Bureaucrats Run Amok

The Collard family of Glendale, California received a notice from the Fire Department ordering them to trim foliage from oak and sycamore trees around their house to lessen fire danger. The Collards agreed that their trees needed a trim and hired a tree service to do the work for $3,000. In the midst of the trimming operation, the city's urban forester stopped by and ordered them to stop work as the Collards had not obtained a tree-trimming permit. They didn't know one was needed and the tree service had told them no permits were required.

The Collards were warned that they faced a fine for this violation and a week later an arborist from the city visited to assess the damage. A few weeks later they received a letter from the city informing them that their fine was $347,600! Really too much to believe. RTWT.

Updike on Dinosaurs

Novelist John Updike writes a good, short piece in the latest National Geographic on some of the "new" (and weirder) dinosaurs recently discovered. I mention this because topic and author tug at several lines of interest running through this blog, and because I'm fascinated by literary journalism, whatever you call it, the journalism written by novelists.

Jonathan Franzen, better known for his fiction and for writing so well about himself, wrote a characteristically great piece--straight journalism--on the US Postal Service in his collection How To Be Alone. There are many examples, notably Steve's own writing which is hard to mash into any category but certainly crosses several. Good writing is good writing.

Here's the last paragraph of Updike's piece. I think it's wonderful.

Of the dinosaurs, he writes, "They continue to live in the awareness of their human successors on the throne of earthly dominance. They fascinate children as well as paleontologists. My second son, I well remember, collected the plastic dinosaur miniatures that came in cereal boxes, and communed with them in his room. He loved them---their amiable grotesquirie, their guileless enormity, their unassuming small brains. They were eventual losers, in a game of survival our own species is still playing, but new varieties keep emerging from the rocks to amuse and amaze us."

Thanksgiving in Texas

My annual hunting trip to the Texas Panhandle is the highlight of my season. It splits the hawking year neatly in two: the building-up period, through late summer and fall, and the slide downward from winter into spring and the summer molt.

Often the weather on the high plain reflects this split. Last week, we spent the first two days hunting in short sleeves (80 degrees), but after Wednesday's cold front we donned parkas to face temperatures in the mid-20s and driving snow.

Through it all, the hawks did their thing. Here are a few snapshots from the week. The falcons flew well at ducks, the Harris hawks at rabbits and the goshawk at, well, everything.


Above: Brian Millsap's excellent tiercel peregrine, Amigo, early in the week. He caught several.

Jimmy Walker's veteran tiercel prairie falcon, Harley--Also accounting for numerous ducks.

Below, Jimmy's young female peregrine on her second duck of the season. Jimmy chats with my father, Ron, and one of the ranch's bovine residents looks on without much interest.

Matt Reidy prepares to fly his tiercel peregrine. This bird has yet to find his stride this season, but will.

The walk down below this pond was like a hike through the Andes. The photo doesn't do it justice. But from below, the slip for Harley is perfect.

The weather turned cold mid-week and knit caps came out of everyone's coat pockets. Here we take a walk alongside some winter wheat in search of cottontails.

At a nearby spot, full of high cover and a few old buildings, we find them.


My hawks, Ernie (below) and Smash (above, held by Matt) catch a few.

Thanksgiving dinner was Texas-style, fried game over an open fire. Wonderful.

By Friday, the weather was abysmal. The hawks troopered on, but after catching exactly as many as they felt obliged to catch, they pulled their legs tight into their breasts and quit. We took the hint.

Below, Matt Reidy makes in to Smash in deteriorating conditions.

A last flight for Brian's tiercel. This redhead died instantly in a passing strike, a viceral sound audible for a hundred yards.

One last shot for Steve and Helen: What but fear winged the birds and jeweled.... ok, enough Jeffers. This is Jimmy Walker's champion gos, Vinnie, on scaled quail. Last catch of the week.

American on Horseback

If you hear of this fellow riding into your town, I hope you'll tip your hat and feed his horse.

