Stephen Bodio's Querencia

I didn't get any of the girl this time, so just the three boys today (I think she was behind Lashyn). More to come.

Labels: Animal Breeding, Dogs

Our friend Daniela Imre, whose photos and commentary appear here on occasion, and who owns the father of our pups, became a citizen of the USA today. It was the first time Libby and I had ever attended such a ceremony, and we found it extremely moving.

Daniela was born in Israel, is a veteran of their army, came to the US, got a master's in architecture at Harvard, practiced around the country, got another degree in education, and moved to Magdalena where she has worked on the (...difficult) Alamo reservation for three years. In the photo above she is flanked by the judge who swore her in (right) and another judge who spoke, a woman who was born in Pakistan, came to the US at 12, moved around the world with her parents, went to Marymount in NY, ran a restaurant in Taos, and is now an appeals court judge here. (I think I skipped a few things there). You can always try something new in the US.

And here she is with her new flag!

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi oppose re-instating the so- called "assault weapon" ban.

Labels: Guns

I stumbled across this piece in the BBC website that discusses a computer-enabled mathematical model that analyses the rate of change of words in English and related languages. It appears to be me that this is a new application of glottochronology , a technique that has been around for quite a while.

The researchers at Reading University in the UK, claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient English words. They also say that they can use their model to predict when words will drop out of the language, and list "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable early casualties.

One intriguing feature of this model is an algorithm that allows you to build a phrasebook of common words between two periods of time:

"You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a list of words that would have changed going back in time or will change going into the future," Professor Pagel told BBC News.

"From that list you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the Conqueror."

That brought me up short. Doesn't this guy know William the Conqueror spoke French?

This isn't unexpected, but Scripps finally announced they are pulling the plug tomorrow on Colorado's oldest newspaper, founded 1859. When I first moved here in the 1970s, I much preferred the tabloid Rocky to the Denver Post, but it's been evident in recent years that the owning chain has been starving the poor girl to death. Sad day.

This esteemed science fiction writer died yesterday at age 91. I especially enjoyed his "Riverworld" series of novels that featured Sir Richard Francis Burton as a main character. Phil Farmer and I are not related, but when I was in graduate school at CU - Boulder, I remember meeting his step-daughter at a party. How's that for three degrees of separation?

Exciting news - the Denver Post and NY Times picked it up, but the best account comes from this press release issued by the University of Colorado.

A cache of 83 lithic tools was discovered by Brant Turney's landscaping crew while they were working in Patrick Mahaffy's yard in Boulder last May. Mahaffy contacted the University and archaeologist Doug Bamforth came out to investigate and has been leading the research.

Dating this find has had to be by "backdoor" methods as there are no Clovis projectile points in the cache and no organic material available for radiocarbon assays. CU geologist Pete Birkeland (I took pedology from him back in the day) verified that the sediments were of Pleistocene age, but analysis of blood residue on the tools sealed the deal. The collection was sent to Robert Yohe at California State University - Bakersfield who performed the protein analysis. This revealed that tools had been used to butcher sheep, horse, camel, and bear. Native horse and camel have been extinct here since the end of the Pleistocene.

This is quite a collection and I am in awe of the giant bifacial knife that Bamforth is holding (foreground top photo). He says these tools are typologically similar to some from another Clovis cache, the Fenn Cache, from up in the Yellowstone area.

Lithic materials found in the cache come from southern Wyoming and the Colorado Western Slope, showing that these people traveled and traded. Some of the very best flint-knapping known in North American archaeology is the oldest (like this find) and Paleoindian craftsmen seem to have been particular about their raw material.

RTWT

Labels: Animal Breeding, Dogs

If you were a former dope smuggler, would you put it in your resume?

English Russia has a fabulous Soviet anti - drug poster. Personally I doubt I could have survived in the Soviet Union without drugs and vodka. And what's with the smoking CAT?

Great line plus the immortal Stonecutter's song. HT David Zincavage at Never Yet Melted.
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Say it ain't so! Via the Nerds: Val Kilmer plans to run for governor of New Mexico. I'd laugh, but consider Al Franken...


A sleeping bag in the shape of a bear? As Cat said, "Sometimes when you're drinking, you think you've got a good idea ... but your supposed to forget it by the next day, right?" Or as Matt responded, "The human desire to be eaten alive???.

An anecdote. When I was in college one of my profs gave a lecture on the literature of the frontier. He asked a student why settlers had such a fear (I'd call it rational) of big carnivores. The student went on endlessly and very literarily about their fear of non- existence, the void, of vanishing without a trace. The prof looked at him deadpan and said: "No shit?"

Labels: Random Weirdness

Yes you can write too much. What authors do you think have committed this sin?

A goose is a man's best friend.

Just in case you were tempted, don't eat Chinese pork liver. And to think some of you don't like cilantro.

Competitive yoga? Only in the US.

Study of fossils shows prehistoric fish had sex. I'm shocked! I assumed they reproduced by fission.

Nanny state alert: pubs in the UK will have hidden cameras to videotape every sale.

Something we've done several times on this blog: a meditation on the joy of books and bookshelves. I think "Shelf Life" is a very nice title.

If you're happy and you know it thank your genes.

The archaeology of Nueva Cadiz, an abandoned Spanish colonial outpost off the Venezuelan coast.

An "extinct" bird is rediscovered-- and eaten.

Apparently black north American wolves owe their color to interbreeding with dogs that crossed the Bering bridge HT Laura Niven and Reid.

SmartDogs sent a link to a new method of detecting rabies. It sounded good, but Patrick found reason to dispute their claims.

Also at Terrierman: a to the devastating article at Dog World about the evils of inbreeding pedigreed dogs.

