are always part of a project like this, we’ve got to arrange to send the workers we borrowed from France back home. We needed them because they still know how to do stuff like this and we kind of like, don’t, anymore. Don’t even get me started about the loss of our guild programs here in the U.S. where you could send those young people and imprison them, I mean train them until they could do something useful, and as you could expect, there’s been a small disagreement about transportation issues.

It seems our migrant workers have decided that they are now too good to be traveling back as steerage in that very nice little freighter we reserved for them. We had the hold completely fumigated after the cattle were unloaded and there is ample space for all the crap they bought while they were here. We’ve even allowed them to shop at one of our big-box grocery stores so they could pack their own lunches for the trip home. That sense of gratitude that you would expect from providing work, living space, and other non-essentials like bread, sun-screen, ponchos for those blustery days, well actually they were those recycled black plastic trash bags with arm holes cut in them so they weren’t that expensive, but even so, those weren’t in our contract, and of course food above and beyond their 800 calorie a day diets, I don’t know, I’m kind of disappointed in this new trade agreement we have, it seems to me to be very one-sided in favor of the imported worker at the expense of those who don’t want to spend much money. But enough about our troubles.

The addition is done, the ungrateful, miserable and hard-to-understand workers are gone and we can get back to work again, writing better, if not darn good posts again. Which reminds me, the area around the sump pump in the art storage basement needs a new mosaic and with the troubles they’re having in Greece right now I understand you can pick up experienced tile setters now that the project in the acropolis has fallen apart, for almost nothing. So with that in mind, please keep those Eurodollars coming in so we can continue our necessary and needed work going at the level you’ve come to expect, after all we do this not for ourselves totally, but to raise your standard of living by our continued success. If we look good you feel better. Thanks America.

 

Who Watches The Watcher

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A pair of golden eyes peering out of the darkness betrays this watcher. Thinking it is invisible it stares with steady concentration, trying to assess what your threat probability is. Should he make his presence known or continue to hide and observe. The decision here could have a life or death result. He is asking himself the question “What is an acceptable level of risk?”

The dictionary says that an acceptable level of risk is the level of risk that is tolerable in a given situation. If the watcher feels that it is relatively safe standing still and observing then that is its acceptable level of risk. If whoever is watching the watcher feels his acceptable level of risk is to stay still so he doesn’t get bitten, then they are both at their maximum tolerance for risk. It’s a standoff until somebody blinks. Then its every coyote or photographer for themselves. In this case it was a stare down and the coyote won. A guy can stand in the middle of a busy road staring at a bush just so long and then hopefully common sense kicks in and you realize that it’s ok for the coyote to win one. But then I got the picture so maybe I won after all.

Sandhill Reeds

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Sandhill Cranes will nest almost anywhere. They have been seen nesting on tiny little islands on Floating Island lake in Yellowstone National Park, out in the middle of open fields and in the case of this one, in a field of reeds that make up a small wetlands in the Blacktail creek area.

Choosing a field of reeds doesn’t seem like an unusual place to nest until you factor in bad luck. Normally this Sandhill crane could count on brooding her eggs without mishap, unless an opportunistic coyote came along and tried for an easy meal. But what she didn’t know was her nesting place was in a natural crossing area for some of the parks main predators, a pack of wolves on one side and a black bear on the other. Blacktail flats sees a lot of animal movement. The blacktail pack of wolves moves through the area constantly and it is also a place black bears seem to like.

This day I was shooting the Blacktail pack of wolves devouring a buffalo carcass on her right and if you could look to her left there is a small pond like many that dot this Blacktail Flats area, which is out of the frame. Swimming across the pond was a good-sized black bear.

All of this activity was taking place in an area perhaps 300 yards across. First I’d shoot the wolves for a while then I’d swing the lens over to the pond with the bear in it and then back to the wolves again. As I made the traverse I noticed movement in my view finder and up pops this Sandhill crane who had the misfortune to put her nest in the middle of the wildlife freeway.

The bear was obviously hungry and spent his time rooting around digging in the ground for grubs, eating grass and slowly working his way towards the Sandhills nest. The wolves were too busy finishing off the buffalo carcass and hadn’t noticed the bear. If they had it would have been very likely they would have run right over the crane and her nest to run the bear off. Helping themselves to the crane and her eggs on the way. They don’t like to  share. But she never flinched or made any movement that gave away her position. The bear noticed the wolves, the wolves noticed the bear. The bear took off rather than deal with seven or eight wolves and the wolves stayed and finished off the carcass. And the Sandhill crane put her head back down and didn’t move a feather, and what could have been major drama was over as fast as it started.

It’s unusual to get that much wildlife activity in a small area like that but every once in a while the photographer gets lucky. So did the crane.