From the story by AP's Carl Manning:

"When rancher Bill Inman decided to show there's more to America than the gloom-and-doom on the nightly news, he hopped on his horse and started riding.

"And riding, and riding.

"Some 1,700 miles later, he's burning through his family's life savings as he collects stories of hardworking, honest everyday people in rural America.

"The scenery in America is changing and I'm really proud we're taking a snapshot at slow motion of this time period, because 20 years from now it will be different," he said. Inman soaks it all in atop Blackie, a 16-year-old thoroughbred-quarter horse mix who's averaging 20-25 miles a day along backroads from Oregon to North Carolina..."

And later,

"Raised on a Texas ranch, Inman worked cattle, herded wild horses and managed a ranch on an Indian reservation in Nevada before he moved to Oregon last year and began selling horses there. He's also an auctioneer and has done horse shoeing for nearly 30 years.

"Among those meeting Inman on the outskirts of town was Kurly Hebb, former rodeo cowboy and Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame member.

"'He's got my respect. I can tell from talking to him he's going to make it. Just be a cowboy, that's all you got to do,' said Hebb, now a rancher."

Know what? Maybe we're not finished yet!

Neolithic Fashionplates

This report on excavations at a 7,500 year-old neolithic/chalcolithic site in southern Serbia doesn't tell us lots of new information about that period in Europe. The article says this site may push back the initial date of the Copper Age by 500 years but doesn't really give you enough information to assess the claim.

However, a study of women's dress from analysis of clay figurines like the one above, turns up some fun insights:

"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic."

Paris Hilton Tries to Help Drunk Elephants

The headline for this piece was so bizarre I couldn't let it go. So now she's the celebrity spokesperson for a big problem in India:

"Activists said a celebrity endorsement such as Hilton's was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers' homemade rice beer and then go on a rampage.

'The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them,' the 26-year-old socialite said in a report posted on World Entertainment News Network's Web site. Her comments were picked up by other Web sites and newspapers around the globe.

Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in the state of Meghalaya were electrocuted after drinking the potent brew and then uprooting an electricity pole.

'There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad,' Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo last week. She was in Tokyo to judge a beauty contest.

Her publicist couldn't immediately be reached for comment Tuesday."

Her publicist is speechless and so am I.

Thoughts on Taking The Dog

I've written a couple emails to friends explaining why, for Pete's sake, I'm not taking Rina to Texas.

My answers are many and are all over the map, which suggests to me that none of them are exactly what I mean to say. The bottom line is that I am afraid for her safety on the one hand, and she is more trouble than she's worth, on the other.

Don't misunderstand. Rina is indispensable to me---here. She flushes birds daily for my hawks, points, chases, catches, and generally provides extra fun and good company in the field. The hawks like her and trust her judgment. She rarely lets us down, and never on purpose.

But up on the high plains, her services are less in need and the inherent dangers of a fast, highly reactionary dog begin to outweigh the benefits. Amarillo, Texas is a blasted land of hard ground, exposed rebar, piles of concrete, irrigation pipes, cholla cactus, rattlesnakes, coyotes, eighteen wheelers, bone-numbing cold and great distances. Into this mix place a fast dog with thin skin and no brakes, and you have a disaster in the oven.

Last year, when Rina was new and (frankly) still proving herself, the dangers were the same but the perceived liabilities smaller. I had the benefit of ignorance, both of how good she is for what I do---here--and how quickly she could be hurt or killed doing what she does up there.

This is not to say that she could not be killed here by a snake (we have plenty) or a car or any number of other things. But her job here is to flush birds in fenced pastures in moderate weather. She is slowed down by the tall grass and soft earth, and we are unlikely to flush anything that will take her far away; there are no black tailed jacks in Louisiana. All else equal, she's much safer at home. The dangers natural to a hunting dog here are the same ones I face and the hawk faces, and we accept that or else need to quit.

