Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Case of The Limping Ibis Pt. 2

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LimpingIbisPt2_8077
White-faced Ibis  Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge       click to enlarge

June 26 7:37PM. I had been unable to pursue my runaway Ibis due to another case that sprang up and monopolized my time keeping me a virtual captive to a vicious but terrible client. Tired of the strident but shrill nature of that case I was desperate to get back to the case at hand. The Case of The Limping Ibis. It took a few of my Private Dick tricks straight out of the Private eye’s manual, plus the deliberate use of an “I don’t give a large rat’s posterior” attitude to be able to put the case of the Shrill but Strident Nightmare with its unreasonable client behind me and resume working on something important again, the original case I was hired for.

I knew where my quarry was going as I watched those three fleeing White-faced Ibis head north along the foothills looking for that break in the mountain range up near Laramie that would let them easily go from the East side of the mountains to the West side and then North again up into Utah without having to make the nosebleed flight over the divide. There have always been stories of sanctuary for outlaws and others not quite on the up and up in the canyon riddled badlands of central Utah. Butch and Sundance hid there. So did dozens of other bank robbers, train robbers, robber robbers, unscrupulous gamblers, ladies of the evening, ladies of the early afternoon, defrocked contortionists, truants, scofflaws, unpaid parking ticket avoiders, laudanum smokers, whiskey traders, whiskey drinkers, unsophisticated politicians and just about anyone or anything that needed a no questions asked, safe haven to hide out in.

I was worried that the trail had gone cold even though it was summer and the temperature was a balmy 72°. But I wasn’t that worried, I knew where they were going and in the weeks after losing them back in Colorado and finally getting back on their trail I had plenty of time to think about this case. I had questions, plenty of questions. My ex-cop, gumshoe instincts were going off like the alarm at a Chinese fire drill. Things weren’t adding up. What was really going on here I asked myself. Why was Ratzo, the mis-shapen but odorous director of the Florida bird sanctuary willing to pay so much money to get these Ibis’s back. Why had he deliberately fed them so much high-priced grain and seaweed and tender little soft-sided crustaceans until they could barely fly. Why did he have Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. Why did he insist on that stupid comb-over and most importantly why wouldn’t the bastard pay me my 40 bucks like he said he would. Who were the Plaid men and what was their game. And why would they drive a Hyundai. The questions kept piling up like the dirty laundry in an Algerian cathouse. And I was beginning to see that the answers were beginning to smell the same way.

Back when I was a rookie detective on the job in LA, before some poor choices left me out of a job and out on the street with nothing but my dented fedora and my last paycheck, I was assigned to the Pershing Square area, that seedy underbelly of perversion and corruption that was the epicenter of everything evil in the City of Angels. After several long sweaty hours I couldn’t take it anymore, and to wash my overloaded and saturated mind of the ugliness I had seen, I got myself assigned to Vice where I was able to spend time counseling the working girls out on Sunset, trying to convince them that working the candy counter at Woolworth’s for twenty bucks a week was preferable to the life they had on the street even if they raked in the big bucks. That and getting the bait and switch cross-dressers to see that it would be a better business plan if they got on the bus to San Diego where the sailors down there weren’t that particular after a 6 month Westpac cruise and besides they wouldn’t have me to deal with. Letting them see the wisdom of that plan and showing them my gat that I kept in a well-worn shoulder holster under my cheap suit coat convinced most of them to take my advice. Since my arrests had gone straight down the crapper after arriving in Vice, the suits downtown sent me to Missing Persons as a last chance hope of saving a failing career. It’s funny though because there is just as much vice in missing persons cases as missing persons. I handled cases where someone was missing, or doing vice, or missing as they were doing vice, or the vice wasn’t there so they went missing. LA is a crazy town, you’ve got to keep your perspective. All of that experience made me see that this case wasn’t a simple missing Ibis case anymore, and there was certainly weirdness enough to go around. I felt like I was back in the old days of pinching hookers and laughing at the moon.

