Tag Archives: The Director

The Rut

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Yesterday was the official opening of the Rut. As you know, the Rut is where the bulls gather cows together called a harem and battle each other for breeding rights. This goes on for weeks and is the highlight of the Elks life, both cows and bulls. There’s usually a big opening ceremony down on the Madison river with hor’s d’oeuvre, some wine, the boxed kind mostly, there’s a lot of elk here for the opening, and we still haven’t fully recovered from the recession, a big banner across the meadow saying “Welcome back Bulls! Get to it!”. The press is on hand to do a shoot of the prominent bulls, They want to feature who’s the biggest, the baddest, which bull is going to kick the most bull butt, who’s going to collect the most cows. There’s always a breakdown sheet on the individual bulls stats. Who fathered the most calves, what was the bull calf ratio to cow calves born, etc. It’s like Yellowstone does Vegas.

There’s actually a pari-mutuel betting window set up down near 7 mile bridge for those so inclined. Last year their crowd favorite was a bull named Edwin, normally a shy reclusive bull in the off-season but a holy terror during the rut. He’s been ranked 1st with a 71-3-1 record. This year the money’s on a new bull named Thug. ( see image above) There’s not much known about Thug other than the fact that he put his antlers through the door of a Prius and made the driver embarrass himself. The Park staff gave him a written warning, which Thug promptly ate, and told him if he did it again they’d saw his antlers off. That got his attention for a minute. That’s like a death sentence during the Rut. Thug listened but showed no emotion. You’ll hear comments like “Dead bull walking” when he goes by now. It didn’t seem to phase him however as he promptly flipped the hor’s d’oeuvre table over during the weigh-in just to rattle Edwin. This should be a Rut of the century coming up folks.

Normally The Director is on hand to oversee the festivities and act as an unofficial Master of Ceremonies. This year there was a problem getting away from The Institute which can’t really be told in complete detail, but it had to do with our on going Animal Modification program. This is one of our most secret programs, not because it’s illegal, but it is to protect our investment and to keep our procedures under lock and key until we can file the proper patent papers and get everything trademarked. We can’t take the risk of losing the T-Shirt sales and other merchandising items we have planned by letting someone beat us to the punch.

We can relate the situation that occurred without giving away the details on our gene sequencing procedures or our use of a reconstituted and safe red-dye #2, that it was our work with Wolverines that went all over wonky of a sudden yesterday and caused the cancellation of our trip. Our purpose is to modify the Wolverines behavior so they can be sold as house pets. There has been a lot of heat on the puppy-mills lately and we frankly see a huge decline in cute huggable puppies in the not too distant future. That’s where we feel we could really capitalize on our new, gentle, genetically modified and recolored wolverines. With our new breeding programs in place, normally wolverines who are so mean one of them has to die in the mating procedure, can now mate safely, actually enjoying the process rather than ripping each others appendages off. We think we have reduced wolverine meanness to a more manageable level. That’s good as that means baby wolverines by the boatload and that means big bucks.

Briefly, our problem happened as we were loading the research vehicles to leave for the opening ceremonies, one of the interns was throwing a dead moose into their confinement area, the wolverines not the interns confinement area, for their evening meal and did not close the door and activate the remote tracking weapons and all of the wolverines got out of their cage. These were the unmodified wolverines. This created a real bad situation right now, we mean an awful one, and anyone who was caught outside was immediate wolverine food. Fortunately The Director, who is lucky that way was climbing up on the roof of the Mothership, our primary research vessel, and was able to pull the ladder up where he was safe but trapped. Several hours later one of our slow thinking interns remembered the tranquilizer gun and was able to dart two of the guard wolverines that were securing the door of our shed containing our bite proof wolverine recovering proximity suits.

To make a long story longer we got the suits, we rounded up and caught the wolverines, which is a whole battle by itself, and much of what we can’t tell you about, and got the area secured again. By then it was too late to leave and we were all tired so we said to hell with it and went in and had pizza and watched “Yellowstone – Super Volcano – Will it Blow and kill Everything and Everybody All Over the Place ” on TV. For those of you who haven’t seen this documentary, apparently it will. So after some thought we decided to pass on the Rut this year and wait and see if Yellowstone is still there in the Spring. But if you’re not doing anything the Rut goes on for a while and you can take it in. Let us know how it goes.