I can no longer claim ignorance about the situation up there. It's a harsh land best weathered by natives. One week a year is not enough time to teach a dog how to operate within such tight margins; in fact, you can't teach that. They learn it by living it. Perhaps a big dog, tough skinned and slower afoot would do better, and of course many hunters' dogs do fine. But Rina is herself: a nutcase whirlwind and unstoppable when in high pursuit.

As for being more trouble than she's worth, in Texas last year she spent more time in the truck than on the ground. We hawked too many places too dangerous to use her. Yet, we had to bring her along in case a good opportunity presented itself. On a hawking trip far from base camp, you take with you everything you might need.

On several occasions I noted to myself that my hawking and coursing trips ought to be kept separate. To use Rina with justice, I should concentrate on her and let the day follow her schedule. Last year she had to follow our schedule, and it was hard on her. She's accustomed to working with the hawks, and could not understand why we left her behind; so she watched, barking mad, as we walked off in plain sight and hundreds of yards away. It was nearly as tough on me as on her. When rabbits flushed she could see them clearly, and we could hear her wailing rise to fever pitch.

Why do that to my good dog?

Finally, there was no relief to worrying at the end of the day. That's a joy killer. Rina wanted to be with us as the day wound down, but even romping in Jimmy's fenced acres with the other dogs left me wondering from minute to minute where she was. Rabbits were everywhere, and Rina hit fences full speed several times just chasing bunnies in the backyard. Thinking of her crumpled at the base of a fencepost, broken in some awful way out there in the dark, sucks all the fun out of sipping beer on the back porch.

Trust me, that's true.

Morning Run-- Sunday

When we have been to busy to go out more than a couple of times a week, like now, our hounds get pretty rowdy. Plummer barks and the tazis "sing" all the way to Lee's.


This AM we went to the ranch. It is finally getting cooler. They chased one cottontail which immediately went down a kangaroo rat hole-- as Libby says, bunnies cheat. Then Lib bumped a hare out of position and only Lashyn sighted it-- she ran it out of sight as the others ran up to me going "Huh?"

Finally we put up a good hare in range and they all had a good though ultimately unsuccessful run-- unsighted in cholla. Then to the tank where the old lurcher had a soak.


That peak in the background has a golden eagle nest on it, on a ledge on the left- hand extension. It is known to locals as "Mount Titty" though you won't find that name on the map..




On the way home, the girls were much quieter.

Here is a dashboard still life on the way out-- binos, whistle, .410 shells, comb for cactus spines, trigger spring for Mauser (must take that in...)



We also saw, in the distance, a HUGE and very black coyote slinking off.
Some think that wolf genes are leaking into the local population through the
introductions. This looked like the big northeastern canids I used to see
killing deer on Quabbin reservoir in Massachusetts in my youth-- which do
have wolf genetic material. More on that later...

Tomatoes

Here are some heirloom tomatoes grown by Mr. and Mrs. Peculiar this summer in Colorado. The big ones in particular may have been the best I ever ate.

It occurs to me that I, Libby, and the P's were all born in cities, Lib and I in big ones, but we were not raised in fear of the natural.

Of course when Libby was a kid her family kept a pig and ducks, (and dogs, and a parrot) in Berkeley. And my father's family kept chickens and rabbits in Boston.

Hounds

The Asian tazi gene pool continues to expand-- Vladimir now has three, in addition to mine and their offspring.

Puppy Urtak is somewhat related to my dogs, and is going to be huge.

Here he is at only four months with the full- grown female, Adel, who is closely related to mine.

Timur, a young male, is from Saint Petersburg and of a completely different line. We may outcross to him.

Invasion of the City Folks

Jonathan Hanson sent me this NYT article on rich city people who move to the country knowing it would both rile me and make me laugh. I don't write about it much in the blog, but the subject is one I have been known to go on about a bit-- well, maybe more than a bit! The invasion of clueless country people to rural areas, where they bring all the baggage they claim to want to leave behind, is a problem everywhere, including, yes, Magdalena, which is now surrounded by "ranchette" subdivisions.