Not exactly biology but birds: apparently, poor Pakistani peasants resent the rich oil Sheiks who come to their country to hunt houbara buzzards with falcons. (They are not allowed to hunt them at all.) Ya think? This one also reminds me of a book, a novel with spies, an Al Quaida- type group, migrating houbaras and a falcon. It may not be very much ahead of reality.

Finally, light detecting backpacks are revealing the secrets of songbird migration.

Labels: Biology, Birds, Central Asia, Wolves

Do you believe in "Gun- Free Zones"? You might want to check out this video. HT Jonathan Hanson.

The shortage of ammunition, especially in popular small handgun loads, seems to make a statement that a LOT of people are interested in self- defense.

Engrish Funny is always fun, but usually through a rather touching innocence. Here, the concept is intentional but insane.

Dave Petzal at Gun Nut posts a version of the old Rules for a Gunfight. The first law is: "Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. " It is good advice-- hilarious but darkly true, and reminds me of this book.
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Also at Gun Nut, Philip Bourjaily tells us why to admire Eliza Dushku. I was not aware of her, and agree with Phil that she has all the qualities to attract, as he says, the "superficial male". But what other young actress also has these attributes?

"4. She killed a deer on Christmas day.

"5. PETA hates her. Their January newsletter read: “Dushku attempted to defend herself by saying that it's OK for her to hunt because she eats those she kills. Eliza, please meet [serial killer and cannibal] Jeffrey Dahmer. He ate those he killed, too." "

I might have to find old episodes of Buffy, a show once admired by Odious and Peculiar.

Labels: AR, Guns, Self Defense

Sorry for light traffic. I have had guests continually on weekends (usually my blogging time) and will for the next two or three weeks. (All welcome but all HERE!) I have also had two sets of guests in the middle of the week, the flu, and three book reviews to write. I wish I could say I will be better but I am about to rewrite the first 14000 words or so of mt dog- Central Asia book to satisfy (?) my agent so will doubtless continue slow. I WILL update on puppies-- the ones I'll post today are already out of date, as they have their eyes well open and are beginning to play. More of those tomorrow-- meanwhile, a link- fest and more pics.

The Chronicle Review brings us another interesting editorial, this one on "poets' puffery," the phenomenon of grade inflation as it relates to the reputation of contemporary poets.

Evidently, the calibre of poetry today is uniformly "excellent," at least according to its own press. In contrast, author Jeffery Gray, professor of English and editor of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, muses on how the historical record seems to suggest that mediocre poets once existed.

"My own favorite entry, on Gertrude Bloede (19th century), sums up a poet's bad dream of posterity: 'Interest in her work, always limited, declined after her death.'"

"Curiously, it is almost impossible to find such modest assessments when one turns to contemporary poetry. Indeed, the problem of neglect or insignificance evaporates in a situation in which, in spite of the vast numbers writing (800 to 1,000 books of poetry are published in the United States per year; thousands of other poets publish in journals and quarterlies), we have no minor poets. Everyone today, like those above-average children of Lake Wobegon, is brilliant and sui generis."

Gray goes on to wonder if the sheer literary output of modern poets (he cites one poet billed as "underground" who nonetheless has published more than 100 books) makes inflation of their assumed quality necessary if they're to be heard above the din. Poets of past eras, few of them full-time writers, typically produced less.

"The historical reasons for the obvious disparity in output include the demands of living in pre-20th-century America, in times when almost no one was a 'professional' poet; the absence of any sense, before Matthew Arnold, that poetry mattered at all to ordinary working people; the complete absence of any institutional support, like that which has proliferated in the United States in the past half-century — i.e., grants, residencies, teaching positions, workshops, and the like; the general absence of any publishing opportunities besides a few popular magazines; and, of course, much shorter lives."

"Perhaps, most of all, it is hard to imagine being 'lonely like that,' as Adrienne Rich wrote in the early 1960s (in 'Face to Face') of earlier times in this country; hard to imagine, for most of us, 'all that lawlessness,' each person living

with his God-given secret,
spelled out through months of snow and silence,
burning under the bleached scalp

"This humble, sequestered idea of poetry is no longer with us, in spite of voices like that of the poet and critic Richard Howard, who has said that 'we must restore poetry to that status of seclusion and even secrecy that characterizes our authentic pleasures.' Or, more recently, the critic James Longenbach's observation that the large audience for poetry 'has by and large been purchased at the cost of poetry's inwardness ... its strangeness.'"

Have we traded the possibility of great poetry (except by its own account) for our quest for celebrity?

"It is easy to argue that poetry would benefit by returning to its magical desert spaces, but few poets, living or dead, have wished for obscurity. And fewer still would hand back a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation or the National Endowment for the Arts, preferring to work in poverty and loneliness. Though it might be the best rebirth of all, no one can persuade poets to write less."

...Also regarding poetry, Anne Hocker sent these links, found on Terry Moran’s twitter (anchor of ABC Nightline): http://home.clara.net/stevebrown/index.htm which referenced this good poem: http://home.clara.net/stevebrown/html/an_arundel_tomb.htm, the first stanza of which reads:

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Lest anyone be left with the mistaken impression that big dogs rule the household here (simply because they’ve taught the humans to sit elsewhere so the big dogs can nap on the comfy couches), I need to clarify something. It’s actually the little dog that rules this roost. His name is Abe.

These three big dogs all have Abe outweighed by at least 3 to 1, but Abe arrives in a no-nonsense flurry. He’s a mighty 30 pounds wet. Attitude, attitude, attitude – man, he’s got it.

Abe’s a bearded collie, about 10 years old now. Bearded collies are less obsessive than border collies, which suits me. Abe is good with sheep because he has a gentle mouth. He refuses to even try to herd bum lambs at all (smart dog, since it never works) and only bites adult sheep when they make him mad (even then, it's specific sheep). Most of the time, he runs up and jabs sheep in the ribs with his nose, mouth closed. It works.

