Seasonal Goodbyes

It's time to say goodbye again. Today this little guy (photo taken by my volunteer of an intern) and his companion, both rescued baby otters, leave our rescue & rehabilitation facilities for the Minnesota zoo. Their cries will no longer echo into our offices - something between a bird whistle and a cat scream. And daily we are losing our summer volunteers and interns which more then double our working population in the summer. It's sad seeing them go. They've livened the place up with their enthusiasm and earnestness.

The town is emptying out. By next weekend there won't be an RV to be found anywhere in the state. They're like snow geese, they're all flying south for the winter. I won't miss the RV's to be honest, but with all of the people going the shops and restaurants close down and the docks will become empty and the town looks a little forlorn. The birds are flying south. The fish are spawning. The fireweed is almost finished blooming. Time to buckle down and prep everything for winter.

Dog-Gone Fishing

It's that time of year when I have to put my dog on leash when we go near a salmon stream - and it's the time of year that every stream is a salmon spawning stream. He is, a most accomplished fisher-dog. As a pup he would get so super excited by the thrashing fish that clog the stream that he he would just merrily run around. As he got older though he learned to focus on one fish and chase it down. I don't mind if he gets one but one a week is the limit I'm imposing on him. Any more and I'll have to buy him his own fishing license. He pounces on the fish and then once he has is shakes his big bear head until it's dead. He'll then carry it all the way back to my rig, jump in the back with it, jump back out at our yard, and after leaving it to sit in the grass for about an hour eat it. Which is good - we're a subsistence household I tell him, if he catches it, he's got to eat it. Salmon does wonderful things for his fur and usually he doesn't need a kibble meal for a day or so after feasting on his self caught one. (And the Disreputable Cat would like it known that she would be a good salmon hunter if she was only let outside - at the very least she would be able to snag some of Dog's.)

Necropsy Aromatherapy

Necropsy: "the term for a post-mortem examination performed on an animal. The prefix 'auto-' means 'self', and so autopsy denotes the human species performing a post-mortem examination on one of its own." (from Wikipedia)

Lately, we have been necropsying lots harbor seal stomachs. Native hunters have kindly donated us the stomachs and various organs and guts from seals they have hunted (others are not allowed to hunt seals). These donated tissues are windows into what constitutes a "healthy" seal as they did not die of an illness. All of the other tissues we receive typically come from animals who die a "natural" death which usually means they weren't doing so well.

With the stomachs we are emptying the contents, which we will later clean & identify, weighing them and describing them. We can find out what they are eating and what kind of parasites they have. These animals were shot at differing stages of digestion and sometimes we pull full fish out. Some of them really reek. As we do this work in a quarantined area (to prevent spreading potentially infectious material to healthy captive animals or vulnerable rescue animals) we cannot step out to get a fresh breath of air. When the smell gets too much though we go to aromatherapy which consists of sticking one's nose in the citrus scented Chlorox wipe container and breathing until nausea passes. I am amused by this as I usually find perfumed or scented things objectionable as they set of my hay fever. Luckily, I tolerate citrus smells well. (PS - I am kindly restraining from posting pictures of the said stomachs.)

Invited to Dinner & Tagged

The lovely Orangeblossoms has invited me to dinner. I am honored to be invited among such prestigious guests. Now about those airplane tickets... In addition to the dinner invitation, she tagged me - the first time this has happened to me in blogland. Here are the results.

Breakfast Items That Are Critical To My Happiness: On weekdays Grapenuts cereal with blueberries & skim milk warmed up. On weekends it varies but I like to have a big breakfast every now and then with either pancakes, eggs, and bacon or a breakfast burrito.