Redtail Hawk 1 Rattlesnake 0

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As they say out here in Colorado “The mail needed picking up” and since we occasionally get financial remuneration via snail mail and we haven’t had any interns able to pass the strict bonding requirements we have here at The Institute, it fell to the Director to go and get  the mail.

Our mail box is located down the five mile dirt road that gets you up and down from the mountain top The Institute is located on, to the modern one lane highway below. On the way down the ‘hill’ you run the chance of seeing wild animals being wild, such as turkeys walking around trying not to get eaten by the coyotes, elk in both male and female forms, mule deer of course, bears, just the black ones not the big grizzlies that roam further north, foxes, the red ones, the aforementioned coyotes, Eagles mostly Goldens but once in a while a bald one will fly by, and lots of birds. Everything from songbirds to grouse and now some Chukar. Hawks, falcons, pelicans flying by to get to somewhere where there is enough water, lots of migratory birds and our favorite species the Redtail hawk.

The Redtail is the hands down favorite because it does one really neat thing. It hunts, kills, and eats rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are what takes the fun out of running barefoot through the tall grass. Rattlesnakes bite. We had a neighbor near us, who was minding her own business doing absolutely nothing provoking, get bit and besides costing what a small Korean car costs it made her foot swell up to the size of your standard microwave oven. And she said it hurt too. A lot.

Most people in this country don’t like rattlesnakes. I mean, there’s a few that like them but they are not the majority by any means. People who don’t like them, the rattlesnakes not the people who do like them, generally hit them with a shovel until they’re dead. It is said by those folks who do like rattlesnakes that one of the reasons we should take these rattlesnakes close to our bosoms, are of the opinion that they do good by eating rodents, therefore let’s have them hang around doing that. Others say “Nope. Don’t think so. Gonna kill ’em”.  We believe that if they, the rattlesnakes, want to act that way they should do it way, and I mean way far away from where good American taxpaying citizens hang around. So there is a difference of opinion there.

It’s amazing that the Redtail hawk sides with the shovel smacking people and kill every one of those rattlers they see. They also pass this trait on to the young Redtail hawks by bringing home the snake, often still wriggling, for their little ones to eat. We at The Institute believe this is laudable behavior and compliment the Redtail parents on their good sense whenever we chance to speak with them.

The image above, which was taken just across the highway from our mailbox, shows the Redtail parent in the act of taking the rattlesnake it has just that moment caught, to a tall telephone pole where it would begin the process of making it not alive. Then it flew it back to the nest for the young to eat. We cheered and gave it the universal thumbs up gesture of approval before returning to sorting out the bills from the junk mail, then throwing the entire mess in the dumpster. I know, you’re saying if you’re just going to throw it all in the dumpster why bother sorting it out. We sort because every once in a while there is a check in there and then we’d have to go back and do dumpster diving which is not very dignified for a Director of a major Institute like ours to be doing. Which of course brings us to, if you’re looking for nominations for the “Most Useful Bird of the Year” award we heartily recommend Nature’s helper the Redtail hawk. Remember vote now and vote often. These birds need our support.

Resolvability

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We are nearly through with our semi-annual inspection of Yellowstone National Park having checked off almost all of our items on the list except for the few involving working with wolves.

Wolves. What can I say about wolves except that they’re the prima donnas of Yellowstone. They’re good looking, they’re cool, they’re head turners wherever they go and they know  it. They’re the rock stars of the park and pretty much do what ever they want to. But that also makes them super-hemerriodial to work with.

They know that they play a large part in this inspection report and usually are falling all over themselves trying to stick their muzzles in everything. They’re the original photo bombers, nonchalantly walking into picture after picture, stealing the thunder of who ever else is being photographed, but not this year.

Apparently they are cheesed off because I outed their watcher they had set up to observe us and blabber it all over the park that we were coming to do our inspection again, see http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/, and had made themselves unavailable the entire trip, showing themselves to the occasional tourist but never to us. It looked like it was going to be the first time in many years that we were not going to be able to include the wolves in our report.

Through the use of an intermediary we were able to convince the Lamar pack to assist us, grudgingly of course, with the last item on our report listed as “Resolvability: Can You See the S.O.B.’s Or Not : YES or No”. Resolvability as you know, is defined as “the quality or state of being resolvable”, like that helps right, by one of the better known dictionaries who asked to remain anonymous after hearing that they would be quoted in our report, but whose initials we can disclose are Merriam Webster. To clarify matters a little more clearly, we  turned to our own patented, copyrighted, unprinted dictionary “Words You Don’t Hear Much and Understand Less” (The Institute press : ISBN: 55555555551: Author: The Director : © 2015 about 15 mins ago).