Bearded collies apparently came from the Scottish Highlands. Despite kennel club recognition and too much “show” interest nearly driving the working dog to extinction, working beardies can still be found on farms and ranches around the world.

Labels: Dogs, rural life

One of the Moodys of Moody Ranch Outfitters met us with a smile and a handshake, then led us inside to sign our "Dick Cheney papers" (his words). Fortunately, our hunting party held no lawyers nor vice presidents.

I'm back today from a weekend with friends Gregg and Soo Barrow of Covenant Kennel, in Montgomery, Texas, and the writer Henry Chappell down from Plano. Gregg surprised us with a guided half-day squirrel hunt on Saturday, an unexpected gift that gave the three of us (plus Cate and Rina) a lovely spot to walk in the woods, talk dogs and get acquainted.

I've known Gregg since Rina was a pup, but it was my first chance to meet Henry, the author of numerous good books and articles on dogs, hunting and rural life. Querencia readers will be familiar with Henry's blog, Home Range. And I wrote up a short review of his novel The Callings, here. We've been swapping books and emails for a year and trying to schedule a free weekend to meet.

Henry's association with Steve goes back to the Vermont Wildbranch Writing Workshop, which Steve once taught. The Workshop was founded by Annie Proux and dedicated, as Steve has described it, "to the idea that nature writing, outdoor writing -- writing 'with trees in it,' to use the phrase of the editor who first rejected A River Runs Through It -- is not a minor subgenre but a stream of literature with subjects and attitudes that are vital, even essential, to a healthy understanding of our world."

Henry's writing falls squarely in that category, and he credits Steve's encouragement and instruction with launching his career.

(Incidentally, current Wildbranch instructor Janisse Ray is a former Florida Fish & Game employee and friend from my Tallahassee days. Her Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a great read.)

After a relaxing evening at Gregg's place, walking our dogs and beers around the pond, we set out early Saturday for the Moody Ranch.

Set in the hill country just north of Navasota, the Moody place covers 6,000 acres of hardwood creek bottom, floodplain and rolling pasture. It's a well-maintained hunting ranch and lodge, providing its clients a range of packages, including wild hog and duck hunts. Although the staff squirrel expert had recently moved upcountry, Edward (a moonlighting Houston fireman) guided us capably through several miles of gorgeous old oaks in a stringer along a creek bed.

Our dogs, acquainted the night before, set off like old friends and got to work.

Here's a little glen in the woods where we found the remains of a wood duck, caught likely by a fox or bobcat, judging from the crude clumps of pulled breast feathers. Both predators are common on the property.

Although the weather was perfect (cool, damp, overcast) and the woods made right, it was half an hour or so before the dogs got excited.

A little further on, a ground-feeding grey squirrel flushed almost at our feet and barely beat the gamut of dogs to the nearest tree.

At the risk of sensationalizing the last exciting moments of a squirrel's life, you can find a short video here, complete with confused hunters yelling, dogs yodelling, squirrels suddenly timbering in twos and threes and many shots fired. Or you can just view the result, Edward holding Henry's next squirrel stew in raw form.

Many thanks to Gregg and Soo for their astounding hospitality, both in setting up this hunt and hosting our visit. Henry will agree that neither of us is accustomed to such catering on a hunting trip. ...Soo, yes, another cup would be great. Oh, and some more sausage?

We hauled Helga the Aziat out to a remote sheep ranch today. She joins up with her sister and one of her brothers on the ranch, in wolf country. It's always hard to part with an animal you make a connection with, but it's always good to think about the wild adventures they are about to have, and how much fun it will be for them. Of course, I got to visit with Vega, the sister, today, which was a bonus.

Anyway, the journey, about an hour back toward the Wind River Mountains, was pleasant, and we flushed hundreds of sage grouse off their wintering grounds. The photo above shows a very small portion of the grouse that took to the air. It was almost 30 degrees, the snow is not deep, and the grouse numbers were impressive. My target date for visiting the sage grouse breeding grounds, called "leks," is April 1, so I'm wondering if the mild weather might make breeding season peak a little earlier than usual. The grouse that we flushed today were within a mile of a lek where I counted about 400 birds last year.

A little further down the road, I saw this little face watching us from the end of a culvert.



Once I disrupted this red fox, it had no intention of sticking around. At first it took cover in the culvert, but then decided to race across the snow. As I was leaving, I looked back to see it sitting in the road, looking back at me.



Yesterday, Jim and I headed to the grocery stores in town (misery loves company, so the two of us is a requirement) and saw this young bald, perched on a fence post along the highway. It was waiting for a chance to feed on a road-killed mule deer. A very mangy, three-legged coyote fled the scene when we arrived. I took some photos of the thing, but I'll spare you. Mange is not pretty, and it's been hitting our coyote populations and wolf packs more and more in the last few years. Nature's population control, eh?

Labels: rural life

Anywhere it wants, of course.

Labels: Dogs, rural life

Black-capped chickadee.

How can anyone hate cilantro?

This jaguar was captured "by accident" southwest of Tucson this week by biologists studying bear and mountain lion populations. He was fitted with a tracking collar and released. Beautiful animal!

I remembered that we had posted on the subject of the jaguars' reoccupation of southern Arizona previously, but until reviewing these had forgotten that one of them dealt with a controversial plan to purposefully trap, collar and track one of the critters.

Makes you wonder how "accidental" this really was, doesn't it?

Laura Niven's colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany report they have reconstructed 63 percent of the Neanderthal genome using DNA retrieved from six Neanderthals. Ethical problems aside, once the work is complete, some experts are now convinced it would be possible to bring a Neanderthal to life.