As I headed north towards Laramie I came across the burned out hulk that was the Plaid men’s car. That Hyundai had only made it about 30 miles with that slashed tire and it had been gone over pretty good, just about anything useable had been taken and it lay there with its axles pointed towards the sun like a gutted loaf of day old bread. There was no sign of the two phantom photographers but the plates were still on the back of the car so I ran them through a friend down at DMV and they came back listed to a couple of low-life, wannabe bounty hunters out of Key West. The Azwhype brothers, Solenoid and Nodule. This was bigger than I thought if these two mental midgets thought they could make a buck off this caper.

I turned the nose of my apple green 1951 Packard Custom Clipper westward and hauled bacon towards Utah. I didn’t know if Solenoid and Nodule, those two miserable excuses for human beings, had caught a ride or were still walking towards Utah and I was worried because they had a seven week head start on me. You could walk to Utah backwards in that time. I knew that if they got there before I did that Ibis family wouldn’t have a prayer. Those two would have them back to Ratzo before I could say “Put those Ibis down you no good Ibis stealing son of a bitch” and it would be all over.

I had finally figured it all out. All of the answers started falling in place when I realized what Ratzo’s real plans were. He didn’t care about the unpaid feed bill. Hell, he tipped that much at Big Leg Kathy’s every Friday night. No he wanted the Ibis. He’d fattened them up with all that expensive Ibis food because he was an Ibis Eater. He ate the Ibis that he was supposed to be taking care of. That’s why he had Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. He hired me as a patsy, a dumb private dick, to find the Ibis first so that I could lead those two bounty hunting Ibis grabbers straight to them, giving them a jumpstart on the chase so he’d be dining on Ibis by the time I was still trying to get the 40 smackers he owed me. My brain burned like hell’s night-light with all the answers falling into place. All this figuring things out had me feeling like a sweat stained Orangutan but my work wasn’t done yet. I had to get to the Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary and deal with Solenoid and Nodule, those lousy Azwhype brothers, before they got to the Ibis.

I pulled into the Sanctuary early in the afternoon and began a frantic search for the Limping Ibis and her two wayward children. I began checking the various flocks of White-faced Ibis and there were hundreds of flocks, with thousands of birds in each, trying to spot one limping Ibis. It was slow going. I didn’t think that much more of them than I did when I first took this job, but they didn’t deserve to wind up like slightly roasted purple turkeys. We all try and make it the best way we can and sometimes you’ve just got to cut somebody a little slack. I was going to warn them and tell them to get out of the country, go to Canada, they don’t eat Ibis up there, not even around Whitehorse where it’s been said they’ll eat anything. Ham, Ram, Billy Goat, Baboon or Bear, but not Ibis. They’d be safe. Whether they straightened themselves out morally or not wasn’t my problem and I sure as hell can’t judge them.

Their strategy of hiding in the great flocks of White-faced Ibis’s at the  Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary worked because search as I would I couldn’t spot them again amongst the thousands and thousands of identical but looking exactly alike Ibis. If you look closely at the picture above you’ll see one or two of the Ibis with what may be tattoos, but then all the kids are getting them so you just can’t tell. As for those two losers, Solenoid and Nodule, one short phone call to one of the leading Mormon bishops about two southern Baptist looking clowns in plaid clothes making fun of plural marriages got them an extended stay at (USP) or Utah State Prison, the one that was built to replace Sugar House prison back in ’51, near Draper. They’ll be there until they see the error of their ways. That left only Ratzo and his refusal to pay me my 40 bucks. He should a paid me. It was strange how Florida’s fish and game department had enough information about his operation that there was a pre-dawn raid catching him plucking what was once a White-faced Ibis and now he plucks chickens at the Florida State Corrections Facility at Apalachee (West) Correctional Institution. They say he is a model inmate. My reward from the grateful state of Florida was enough to buy me a new truck with a better gas gauge and the satisfaction of knowing we won’t be running out of White-faced Ibis soon. Sometimes it wasn’t bad being a private dick.

The Case of the Limping Ibis

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Limping Ibis1484White-faced Ibis   Northern Colorado                            click to enlarge

May 8th 6:07 PM. I had been hired by a small bird refuge in Florida to ascertain the where abouts of a certain White-faced Ibis and her brood. She had skipped out without paying her food tab and the refuge wanted their moola. Why any bird refuge would go to these lengths to collect on a food bill was beyond me but then I was just a flat-footed gumshoe with a camera in his hand and a need to feed my habit of taking pictures, and I didn’t need to know everything. I was just there to find the bird, take her picture and collect my 40 simoleons. Forty simoleons doesn’t sound like much but when you’re down on your luck you’ll do a lot of things for not much money. Besides I was getting low on pixels and needed to fill my cards up.

