Backcasts archive: Through May 11, 2007
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Bruin in the neighborhood? Grin and bear it
All this bruin was trying to do was look for bare necessities, the simple bear necessities.
To forget about his worries and his strife.
Put more simply, he likely was tired of sitting in the woods.
Indeed, Scripps Howard News Service reports a young black bear was seen last weekend nosing around a bird feeder at the Cherokee Bluff condominium community in Knoxville, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
The bear was probably on the move looking for new habitat, said Wildlife biologist Dave Brandenburg.
"Presumably, he was not looking for a condo," Brandenburg told Jim Balloch of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Too bad. The story would have been so much better if the loner was looking to take up residence — maybe just a one-bedroom, one-bath, furnished, of course, with a chair that's not too big, a bed that's not too soft and porridge that's just right.
Apparently it's all part of a young male bear's built-in wanderlust, when it begins to depart from its first home and seek its own habitat, Brandenburg said. It can travel 50 to 100 miles in search of new living quarters.
These young bachelors are night owls and probably aren't looking for trouble, but to avoid confrontations try to minimize outdoor food sources, including garbage, pet and livestock food and, as you can guess, bird feeders.
Fawn of the dead
As weird and wild a deer tale as we've heard developed this week in Tacoma, Wash., until now known for it commercial freighting by sea and rail; its juxtaposed reputation for being supremely livable, "sexually healthy" (Self magazine) and stressed out; and its distinctively malodorous "Tacoma aroma" created by its paper mills of the 1930s.
Well a new Tacoma odor was discovered Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press, when a dead fawn dressed as an infant was left at the Pantages Theater.
"It's just bizarre," said police spokesman Mark Fulghum, who noted that an officer found the fawn.
We'll say! The newborn deer was outfitted in an infant sleeper and a bib that read, "You think I'm cute? You should see my aunt," said Tom Sayre, a spokesman of The Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County. It was put in a basket and abandoned outside the ornate downtown landmark, the AP reports.
It was unclear how the animal died but the odor indicated it had been dead for awhile, Fulghum said. A Humane Society vet thought it might have been stillborn.
My dad's a shrink and while fawn nor fauna are among his specialties, I'm certain he would have a case-study candidate right here.
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Required reading for all steelheaders
This week's announcement by the feds that the wild populations of Puget Sound and Hood Canal steelhead are now considered threatened can't come as a surprise.
No, folks here in Washington state have been expecting the news for some time.
But now is the time to strive toward ensuring Seattle's metalheads don't become merely a memory. I don't have any immediate answers. I'm no biologist. I'm a writer who can only help bring attention to the sobering story. I can only put my trust in the experts to offer the correct solutions and the National Marine Fisheries Service to properly monitor its latest entry on the federal Endangered Species List.
The steelie is a critically important game fish in these parts, and one would have to consider himself lucky — especially in light of this recent development — to have ever boated or banked this high-drama, tough-warring, sea-run version of the rainbow trout.
Before moving to the Seattle area in 2000, I'd done most of my steelheading as a secondary (read: inadvertent) function to the primary focus of flyfishing for rainbows on annual drift trips down the Deschutes River in north-central Oregon. I'd hooked a couple of the salty brutes but never came close to landing a metalhead.
My fishing career would forever be changed for the much, much better by December 2000, when on an indelible outing to the Skykomish River just northeast of the Emerald City in Sultan, Wash., my first-ever steelie — an 8-pound, two-salt (two years at sea) — was in the boat before I placed a 7:30 wake-up call to my wife.
You can read all about my adventures that fine day in the Seattle Times piece I penned at the time and just dug up from the newspaper's Web archives. (Who knew they'd want to keep that old junk?)
I had finally beaten the elusive and aggressive opponent — and would go on to catch several more Skykomish steelies on cured salmon roe over the years. But I remain a lifelong 0-fer when it comes to landing a steelhead on a fly; I remain hopeful that will someday change … and hopeful my quarry's status will improve.
Yes, writing is a way to bring attention to the Puget Sound steelhead's plight, and the best bit of advice I can give you is to take a few minutes to read Ron Judd's column on the topic that appears in today's Seattle Times.
Judd's approach in "Save the steelhead, save ourselves" is to personalize the issue with a familial backstory of his own, then slingshot to his plea: "Let's for once do what it takes."
He sums up the situation soundly:
I imagine this week's listing of local steelhead as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act is seen as both sad and hopeful by anglers.
Sad, because steelhead numbers have been depleted — mostly by human activity in the foothills streams these fish call home — to levels that not even the current batch of hell-bent-on-destruction feds can ignore. Hopeful because some part of us likes to think maybe it's not too late.
Please give him a read … and get yourself updated on the steelie's sad song.
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Grizzly vs. moose … in the driveway
You've seen similar scenes played out on Discovery Channel, in all its theatrical, HD glory.
A 500-pound grizzly and an adult moose square off in what quickly amounts to a fight to the death for the deer.
Now imagine that big screen of yours actually is the window of your house and this epic tug-of-war is taking place in your driveway.
That's how it went down early Sunday morning outside the home of Gary and Terri Lyon, the Associated Press reports out of Homer, Alaska.
"I saw this wildlife spectacle of a full-grown brown bear on a moose and the moose fighting for its life," Gary Lyon said.
What would you do upon seeing this great Alaskan spectacle?
The Lyons did like any couple would — put their pooch indoors, picked up cameras and filmed the attack … and, of course, eventually posted their video on YouTube.