I suggest we start with something like a mammoth first.

A performance artist spends a year in a cell doing nothing. Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.

Fascinating post by an old friend of this blog, Darren Naish. I recently noticed that the NY Times Science Page has been regularly linking to his Tetrapod Zoology giving him well-deserved exposure.

This NYT article marking what would have been author Wallace Stegner's 100th birthday bears the apt title of "Stegner's Complaint." It's a sad story that the legacy of a writer of his stature is inextricably linked with his neglect by the New York literary establishment. The concept of "regional" writers is something we've talked about a lot on this blog, maybe this marks another opportunity to continue that discussion.

I have to give the Times credit for running this, but choked on this paragraph:

"The fact that a writer of Stegner’s stature felt ghettoized with the dreaded tag of 'regional author' raises the question of whether our national literature is too tightly controlled by the so-called cultural elite – those people who talk to each other in some mythic Manhattan echo chamber."

My immediate reactions were - "What do you mean mythic?" and "Ya think?"

We're in the midst of a vast revolution in literature and media and it's obvious that many of the traditional gate-keepers to art are being swept away. Hopefully this sort of discussion will sound rather quaint 30 years from now.

I was finally able to grab a shot of one of these amazing looking birds.

Nanny state alert: in Belmont, CA it's now illegal to smoke in your own home.

The trials and tribulations of an LA area coyote trapper.

A delicious sounding recipe for braised rabbit.

According to this piece, self-publishers flourish. Money quote: "The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them."

Vanity, vanity: baby boomers hate being called grandma and grandpa. Well, we do have a friend who insists her grandchildren call her "Mimi". Don't trust anyone over, uh, 70.

Couldn't have made this one up: 1,800 pounds of pot found in lawn statues .

The Hudson Valley hosts bald eagles and their fans.

The spread of second-growth tropical forests complicates the environmental debate. You'd think this was a shred of good news, but some don't act like it.

Carnigans rule!

Tail thieves are plaguing my horse-owning neighbors over in Elbert County. They used to hang people for stealing the whole horse, didn't they?

I don't know about you, but I'll sleep better at night knowing that West Hollywood is cracking down on rogue hot dog vendors!

The LA Times reports that a major deposit of Pleistocene fossils has been uncovered during excavations for construction of a new parking structure for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The site is conveniently near the Page Museum at the famous La Brea Tar Pits, which will be taking possession of the fossils.

According to the article the paleontologists have found 16 separate stratigraphic units representing different depositional episodes and fossils identified so far include a nearly complete Columbian mammoth and a horse. Though near the La Brea Tar Pits, the deposit is in a much sandier matrix, making it easier to work in than the thicker asphaltum. It's estimated to be the same age as the tar pits, 10 to 40,000 years ago, but there hasn't been time to perform any dating on these specimens yet.

I've cooperated on projects in the past with the project director, Robin Turner of ArchaeoPaleo Resource Management, who's very sharp.

Click through the slide show, which has some great shots.

If you ever are in LA and have any interest in natural history, I urge you to go to the Page Museum, which is just an unbelievable place.

We had to do some cattle work in the corrals today, so Rena (the Akbash dog) and Roo (the burro adopted off the range in Nevada), got together to entertain each other. They are both almost two years old, and are matched in temperament.

Labels: Dogs, rural life

Craig Childs has an extended meditation in the LA Times on the significance of the Chaco Canyon find I posted about earlier in the week. Childs' popular book on the Anasazi, House of Rain, is well worth the read.

And while you're at it, go take a look at Peculiar's very cool picture of a parrot petroglyph near Santa Fe.

Late every afternoon, we feed big bales of alfalfa hay to our sheep and cows, which live in the same large meadow pasture together at this time of year, along with the burros and a guardian dog. As we drive to the hay stackyard in the noisy flatbed feedtruck, we watch the moose clear the fence to get out of the way before we get there, and we let Rena the Akbash juvenile out to chase the jackrabbits and cottontails down the drive and through the corrals.



We usually have mule deer or pronghorn antelope hanging out in the brush in the pasture, and because the pasture is adjacent to the riverbottom, plenty of birds, including bald eagles (even though the river is frozen). The magpies that hang out at the stackyard are fat from eating guard dog food every day.

Every few days, when we finish feeding, we stop the truck in the lane at the bottom of the hill, in the tall brush. Jim gets back out of the truck and cleans all the excess hay off the flatbed, providing a treat for the bunnies, which in this spot even includes those tiny pika-like pygmy rabbits. The next day, we usually get to spot what’s been enjoying the treat.

Today we noticed we were being watched. Perhaps instead of simply providing a treat for bunnies, we’re providing bait for prey of this great horned owl.



Regardless, Rena loves watching to see what’s chewing on the spot of hay in the lane , and we let her out so she can make her run, flushing rabbits and bunnies as she goes. She gets back in the cab of the truck with us smelling like sagebrush, panting and smiling, when we turn for home. Always a nice way to end a day.

Labels: Ranching

Nanny state alert: New York City declares war on salt.

Great pictures of nanodreadlocks and fossil poop in case you missed them. And that's not just any fossil poop, that's moa poop!

A fascinating piece in the WaPo - 30 years ago a fellow bought (for a song!) an antique cabinet that turns out to have belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace. It's filled with treasures!

Just because you know a lot about art, doesn't mean you know a lot about animals.

Not sure what to make of this one: 'Pre-historic Viagra' found in Siberian mammoth DNA could boost your sex life and let you live longer . Nicholas Wade, call your office!

I just wanted to direct you over to an interesting post by Chas on Cubism and the origins of modern military camouflage.