When I did my initial interview with the director of the refuge, a short little rat-faced weasel with too tight shoes and a comb-over I found out a few of the facts I needed to know to start this job. The first was this guy needed to brush his teeth, his breath smelled like burning tires and unfortunately he had to open his mouth to talk and that made matters even worse, if they could be. He also needed to change his ” I ♥ Ibis ” t-shirt, too much of his pasty skin was showing. It didn’t help that there were what looked like Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. Who licenses these places anyway I asked myself, but then I thought about the dough and moved upwind.

The second fact was more useful. It seems that this particular Ibis had a limp. A very pronounced limp and she was traveling with her two off-spring who were following in Mom’s every footstep. Both of them had records going back to when they were eggs. Petty theft, missing school, selling slightly used crustaceans to the younger ibis, some sordid behavior with a juvenile spoonbill, the list went on and on. No wonder they were on the lam. Every bird refuge in southern Florida wanted these three. It began to make sense that they were up here in the backwaters of Northern Colorado.

I got my first break in the case when I was going into town one rainy overcast day. I needed smokes, I didn’t smoke but we’re required to carry them in case some sultry dame with long red hair, gams that go up to there, and knowing eyes asked us for one. It ‘s part of the gumshoe code. My warning light came on to tell me I was low on gas. Great, the 40 clams promised by ratzo the Ibis lover hadn’t come in yet, so much for the checks in the mail bit, I was out of smokes, low on gas and all I’d had to eat in the last three days were a can of anchovies, a few soggy saltines and some grey stuff I found on the top shelf of the fridge. I was feeling so low that whale shit looked like star-dust. I missed Angie too. She wasn’t much of a secretary, my girl Thursday, but she could make a mean enchilada. And the fact that she had curves in all the right places didn’t hurt, much. She knew how to make a man feel good though and that’s a skill that is worth its weight in gold. I let her down as is my habit with women, I answered her truthfully when she asked me if those fishnets made her butt look big. I should have lied to her. That’s another part of the gumshoes code. Lie to them if you have to. Women want it, hell they need it. I was sinking fast.

I was thinking real hard about whether I should just dump this lousy crate into the bar ditch and put it and me out of misery when I noticed three dark shapes moving amongst the marsh grass. What the hell, I thought, could they be Ibis and then swear to god, they were. White-faced Ibis looking for food in all the wrong places. I couldn’t believe it, was I gonna get a break here or what. I wasn’t close enough to see if any of them were limping, so cutting across two lanes of traffic and one very large Navajo freightliner, luckily both his horn and his brakes worked, I pulled up to where I could see them better. They didn’t see me, Ibis don’t look in truck windows. There it was, she was limping, I could hardly breathe. She looked exactly as I expected her to, the kids had a few new tattoos but otherwise they fit the bill, I had them. All I needed was a picture.

I reached for my trusty Nikon D700 with its 80-400 VRII image stabilizing lens and quickly checked its settings, this was no time to screw things up by not having my crap together. I always carry my gear with me, my camera and lens are my bread & butter, I couldn’t live without them. They’re to me what the splits are to VanDamme, what wide teeth are to a game show host, what cleavage is to Sophia Veraga, well you get the picture. When Angie left she took the big screen, the microwave, my socks, the front floor pads out of my truck but she didn’t touch my gear. I guess there might be a small amount of human kindness left in that black chunk of basalt she calls a heart. Then I thought nah, she just missed them.

Just as I was ready to squeeze off a shot a car with Florida plates comes skidding to a stop, two idiots dressed like it was Plaid day at the senior center jump out with point and shoot cameras and flash those birds right in their little red eyes. Then before I could even get out my stun gun out to give a friendly birders welcome to those bozos the Ibis were gone. All I heard was one warning squawk and the hard flapping of wings and the marsh was empty again. When the rage cleared and I was able to locate the three they were just specks in the sky heading north along the foothills. The Hyundai the two intruders were driving was slowly wobbling after them, I must have luckily been able to slash their rear tire as they went by. They’d be able to follow my birds until the tire came off the rim then they’d be off-line for a while. Mad, sure I was, mad as a blind potato farmer with a dull shovel, but I wasn’t out of the game. I had a hunch where those three birds were going and it wasn’t Disney world. It was a much cooler place, a place where they could blend in with other white-faced Ibis and disappear.

