I mean, LOLCats was severely dumb and stupid but nobody’s doing that any more, right? I hope. AG’s cat (though a little badly drawn) is thoroughly in the spirit of Snark Week and has the attitude nailed: if you think soft cuddly Nature loves you and is your friend, you’re not paying close enough attention.
_____
The most often asked for bedtime tale from my children is a “Squirrel Story.” I’ve written a book about animal encounters in the wild, but this is a whole different matter. As the kids scoot beneath their covers, I tell them about a horde of blood-thirsty, mad-eyed squirrels who’ve built an enormous warren beneath our house called Squirrel Haven. In their secret lair they have laboratories and campaign chambers where they plot how to get my family out of our house so that they can take over, free to leave their robust turds on every dish, ripping our home apart from the inside out. Ostensibly, they are trying to rule the world by unleashing terrifying genetic experiments, building a giant metal squirrel robot, or capturing squirrel farts in balloons and sending them to the surface. But really, before taking over the world, they have to first conquer our house.
These stories are not unfounded. We have a squirrel problem. They’ve chewed holes in every window screen to gain access. One day I walked outside and counted five squirrels on my car, chewing at the weather stripping around my windows. They want in. Nothing will stop them. One summer we live-trapped almost 30 of these marauding beasts, giving each a spot of spray paint before hauling them miles away. The marked individuals never reappeared, yet the population did not appear to diminish. They produce two litters a year, nine young per litter. You do the math, there is no stopping them. Continue reading
They look so docile, but don’t be fooled. “Assume every moose is a serial killer standing in the middle of the trail with a loaded gun,” says Alaska wildlife biologist Jessy Coltrane. They may be cute in a dopey sort of way, but moose are also huge and powerful. Females weigh between 700 and 1,100 pounds and bulls can hit 900 to 1,400 pounds on the scale. Considering their bulk, moose are remarkably fast runners — their top running speed can hit 30 miles per hour.
Moose injure more people in Alaska each year than bears. While some of these injuries stem from collisions with motor vehicles, moose also stomp and kick and these hoof swats can kill. In 1995, a moose stomped to death a 71-year-old man on the University of Alaska-Anchorage campus. What makes moose so statistically dangerous is their numbers. They’re more numerous than grizzly bears and more likely to wander into urban areas. Continue reading
Our continuing public service for those trusting souls who think animals are cute and loving: a full week of the horrifying truth.
I grew up on a small farm where we raised chickens. I didn’t always think they were repulsive. When I was around 10, I had a 4-H project for which I raised chickens from the get-go; we already had a laying flock but the project was part of my training as a farm kid. Baby chicks are some of the cutest babies on earth, so soft and light you hardly knew you were holding them, making inquisitive little squeaks — eep? eep? When I turned the lights out on the brooder, where they spent the cold nights, they’d peep like crazy EEP EEP EEP then all fall asleep at the same minute. Eventually they grew up and began laying – or swanning around being roosters – and only then did I take a good look at their eyes. They looked back with no interest; in fact, change our relative sizes and they could kill me or not, they didn’t care. If you don’t believe that T. Rexes evolved into birds, just look into the cold, mean, stupid, reptilian eye of a chicken. Continue reading
The sun hangs low over the bayou, wavering in the humid evening horizon. Sweat pours off your face as you struggle see into the underbrush. And suddenly you hear it. A rustling in the bushes that turns your veins to ice. “Please, sweet Jesus,” you whisper, “be something else. Please, not here. Not now.”
But it’s too late. You know you’re trapped and your simpering prayers can’t help you. That scene from The Princess Bride – the one in the Fire Swamp – keeps running through your brain as if on a loop. And just then, from the bushes it walks into the clearing. You find yourself face to face with a creature of children’s nightmares.
August 4 – 8, 2014
Richard and Ann disagree informatively about the nature of a science writer’s duty toward truth and its embellishments. There is a glimmer of hope when Richard strikes on the thought that science writers share subjective truths, whereas scientists have a duty to be objective. Ann disagrees. The debate rages on in our virtual LWON offices.
Some collect flag badges on their backpacks. Helen collects bird species, instead, to tell her where she’s been. Still other people have strong feelings and associations with odd and even numbers, as Cameron’s family schedule demonstrates, in all of its adorable oddness.
Michelle has found that in some instances, fish population numbers and haul volumes tell you more about human quality of life than other economic indicators. Speaking of fish, I test my dad’s theory about the baby fish he buys from hatcheries and pours into lakes to fend for themselves.
Image: Shutterstock
The teetering, hundred-year-old collection of wooden buildings that form my father’s fishing club in backwoods Quebec is arranged in a row like a Wild West town, where mosquitoes are the hostile locals. To reach his favourite fishing spots, Dad sometimes has to stop his motorized quad in front of downed trees and change into Kevlar trousers to chainsaw his way through.
Nearby lakes without large fish are often stocked with trout for sport – a practice which, after careful study, Dad has adopted on behalf of the club. When I visited a couple of weeks ago – for my son’s fishing initiation – he described his stocking process. He gets to the lake with the juveniles from the hatchery and looks for a spot near the shore where schools of minnows congregate. Then he puts his little bitty lake trout, or what have you, into the water next to the tiny adult fish.