I want to thank Isaac Nichols, my neighbor and proprietor of Another Falconry Blog, and his colleagues of the Colorado Hawking Club for letting Connie and me come along with them on New Year's Day. Though I've been hanging out with this crowd for the last three years or so, this was my first time out to watch the birds hunt.

We met at an office park outside of Boulder, and got set up to let three female Harris hawks (Roxane, Lolita and MJ) go to work.

The plan was for us beaters to scare cottontails out of the bushes so the hawks could get after them.

As you can see in these pictures, the hawks spent most of the time perched on light standards, roofs or signs waiting for us to do our job so they could do theirs.

And it was look out when the rabbits broke out.


Success!

Isaac's kestrel, Dulcinea, didn't fly that day and I regret that I didn't get a chance to get her picture. One of the other folks brought this merlin along, who we were told is almost ready to hunt.

This young lady is new to the falconry business, but was an enthusiastic participant.

After spending a few hours at this, I can see why you all are addicted. Again thanks to Isaac and big congratulations to him on his new baby daughter!

I have the pleasure of living with livestock guardian dogs. Ours is a working sheep and cattle ranch, so our dogs live with the sheep, but I generally raise a litter a year, so that means I am often living with puppies and socializing them to humans, buildings, etc. I raise the pups for other sheep producers in this region because our setup allows the pups to really bond well with young lambs, have their first predator encounters while they are young, and get big enough here before they go on the migratory sheep trail.

I team up with a friend who owns a large migratory range sheep outfit and needs to keep about 20-24 guard dogs guarding his herds at any one time. The toughest stud dogs win breeding rights to females, although every now and then we hand-pick pairings and move the pair to my place so they can be undisturbed. Once the female is pregnant, the male goes back to the sheep trail, while the female hangs out with my sheep, taking it easy. It’s guard dog vacation. The dogs are challenged by coyotes every day (and now and then a mountain lion, bear or wolf) but we have dead coyotes in our sheep pastures on a regular basis. We call coyote and red fox carcasses “puppy chewies” because they are scattered around puppy territory every summer. Most pups get their first ass-whipping, which makes them mad enough to make their first kill, before they lose their puppy teeth. From then on, they are pups with a mission.



We mostly raise Anatolians and Akbash, both Turkish breeds we love – we’ve even bred and raised the Kangal and Karabash types. We started with Great Pyrenees, but needed a more aggressive guardian breed here in western Wyoming, thus the move to Turkish breeds. The Turkish breeds don’t just hold the predator back from entering the sheep herd, but will run coyotes down and kill them.

My current puppies are 10-month olds from a breed we call Aziats. The dogs are officially Central Asian Ovtcharka or Central Asian Shepherds. In the countries of origin, the dogs are also called Alabai, Tobet, Sage Koochi, Sage Dahmarda, Aryan Dog, etc. Our pups are about 100 pounds currently, and still growing, so we’re betting they get in the 160-pound range, much larger than our other livestock guardian breeds.



Last summer, we purchased four Aziat pups – two for my migratory sheep buddy, and two for our ranch flock. We were told their pedigree six generations back by the breeder: In the early 1990's, an adult male was imported from Turkmenia to Russia and bred there to the dam, which was imported from Tajikistan (purchased as a pup from herder). A few years later, these dogs, with some of their progeny, were imported to the United States. The adult male involved in this story, Gjock, was tried as a fighting dog in Turkmenia, but apparently did not show much success.

The reason we agreed to try these dogs here in Wyoming is because they have been very successful in guarding sheep from wolves in other regions of the world. We’ve lost count, but we know six to eight of the livestock guard dog pups I’ve raised here on the ranch and then sent with other western producers ended up getting killed by wolves. We’ll see how well the Aziats work here.

The photos show the Aziats: Rant (the runt of the Aziat litter) with his sister Helga (dark face mask); as they play with the all-white Akbash, Rena (the runt of her litter two years ago).

Labels: Dogs, Ranching

Adolph Murie described golden eagles harassing bears in Alaska as they swooped and dive-bombed the bruins. This type of action has been viewed by naturalists on numerous occasions, with the consensus being that the eagles were either playing or curious, or simply hanging out waiting for the bears to take down prey that could be scavenged.

But a few recent observations have provided an entirely new view of the relationship between golden eagles and bears. In April 2004, a Norwegian research team was watching a female brown bear with three cubs as they moved and foraged on an open slope. One of the cubs was smaller and slower than the other two, and repeatedly fell behind enough that mama had to turn back to retrieve the straggler.

Once again the smallest bear cub fell behind, and as the researchers watched, a golden eagle glided out of the clouds and grabbed the cub with both feet, lifting it into the air, as it struggled and cried. The mother bear’s rushing charge was too late to save the cub. The eagle flew over the research team as they watched through binoculars with the captured cub “struggling, its feet and head waving from side to side as it vocalized loudly. The eagle, carrying the cub, gained altitude and was lost from view when it flew into the clouds …” The team could hear the cub crying for several more minutes, suggesting the eagle landed with the cub. The team could not find the cub carcass.

This incident raises the question of how often eagles predate bears. The researchers posed the question to the international bear community and learned of just a few other occasions. Several observed incidents in Slovakia in 2005 involved an eagle harassing bears (either small bears or sows with cubs) enough the bruins ran for the cover of trees, dodging and evading as they retreated. In addition, a brown bear cub recovered from the Italian Alps in 2003 was determined to have been killed by an eagle.

In the 1950s, a Canadian naturalist described an incident involving a large eagle carrying a black bear cub overhead, before dropping it onto a rocky lakeshore, where it landed with a thump. The eagle watched it from above before retrieving the carcass and carrying it to a nest. In 2002, fragments of a yearling brown bear skull were found in an eagle nest in Poland.

