Prairie Puppies

I'm thinking of blogging up a storm over the next month, but wanted to have something recorded for April.
Here are some baby prairie dogs and one nursing.  Seen on a field trip to the Wichita Mountains (in Oklahoma, not particularly close to Wichita, Kansas or Wichita Falls, Texas and not really where witches hang out, but possibly).

Finals have started and the kites are not back in town.

Rules to live by

One of the seldom mentioned perks of having annual themes is that it eliminates some decision making.  

Do I take a poor quality picture of the rodent at the Sonoran Desert Museum?  Of course I do.  Rodents are one of my things.

We happen upon The Curious Kumquat in Silver City, New Mexico at lunchtime. They are serving only full sit down meals rather than purveying supplies for a gourmet picnic.  We already ate a full breakfast and don't plan on a full restaurant lunch.  But there is a duck confit salad on the menu.  And a Oaxacan Mole Chicken sandwich, and it is bird year.  So we stay and now I "get" duck confit.  It was fabulous

And while in Tucson, we were at a Mexican grocer and encountered fresh garbonzos for the first time in my life.  Do I know what to do with fresh chick peas?  No.  Should I get them?  A brand new bean?  By all means, I need to try those beans.

Thanks to the Mister's Mother for shelling.  Steamed with salt and pepper, the beans were fine.

A Rodent in the Sun

Prairie Dog (a fairly close relative of groundhogs) popping up in Jasper National Park (where the glacier was not that long ago) to wish you and yours a happy groundhog day. 

Metaphorical sunshine and warmth are always good, but for many
organisms literal cold and snow are necessary.

On Rhubarb and Rodents

While every trip has an official destination (the recent one was the Vancouver-Yellowstone trip), and most have some personal significance (this one was Women's World Cup - my Mother's big birthday- Mister's Parents' 50th anniversary [and possibly our 10th]), many also acquire an unofficial agenda.

Columbian on guard in Canadian Rockies

Yellowstone-Glacier 2004 (what I call our engagement trip) became the Quest for All Things Huckleberry.  Canadian Maritimes 2008 was the Where Eat Seafood in Canada trip and last summer we embarked upon "I states can be interesting" or something like that.

Uinta grooming in Yellowstone

This trip was about rodents (but then they all are) and rhubarb.  We weren't crazy about rhubarb like we were about huckleberries in 2004, but we did have  rhubarb several times before we left and proceeded to buy a rhubarb-strawberry gallete-let at the Farmers' Market in Osoyoos, British Columbia, ate the most rhubarb-y rhubarb pie I have ever experienced (along with a piece of intriguing Rhubarb-Raspberry-Jalapeno) at the Purple Pie Place in Custer, South Dakota. drank a fresh rhubarb shake in Murdo, South Dakota, sampled a wonderful Sour Cream Rhubarb pie from Broken Bow, Nebraska and there picked up some rhubarb stalks to fix into something wonderful here.  We also ate rhubarb yogurt in Vancouver, because it was something different and sorta Canadian.  Independently, my mother just sent a photograph of her third large rhubarb harvest of the season.

Notice the shoulder humps!

As for rodents, well, I would have to consult the Mister's exhaustive animal list, but it includes this Columbian Ground Squirrels from Canmore, Alberta, this Uinta Ground Squirrels in Yellowstone, and this Yellow-bellied Marmot in Custer State Park (just a few yards from where we saw his relative 8 years ago).  Non-rodents included bears (both black and grizzly, like these at Banff), bald eagles and sea otters, and big horn sheep in many places, including the verdant (!) pastures of Badlands National Park.

Prairie Dog picked up two new provinces (British Columbia and Alberta) and we probably received full value of our National Parks Interagency Pass (Rocky Mountain, Dinosaur, Golden Spike, Glacier, Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Jewel Cave, Badlands).  Canada, along with Idaho, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota were all new for both Dianthus and Aster.