Some think I exaggerate. So I am just going to quote some of these ninnies-- and remember, this is the New York Times-- it is not written by disgruntled rednecks.

"WHEN Evan Gotlib and his fiancée, Lindsey Pollack, bought a three-bedroom cottage surrounded by pine trees in rural Sharon, Conn., they couldn’t wait to flee their cramped Manhattan studio on weekends to spend their days dozing in a hammock and barbecuing on their brand new 42,000 B.T.U., 60-burger-capacity Weber grill."

"But being city people, they did what anyone looking to “get away from it all” would do first, before they even spent the night: they paid $3,000 for a home-security system complete with motion detectors, a one-touch intercom that connects to fire and police dispatchers and an emergency hand-held remote-control device they could leave on the bedside table at night. 'I know it sounds ridiculous now that I talk about it, but I just feel safer sleeping with the remote control,' Mr. Gotlib, a 32-year-old corporate sales director for Time Inc. Media Group, confessed, 'because those deer are aggressive.' "

(Snip)

" 'New York thinking applied to nature equals paranoia,' said Augusten Burroughs, the author of the memoir “Running with Scissors,” from his country house on the outskirts of Amherst, Mass., which he and his partner, Dennis Pilsits, built three years ago. Since then, Mr. Burroughs, 42, has poured several book advances into what he calls his “prison in the trees” in an effort to defend his rustic outpost 'from nature in all its malicious glory.' This includes installing an $8,000 lightning protection system and spending $2,000 on various military-grade “tactical illumination devices” — flashlights — and even a pair of night-vision goggles, thanks to some terrifying encounters with nocturnal neighbors.

"Late one recent night, Mr. Burroughs had gone out to check the mailbox when he saw two green, glittering eyes, triangular ears 'and the general impression of height' in the shadows. When the creature began to walk toward him, Mr. Burroughs ran into the garage, fearing for his life. 'Our skinny, gym-polished urban bodies are no match for anything that scratches its back on a tree,' he said. “Whatever it was, it was both curious and unafraid — two traits one does not admire in wildlife when one is alone in the dark.'"

(Snip)

" 'When it’s bedtime, I’m terrified,” said Mary McCann, an actress from New York City, who owns a house on 11 acres in Napanoch, in Ulster County, N.Y., with her husband, Neil Pepe. When he can’t join her and their daughter, Lena, 6, there on weekends, Ms. McCann has been known to bed down with a knife by her side. 'I’ve definitely had some sleepless nights listening to the sound of coyotes killing something, and I’m thinking ‘what a stupid system, I don’t know how to defend myself with a knife,’” she said. “My husband thinks I’m crazy.'"

(Snip)

"Indeed, perhaps it’s better not to bump into other people in the country, especially during hunting season. Charon Marden and her husband, Roy, often like to go for walks in the state wildlife area behind their property in Otis, Mass., but last November they were strolling through the trees when a man in a mask and full camouflage rose out of the bushes five feet away from them, wielding a crossbow. 'I almost had a heart attack,' said Ms. Marden, an art director for Dow Jones & Company. 'I’ve definitely seen too many Lifetime movies, because after that I had visions of commandos in the woods wanting to break into our house.'"

(Snip)

“ 'There is something inherently unnatural and vulnerable about humans being in social isolation, because out there no one can hear you scream.'”

(Snip)

"It took Dr. Holland and her husband, Jeremy Wolff, a photographer, a while to get over that anxiety. Even so, encounters with armed hunters are always unsettling, even for a seasoned second-home owner. After disturbing a camouflaged fellow in a tree during a family hike last autumn, Mr. Wolf wrote a letter to the hunting club that leases the land beside his, asking members to 'please make sure your bullets don’t cross my property lines.'”

(Snip)

"'I feel I’m more of an intellectual artist and they’re kind of machine people,” he said. “Everyone has their own backhoe up there, and their kids have A.T.V.’s and motorboats. And they all have guns, which scares me.'”