The authors of a recent article on eagle predation on bears conclude: “Predation on bear cubs by eagles might be more common than it appears from these few observations because the opportunities for direct observations by humans are very limited.” Even if it only happens every now and then, it’s fascinating subject matter.

The article is in the new issue of the journal Ursus, but can be read in its entirety at BioOne.

Labels: eagles, Predators

From the AP this morning. Maybe you saw it?

VIENNA, Va. – Thomas Shepler, a hand surgeon, shot a hawk to death in his backyard when he said the bird was eyeing a young squirrel that he and his wife had helped raise.

Shepler, 65, said the hawk had previously killed an adult squirrel near his suburban Washington home in Vienna. When the doctor tried to chase away the bird over the weekend by yelling and throwing a crowbar at it, the hawk didn't leave the area.

So Shepler got a shotgun and killed it.

A police officer heard the shot Saturday and Shepler was arrested. He was charged with discharging a firearm in public and cruelty to animals.

Shepler says he cares about animals and is feeling a lot of anxiety and embarrassment over the shooting.

The good doctor might feel even more anxious if they bring Federal migratory bird charges against him...!

But I'm just curious about this guy. What do his actions suggest about him?

Here's a man educated about as well our civilization can manage it, a qualified scientist who is doubtless also a skillful artisan. Yet he admits to throwing a crowbar at a hawk to rid his neighborhood of its menace. Somehow that strikes me as even stranger than shooting it... Was the crowbar just the nearest thing at hand? Or did he think it would make an especially effective missile and go retrieve the crowbar from its peg in the garage?

Whatever the case, he ultimately shoots the hawk for allegedly "eyeing" his pet squirrel. If it were my story, I would at least have the hawk "vigorously chasing" my pet squirrel as I explained why I had to kill it.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this. Maybe the guy's wife wouldn't settle for anything less than extreme prejudice in addressing her concerns about the hawk. ("Alright, alright--I'll take care of it!") I can attest there's little a husband won't do to make Momma happy.

But what if this was his idea alone? What if it seemed the rational and right thing for a well educated suburban man to do, given the circumstance? How weird is that?

The choice of criminal charges against him is another issue entirely, weirder still.

Pygmy nuthatch. We've had a pair hanging around the last week or so. Some mountain chickadees have just showed back up as well.

USA Today reports on a public opinion poll that finds almost half of all Americans would rather be living somewhere else. The most popular pick of where they would like to move - Denver. I don't know if this is good news.

Archaeologists spend lots of time studying (or trying to study) prehistoric trade. One of the first things we do when assessing the artifacts from a site is to try to identify the "exotic" materials that must have been traded in or carried in from out of the area.

We are operating under a sizable handicap however, in that we are usually dealing only with the durable materials that have survived. We can tell you all sorts of things about stone tool materials or ceramics that have been traded all over North America - like obsidian from near Yellowstone, Wyoming that has been found in sites in Ohio. But most of us are tormented by the fact that we are missing most of the picture and can only guess at the trade in furs, feathers, cloth, foodstuffs, etc. that was also going on.

The prehistoric Southwest is a case in point. We've known for about a century now that the prehistoric cultures there (Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon) carried on a lively trade with the high Mesoamerican cultures of Central Mexico. Large quantities of obsidian and turquoise from mines in New Mexico and Arizona have been found in the Mexico City area. Tons of marine shell from the Sea of Cortez and the Gulf of Mexico has been found in Southwestern sites, both as finished jewelry and raw material for jewelry manufacture. The Hohokam were especially sophisticated shell jewelry makers. The Southwestern cultures had no metal-working knowledge, so the small number of copper bells found in some Arizona sites were traded up from Mexico.

As to the perishable goods involved in this trade, the dry climate of the Southwest has preserved some of those, so have a little idea of what went on. Items made of rubber, obviously from Central America, have been found in Hohokam sites. Most of these were rubber balls presumably associated with a variant of the prehistoric Mesoamerican ball game. The game was sort of a hybrid of soccer and basketball with the object of shooting a rubber ball through a vertical stone ring. Ball courts are prominent features in Mesoamerican sites and what are thought to be ball courts have been seen in Hohokam sites.

It is also apparent that brightly colored parrot and macaw feathers as well as live birds were traded from Mexico north to the Southwest. I've been struggling to find a picture of a beautiful macaw feather cape that was found in a dry cave in Arizona. I've had to make do with the parrot petroglyph from the Albuquerque area that I pasted in at the top.

An article in last week's Denver Post (the NYT and LAT also picked it up) adds more to the story. An archaeologist from the University of New Mexico worked with a chemist from Hershy, PA to test residues from the interiors of pots excavated from the site of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Tests found traces of theobromine, the active ingredient in cacao, in the residues. Cacao beans, used to make chocolate, come from Central Americam, meaing that this foodstuff was traded to the Southwest prior to AD 1000.

This is exciting on a number of fronts. Cacao was a prized commodity in Mesoamerica with many ceremonial uses and cacao beans served as a form of currency there. Chaco Canyon was the cultural and political center of the Anasazi Southwest from around AD 900 - 1150 and Pueblo Bonito was one of a number of big sites located there. It makes great sense that the cacao residue was found on prized ceramics in a ceremonial structure in the prehistoric "capital" of the Anasazi.

Walter Hingley sent in a Canadian article on the newly- discovered giant snake Titanoboa cerrojohnensis. He was swiftly followed by Reid, who sent this NYT link (Peculiar commented "Leave it to today's media to tie it immediately to global warming, though. I guess 42-foot snakes aren't interesting if they don't relate to Obama.")

Best treatment here, with photos of the Titanoboa vertebra beside one from a "little" anaconda.

Labels: Snakes

Prairie Mary has just written a post that mentions us most favorably. I'm blushing. As we try to see through the fog to what will happen in publishing, we need such thought.