The battle royal moved its way down the driveway, where the brownie eventually prevailed.
"She tore apart the chest cavity, ripped out the heart and ate it," Gary Lyon said. "It was like she knew that's what kept it alive."
Wildlife authorities were summoned, moved the carcass a half-mile down the road and contacted a charity to harvest the moose meat, according to the AP. But judging by its paw prints the griz is thought to have returned later than evening to feast on the beast.
The Lyons are now locking their doors, trying to avoid a more dangerous confrontation, the AP reports.
"I've lived here for almost 30 years, and I've never had to shoot anything out of defense of property," Gary Lyon said. "It was just doing its own thing that the species has done forever. Unfortunately, it was in our yard."
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Caution: Don't feed the volcano
This ain't no zoo, folks, and there aren't any animals to feed — save for the rats and roaches that scavenge the religious offerings left at the summit of Mount Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii.
And rangers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park are saying enough's enough: Don't feed the volcano.
Each week visitors leave some 45 pounds of offerings at Halemaumau Crater inside the Kilauea Caldera, according to the Associated Press. Items include flowers, bottles, money, incense, candles and crystals, park rangers say.
But it's the food that causes the most headaches.
"The accumulation of rotting food and foliage attracts rats, flies, ants and cockroaches," a park statement said.
One ranger recently found a whole, cooked piglet replete with a papaya, orange and apple in a cardboard box, the park service said. The rotting offerings pose a hazard to the endangered nene goose, the state bird endemic to the islands.
People also burn fake money, which in Chinese culture is meant to aid people in the afterlife. Such fires are illegal, according to the release.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park superintendent Cindy Orlando said efforts must continue to properly preserve the summit area of Kilauea, which has special significance in Hawaiian culture.
Some Hawaiians believe lava is the physical representation of the fire goddess Pele, making the volcano summit sacred, the AP reports.
"We look to our partners and local communities to assist us in communicating the value of resource protection and cultural sensitivity," Orlando said.
Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, has been in continuous eruption since Jan. 3, 1983.
One man gathers another man's ills
Hawaii may not want its cockroaches, but Texas sure does.
The Los Angeles Times reports the Houston Museum of Natural Science hopes to purchase up to 1,000 American cockroaches at 25 cents each from anyone willing to bring in the insects.
"We needed a lot of roaches and didn't have time to collect them all ourselves," Nancy Greig, the museum's curator of entomology, told the Times.
Twice each week before the museum's new insect exhibit opens May 25 contributors can turn their live, healthy roaches into cash.
The curator doesn't think the museum will receive the 1,000 bugs it wants, however. "They're harder to catch than you think," Greig said.
But if we know the fortitude of Texans, we're betting the museum eventually will have to turn away roach rustlers. But it won't be a complete wash for collectors if the facility reaches its critter limit of one grand; they'll get a free pass to the museum in lieu of quarters, according to the Times.
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Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's super … Robop
First we learn of the seemingly unreal story of robotic falcons employed in London to deter problem pigeons, then we discover the all too real tale of famished vultures in Spain attacking livestock.
Strange times with raptors in Europe, I suppose. Hitchcock would have a field day.
OK, so Liverpool — yes, of Beatles fame and more recently selected as next year's European Capital of Culture — is being dragged through the mud by the most lightweight of characters: the pigeon.
Officials have been left red-faced by a plague of pigeons that dines on junk food and pollutes the city center with droppings. Sick of the menace, the city council is investing in mechanical falcons designed to frighten the pest fowl with squawks and flapping wings, according to the Associated Press.
It may sound like just a bunch of wing flapping, but the Liverpool council is quite serious — to the tune of $4,000 apiece for 10 Robops, a k a "robotic bird of prey," of which two already have been installed.
"The key is that we move (the Robops) around, so the pigeons don't get used to them," said council spokeswoman Sarah Langworthy. "It keeps (the pigeons) on their toes."
The city had weighed several earlier options, including introducing live falcons, but ultimately settled on the Robops, the AP reports. It seems to be a worthwhile investment because cleaning teams already spend many hours each day scraping droppings from streets and buildings at a cost of about $320,000 a year, the council said.
While the council has not yet evaluated the Robops' performance, Langworthy was confident they would be an effective solution.
"It's early days, still," she said. "When we get the full force up, they won't know what hit them."
We're wondering if it will instead be the citizens of Liverpool who will know exactly what continues to hit them from overhead.
Now let's cross the channel and fly down to Madrid, where Reuters is reporting that live animals have been attacked, killed and devoured by the kings of carrion: vultures.
Vultures, as we know, prefer to feed on the carcasses of dead animals, but carrion is scarce in modern Spain, according to Reuters, so flocks of the unsightly raptors have taken to killing livestock in northern Spain during recent months.
On one occasion about 100 vultures killed a cow and her newborn calf, a rancher from the Mena Valley said, according to the Spanish government's office in Burgos, quoted by state news agency EFE. Other incidents involving attacks on livestock have been reported.
Fingers crossed these are merely isolated attacks and not something more sinister as the killer vultures acquire a new taste for live prey.
About the author: Brett Pauly spent nearly six years editing and publishing ESPNOutdoors.com before moving on to produce the ESPN.com Sports Travel site.
He is a national award-winning writer and editor with 14 years of experience in the newspaper trade. The Evergreen State of Washington is where he makes his home. Click here to email him.