(Snip)

"Howard Gold, a doctor from Miami who owns a mountain home near Aspen, Colo., built a guest room on the ground floor with large French windows opening onto the spruce-dotted slopes, thinking his friends would love waking up to the view. 'Everyone absolutely refuses to sleep there because they think a person or a bear will come through those doors, so it just sits empty,' he said."

"Four hours east, in Estes Park, Natalie Galyon, a photographer who lives in Dallas, was recently host of a friend’s bachelorette party at her cabin overlooking the Big Thompson River. 'When a herd of elk jammed the road, we got out of the car to take photos, but one of the girls stood by the car guarding everyone’s purses, when we were the only people in sight,' said Ms. Galyon, 32, 'and each night they would shut all the blinds, even though we were on a cliff in the middle of nowhere.'”

(Snip)

“'I thought I loved nature,' said Mr. Burroughs, back in his Manhattan apartment. 'I was wrong. I love escalators.'”

As reader Bruce Douglas (born in Tucson) says, "After reading this I started to feel a little empathy toward the locals in 'Straw Dogs.' I hope when Mr.'I feel I’m more of an intellectual artist and they’re kind of machine people' gets his Saab stuck in a ditch he just visualizes it back on the road and doesn't ask his neighbors to use their tractor to pull it out."

I am actually NOT a rural chauvinist. I spent the first half of my life mostly in Boston and Cambridge, and know and love New York City more than these people will ever know and love the country. But I think at best they ought to do obey the Rural Immigration Law from Vermont writer Noel Perrin's Second Person Rural (hint: there's a test).

But my real reaction is more like:

Get. A. Life.
Get. A. Gun. (On second thought, scared ninnies with guns is probably not a great idea-- scratch that).
Go. Home.

Links

A guitar that looks like an AK 47. I agree with Mr. Massie.

Sippican on creativity. (He builds fine furniture).

"There's a mindset that's de rigeur these days that rules are for schmucks....(snip)

"What utter bosh. Michaelangelo Buonnarotti Simoni painted some interesting things, and he labored under plenty of constraints, including: don't piss off your patron, he can have you killed AND excommunicated. It didn't seem to take much off his fastball. But let's give the Rousseau "Noble Savage" wannabes the benefit of the doubt. Let's imagine we let the old chiseler off the hook from Pope Julius. Paint what ever you want, Mikie. Do you really think he'd paint something better than the Sistine Chapel? Why stop there? Let's take it as far as modern artists do. Why not have Michaelangelo paint with his feet, using yogurt instead of paint, and a toilet brush for his stylus? That should free up his creative juices, huh?" (Snip)

"As I was saying, commodity, firmness, and delight. Sounds easy enough. Let's see you do it. It's easy to blaze a trail if you start out by saying wheels should be square instead of round, or made from spaghetti. You'll get Yoko Ono sized plaudits in the art magazines for that, but the cart still won't go. Your mission, if you live in that world, is to find a patron that wants an odd useless cart. And has a trust fund too."

He should write a book, too. RTWT. Read the whole BLOG. (He also posts at the hilarious Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys.

Darren has been writing fascinating posts on frog relationships and evolution (start here and go up-- as always, lots of other good zoology at Tet Zoo too). He got an unusual response from one Digital Cuttlefish, an evo- bio poet, which I print in full:

I think I never saw a blog
So keen to celebrate the frog.

A blog that finds the anurans'
A tale at least as cool as man's;

A blog that looks at tetrapods
Which, over eons, beat the odds;

A blog that posts on what may be
Transitional morphology;

Reporting on the Pipoid classic,
Whose family tree has roots Jurassic.
I have found frogs, in wood and bog
But learned much more within this blog.

Back-- for a moment...