BTW Penelope Reedy once printed my essay- with- recipe "Private Reconciliation Chile", which also appears in On The Edge of the Wild.

Labels: Blogs, The West, Writing

Walter Hingley found an ad for Querencia- the- book that... well, you have to see it in its entirety:

"Bodio, Stephen: "Querencia" 1990 (1996) Clark City Press, 2nd Printing (1st Hardcover printing), Fine in Fine DJ, Signed by the Author. "Querencia" -- the Zen-like Spanish term means something like the tiny pocket of one's inner life where one is truly at home -- details a decade of life there. Throughout the early pages of his memoir, Stephen finds himself tested by the locals for his knowledge of raptor birds, of snakes, of dogs. When he begins to pass the tests, his transformation is complete, earning him a home, a place in the heart. Querencia offers a fine brief on rural living, alternately reveling in country matters and acknowledging the difficulties involved in such exercises as luring cows home from the mountain wilderness into which they've strayed while steering clear of venomous reptiles and combative bull elk."

I THINK they read the book, but I am sure I have never been tested by the locals, or ever lured a cow...

Labels: Random Weirdness

Dr Hypercube has three great links from English Russia which you should also visit, on reindeer races, Ukrainian Amazons, and wildly implausible airplanes, some of which actually existed (see here.)

The charm of the first is partially linguistic: "People bring their best deers and race, race, race. The looser deers are being eaten then, like, they did not satisfy the expectations, giving the big meals to everyone." The charm of the second is the concept. And the third-- well, you really have to see it!

Labels: Random Weirdness, Russia

Frequent commentor Matt Miller is blogging for The Nature Conservancy. Here he is on falconry. And here are his other posts to date.

Holly at NorCal Cazadora has the first original essay on why we love to hunt that I have seen in a long time. A hint, from a quote from Temple Grandin: "Wild animals don't want a free lunch. The reason they like working for their food is that it feels good."

What satisfaction anyone would get from poaching trophies from a helicopter is beyond me, but some New Russian big shots apparently didn't think that way. Karma is a bitch, huh?

There can be many unintended consequences that shake out from mandatory spay- neuter laws.

Labels: Animal Breeding, Central Asia, Coursing, Dogs

Therese, who knows about and studies such things, left a long comment on the last post that I think deserves to be up front.

"I’ve got some insight into these questions. I apologize in advance for both these long rants, I’m currently working on some species redescriptions and its not progressing as fast as it needs to be.

"So subspecies are a relic of 1950's species concepts. I know they still teach in biology (even university bio) that for something to be a species it has to be reproductively isolated from other similar groups. Conversely then if two groups are able to reproduce they were the same species. The concept of a subspecies was a way for a taxonomist to be like these things mate just fine, but they look different, have different ranges, etc. Since biological species concept has gone the way of the dinosaurs, in the real world we now operate under about 20 different species concepts and subspecies as such are no longer necessary. Infact what most people think of as subspecies are no more than races. May sound like a wording difference but the two are not even remotely the same. Subspecies, as a taxonomic unit, implies a monophyletic grouping while a race does not. There have been some interesting papers looking at subspecies in birds and in some papers up to 97% of the recognized subspecies looked at are not monophyletic. Most of us these days ask a series of questions before describing a new species or revising old ones. The two I ask as a follower of the phylogenetic species concept are 1) is the group diagnosably different and 2) is it following its own evolutionary path. Question 1 means I need to be able to look at a specimen and say this belongs to morphgroup x. Not based on range, not based on behavior, based on actual morphological/molecular evidence. Question 2 determines if the group is monophyletic or not. If the group is in question meets the 2 criteria it’s a valid species. The fact that its able to interbreed with morphgroup y (say in captivity or in hybrid zones) doesn’t mean anything. Since those incidents are rare they don’t affect the overall evolutionary path of the two species. However if these events become common- say 2 groups of birds that look a bit different but have massive range overlap and commonly interbreed the evolutionary path of the two groups is intertwined and they are not monophyletic in respect to each other. In this instance there is a single valid species. If you like splitting things you can have a few races- group 1 and group 2- but because the two groups arnt monophyletic they aren’t an actual taxonomic unit.

"As a side note a number of the new “insert large mammal/bird” here discoveries announced are elevations of old subspecies as the groups are being revised using modern phylogenetic theory. The Bornean Clouded Leopard (described in 1823 as a subspecies of Clouded leopard) comes to mind- read the Yahoo news story (or any other paper) and they conveniently neglect to mention that detail, after all the headline: Bornean Clouded Leopard now a species 200 years after discovery doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?

"As far as reintroductions go I tend to like the peregrine approach used by the p-fund in parts of the US. Use birds from across the entire range of the species and let the best genes win. Overtime the animal will either resemble the original animal (if that morphology is still the best for the environment) or it will create a new morphology to reflect what is now the best. In general reintroductions/restorations are sort of silly. People hate to hear it but landscapes aren’t static, they aren’t naturally so why are we trying to make them static now. I have no problem with reintroductions where there is a single or small group of known causes for the extinction event (peregrine and eggshell thinning comes to mind) but when the reality of the situation is the bird was on its way out anyway, it’s right on the edge of its range to start with, throwing a few million dollars at the problem isn’t going to fix it and that money could have been better spent on habitat protection for other things. Extinction is a natural event and is not uniformly bad. Take prairie chickens for example. I’ve been involved with various aspects of the Attwater’s prairie chicken for about 6 years now- raising birds for release,ooking at insect population at APCNWR, and that sort of thing. APCs are the southern most grouse species period. Grouse are an northern bird, the fact that a group living literally at the edge of where a grouse can survive is basically extinct isn’t surprising. But it makes people feel bad because they look cool and habitat loss is partially to blame so they throw money at it. Large sums of money at it. Hey its paid my salary for a while so I’m a hypocrite but whatever. Interestingly enough the northern populations are also doing pretty badly in some areas mainly due to habitat loss and there are some projects trying to keep numbers up. Only one problem- if you’d been in those areas 250 years ago there were no prairie chickens- they moved in as European settlers cleared forests for farming. So what point in history are we picking as “ideal”? "

I believe Moro said something like the last line in her comment.