Green green badlands

Otter directly below the eagle at water line

Always up for a new adventure.
Moraine Lake in Banff National Park

Love and rodents

One of best surprising, "but wait, there's more" benefits of marriage to The Mister is now being related to My Brother-in-Law and My Sister-in-Law*.

Not only are BiL and SiL good cooks, good conversationalists, good at playing with nephews, and generally people with whom we enjoy spending time, they also are fabulous gift givers.  Case in point: this year's Christmas gift from the Massif Central in France.  Yep, they managed to find groundhog (or at least Alpine Marmot) hot pads.  How do they know me so well?  How did I get so lucky?

The convention of plush marmots including (from left to right): Phil (groundhog, Marmota monax), Marmie (alpine marmot, Marmota marmota who spent the four years we lived in West Virginia stuffed in a vase), the yellow-belly (Marmota flaviventris) and the Vancouver Island (Marmota vancouverensis) staring at the new hot pads in my living room this morning partially compensated for my sadness at not getting it together to throw a groundhog party or send groundhog cards this year.  Driving to the next town to eat sausage and pancakes for a groundhog dinner then made my day.

Celebrate rodents and spring, wherever you may be.
Happy Groundhog Day!


*My Parents-in-Law are also lovely people with whom I like spending time, but I do not consider that a surprising bonus, as I consider "reasonable chance of getting along with in-laws" a valid criterion when considering potential mates.


    

The pines of the Mister

On our recent (read "over a month ago") trip West, Le Cirque de Sierra, I kept crossing paths with myself.

Utah Prairie Dog

Second-grader me was very excited we made the tunnel into Zion without stopping.  I was embarrassed when I saw high school me "showering" at the base of Bridal Veil Falls with the rest of her church youth group, and no reminders about how dirty we were (many days without showers packed double into un-air-conditioned vans after one caught fire in Nevada) could ease my regret that I had ever been that tacky and thoughtless as to ruin the falls experience for all the other visitors.  College me liked SE Utah much better on that sunny Spring Break than in a gale force dust storm making it hard to stay on the road.  Modern me couldn't help bragging about camping in the snow in Yosemite and on the Mojave in February with my Scottish Ranger* boyfriend of 17 years ago.  Even grad school me made an appearance contrasting the desert right after the cold rain in 2003 with baked Death Valley in June.

Our (Black-Tailed) Prairie Dog

I travel.  I remember places.  It's not a bad thing, overall.

But it can be a bit disconcerting when every exit off of I-70 reminds me of another trip with another person.

At Bryce Canyon.  Not Jeffrey's.

So I took some time to consciously note what was different about this trip from all of the trips of my past.  There were new destinations, of course; I hadn't previously been to Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley (torture on my ears), Mono Lake or Devil's Postpile.  There were new animals: Utah Prairie Dogs in Bryce and Beldings Ground Squirrels swarming the park in June Lake, where we stayed.  There was the Mister, Dianthus, Aster and the Parents-in-Law.  And there were the pines.  Conifers of the Sierra make me smile in connection to a whole lot of bad puns and experiences of my past.  When Dianthus and Aster started collecting large cones, I first thought they were just adding to my collection of Ponderosa recollections.  A few days later, I did some investigation: "It turns out the cones are Jeffrey's**," I announced.
My Mother-in-Law looked at me quizzically, as if to ask, "The cones belong to my son?"
In my mind they do now.

At Bryce Canyon, Jeffery.

Yosemite Squirrel with gray shoulder

He has Mammoth Lakes all to himself in my memory, for now.

*He's not actually Scottish, but since I met him in Scotland and he loves Scotland, I usually think of him that way.
**Jeffrey (or Jeffrey's) Pines, Pinus jeffreyi.  They are confined mostly to lower montane elevations of the east side of the Southern Sierra Nevada.  The Mister does not spell his name that way.

But who's counting?

Dianthus is not impressed by Long's Peak.

