Deadly Menace

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There are many dangerous things in the mountains here in Colorado. Some are very obvious, the western Rattlesnake, angry beavers, the Unibomber, well he isn’t here so much anymore, but one of the deadliest is our State flower the Columbine. Yeah, sure they look harmless and they’re pretty, some might even say beautiful, but therein lies their menace. Just like their sister in crime that Venus fly-catcher trap thing that lives somewhere else and does deadly stuff, these harmless appearing flowers sit in the dappled sunshine of a shady grove and startle you with their absolute undeniable beauty.

To illustrate just how dangerous these innocent looking flowers can be we asked our resident Flowerologists the twin PhD’s, Drs. Solenoid and Nodule Stem about them. We here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire sponsor a lot of freeloaders, I mean researchers for a small cut of their grant money and the publishing rights to any lucrative research they might accidentally produce. They couldn’t wait to describe their deadly encounter with these harbingers of evil.

The Drs. Stem had been on a field trip to discover whether any of the flowers pictured in their “Flowers of The Rocky Mountains” guidebook actually grew here. As this was a government-funded project they were obligated to obtain results and had struggled for weeks trying to show some sort of progress. The pressure to protect their phony-baloney jobs I mean large, tax deferred grant was paramount.

So with these discouraging thoughts weighing heavily on their minds they were totally unprepared for the radiant gorgeousness that suddenly appeared before them.  Solenoid, being the older of the two twins by three days, and some say the more intelligent one, immediately spun around to warn his brother Nodule to cover his eyes before they were damaged beyond repair by the insidious beauty lashing out at them in shades of Columbine blue and pestle and/or stamen yellow. Instead of protecting his sibling he accidentally struck him with the tripod he was carrying knocking out his gold tooth and causing him to drop his notebook with all their irreplaceable data in it.

Of course while looking for his tooth he accidentally kicked his notebook under a rock and it was lost forever, the big dummy. At least that’s what they told the people administering their grant, hoping to salvage something out of the catastrophe. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed we were with the Drs. Stem. The grant was gone, our sponsorship fee was gone, everything was a total screw up I mean, in disarray.

We don’t like failure here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire and take any very poorly. Very poorly indeed. But life goes on, the Drs. Stem are out in the forest turning over rocks hoping to find grubs which they say are very nourishing. Their petition for the return of their cafeteria privileges is on my desk and I intend to look at it, perhaps as soon as next month, and we are still dedicated to the research necessary to maintain our position as one of the premier research facilities anywhere on this planet.

The only bright spot to come out  of this whole mess was our ability to point out the dangers that lurk in our natural environment so that you, our most favored readers, can remain safe while visiting our gorgeous state. Remember, let’s be safe out there, not everything is as it seems even the really pretty stuff.

I Don’t Get Ulcers… I Give’em

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Many,many strange things happen out in the wild. Some make sense, others take awhile to figure out. Normally these cow elk are placid, shy, introverted animals. They don’t look like drill sergeants or the Mayor of Chicago. But this young cow appears to break the mold. ( whenever I see the phrase “Young Cow” it reminds me of that old joke, “How do you say Calf in Chinese? answer – Young Cow.” but enough about humor. This is serious business.) That greenish thing she has in her mouth is a bone. She held it in her mouth like an old stogie and appeared to be chewing on it but not trying to break it up, just rearranging it for maximum taste. There are lots of places in Rocky Mountain National Park, where this event took place, that are wetlands, not quite swamps but very damp areas with some standing water and dense stands of Aspen and in this area were the remains of a dead elk. The bones were algae green and scattered about and she nosed through the pile before finding the one she liked best. Elk aren’t normally cannibalistic, at least in this dimension, yet this is very puzzling behavior. To get to the bottom of this mystery we consulted with our staff Mammologist, Dr. Frieda Houf, here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire and asked her “Hey, What’s up with all this elk eating bones and stuff?” It turns out that this phenomenon isn’t as strange as we first thought. Herbivores, ungulates and other creatures who eat mainly grass lack a lot of the essential minerals and vitamins that we get from our diet of cramming whatever will fit into our mouths, and consequently they have to get those things wherever they can. Bones being made up mainly of really hard milk, and you know what’s in milk don’t you? Right, Calcium. Funny as it sounds calcium is needed to make strong healthy bones. This is why you should drink at least three gallons of milk a day. So you see, the circle comes around and there it is. Bone sucking by cow elk makes for strong healthy bones. Not so strange now is it? It is insight like this that makes the members of our staff here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire so valuable. Unfortunately we can’t pay them anything at the moment, which is causing some dark murmuring down in the PHD dorm but hey, we don’t control the economy. The fact that they can come up to the big house I mean the headquarters occasionally to get warm should count for something. So there it is, another fact about the natural environment that surrounds us. Pass it on.

Got Spring ?