They were going to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and so was I.

To be continued……

Big Hats

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HeadinHome3817Big Hats     Wyoming Territory                                       click to enlarge

I was returning home from a late spring shoot in Yellowstone, traveling the back roads of Wyoming taking in the scenery, and found myself on a stretch of two-lane highway that went on, straight as an arrow, for miles. It was that part of Wyoming that a lot of people find completely devoid of anything interesting to look at. Even boring perhaps. I don’t because I like the way being able to see for miles and miles makes me feel. It feels like you’re the first one to see this country even though you aren’t of course, but the feeling of all that space and you’re the only one in it feeds my sense of adventure.

The country is made up of low rolling hills, sparse vegetation, and sand. Lots of  sand. To the uninitiated it would seem impossible to make a living out here or even sustain life for that matter, but they would be wrong. Scattered along this highway to nowhere there are small ranches, mysterious trailers sitting way out in the middle of nowhere, no wires leading to them, no signs of life except for the tire tracks leading up to them, fairly well used tire tracks. Every once in a while there will be a break in the fence with a dirt road leading off into the distance heading towards who knows where, until finally going over one of those low hills towards what, home maybe. To mark that this country is inhabited there is often a mailbox leaning up against the fence post by the cattle guard and occasionally the red flag would be up but I didn’t see that very often.

This is a place where you can drive for a long time without meeting another car and any movement can be seen for miles if you’re watching. And you need to be watching and not sleeping which is really easy to do if you stare at the road ahead too long. It seems like the view doesn’t change for hours and if you’re not careful you will find you have traveled for quite some time and you have no memory of what you just passed through. Hopefully your autopilot was on and you were in that phase I call the Sun-blind lion phase and not asleep. That’s where there is a huge amount of activity going on behind your eyes in the farther back part of your brain that you use for planning stuff while you’re semi-conscious and driving. It’s where you can build an entire house stick by stick in your minds eye while your regular non-goofy part of your brain handles the mechanics of driving while you’re busy elsewhere. Either way it is disconcerting to suddenly be aware of traveling at a high rate of speed and realizing you weren’t aware. That’s why you look all over the place. You watch for birds, trying to figure out if that black speck out there near the horizon is a raven or a golden eagle or even a buzzard. Long minutes of intense concentration help eat up the miles. It’s always a raven, by the way. But the thought that it might be the eagle keeps you awake and that’s the whole point of this anyway.

Cresting a hill I could see way off in the distance a shape that wasn’t the normal next to the highway kind of shape. I always keep one of my cameras on the passenger seat in case I need it and it is set to the prevailing light conditions, turned on and ready to go. As I drew nearer I saw that it was two boys heading home or at least I thought it was their home as there was a cluster of low-lying buildings with corrals, an old pickup sitting there, a few kind of dusty and somewhat used looking cows standing nearby, and the general appearance of people living there real regular. I hadn’t passed another place for miles, I don’t know where these kids were coming from but it was clear they were going home. It must have been a kind of ritzy place as it had not only electric wires leading to it but a phone line as well and almost all of the fence posts were upright and the wire looked tight. Those are pretty sure signs this is a place where folks live full time.

I knew right off that they were professional cowboys as they didn’t use a saddle. Amateurs and city kids got to have a saddle. Plus their hats, It is a hard and fast rule that a cowboy kid growing up cannot have a hat that fits them until they’re at least 16 and then they must have knocked down one of their uncles in a fair fight before they’re allowed to choose the one they’ll have until they get married. This is a cowboy law and seldom broken. Besides it is a badge of honor and a sure sign of unspoken love to have and wear the hat your dad doesn’t need anymore. It means you belong to a family and they care about you. It doesn’t matter that you have to put Kleenex in the hat band to make it fit. It’s a grown up hat. I’ve heard of some of these hats being passed down through several generations until they finally wind up hanging on hooks next to a treasured family picture. An heirloom now that shows traditions need to be honored.