This summer prairie dog crossed the Continental Divide at least six times.  In one day in Rocky Mountain National Park we saw 5 moose, 6 elk, about 15 big horn sheep, a few deer, 5 marmots and some chipmunks and ground squirrels.  Aster turned one.  Dianthus turned three.  Aster's first three molars made their way into his mouth (making them tooth 9, 10 and 11).  Aster and Dianthus each had their hair cut.  Dianthus rode free gondolas six times and also rode a mountain bus, a city bus, two miniature trains and one commuter train.  In the last two weeks, 11 shots were divided among the five household members (cat is included).  Mean 11/5.  Mode 0.  Median 2.  How many shots did each family member receive?

Moose!

A Proud Tradition Continues

Fall Break* means one thing: pretending that we'll catch up on grading! Actually, for the Mister and me, fall break (which is two days here, one day at our previous institution) means traveling to places that people in our demographic don't go, at least not midweek in October, and then pretending that we will somehow catch up on grading when we return. While we were in West Virginia, we spent fall breaks in a rodent-infested cabin at a state park, in Parkersburg (a small city an hour and a half from where we lived), in Pittsburgh, and at a bed and breakfast entirely full of wealthy post middle-aged women from DC and Ohio. While living in Kansas, we went to St. Louis.** Before I met the Mister I spent one fall break with my English ex-boyfriend (then already an ex for several years) among the retirees at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park in Vermont and another with my college ex (then already an ex for seven years) listening to music with busloads of blue-haired ladies at the Ozark Folk Center.

This past week Dianthus, The Mister and I went to Medicine Park, Oklahoma and stayed in a cobblestone cottage. Despite being built as a tourist town, nothing is going on in Medicine Park on a Thursday in October. The shops are closed, the winery isn't open until dinner and there is not a single place to buy breakfast.
We spent our day in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge and intend to go back.
And yes, rodents were spotted.

*Really it means kids these days have it sooo easy. There was no fall break when I was an undergrad. No siree.

**To be complete, I should mention that we went to Paris for my fall break the first year we were dating. It doesn't fit the pattern quite as well, but people in my demographic (graduate students) certainly didn't jaunt off to Paris for a long weekend. The conversation went something like this:
Mister: We should go someplace over your fall break.
Me: Let's go camping in the Ozarks.
Mister: Okay. Or we could go to Paris.

That's How Lucky I Am

I'm sweating sitting in my stuffy office frantically milling through piles of paperwork trying to efficiently locate a receipt to turn in for our medical savings account and worrying about all the moving details that are not yet begun. I took a break to see if there were any new quotes from moving companies and realized that I had not posted in over a week.

It's a great time to remind myself that I lead a charmed life. A few quickly chosen examples:

• I have friends who think of me when they read about luck [ evidence that lucky people share personality traits (thanks Irene!) (more details here)], and noodles [flying spaghetti monster iphone accessories, (thanks Supplement Scriber!)].


• While we were in Kansas, my son pulled over one of Sal Sis's shelves, destroying several fragile items. She just wrote me a nice message telling me how much fun he is (thanks Sal Sis, he thinks you and your menagerie are lots of fun too!).


• Marieke, my blogosphere friend who lives, reads, writes and gardens in Western Scotland, sent me a pasta card with rodent stamps. A woman I "met" the one time I tried a random search feature on blogger turns out to be a kindred spirit and happy with her inner pasta. How lucky is that?


• My future house has a sundae parlour.

Our Rodent Friends

As to the goings on of our rodent friends: In August, all of our newly ripe grapes were on the vine one evening and gone the next morning. We believe a groundhog to be the culprit.

We left town on a Friday when this beaver dam was half built. It was complete by Sunday and completely gone a week and a half later.

We had a good chestnut crop this year which the squirrels seem to have taken advantage of, as there are nothing but spiked shells left for the humans.

The chipmunks have not learned to fear Mr. Splashy Pants, and she has not learned they exist, but someday she'll notice and stalk them, just as diligently as she hunts the bees in the gomphrena.

