Animal Portraits – Bighorn Sheep

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Every blue moon we bring you an Animal Portrait. It’s not a blue moon but there is always time to present an Animal Portrait regardless of the Lunar calendar. This is a Bighorn Sheep ram and he is called Ishmael because he asked us to.

This is also a captive animal who resides at a nearby zoo. As always we prefer to shoot in the wild but sometimes one is presented with a situation where the subject commands a photo session. Such was the case with Ishmael. He is such an imposing individual, so full of character and strength, that nothing would do but to stop in our tracks and photograph him.

We usually don’t do much black & white photography but nothing else would focus our attention on the strength and iron resolve that resides in those horns. If you want to see others in our animal portraits project, type in Animal portraits or Captive beauty into the search box at the top of the post.

The Bighorn Ewe and The Stone of Secrets

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Deep in the heart of Yellowstone National Park there is a place that is holy to the Bighorn sheep that reside there. Every year they make the arduous and dangerous Pilgrimage from Calcite Springs, high up on the cliffs of the Tower falls area, where the Yellowstone river can be seen flowing deeply along the canyon’s floor below. A place where they birth their lambs and find safety on the vertical cliff walls, safe from predators, their only neighbors the Fisher Kings, or as we know them, the Osprey, to this hidden valley near the Gardner river. A place a short distance from the gray stone pathway with its shiny noisy beasts full of screaming beings that pass through here on their way to somewhere, perhaps they’re on their own pilgrimage. Most do not notice the valley and its stone, or the animals who come to pay it homage.

Upstream a short distance the Fawn, Panther, Indian and Obsidian creeks join to form the main body of the Gardner river. The Bighorn sheep don’t care about that, they’re here for a completely different reason. This is after all, a spiritual place. A place where they make a single pilgrimage to each year, to do one thing and one thing only. And that one thing is to visit the Stone of Secrets.

The Stone is a common enough looking boulder shaped by unknown forces millenniums ago and deposited with several others in the bottom of the valley where it has lain unmoving to this day. Unlike its brethren very little lichen has formed on the stone, perhaps due to what it holds inside its rough-hewn exterior.

This is the Stone of Secrets and it contains the countless secrets, dreams and desires, the wants and hopes of the Bighorns who lean up against it and tell it their innermost desires. Some of the younger ewes want to be selected by the most majestic ram, others want the lambs they have been unable to produce and pour forth the most heart-wrenching pleas, hoping that this year their wish will be granted. The young rams secretly and embarrassed by their wants, lean tightly against it, whispering, asking for bigger horns. The older ewes want to lean against it and feel the warmth and contentment that washes over them, some of them ask for just one more year to make the trek back and forth from here to there again.

The stone has been here for as long as it and the untold multitude of Bighorns have been living here, which has been a very long time. Originally the stone did not have the flat spot the ewe is leaning against. The countless animals, and it has been countless animals, for occasionally other creatures came and used the stone too. Rubbed against the stone, feeling its strength and wisdom, letting  their secrets pour out like a  roaring river of emotion, washing and wearing the stone away until it attained the shape it has now. The flat area becoming infinitesimally larger each year.

It is unknown if the stone will work its magic on humans. Occasionally you will see one carefully approach it and lay their hands on it rough surface. Some rest their faces against the stone, or spread their arms against it as if they’re trying to lift the stone from of its resting place. But the stone is unmovable, the only thing you can take from it is the strength of it presence. Some say they have received more, some say it’s just a stone. You will have to go there and see for yourself.

Last Call

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A week ago the road leading up Mt. Evans to the summit was closed due to impending winter. The road goes way up into the sky until at 14,000′ plus, it stops and you can get out of your car and wheezingly look at the animals living here that have absolutely no trouble breathing. In fact they find it amusing that many of the visitors keel over and have to be dragged by the back foot to the waiting emergency vehicles where they get oxygen and the advice to go home.

So on the 5th of September you had last call to go up and see the mountain goats and their neighbors the Bighorn sheep, pictured here. In a very short time it will be soooo cold and snowy, what with the mountain top area being completely filled with weather, that it would be really miserable to be here. Guys who regularly go to Antarctica don’t like going here.