I knew I only had a chance for one or two pictures before they heard me coming and looked around. That would change the very character of the image I wanted so I rolled down the window and took a few shots as I coasted up to them. The  wind was blowing up pretty good as it does two or three times a year in Wyoming so they didn’t hear the truck until I pulled up next to them. I was right, they both turned to look and the whole image changed. They were nearly as surprised as I was to find another living soul out here so we both tentatively waved at each other and they turned down their lane towards home and I pointed the truck south and did the same.

I don’t normally photograph people. I’m more comfortable out in the field shooting wildlife and landscapes, but every once in a while that perfect shot comes along and I can’t pass it up. That’s the way it was with “Big Hats- Heading Home”.

The Weather Cow

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20ChanceofSnow6686Cow Elk  Yellowstone                                                      click to enlarge

20% chance of weather. You hear it in every weather forecast. “Well, there’s a front moving down from the Canadian highlands bringing wind and a 20% chance of something”. Insert your own weather word here. Snow, ice, sunshine, brown m&m’s in the mix, giggles, bankruptcy, tornadoes, you name it. You can’t go wrong predicting 20% of something.

So how do you find out about upcoming weather while visiting Yellowstone? You watch the Weather Cow, that’s how. This is Lucretia, a 6-year-old cow elk with an uncanny ability to predict the weather. Once thought of as a freak and chased out of the herd, she is now sought after for her insights and amazing abilities to predict the weather for at least five days into the future.

We don’t know how she does it. At one point there was a movement to dissect her brain to figure it out but since there is only one of her, cooler heads prevailed and she was given the freedom to forecast the weather. If Lucretia says it’s going to rain you’re probably already wet. She is shown here gazing at the snowflakes she predicted yesterday. Because of her amazing talents there were some experiments undertaken to see if she could predict any other phenomenon, such as the stock market, chance of marriages surviving, Superbowl winners, but she didn’t do any better than any of the other elk asked the same questions. Obviously her talent is predicting the weather and she does that with startling accuracy.

Pennsylvania can have their Punxsutawney Phil, the ground-hog that can only answer one question and its usually wrong, we have Lucretia The Weather Cow and as far as predictions go she can run his chubby little backside right back into that hole in the ground.

Due to our connections to Yellowstone National park and the herd that Lucretia hangs out with, the Institute can offer another incredible service provided exclusively to our loyal but regular readers. We will provide either by postcard (postage extra) or electronic delivery predictions straight from the elk’s mouth as it were, addressed to you and only you for your weather forecasting needs. There will be a small monthly fee of $285.65 payable in advance with a 5 year contract. For that nominal fee you will get regular forecasts containing real weather words such as Snow, Wind, 20%, Sunny, Poganip, yes it’s a real word look it up, plus advisories like “OMG! Run for your lives it’s a class 5 twister, y’all”  “Don’t stick your tongue on that Flagpole” “Edna let go of that milk cow” and many other catchy phrases heard on National TV. Each prediction will also include a signed picture of Lucretia our Weather Cow, and a 900 number where you can get even more information on various other subjects. Sign up now and sign up often, tell your friends and neighbors about this incredible offer, and remember to set up that autopay system we offer so you don’t miss a single months prediction and we don’t have to take you to court for failure to pay, but above all, Hurry! Sign Up! after all, we can’t do this all day.

Breaking News!!! Just in from The Weather Cow. There’s a 20% chance of snow this month. Didn’t we tell you this was incredible?

Synchronicity

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Synchronicity2749Trumpeter Swans    Yellowstone                                  click to enlarge

One of the most amazing sights in Yellowstone are the Trumpeter swans. They grace the river ways of Yellowstone National park with the charm and allure of well-trained ballerinas. Their mannerisms and postures seem so natural that one wonders how that came about. Are they born that way? Is it just natural? The Institute had to find out. Our readership demands it, so we embarked on a multi-year study of Swans, their genesis, their behavior, their rigorous yet secret training. We bring you behind the scenes to see how Swans are made.

One of the most compelling questions we had was, how come you see adult swans and brand new goslings but you rarely see them in their in-between, or awkward phase. Where are they? Where do they go? Determined to find out we spent countless hours observing, trailing, chasing clues until we discovered the answer.