Lucky Sugar Mice

What happened was, Chris Roberts bought a sugar mouse from Jack Reynolds ('The
Rock King'), bit its head off, dropped it in the Newmarket Road before he could
get started on the body, and it got run over by a car. And that afternoon
Cambridge United, who had hitherto been finding life difficult in the Second
Division (two wins all season, one home, one away), beat Orient 3-1, and a
ritual was born. Before each home game we all of us trooped into the sweet shop,
purchased our mice, walked outside, bit the head off as though we were removing
the pin from a grenade, and tossed the torsos under the wheels of oncoming cars;
Jack Reynolds would stand in the doorway watching us, shaking his head
sorrowfully. United, thus protected, remained unbeaten at the Abbey for months.

NickHornsby, FeverPitch, pp.109-110.

The opening of the best chapter I've read about luck all year, in a book I was not reading with thoughts to luck, and in it sweet rodents that are lucky. Reading this passage felt like a not-very subtle sign from God.
Alas, even the most obvious signs can have cryptic
meanings and I have yet to properly interpret God's lucky rodent message.

Lucky Racoon Penis Bone and Midpoint Assessment

Pictured at left is a raccoon baculum or penis bone. According to wikipedia (also the source of the image), a raccoon baculum is a good luck charm. When I set out on the year of luck, I thought that this would be the sort of information I would be providing you. In much the same way that last year I saw a new rodent, looked it up, and wrote about it, I anticipated learning about a new luck charm, looking it up and sharing the information.

I've hit a few snags with this approach so far this year. First and foremost, I'm just too lazy. Sure, wikipedia says that raccoon penis bones are a good luck charm and fertility symbol, but among whom? where? This wikipedia article being properly referenced, I can click to the Lucky W Amulet Archive and learn from people who sell necklaces of them that the scientific name is os penis (for "penis bone") or baculum (for "little rod") but they are also known in Oklahoma and Texas as coon dongs or mountain man toothpicks. Still, I'm not convinced that internet salespeople at "luckymojo.com" should be my primary source of information, and, as it happens, I have neither the historical anthropology skills, nor the motivation to dig into the origins of good luck charms and, unlike rodents, there aren't a few authoritative texts where I can look up luck.

The second major snag is that I have become much more interested in the psychology of fortune. The difference between luck, fate, gods and superstition interests me, as does one's perception of when one is lucky. Probability and statistics fascinate me (as many of my graduate school friends will attest, who else would throw a wine tasting based on a factorial analysis of variance?) but mostly from a teaching and a perception stand-point, rather than as a gambler or actuary. During my year of luck, these interests have grown and led to the beginnings of brilliant essays composed while walking home from work or washing the dishes. Despite this, astute readers will notice a definitive lack of brilliant essays here. In composing these brilliant essays, I've discovered that few are brilliant enough for me to spend my time actually writing them, that most fail to come to a conclusion, drastically diminishing their brilliance, and that I lack the skills or, more honestly, the persistence, to delve into the social science and biopyschology literature to learn enough to come to conclusions. Halfway through a year on luck, I'm still resolved consider these ideas, but I've failed to come up with a workable plan. We'll see. I'm also short on luck books and movies, but plan to hit the library for some lucky summer reading tomorrow.


Meanwhile, penis bones have proven to be lucky for me. While teachning vertebrate zoology this spring, I wanted to talk about mammalian os penes, and how some species have a calcified bone in their penis and others do not. Alas, I could not remember the term. I was cringing at the thought of googling for "penis bone" images when I happened upon an article I needed for another lecture contrasting lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and pikas) with rodents. Among other things, rodents have baculum and lagomorphs do not. Technical word found at just the right moment, safe search done, image found, lecture given without overmuch giggling. Penis bones: lucky indeed.

Prairie Dog Predators and Plagarism

If you've managed to miss the story of text about black footed ferrets being lifted straight from a wildlife brochure into post-coital dialogue in a bodice-ripper, take a few minutes to read the story. Not only is event preposterous (the romance author even managed to use the direct quote from a wildlife biologist as part of the sexy conversation), you might learn a few facts about the one of the most voracious predators of prairie dogs.