If you look closely at the picture above you will see adolescent bighorn sheep frolicking. They’ll run and leap from rock to rock and jump for the sheer irritation factor of it knowing it bothers the older ones a lot. If you were to try even one frolic your heart would explode in your chest and your eyeball would pop out. That’s right, pop right out of your head. Eyeball popping is very possible in super high altitude places where extreme cold is involved. That’s why they shut the road down. Otherwise people would go up there and try one frolic and then there you are, exploded heart and eyeball popped out. Plus you’d have to lay there for the rest of the winter because they don’t open the road until May or June.

Well then, there it is, if you didn’t make it to the summit of Mt Evans on September 5th too bad for you, you missed it. Now you have to wait until next year. The sheep and goats will still be there. They live up there fulltime. No exploded hearts or popped eyeball for them, they’re trained and experienced on how to survive living in ridiculous places so they’ll be just fine. Meanwhile if you are hell-bent on being miserable there’s lots of stuff you can do between now and the opening of the Mt. Evans road next May.

You can watch every single one of the debates between the candidates and talk to your friends about them until one of them sticks a pencil in your ear. Or you can intern on one of those crab boats up on the Bering sea. It’s just below eyeball popping cold up there. You could attend a seniors only party and listen to all of their recent medical procedures. There’s more, that’s just a few of the things you can do to keep your misery index up to your own personal comfort level. If you lack the imagination to figure out your own miserable activity to do this winter we have a list here at The Institute that we would be happy to send you. Just send us a stamped self-addressed envelope with $80 dollars cash in it and we’ll get it right in the mail for you. If you don’t have the exact amount in cash send five twenty’s instead and we’ll try like heck to get your change back to you.

P.S. Don’t think you can outsmart the system and sneak up to the summit and hold one hand over your eyeball and get away with it. Doesn’t work, trust me on this one.

Now Are The Foxes

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We are continuing with our semi-annual inspection report that The Institute conducts in Yellowstone National park whether anyone wants it or not. As has been described before this is a very comprehensive inspection of all aspects of the parks operation. We leave no stone unturned, no question unanswered, no oddity unexplained, no lunch counter stool unoccupied.

One of the major checkpoints on our report is whether the performing animals are, well, performing. This is a major area of concern for park management as many of the tourist dollars spent here are dependent on how good a show the park provides. The travelling public, especially those from out-of-town, are demanding to see the various tricks, capering’s, sleight of paw trickery, mimicking, scampering cutely, impressions, demonstrations of unique abilities, ability to sing, dance, and perform acrobatic stunts that television has conditioned them to believe is realistic animal behavior.

Consequently nearly all of the parks inhabitants have their own repertoire of acts carefully selected for their particular personalities and physical attributes. Grizzly bears lumber along in a wallowing gait that makes them an amusing sight when viewed from the rear, even if there is a freshly killed elk calf dangling from its jaws you can’t help but laugh at its distinctive big butt roll, Eagles, both Bald and Golden soar and dive providing an incredible airshow for the gaping wide-eyed tourist. You can’t miss the sound of cell phone cameras clicking away to capture them in all their splendid glory seven or eight hundred feet in the air. The many hooved ungulates such as the buffalo, antelope, elk, mule deer, Bighorn sheep and Black-horned rhinoceros, put on a grazing display second to none, ok, that list was just a test to see if you were really paying attention, there are actually no buffalo in the park.

Using the beautiful four-color brochure that the park hands out to each and every paying entrant into the park that shows the time, location and activity to be performed by the various animal performers we headed to the Hayden valley our first stop, to view the amazing acrobatic maneuvers of Americas favorite small hairy predator, the Red Fox. We got there a few minutes early so we could set up our gear and get good seats as the spaces fill up rapidly once the show gets under way.