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We’ve had snow and the accompanying cold weather all through April and it has the feeling that spring is still along way away. It is virtually sacrilegious to speak ill of the snow and it’s moisture here in the west, especially since we’ve been in a drought and were worried where our water was going to come from. And of course the staff here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire would never do such a thing, fearing to not only anger the gods but our neighbors in the realm, I mean neighborhood as well. It hasn’t been too long ago that one saw torch-light and heard cries of “There he is. Get a rope!” echoing through the valleys. It is just that after a long winter facing the trek up and down the icy goat trail that leads to the headquarters you begin to long for a little spring, a little moist, damp, high moisture content, spring. To that end we have set the scientific members of our staff, the snowologists, the NOAA guys that have joined us because it was just getting too boring going down to the south pole all the time, Captain Colorado our janitor, excuse me, building maintenance technician, who reads a lot, and several others to develop a new weather phenomenon that I can’t tell you anything about because it is really, really secret. I can tell you though that it has to do with creating 70 degree snow. Oh man, did I just say that out loud. Listen if you heard that you can’t tell anyone. We are way ahead of the Russians on this and getting to the patent office first is crucial to our funding here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire so keep it to yourself. In light of the important, I would say crucial work, being done here, I think it is only fair that we ask you to pitch in, if you can’t send money then at least help us with some of our developmental problems, for instance we are having some difficulty with the whole melting thing, so your input could be critical. OK then, to answer the unasked question, what does that have to do with today’s picture? Well, everything. meadowlarks are the harbingers of spring, they need to get to work here. They can’t do that if they are feathers deep in cold snow. We need to get this spring thing on the road. So give us a hand, we need you and America needs you!

Owls Gone Wild

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As you know doubt have heard, we have a long standing study being conducted by our head owlogist and sponsored  by the Owl Fund Forever here at The World Headquarters of our Media Empire. Through the years we have made many huuuge and invaluable observations of owl behavior, enough that several papers could be published in those fancy scientific journals that you hear about but can’t buy at the newsstand. However, since there was a small problem between our head owlogist and Vinnie and his friend Thug, our friends at Witsec have asked that we don’t use our experts name at this time. Be that at it may we can still share some of our findings with the general public. This study was focusing on the Great Horned Owl and it’s young and we were lucky enough to find this fine specimen at Yellowstone National Park, where so much of our important work has been carried out.

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We have determined that there is a certain amount of boredom that sets in due to the restrictive nature of the young’s immaturity and of course it’s inability to fly. Thus it has a lot of time to engineer disruptive moments in the parents life. After a certain amount of consideration a plan may be forming.

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Several possibilities have been considered and rejected.

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Our owlogist calls this the “Eureka Moment!” which is a scientific term for “Oh man, this is going to be good.”

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The plan, devilish in nature and one that only a young owl could conceive, is to sing the latest rap song at maximum volume.

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The desired result is achieved in a very short time. The adult expresses it’s displeasure and according to our expert on the scene, it was done so in no uncertain terms.

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Undeterred the young owl resorts to expressing it’s intention to continue developing new and unusual ways to interact with it’s parent. Our owlogist suggests that this posturing could be interpreted as the “I could bite you in the neck right now and you wouldn’t even know” behavior that is the universal expression of disdain in the young owls community. We here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire, intend to keep this important work going for as long as it takes, and our funds hold out, to get this behavior not only documented, but interpreted in a manner that will explain this species behavior to the person on the street in a way that can be easily understood. No big words here, no talking down to, no expecting you to know Latin or some other dead stupid language.  As our friend Joe Friday used to say “just the facts ma’am” and that ‘s what provided here at The World Headquarters of our Media Empire, and of course , as always, free of charge.

We Interrupt our Regular…….

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As you are no doubt aware from all the recent attention by the Nation’s press, the World Headquarters of our Media Empire is located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The Royal viewing room, um, I meant the office, looks East where every morning the sun comes up and starts our day. Things may be different where you live but that’s how it works here. Yesterday it snowed for the entire day and although it didn’t accumulate all that much it did cover our grounds completely. The Staff in their usual surly manner began the task of sweeping the snow off our dirt driveway. As you might imagine there was much good-natured grumbling but they knew it was a necessary task that they needed to complete if they wanted to eat. But that’s not the real story, the real story concerns the incredible cloud cover that sometimes happens after one of our storms. A meteorologist could tell you the scientific name for clouds like this but unfortunately, due to budget restraints and sequestration we had to let ours go. Looking out over the surrounding area you see a sea of clouds under which are entire towns, lots of cows, some people riding bikes, the transmitting towers of the world’s atomic clock, (seriously every time your computer updates it time, the signal came from a little pulse sent from the towers near the World Headquarters of our Media Empire) and etc. Under there it is still dark and cold, they won’t see the sun for another hour or so until the cloud cover is burned off by the thermonuclear reaction above. But meanwhile above all that there is an absolute riot of shifting shapes, entire mountain ranges build up and are dissolved in moments, seas form and huge waves are cast forth that never reach a shore, and once in a while when we’ve been particularly good, a rainbow begins to form, like the one to the right of the sunburst. This isn’t RainbowNomics as such (see previous post)  because we didn’t order this one, it is simply a gift from the universe. It is faint to be sure, but it is there and we are thankful. Normally we do not interrupt our regular posting, but we wanted to share this special event with you, why?, well, because we love you of course.