Thanks to Abby for alerting me to this particular story.

Giving the Gift of Rodentia

During the rodent year I saw many rodents. I read books with rodent characters. I watched movies with rodent sidekicks. I traveled with a stuffed prairie dog and have a stuffed beaver, a stuffed rat and 3 stuffed marmots around my house. I did not, however, eat many rodent things or wear many rodents. Family members helped diminish this deficiency with Christmas gifts.

Prairie Quilter gave me a tasteful new mouse barrette which I'm likely to sport tomorrow for the first day of Vertebrate Zoology. (Thanks Prairie Quilter!)

My parents gifted the Mister with some Marmot Salve from Austria. Yes, Murmeltier Salbe is made from marmot oil. No, I'm not sure exactly how one acquires marmot oil, but I am fairly certain that live marmots don't surrender, or render, their fat willingly. A gift that just falls on the cool side of the creepy-cool divide is made all the more amusing because this is not the first gift of genuine Austrian marmot salve my household has been given (my brother's family also travels frequently to Austria) and the price sticker was still attached. I find it somewhat gratifying that marmots don't part with their oil for some cheap potion but horrifying that my parents paid that for goofy marmot salve.

In any case, marmot salve is a white cream with a strong smell of menthol (although it also contains a huge number of alpine herbs including gaultheria and gentian) that is supposed to ease aching joints and cure all ills. It does tingle refreshingly when applied to sore backs. (Thanks Mom, Dad, J+C!)

The true intellectual siblings-in-law found sugar mice for me in St. Louis. Unlike those pictured from floo network, my sugar mice are on sticks, like little pink lollipops, rather than with string tails, which seems to be the thing in the UK based on my quick web-search. In any case, sugar mice are just that: sugar held together in the form of a mouse with minimal additional flavoring. As one might expect, sugar mice taste horrible. I think I report this without offending my siblings-in-law because my siblings-in-law are not stupid. One look at the list of sugar mice ingredients and it's obvious that the are not going to be mouth-watering confectionery. Of course, my siblings-in-law would also know that I would desperately want to try a sugar mouse, if I had known they existed and I'm very excited that I did. (Thanks sibs-in-law!) I just need to figure out what to do with the rest. Perhaps I shall use them to sweeten tea?

Bye, Beaver

After the first substantive rain of the fall season (late October, on a day I took my ecology class on an all day field trip, pictured below), progress on the beaver lodge stalled. The Mister and I were unsure if the beavers decided that the water levels vacillated too much, or if they had just moved to slower waters. We haven't seen either since.

We cannot be sure, then, that the gigantanormous 50 pound beaver recently trapped out of the our river was one of "our" beavers, but I suspect it was. The on-line version of the local paper seems to be a month behind, so you might want to check here in a few weeks to see a grainy image of a large animal you'll recognize as a beaver only from its feet.

Last Night of Squirrel Awareness Month

I was visting Squirrelman's Blog today and learned that October is squirrel of awareness month. Instead of trick-or-treating (and that happened on the 30th here anyway, you should spend some time being aware of squirrels. If you are reading this in the USA, you are in the country with the greatest squirrel diversity on the planet. I learned this from Squirrelman's odd but informative video clip of the top ten squirrel countries, which is worth a look.

Preparation for the winter

Last weekend the Mister and I journeyed into the mountains. Despite temperatures reaching into the 80s (in the mountains, in West Virginia, in October!), smart organisms were preparing for the winter.
Chipmunks were on high alert. Around the Civil War graves at Droop Knob State Park, Eastern Grey Squirrels were chasing walnuts and each other. At Bear Town State Park,
the Red Squirrels stashing acorns and conifer cones wouldn't stop long enough for us to take a clear photo.