I am in the throes of completing Eagle. It is the hardest part, at least for me-- getting all the illos, paying, begging (often repeatedly) for promised material, scanning (all slide scans must be done in Albuquerque, 100 miles away, and I don't HAVE them all yet) and arranging them to Reaktion's arcane system (on CD at 300+ DPI, on paper with captions and permissions, and in- text "in brightly coloured ink, in the right margin" with recommendations as to whether they be large, medium, or small. This for at least 100, but they reserve the right to shoot down any, so I'm aiming for about 120 to make sure I am FINISHED. All by December first.

I will be very glad when this is done.

So blogging has been unforgivably light, and will be for a few weeks more. But I'll add some links and pretty pix to amuse today, and promise more substantial stuff soon (I promised Patrick a post on wolves, for instance.)

The World's Tallest Horse

.....lives in Niota, Tennessee. That's southwest of Knoxville. Reminded me of this post from last year.

Breakfast Time

The dogs let me know early this morning that this spike buck and two does were grabbing breakfast in the back yard.

Pre-Clovis Artifacts

The earliest currently agreed-upon date for human migration to the New World is in the Clovis period, about 13,500 years before present (BP). For decades there has been research to push the date back, to put the migration from Asia in what is called a "Pre-Clovis" period. A number of sites in North and South America may have occupations that date earlier than 13,500 BP: Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, PA (14,500 BP), Cactus Hill, VA (16,900 BP), Monte Verde, Chile (14,000 BP), Big Eddy, MO (14,000 BP), and Topper, SC (37,000 and 50,000 BP). There are a few others.

Most of these sites have issues related to either the artifacts recovered or their dating. There are good artifact asemblages at Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill, and Monte Verde but disagreement about the dates. At Meadowcroft, for example, the radiocarbon dates may have been thrown off by a coal deposit in the cave. At Big Eddy and Topper, the dates look secure but there are questions about the artifacts. The picture above is of artifacts from Topper. At both these sites the Pre-Clovis assemblages seem to consist of crudely chipped pebbles, like the ones pictured above.

I got the latest issue of American Antiquity this week, and wanted to share with you an article from it written by the researchers at Big Eddy: "Trampling Experiments in the Search for the Earliest Americans" by Neal Lopinot and Jack Ray of Missouri State University. I'm sorry but there really isn't anything I can link to.

Lopinot and Ray thought that the material they were recovering from their lowest levels looked suspiciously crude, and began to doubt they were made by human agency. They devised an experiment to find out.

They reasoned that "artifacts" like the ones at Big Eddy and Topper may have been made by animal trampling. Field archaeologists commonly see things like this, rocks flaked by cattle trampling or crushed by heavy construction equipment, that look like crude tools. They are commonly referred to by elegant terms such as "cow-facts" or "dozer-facts".

The researchers made beds of pebbles and cobbles of stone found at Big Eddy and placed them where they would be trampled by elephants and bison, stand-ins for common megafauna during the end of the Pleistocene. In the picture above you can see an elephant from a zoo in Missouri trampling on the stone. This experiment went well as three adult Asian elephants named Vicky, Patience and Connie were walked over the bed repeatedly. The bison used were from a herd in a nearby state park where a similar bed was set up. Things did not go quite as well there:

"The untamed bison herd could not be manipulated like the elephants, but park personnel attracted the herd to the experimental area with so-called 'bison candy', large grain pellets soaked in molasses. Unfortunately, the bison were skittish and, after many hours, only a few young calves and later a few cows stepped on the gravel in the experimental pit. A couple of large bulls in the herd sniffed around the gravel and walked over or stepped around the boulders, but they never were observed as having stepped direcly on these or the gravel pit."

I can just see the bison sniffing suspiciously at that pit. And leave it to the kids to go get the candy!

The bison experiment was continued for five days and eventually 29 modified pebbles and cobbles were recovered. A total of 228 modified pebbles and cobbles were recovered from the elephant experiment. Above is a photo of some of these that Lopinot and Ray call "zoofacts." They really look quite like the Pre-Clovis material from Big Eddy and Topper. The researchers analyzed the zoofacts just as they would real artifacts and came up with a number of attributes that can be used to differentiate them.