Soon, just as advertised, the Red Fox appeared and began to tease the crowd by scampering over logs, peering out from behind bushes and other shrubbery, posing and posturing out in the open for the many folks wanting photo ops, and generally setting the stage for its climatic last act, the Incredible Leaping Headstand with Bushy Tail Salute. It was an amazing performance. As soon as it was over and our performer retreated into the forest behind it, the crowd immediately dispersed, stopping only to take selfies of themselves and their companions with their cell phones and consulting the brochure for the next performance. Some were even seen photographing their brochures, the  ground they were standing on, the road, their car door handles, each other again, the now empty area where the performance took place. Every thing of interest in Yellowstone that might amaze their friends and neighbors back home must be digitally documented before the next amazing sight comes into view.

We were satisfied with the Red Fox’s performance and gave it four and a half stars out of five and went on to the next performance, a yellow-bellied marmot spitting the shells of seeds over the edge of a rock. We were in for a long day, Yellowstone has a lot of things to see and we hadn’t even gotten to the Buffalo shedding exhibit yet.

Note : To those of you tuning in late the following posts will catch you up on preceding events. There is no extra charge for this service we just want  you to be fully informed.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/announcement-13/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-passes-inspection/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/ghosts-in-the-darkness/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/you-dont-see-that-every-day/

Battle Along The Columbia

As many of you already know the Bokeh Maru, the Institutes premier research vessel, is a remarkable vehicle. Outfitted with all the modern attributes of a world-class media center and loaded down with sophisticated electronic equipment including GPS, a Smartphone, contact receptacles mounted in the walls that interface with portable electronics like laptops, toasters, handheld devices that remove facial hair and a place to recharge batteries in all the professional photographic gear that is needed on an expedition such as this one. The power source alone that is a regenerative unit that provides nearly an inexhaustible amount of power in the form of AC/DC electricity, requires an advanced degree in mechanical engineering just to turn it on.

But perhaps the greatest and most useful device on board is a portable, slightly oversized, hyper-organic computer with the ability to perform incredible feats of observation and analysis of the conditions around it. Programmed with the latest algorithms and lightning fast calculations it is able to instantly react to stimulus occurring in a 360° radius of its location. That is until it goes on overload, reboots, gives you a blue screen and you crash into the guard rail and spill your tea. Fortunately that didn’t happen but it could of.

It, the organic computer named after the Hal 9000’s cousin Leland, was running its wildlife acquisition app as we sped down I-84 along the Columbia river just east of The Dalles in Oregon, when it suddenly sprang into action after locating life-forms just off the hwy and up a nearly vertical wall of rocks, sand, boulders and scrub. Sensing images to be had I immediately pulled over to the side of the road where fortunately the shoulder was just wide enough that if I nearly scraped the side of the Bokeh Maru against the concrete divider placed there to keep foolish gawkers from falling into the Columbia river, I could get far enough off the roadway to avoid being crushed to death by the semi-truck traffic rocketing by at 70 mph.

The life-forms turned out to be Bighorn Sheep, rams to be exact, that were girding their loins in preparation for the rut which would allow them to have unprotected sex with any female sheep they could coerce into mating behavior. There were 5-7 of these bachelor boys who took turns ramming their heads together (hence the name Rams) to see who would get first pick of any females they might blunder into. Half these guys  were so loopy that they didn’t know which way was up after several rounds of striking their heads together with enough force you could hear it over the sound of 18 wheelers screaming by inches away. Their numbers varied as they came and went, as they did battle, then retreated to take whatever headache remedy they could before returning to the jousts again. This went on for hours, all in all a magnificent display of the ridiculous, I mean, they could’ve just sent a nice bouquet of roadside sage or some tasty twigs they located, then after some small talk and a little wine, they could accomplish what nature intended without all that head-banging and bleating. But that is just a personal opinion and not to be taken as scientific fact.

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Here two of the Bachelor Boys contend for contendership and the right to do this again with someone bigger. The average good-sized ram will weigh between 250 and 300 lbs. with 30 lbs or more of that weight being their horns.

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Contact! They put every ounce of power they have into these moments.