Our definition of Resolvability is “to clarify; to make clearer; to see way, way out there; to get fuzzy looking stuff to look right; : Photographic context: to get pixels that are blurry and all over wonky to line up right and get really clear so you can make out what it is you’re trying to see; to not be fuzzy; to not be unrecognizable because it’s all fuzzed up and you can’t tell what it is; to get little hard-to-see details not so hard to see; and so on”. We’ll use our own definition for this report as it makes more sense than the ones those professional dictionary types provide.

So to test the resolvability of seeing wolves we asked them to come in closer so we could at least see them with our naked eyes, but being wolves and the Lamar pack at that, the biggest divas of the bunch, the most we could do was get them to come in to about 3/4 of a mile from our viewing station. They did deign to howl for us however. Being so far out there meant that they were just tiny itsy little black dots barely resolvable with the naked eye and only if you knew exactly where to look for them. The dots didn’t even look wolf-like. You couldn’t see ears or eyes or as they say in Wisconsin, nothin’. You couldn’t see nothin’. So the wolves get a big fat FAIL on this test. We’ll see how they like it when management reads this report and sees how they acted. I hope they get transferred down to Old Faithful where they’ll be on display all day long with screaming kids and flash cameras going off in their face all day . We’ll see how they like being divas then.

We did have one ace up our sleeve though. We had this great big long lens that has plenty of resolvability built into it and we were able to get some pictures of them. Not really clear ones with every pixel lined up perfectly but resolvable for being shot at 3/4 of a mile away in the rain and nearly dark out. This is a huge crop from the area where the wolf was sitting. If the scene were viewed with your eye the wolf wouldn’t have been visible, just a dark unwolf-like dot. So I guess if we got any pictures at all where you can tell they’re wolves than there was a certain amount of resolvability and we may have to revise our report to a Yes.

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, it is included in the cost of admission. We know you don’t want to miss a minute of our fascinating but undocumented report.

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/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/now-are-the-foxes/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/into-each-park-some-rain-must-fall/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/through-the-keyhole/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/reflectivity/

Ghosts In The Darkness

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Many people do not know this but buffalo do not emit light. They do not reflect light. In fact they absorb light. What one sees when one comes around a corner late at night is not the neon green eyes of the usual grass nibblers as you would if these were normal creatures, instead there is nothing, just a dark shape perhaps slightly darker than the surrounding light, a night-time shadow, a ghost in the darkness. They loom in the roadway, an almost formless mass that represents a 2000 lb. animal blocking your passage, somewhat irritated that you would be disturbing it as it goes about its life.

They also do not understand motor driven vehicles. This is not a proven fact yet but it appears that they do not see vehicles as a mechanical conveyance at all but simply as another large animal that needs to be confronted and dealt with. The Director has a large imprint, call it a dent if you must, in his old Dodge pickup,The Enola Gay, that was placed there by a bull who apparently didn’t like the color blue. That’s the only reason we can come up with that would explain why it would suddenly charge across the roadway and attempt to gore the Enola Gay to death. During circumstances such as these one doesn’t try to have meaningful dialogue with the enraged beast, there is no attempt made to explain that this is going to result in increased insurance premiums, body work, and some inconvenience, one simply drives away glad you were not the one with a big dent in your ass. They do not care that you may be weary and just want to get home after a long day of photographing them when they are visible. Note: Sunlight makes them visible and they are much easier to see so you don’t have problems seeing them during the daytime. But night, that’s a different story.

They wander through their lives completely oblivious to the needs and demands of humans. This is why they do what appears to be mind-boggling stupid things when you least expect it. Buffalo fall into the category of things and people that do not keep regular hours. This makes them unpredictable. They will leave waist-high grass, jump into the frigid water of the closest river, crossing it to eat the waist-high grass on the other side. They will stand placidly by the side of the road as you pass only to leap out into the road and stick their horn in your radiator the next time they see you. They will lie down in the middle of the road immediately around a hairpin corner because the asphalt is warm. Even going 45 mph, or less, the speed limit in most of the park, it is difficult to stop a vehicle on such short notice. Usually they will not even get up after nearly being struck. They require that you back up and go around them. One learns to drive very cautiously in buffalo territory.