I suppose this shows that everyone should be a little suspicious when only very crude tools are found in Pre-Clovis contexts. Humans everywhere else had very sophisticated flaked-stone tool kits at this time period. Why should people here be any different? Lopinot and Ray say they are keeping an open mind, and admit that not absolutely everything from the Pre-Clovis levels at Big Eddy fit neatly into the zoofact category. But this shows we should be cautious.

And please understand, I am not invested in disproving Pre-Clovis claims. I am just trying to stand up for good science. I fully expect that within my lifetime we'll find a (some?) Pre-Clovis occupation we can all agree on.

I believe it is starting to appear that the paradigm we have been using for he last 50 years or so, of a single overland migration across Beringia about 14,000 BP, is impossibly simplistic. I think future research will likely show that (as Valerius Geist believes) there were many attempts to colonize the Americas from Asia over a long period of time, both overland and down the coast in boats. We aren't recognizing or haven't found the inland sites and sites along the coast have been drowned by the Holocene rise in sea level.

There is all sorts of evidence that currently doesn't fit together very well. Mitochondrial DNA evidence from Native Americans seems to indicate a single migration of a small number of individuals. But the morphology of the earliest Paleoindian skeletons we have is distinctly different from modern Native Americans. A recent review of all the radiocarbon dates from all the Paleoindian sites in Alaska shows that the oldest sites there are younger than the oldest good dates from further south in North America. That doesn't seem to fit with a Beringian migration. Time and more research will tell. I think we'll see that Clovis was the latest and most successful colonizing attempt.

Tamarisk Removal

Chas has some new information on this subject, something I posted on back in August. I was stunned by this:

"Today, the tamarisk are consuming about 58,600 acre-feet of water - 19 billion gallons - annually, but the number will grow to nearly 130,000 acre-feet annually - one-fifth of the water in the river in an average year - when the plants completely take over and grow larger."

Heritage Turkeys

More turkeys in the news. We've gone from terrorist turkeys in Massachusetts to a NY Times piece on an effort in Kansas to preserve traditional breeds of domesticated turkeys. Here's a little something from the article about what most of us will be putting on our table in a couple of weeks:

"Virtually all of turkeys raised in the United States come from one basic line, a broad-breasted White that George Nicholas developed in California in the 1950s. By the 1960s, he had perfected a breed that produced meat so efficiently that it became the industry standard.

The problem is, the birds can’t fly or reproduce without the help of artificial insemination, and their bland meat has produced a nation of diners for whom dry, overcooked Thanksgiving turkey is an annual disappointment."

A Book I Won't be Buying

Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics
Y. Hamilakis and P. Duke, eds.

Pointing to the disciplines's history of advancing imperialist, colonialist, and racist objectives, contributors insist that archaeology must rethink its muted professional stance and become more active agents of change.

Bourdain's New Book

Time Magazine has 10 questions for Anthony Bourdain on the occasion of the release of his new book Without Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach.

Question Number 1:

What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?

Fermented shark in Iceland. They celebrate their hardy Viking roots by eating shark that has essentially rotted and is then marinated in lactic acid for six months. There was also the warthog rectum in Namibia. Steer clear of that.

H/T to Lady with the Black Dogs

Rattlers

A Texas man spent 45 minutes in a tub with 87 rattlesnakes to set a world record. Oh, and he wasn't bitten. The article says he set another record last year by holding 10 rattlesnakes by their tails in his mouth. What a fun hobby.

All I Want for Christmas

....is a pair of remote-controlled tarantulas. Leg span of seven inches - batteries not included.

Newly Visible Comet

I just stumbled across this news that Comet 17P/Holmes is now visible to the unaided eye:

"The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper."

snip

"Until October 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes."

I don't know if the comet's coma is actually larger than Jupiter, or just appears larger to us here on Earth than Jupiter does. Tough to tell sometimes in wire service copy. I intend to go out and take a look tonight.