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The impact is so intense that the energy rocketing through their bodies results in one or both of them actually being lifted from the ground. It is impressive to see and one wonders about the longevity of Nature’s crash-test dummies after being subjected to this dozens of times a day. Makes these NFL linemen we hear about today seem like pansy little whiners in comparison with their measly little concussions and all.

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After the immediate impact they stand there motionless, or I might say paralyzed, while they contemplate what just happened. At the moment of impact these 250-300lbs. rams are striking each other at speeds up to 20 mph which is the equivalent of a 250lb man on a fat-tired bike slamming into the concrete wall of a Starbucks at 40 mph. One can only wonder what they might be thinking at this moment.

As a trained observer I have theorized that those thoughts may be something like “Holy crap, did THAT hurt.” or possibly a false sense of bravado with one saying “Didn’t hurt.” and the other one responding “Did too!” or perhaps something along the lines of “Where am I? Better yet, what am I?” While these boys are standing there trying to figure out if they walked to work or carried their lunch, another pair begin the same ritual. These bouts can last up to 24 hrs. before they finally concede its dumb and they go get breakfast somewhere.

Although this was a unique adventure as there was no expectation that wildlife would be spotted in the narrow confines of the Columbia gorge, the real adventure was not getting sideswiped by every semi that came down the highway. The rest was that act of reentering 70 mph traffic from a standing start. For those who have never  driven through the Columbia gorge it is one of the principal entries into the city of Portland and consequently every truck in America is required to go through it, sometimes several times a day. And they, the large, malevolent, evil-smelling ogres of the road, do not like RV’s. Or cars. Or other trucks. They don’t even like their mothers, or Jesus, or Country and Western music, so reentering their domain takes an act of courage that many simply don’t have. But the Bokeh Maru does. She leapt into the fray with never a thought for her soft-bodied passenger inside and fearlessly held up her tail pipe in a obscene gesture in the face of that 90,000lb behemoth bearing down on her and pulled into the traffic lane. We lived.

It was on to bigger and better things as we pointed our broad nose to the west and headed for Portland, the city of narrow roads and high-speed traffic. New adventures awaited us.

Spring Break

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It’s Spring Break time again and the boys are resting up prior to heading out to the big bash tonight at Sheep Lake. It looks like it will be a good one, there’s a band playing, a wet t-shirt contest, all the grass you can eat and a minimum of rangers on duty. It’s a good time to get your hooves stuck in the mud and watch the young rams head butting contest. Always good to see who is going to be a potential problem this fall when the rut starts.

Spring break has been a long standing tradition here at Rocky Mountain National Park. Everyone’s been studying hard, winter has been a drag and it’s time to let off a little steam. There’s been some agitation from the German exchange students to make Spring break longer here because back home in Germany Spring Break can last from five to eight weeks long. That’s a long time to spend in the biergarten. The Brits chime in with the fact that they get a month off and of course in Jamaica mon, Spring Break is the entire year except for the week they go to school.

But the third and fourth year guys know that you have to pace yourself if you’re going to last so it’s prudent to spend the afternoon resting, catching the sun, deciding on what the evening’s strategy is going to be and checking to see that your stamina levels are  registering in the proper zones. After all the ewes can spot a wimp a mile away.

On The Edge

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Sometimes you just have to take a step back and reevaluate. Most of the time things are happening at breakneck speed, there are ewes to collect, other rams to fight, wolves to watch out for, thick coats to grow, decisions to make about where you’re going to winter, the list goes on and on.

Every so often though you get to the point where you say, “Hey, I need a break. I need to sit in front of the fire and read a good book, maybe drink some nice hot Jasmine tea, listen to some music and think about the future”. Well the ram doesn’t think that, his thoughts tend towards “I need to get four or five nice fat ewes, find a place the other rams don’t know about, eat some grass, make sure the lamb crop will be well stocked next year and get settled for winter.” Different species, similar sentiments.

So if you’re feeling like things are getting too frantic or just plain nuts, take a minute, tune it all out and you’ll feel better. If nothing else the few minutes rest you’ll get will feel good, guaranteed.