Buffalo are travelers. They’re like Deadheads. One place is never good enough. They’re soon off to hear the next concert even if its exactly like the one they just heard. They have timetables that they do not share with the rest of the denizens of the park, human or otherwise. Migratory schedules that are important enough to them that they will set out at any time, cross any obstacles to get to a place that looks exactly like the place that they just left. That is what is happening in the picture above. This small herd was feeding on the new grass of the meadows in the Madison river canyon when the bell rang and they immediately started up the roadway through the Gibbon falls canyon to the lush meadows at the top of the pass. In the old days before macadam they had trails that they would walk in, single file, nose to tail like circus elephants but then humans came along and built them these wonderful wide flat trails that they could walk ten abreast on, and they use them. In fact they own them and only grudgingly share them if at all.

One has not lived until one has followed the herd the eight miles or so from the bottom of the Gibbon pass to the top where the Gibbon meadows are. Buffalo walk at about 2-3 miles per hour, less if they have calves along, and they always have calves along, so if you are fortunate enough to get behind the herd  be prepared to inch along behind it, carefully watching the temperature gauge on your dashboard, wallowing in the delightful scent of buffalo until they get to the top. Some people become so enraged by this that they blow their horns and try and push the herd by encroaching on their space. This is never a good idea. Buffalo can be very vindictive. Repair bills are the least of your problems if you try to impose your will on a buffalo herd. Just a word of warning.

This night everyone was lucky. There was a car in the lead full of people who had never seen a buffalo before even though they had been watching them all day, so traffic was at a crawl to begin with when everyone rounded the curve and came upon these ghostly travelers. You can get a small sense of the chaos involved when the cars slam on their brakes and the herd erupts into a darting frenzy, trying to make sense of what is occurring , protecting the wild-eyed calves, and maintaining their forward motion. This is a ‘good news’ photo as if you notice the direction we’re traveling and the direction the buffalo are moving, we will be through this buffalo jam as soon as they pass by us. The folks behind them traveling in the same direction however are in for a long night.

If you visit Yellowstone and you find yourself a long way from your lodging just relax, don’t try and race home, take your time, and be ever vigilant so you don’t meet the ghosts in the darkness.

Yellowstone Passes Inspection

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YSPassesInspection2832

Those of you who follow the blog religiously or even non-religiously, know that we have just been on our bi-annual inspection trip of Yellowstone National park. We let you know of our plans to inspect the park in this posting http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/ . Well we’re back and we are excited to announce that Yellowstone has passed its inspection with flying colors.

As mentioned before we went up there this year with a new research vessel, aptly named The Mothership, a newly commissioned, completely overhauled and refitted land yacht, large enough and strong enough to be able to tow our shuttle craft and haul the nearly eight dozen interns we intended to use as bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. We had decided on a new strategy this trip which included dressing our interns up in various animal costumes, to mimic small prey and injured or helpless larger animals such as an elk calf with a damaged leg, etc. to see if the predator population in the park would act in an appropriate manner or not.

We have good news and bad news as to the success of that strategy. The good news was the predators acted in a completely predictable way when confronted with our bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. The bad news is it resulted in a complete loss of every single one of our interns. That’s a great big oops on our part. We were hoping that at least a few of them would make it through the different testing situations but that was not to be the case. However we are able to completely verify that a wolf will always be a wolf and a bear will always be a bear.

After completing the section on our report titled “Predator population still aggressive in its pursuit of prey” we were able to check that item off as a yes and get on with the rest of the inspection. This resulted in The Director, who is of course me, having to handle a much larger work load than originally considered. (Note to self: Consider holding back some of the interns in the next inspection this fall to do all of the crap work required.) But as one who leads from the front we sucked it up and got on with all the remaining tasks involved in completing an inspection of a facility as large as Yellowstone National Park.

There are many, many areas to be checked to complete this task and over the following days we will attempt to show you the various areas and critical events which must take place to keep the park functioning at the level expected by the visiting public. Are the young being born on time? Are the thermal events turned on and operating properly? Are the predators doing their jobs? Well we can cross that one off now. We know the answer to that one. Are there the proper number of smaller activities being performed, birds doing bird stuff, plants situated in the most scenic areas, large overviews of the park like snow being on the peaks in the Lamar valley, rivers running up to their banks but not over, all the usual stuff the public doesn’t notice until it’s not there.