Tutankhamun's Mummy

The mummy of boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun has been moved from its sarcophagus in his tomb and placed on public display for the first time in a climate controlled glass case. Not being an Egyptologist, I was somewhat surprised to learn that this mummy has been kept in the tomb all along. That seemed a little reckless to me. Humidity introduced into the tomb by the perspiration and breath of tourists has been damaging the mummy.

"King Tut" is the general public's vision of ancient Egypt and I remember the frenzy that attended the Tutankhamun exhibits here in the US thirty years ago. The National Geographic Society is sponsoring another series of exhibits of Tut artifacts beginning in London later this month. There will be exhibits here in the US starting in Dallas next year, but other venues have yet to be named. The Denver newspapers are saying that one of them will be here, but that may be wishful thinking.

Hunting Ban Makes Hunting More Popular

News from the United Kingdom is that the hunting ban enacted there in 2005 has actually increased the popularity of hunting:

"Against expectations, hunting has been able to continue, legally for the most part, with little difference in style. As Simon Hart, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, puts it, 'most people would find this season's sport quite difficult to differentiate from old-fashioned hunting'. It is more popular than ever.

'It's a bit like prohibition,' declares Seed {master of a hunt}. 'If you want to make something popular, ban it.' No hunt has closed since 2005; two have been started. 'A lot of people came out at a time of controversy and decided they liked it,' says Farquhar."

Enforcement of the Hunting Act has apparently been haphazard and the anti-hunting forces who "monitor" and disrupt hunts are frustrated:

"There have been more than 30,000 days of hunting since 2005; the League Against Cruel Sports has secured 20 convictions under the Hunting Act, only three of them relating to the activities of established hunts. More people have been convicted for hunting rats than foxes."

snip

"Police seem more concerned to prevent clashes between "monitors" and hunt staff than to follow hunts lest they breach the Act. Hunting offences do not count towards their targets.

The frustration of the anti-hunt lobby is apparent in the proposal made by Ann Widdecombe on the Today programme last week, by which League Against Cruel Sports monitors would be contracted as evidence-gatherers for the police."

The apparent intent of the Hunting Act was to save wildlife from cruel deaths. Enforcement of the Act has also run headlong into the law of unintended consequences:

"Research by the Exmoor and District Deer Management Society Consensus has revealed a 20 per cent decrease in deer numbers in 2006 against a trend of steady rises over the previous decade.

This is the great irony of the Act: it has led to the shooting of more deer and foxes. Farmers and landowners no longer have a reason to tolerate animals that destroy crops, lambs or pheasant chicks."

These are interesting developments to read about for us pro-hunters here in the US. I look forward to reading some informed comments from our readers across the water who are having to live with this state of affairs.

Also, over the weekend, Terrierman addressed this issue with a post titled "The UK Hunting Ban Is Not Helping Foxes."

Washoe, RIP

Washoe, a chimpanzee who sent the field of primatology into a tizzy by learning American Sign Language, has died at age 42 after a short illness. From the age of 10 months, Washoe was raised by cognitive researchers R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix T. Gardner, who taught her to make recognizable signs in American Sign Language. She eventually learned about 130 signs.

This accomplishment was a great shock when it first was publicized in the late 1960s. Attempts to replicate this through the 1970s with other chimpanzees eventually showed that most of the communication between humans and chimps was prompted by imitating the human researchers. There was little spontaneity and no use of grammar. However, it did show that apes have the capacity for some of the basic rudiments of language and their intellectual functioning overlaps with humans in some ways.

Washoe spent the last 27 years of her life at a research facility run by Central Washington University where she continued in cognitive studies and served as a matriarch to a generation of younger chimpanzees. Apparently she shared some interests with her human friends:

"She had a gentle touch with them {the younger chimpanzees}, Dr. Jensvold said, and kept an eye on the habits — and footwear — of her human companions.

'She always checked out your shoes, and if you had new ones she’d sign for you to show them to her,' Dr. Jensvold said. 'Then she might sign something about the color. She was a real shoe lady that way.'”