The trees were reabsorbing their chlorophyll.
And, at least one bear at Droop Mountain was eating large quantities. Whether he (or she) was absorbing any of the nutrients I have no idea, because he (or she) was certainly piling up the scat on along the trail. We encountered at least 6 large plops in less than a fourth mile of trail. Two were still glistening fresh, two appeared to be the previous day's, and two were still very squishy but growing mold.


Back at home our chipmunks seem especially excitable, our marmot (the local groundhog) is very fat, apparently feasting on chestnuts, and two beaver are building a lodge in the river which is visible from the bridge we cross on the way to work. Winter's coming!

Bad Mouse Movie

The Mister and I have been watching The Secret of NIMH over several nights because we could not stand to watch the whole thing in one sitting. As this is a movie with a run time of 82 minutes, that is saying something.

Robert C. O'Brien's Newberry Award Winning Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a wonderful book: one of the very best rodent books around. It's a book which I will re-read soon and review. It's a book which deserves better than the mess of a mystical movie very loosely based on it.

Perhaps because if I didn't love the book so much, I would be less dismayed by the movie. That the lead mouse's name is Brisby (to avoid a lawsuit with Wham-O, makers of the Frisbee Disc), that the tension of escaping from NIMH and internal arguments about rat governance have been replaced by sword fights, and that that final resolution rests with a charmed stone, might not irk me if I didn't know a much better plot exists. However, unlike many viewers and fans, even if I didn't know they committed complete book assination in the creation, I don't think that there would be anything about the movie that would wow me. The animation is well done and the land created fantastical, yet I don't think I could have cared about rats with glowing orbs instead of eyes and charms (somehow from the National Institute of Mental Health) that cure all ills.

Read the book. Or watch the Rescuers for fun 1970's mouse animation. Or Ratatouille for a good rat movie.

Ground Squirrels

Ground squirrels may be my favorite non-marmot rodent, although, come to think of it, I am very fond of the entirety of the squirrel family (which includes marmots, prairie dogs, and chipmunks, as well as ground, tree, antelope and flying squirrels).

As I grew up hiking in the Colorado Rockies, where the most common ground squirrel has stripes, the first wildlife biology I remember learning was the difference between a ground squirrel and a chipmunk: chipmunks have stripes through their eyes and little pointy heads.

On the recent road trip, The Mister and I drove over Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. At one of the pull-outs, we encountered this attractive and well-fed Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus lateralis), and I refrained from correcting the tourists exclaiming about the cute chipmunks. That's good, because it demonstrates that I can sometimes keep my mouth shut in the face of biological inaccuracies and good because it turns out there were as many chipmunks (which we believe to be Colorado Chipmunks), begging from the rocky slope as there were ground squirrels.

Over the Continental Divide on the west side of the park (near where we encountered this moose and calf), we saw our first Wyoming Ground Squirrel. At first it perplexed us, because it was shaped and sized like a ground squirrel, but living in a colony like a prairie dog. It turns out that that is exactly was Spermophilus elegans does, and it now serves as the squirrel/prairie dog transition in my mind. We saw many of them in North Park in Colorado and along the backroads in Wyoming. They don't seem to be as suicidal as the Uinta Ground Squirrels in Yellowstone or as thieving as the Colombian Ground Squirrels in Glacier, and make a nice addition to our life lists.

Before we left ground squirrel territory entirely, we saw a few Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels dashing across the road near Pipestone National Monument in SW Minnesota. I'd seen a few previously while doing field work in Nebraska and Kansas, but this was an adult-first for the Mister. Thirteen-lines are also a spotting of significance for The Mister because he has remembered the scientific name (S. tridencemlineatus, literally "thirteen lined") since junior year of high school and actually adds it into conversation regularly.

Here's a chipmunk for comparison.

Chipmunk with Discriminating Palate

Before we set off on the Summit Loop in the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness, the Mister and I carbo-loaded with some rice cakes, not just any rice cakes, but the the really good ones (genuinely: brown rice with tamari and seaweed). The woods were full of frisky Eastern Chipmunks. One such critter ran over to us, sniffed the ground, took a piece of rice cake, and spit it back out.