As soon as young swans get pass the cute gosling stage and enter into that awkward adolescent period they are immediately shipped out to a training facility hidden deep in the backcountry of Montana and maintained by the training nuns of Our Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage. There they spend countless hours under the severe gaze of these sisters of the fallen feather, being taught swan manners and the fine movements that we as observers have come to expect of adult swans. Under the severe and unrelenting tutelage of these stern taskmasters they transform from awkward ugly teenagers into the graceful adults we’ve come to expect and love. Many a young beak gets smacked with those wooden rulers until each and every move is second nature and perfect. Grace and beauty comes at a price in the swan world.

What you see in the image above, which was taken with a long lens as we couldn’t chance being discovered and getting our beaks smacked with a wooden ruler, are two, soon to graduate, students, practicing a synchronous movement in the ballet works known as “l’étiquette du matin au lever” or as we know it in English,   “Morning Etiquette Upon Rising” and aptly titled “Preening”. Notice how exact their movements are, how precise, how synchronous, they can do this for hours with never a mistake and without even looking at each other. Their harsh training has paid off and as soon as the scars on their beaks* have healed, they will rejoin the adults and put on their incredible flawless performances for the benefit of the thousands of fortunate visitors that attend the park.

Our study now in its 12th year has uncovered many other facts regarding the harsh training of young swans which we don’t have time or space to relate at the moment. That plus the cease and desist letter stating pending litigation from the Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage due to Invasion of Privacy, trespassing, making true statements about their teaching staff, failure to yield right of way, destruction of property, namely the breakage of several wooden rulers, and other issues have temporarily halted our study. We believe that this is just a minor setback and our legal team has told us “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” so we hope to be back trespassing in the very near future continuing the work you have come to expect from the Institute. Stay tuned.

*Many of you have asked “What is that big lump you sometimes see on swan’s beaks, that one right where their bill joins their heads?” Well now you know, ruler marks.

Lights Along The Rim

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NightLife6579Night Lights  South Rim  Grand Canyon                     click to enlarge

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind blew through the mizzen mast like a banshee of old. The boiling heaving seas were determined to sink this ship and all who sailed on her. Wait, wait, wait, stop, that’s another story entirely. Let’s begin again.

It was a cold, crystal clear, Christmas eve and I was hiking back to the lodge on the South rim of the Grand Canyon after spending the late afternoon shooting the light as the shadows settled into the canyon depths and slowly crept up the canyon walls. The sunset seemed late in arriving but that was only  because it was cold and seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours and the sunset was oblivious to creature comforts especially mine.

The sunset arrived as it had to of course, but the gamble of getting the exceptional shot didn’t pay off as it was just a standard, only average gorgeous sunset. Then it was over and soon replaced by the clear indigo blue night sky in all of its glory. There was no moon as I began my trek back to the lodge, and my eyes had to adjust to the darkness which meant walking the trail by the light of the stars.

I rounded a bend and came across this vantage point and what appeared across the canyon was this most beautiful magical scene. The lights of the visitor center and El Tovar Lodge shone like diamonds. It was as if someone had dropped a necklace of stars upon the edge of the canyon and if anything man-made could add to the beauty of these natural surroundings it was this brilliant display.

The fact that I had another mile and a half to trudge in the dark before I could get warm and have dinner melted away. I didn’t even care that I had all this heavy stuff to carry back. I didn’t get my exceptional shot of the fading sunset but it was replaced by this unforgettable view of the lights along the rim. It was a most special Christmas eve and I have it secure in my memory banks forever, or as long as they last anyway. If they begin to fade I have this image to remind me of the night on edge of the Grand Canyon, walking by starlight and seeing one of the most beautiful sights I have ever been privileged to photograph.

Anasazi Storm

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AnazaziStorm0278Rock Formation Zion                                                    click to enlarge

Another mystery solved. That’s what we were able to write in the Journal of Mysteries Solved, kept in our celebrated “Explorers and Natural Scientists Guys” room here at The Institute. This legendary room is the headquarters of a bunch of little-known, but famous in their own mind, group of world-renown experts that make up our division of CyrptoBotan-PaleoKayology dedicated to solving the mysteries of the ages. Very much like that upstart organization, The National Geographic Society, which has its own fancy-schmancy headquarters building in Washington does. Only we’re not some Johnny Come Lately bunch that’s only been around for a few hundred years like they like to brag about. No, we’ve been doing this stuff for a long time now. Those NatGeo guys will often come around here trying to sneak in and find out about our newest most secret projects we’re trying to get funding for just so they can get the jump on us and get stuff in their magazine before we can publish. We had that story of the Super-Collider and the Dangers of Inter-specie Mutation in the bag until they butted in. We’re out of sorts with them at the moment so enough said. We run them off as soon as we see them now. Headline grabbers.