Labels: Evolution

I have an interest in diverse life forms, and when I become interested in a species, I sometimes become somewhat obsessed, trying to learn all that I can - I want to know more, and more. The result is that no matter how much I learn, I am always humbled by how little we as humans actually know and understand about the animals in which we share our environment.

As many of you know, I spent a couple of decades obsessed with learning about our native Rocky Mountain wolf, trying to compile what little recorded history existed for this unique subspecies, and arguing about subspecific distinctions and whether they could/should be based on size distinctions, genetics, behavior, etc.

Living in western Wyoming, I see wild horses often, and started wondering about them as well. Different herds in specific areas have distinct color patterns that reflect the herd sire. Some stud horses tried to defend territories, while others only defended his mares. Jim and I watched a stud horse trying to kill a colt that obviously wasn’t his. Animal behavior is fascinating to watch and I wanted to know more, so I went to the Bureau of Land Management office to start going through the wild horse records, to see what I could learn. What I learned was that the BLM had started capturing studs and moving them around to various places on the range, trying to improve the color patterns of the herds. Nothing scientific, just the personal preferences of agency personnel. Within a few years, I could see the changes. The band of dark bays with thick necks suddenly had appaloosa or paint markings, and white feet. Argh. I quit looking and didn’t want to know any more. Of course, later research reveals that before this pick-a-color and move it around program began, genetic research on the dark horses revealed Spanish Barb origin.

This seems to be a constant pattern with wildlife managers - moving animals around nilly-willy, with little or no concern for the consequences.

Need more Sonoran pronghorn? Here, have some fawns from Wyoming’s pronghorn population. I kid you not - this took place just a few years ago.

Need some wolves in Wyoming? Here, have some from Canada. Bighorn sheep from Wyoming have been transplanted all over the western United States. Different bighorn subspecies (not native to this area) have been transplanted here as well, in hopes that the new subspecies won’t be migratory.

I recently filed an interlibrary loan request for a book about golden eagles and later came upon the obituary of the author. He had taken golden eagle chicks from Scotland and reintroduced them into Kazakhstan. I’m still trying to figure out golden eagle subspecies and where they are located (subject of a future post), only to learn that we’ve muddied that subject as well.

Those who care about primitive and aboriginal dogs and livestock seem to have a better handle on the importance of distinct ecological units than many wildlife managers. Even fisheries professionals are backing away from the old mentality of transplanting sport fish everywhere, regardless of the origin of the transplant and status of native species.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) mandates the conservation of endangered species, and Congress went so far as to define species to include “any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species ...”. Unfortunately, the current standard practiced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is that anything less than a species is entirely “discretionary” when it comes to deserving or qualifying for protection. Our legal system has let the agency get away with all the “discretion” it wants.

I wrote about my concern in the epilogue to my book Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronology of the Animal, the People, and the Politics:

In a 1987 paper in Social Studies of Science entitled “Paradigms
and ferrets,” Tim Clark and Ron Westrum questioned the adequacy
of traditional wildlife management approaches when applied to
endangered species, using the black-footed ferret as a case study.
They used the term “ecology of applied ignorance” to describe
the influence of expectation on perception, which is based
on four concepts:what is expected is what is looked for;
what is looked for is what is seen; what is unexpected is
unobserved; and what is unexpected is unreported.

Clark and Westrum provided specific examples of how each of
these concepts have led to faulty “scientific reality,” which, given
time and additional observation, were corrected. These expectations
are a powerful force, with powerful social effects. Since survival of
an organization is a natural goal for its members, Clark and
Westrum assert, “It is only human for an organization’s scientists
to be more favorable to facts and theories which present it
[the organization] in a positive light.” In addition, an organization’s
stance on an issue can become an anchoring point for future opinion. 

Success in science leads to recognition, which leads to power,
as evidenced by control of access to research sites and funding,
gatekeeping of publications, and even the ability
to determine what is to be considered “scientifically competent.”

“In time what was merely a consensus begins to appear as objective
fact. Critiques of the established view are received with surprise,
incomprehension and ridicule,” according to Clark and Westrum.

“As the establishment becomes larger and more dominant, it can
present its critics as misguided, badly informed or even dishonest.”

Thus, the scientific establishment represents a concentration of
both opinion and power, and if unopposed and not subject to
criticism, can become too self-centered and close-minded
to actually accomplish its objectives, such as preserving
endangered species.

The quest for taxonomic truth in wildlife seems to have been
abandoned, as wildlife management has turned to pursuit of
homogenized species. Cases abound as wildlife managers
move animals around without regard to maintaining the
taxonomic integrity of ecological forms, affecting everything
from numerous fish species and orangutans to pronghorn
antelope and bighorn sheep.

The determination of what constitutes a species, subspecies,
and a distinct population is a critical factor in future
implementation of the ESA. The words of the act are powerful,
including the provision calling for conservation of threatened
and endangered species, including “any subspecies of fish or
wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any
species.” Taxonomic units lower than subspecies
are to be protected, according to the law, including those
“distinct population segments,” which should be reason to
rejoice. But it is not.

... Today, FWS is busy delisting large carnivore populations
that it designates “distinct population segments” — not
because of any real ecological distinction, but because of the
distinctions of jurisdictional lines, including state boundaries.”

Anyone care to weigh in on this subject matter?

Labels: Conservation