The Urban Pantheist

One of my good zookeeper friends left a year or so ago to become the director of the Quincy Animal Shelter. Yesterday I visited her, and the animals there.
( Read more... )

I went out to dinner with some of the folks that were at the Nocturnal Bug BioBlitz, at a bar I'd never been to, in my new home town. Afterward we were standing outside saying goodbye and one of the gang pointed across the street and said, that's public land over there. She had studied the maps of the town and knew that this unused parcel was not private, and that it might end up being a town woods or park. I said I would go there any time and check it out. Which I did, the next day.

Long story short, it has potential. Mostly it is impassibly choked with poison ivy, but one margin was easy to get at, and had clear evidence of human use. A small wetland was there, with a swampy pond and a dry stream bed. The far side of it abutted some houses, and was being used as a combination dirt bike track and dump.

I found a little group of Indian pipes, white flowers that are parasitic on mycorrhizzae and have no chlorophyll.
( Read more... )

Let's talk about urine, shall we?

( Read more... )

There's been another jailbreak from nature, and this time the culprit is a coyote. Coyotes, once thought to be creatures of the prairie, are American wild dogs that can thrive in almost any kind of terrestrial habitat. One made it all the way to Boston's North End, probably to compare different plates of Meadow Vole Alfredo at various Prince Street Ristorantes. It was scooped up by authorities, who brought it to Tufts Wildlife clinic where it was deemed relatively healthy: not conspicuously rabid or mangy, but possibly hit by a car.

They are going to release it "to the wild" whatever that means. A Coyote found that far into Boston didn't wander there from the Worcester Hills. This guy was a local, and as far as he was concerned, he was in the wild. Nonetheless, the belief that the city is NOT wildlife habitat must be protected at costs, no matter that the wildlife continues to view it as such. He'll be let go someplace woodsy, wondering just what happened.

While it lasts, the article, with a great photograph of the vet students working, is at boston.com:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/01/coyote_captured.html

Thanks to Gribley, for pointing me toward this story!

With apologies to the Crow, my favorite Urban Animal.

( Read more... )