We can state at this time that park is functioning exactly as required. Our first function check, the one we do right before we release the interns, is to see if the Buffalo, especially the bulls, are placed strategically throughout the park and in the proper numbers. As our inspection of the park always begins through the West entrance of the park along the Madison river, it is imperative that a master bull, one of the better looking more regal appearing ones, be stationed just past Seven mile bridge, in the first major meadow but not too far from the road, so it can fulfill its duty as the official icon of the park. We checked that one off as done.

Watch this space for further reports on your very favorite national park. Tomorrow should bring something interesting.

The Word’s Out

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When we, and the we would be me, The Director of the World Famous Institute and any of the many staffers and interns we choose to bring along, attempt to slip into Yellowstone National Park for our annual inspection tour, we try to do it on the sly. We don’t want the usual Pomp And Circumstance, the parades, the cheering crowds, we want to be able to travel anonymously through out the park without everyone coming up for autographs and offers of sexual favors and incredible investment possibilities. We’re here to work.

But somehow and to this date I have never figured out how, the word gets out. No matter how carefully we tell people that we’re going back to the park and it’s like a secret, don’t tell anybody kind of thing, the animals, the park personnel, the wait staff at all the park restaurants, they all seem to know about it before we do. As a wildlife photographer I can only assume we have a mole in our organization.

Our advance scouts that we send in to get things scoped out for us have been sending back pictures and as you can see all the major players are aware of our impending arrival. It ‘s like when a restaurant gets advance notice that the health inspector is coming, you won’t find a cleaner kitchen. You could do surgery in that kitchen. Well it’s the same in the park. The wolves clean up their act, only killing the healthy good looking elk and not showing you the carcasses of all the little rabbits, voles, dead stuff off the highway and other disgusting things they eat. This hampers our ability to get the nitty-gritty on what’s really going on.

 The wolves are the smartest ones of the bunch and they post watchers around the most likely spots we’ll hit, like this one at the Cascade Creek area near Canyon. We’ve seen this guy before and he is a world-class blabbermouth. If he’s seen our scouts and you can be sure he has, he’s looking right at one, we might as well abandon any hope of getting an accurate picture of park activities. This will not keep us from making our annual inspection however. We’ll be there but this time we have a surprise in store for them. This time we’re going in disguised.

That’s right. We have created costumes for some of our intern volunteers to wear, such as a badger, a cottontail, an elk calf with a damaged leg, things that the wolves wouldn’t touch if they knew we were coming in to inspect. This will hopefully allow us to get close enough to the wolves and other predators so we can photograph them and the conditions they’re living in. Now, we’re sharing this information with you, our loyal readers, so you’re aware of how we get some of the incredible exposes, not to mention world class photos that we’re famous for, but you’ve got to keep this quiet, otherwise it is not going to work and if you’ve blabbed there’s a good chance we could lose some or even all of our interns.

OK then. That’s it. We’ll be off real soon for the Spring inspection at Yellowstone National Park and we’ll do our best to bring you first hand accounts of everything that transpires. So stay tuned and watch this space for further developments.

P.S. we are always looking for bright young volunteers to fill our intern ranks. Send name and working phone number to the Director, % The institute and please be able to write your name as we need it for the Release of Liability form our lawyers require of all new workers.

Help Wanted

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Shark0731

Help Wanted ! Shark Polisher

Shark Polisher urgently needed at the World Famous Shark Emporium here at The Institute. Experience helpful but not required. Work side by side with Great Whites, Hammerheads and those goofy but loveable Bullsharks. On the job training. Excellent benefits. Swimming experience a plus but not essential. All equipment provided. Employee must supply their own swimwear. If you have ever wanted to experience the excitement of polishing a shark in its own un-natural environment this is the opportunity of a lifetime.Our sharks occasionally become tarnished due to the constant exposure to the public and need to be polished to bring back their full luster. Be able to brag to your friends and loved ones that you not only work at the prestigious Institute but you are a shark polisher! We have immediate openings on all shifts. Daycare, 401k’s, insurance referrals, parking validated, remodeled break room, tattoo removal, especially those prominently displayed on appendages, discounts at the main Institutes cafeteria, free subscription to The Institutes blog, BigShotsNow.com, T-shirt with I am a shark polisher emblazoned on both front and back provided after one full month of shark polishing, automatic notification of next of kin if for some reason you do not complete your shift, maternity and/or fathernity leave available no questions asked, are all provided. We are an equal opportunity employer. We cheerfully meet the new government minimum wage requirements. Se habla espanol. Send resume or your name and a working phone number to The Director at The Institute. Immediate response guaranteed.