Some of you folks who have been busy with your lives may not have heard of this new offshoot of science called CyrptoBotan-PaleoKayology. We’re proud to be able to state that we have the very first department here at The Institute. It is made up primarily of experts that couldn’t make up their minds about what their majors were and so they dabbled in a little bit in everything. We have the fields of Cryptology, Botany, Paleontology, Archeology, Welding, School bus repair, Home Healthcare advocology, Dog Walker certification, BB Stacking 101 and 102, T-shirt design for the Hooters restaurant chain, I guess that would come under Designology, Cosmetology, Zoology and “Etiquette In Line” at your local fast food restaurant (which isn’t really a science but we thought it would benefit humanity if we taught those blivets some manners. We’re looking at you, McDonalds.) represented here. Our motto is “Our experts may not know a lot but they know everything about what they do know”.

If you’ve been to Zion National Park you may have noticed this rock formation on the road to the Temple of Sinawava. At first glance it looks just like any other incredible fascinating rock formation but that’s what has hidden it mystery for so long. Beneath its gorgeous natural beauty it hides a tale of danger, destruction, doom and despair. Our CyrptoBotan-PaleoKayologists have unlocked its secrets by a little know technique called Imagineering. That where you see something unusual and say “hmm I wonder what caused that”, sit around, have a few beers, talk about it with your fellow CyrptoBotan-PaleoKayologists and come up with a theory that can not be disapproved and write a paper. Whole religions have been started like that so there’s precedent.

This particular rock formation is actually a major construct created by the predecessors of the Anasazi, a people lost in time. The class of this type of construct is called an anti or reverse pictograph because as you know a pictograph is ‘picked’ into the surface of the rock it is on while reverse or anti pictographing is made up by applying layers of stone on the surface of the rock canvas building it up until the desired image is created. It is hard to do, really hard, they are still trying to discover what the composition of the adhesive was that has allowed that applique to remain in place over the eons, let alone how a race of people barely 4½ feet tall and weighing less than 86 lbs. and couldn’t even speak English, could have lifted pieces of stone weighing about the same as a greyhound bus.

After several cases of a very strong English Ale called the Bishop’s Finger, which had been smuggled into the National park by a British member of our team, the theory began to emerge. There was a tremendous storm the likes of which had never been seen before, it swirled and twirled and rotated at an incredible rate destroying everything in its path. It uprooted trees, pulled gigantic rocks out of the earth, sucked an entire river dry and spit it out in the canyon it had just formed and then relocated a good portion of the unconsenting tribe to the nearby Sonoran desert several hundred miles away. That’s what made this a true tragedy. The storm took men, women, children, liberals, conservatives, 32nd Degree Masons, Avon ladies, members of the DAR, and others that may have been undocumented. The storm didn’t discriminate. If you were near you were gone.

This was a calamitous event, a storm of this type and magnitude had never been seen before. The people named it xqjtornadolix, which is one, if not the only surviving word, from their language. We now call it tornado because their name was impossible to pronounce and we’re scared spitless of them too. A simple little EF5 (Enhanced Fujita Scale) tornado with winds of over 200 mph will send us scampering for the storm cellar as soon as we see it. The storm that created Zion canyon was like a really big bunch of those EF5’s all rolled together.

We  think we finally got the jump on those NatGeo guys on this one. We’ll be publishing in Nature and Science magazine just as soon as they accept our paper and if we don’t run into any problems during the peer review process we’ll be pocketing that fat $300.00 dollar advance and waiting for the royalties to come streaming in. And best of all we were able to give you, our loyal readers, an advance look, not to mention the knowledge gained by seeing it first right here on our pages. No, you don’t need to thank us, sending us those large donations is thanks enough. Remember the Institute is here for you.