People I Would Most Like to Share a Table With (okay, I am limiting this to people not in blogland nor with whom I have shared a table before or the list would go on and on):
George Shaller (a biologist who actually went to grad school with a close friend & mentor of mine)
Marie Currie (a fabulous chemist)
Jimmy Carter (who created most of the National Parks in Alaska)
Teddy Roosevelt (who came up with the National Park system)
Ada Blackjack (an amazing Inupiat, i.e. Eskimo woman who was a lone survivor on a far northern island)
Georg Steller (the naturalist for whom many things have been named - he might be a bit cantankerous but let's hope he'll have stories to tell)
Wangari Maathai (Kenyan activist & the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize)
Monica Turner (a spatial biologist in Wisconsin)
Danny Wright (a composer & musician)
Brian Andreas of Story People (I didn't cheat! It's not a blog)

Rudest Thing Said To Me This Week: Ummm...you know, I can't think of anything this week... but a week before I was volunteering at a marathon and I was trying to keep the RV's off the sidewalk and the race trail. There were several who were patiently waiting but this one guy pulled in the wrong lane and yelled at me that he wouldn't be in the wrong lane if I would just let him into the RV lot despite the fact that there were all these people running past him who would be gone in about 2 minutes. The ironic thing was that there was no space in the lot and he was going to have turn around and leave almost as soon as he came (which he did). And that guy was on vacation! Couldn't spare a minute!

Rudest Thing Done To Me This Week: Drag racing in front of my house (a 15mph zone) while my dog was outside! Oooo - that made me angry.

Jobs That Have Made Me Go, "Huh?" hmmm....amazingly I can't think of it. Usually it's the bosses that have made me go "huh?". Nothing gets under my skin like supervisors who don't look out for their people or who are unable to delegate.

Jobs I Have Had That Concerned and/or Confused My Mother: I think every job I've ever had concerns my parents because they tend to be potentially dangerous, but they are still pleased I do them. As for that though, nobody in my family ever expected me to study and become a scientist...they all thought I'd study English. It was a big surprise to them, which in turn surprised me.

Favorite Curse Words That I Can Use In Front of Children Without Too Much Fear of Repercussion: "You son of a seal pup!" which I got from my father who uses it when he is extremely upset (like having hit his thumb with a hammer). The amusing thing about it is that now, sometimes when I use this curse, it is at actual sons of sea pups...seals and sea lions. Oh, and sometimes I say "Bloody shistomiasis" which is really something to curse about, it being a dreadful water borne disease that affects much of the world. (Nerdy of me, but somehow it's stuck)

Curse Word That I Use Most Frequently After Leaving the Children: Bullshit. I use this mostly when I feel someone is well, bullshitting me, or themselves. Since grad school I have a low bullshit tolerance. I don't usually use it in a mean way, just a statement. However, I'm not much of a curser...if someone offends me I'm likely to get all super polite and sickly sweet but if I stumble very hard into something I might just say "bloody hell" which is, for some reason, very satisfying.

Most Honest Bumper Sticker I've Ever Seen: "I club baby seals" with a club picture for the word. Granted, I didn't exactly appreciate the sentiment but it was honest.
Changes I Would Make If Money Were No Object: To what? To my life or to the world? This is a very large question....hmmm....but I think, if we are just referring to my life, I would run my own research and forget about grant writing and I would probably travel more, and I would donate more money to my pet causes because really, there's not that much I would change.

Favorite Piece of Technology: Well, everything is technology these days right? I'm awfully fond of running hot & cold water (showers & washing machines) but I suppose you meant some sort of electronic gadget ... but I've lived without all of them and I have to say the one that gets me the most excited when I rejoin civilization is the showers.

Oh, and, tagging? If you want to do it, consider yourself tagged. If you do please write that you are in the comment line so we can follow you.

Explaining Thermokarst

Froghair & Sally Forth requested further elaboration on thermokarst. I did reply in the comment section of "The Changing Alaskan Arctic/ Sub-arctic" to them but apparently they wanted more. So, on popular request I will attempt to explain it....

Thermokarst (see picture taken on Bering Island, Russia) is surface topography that results when the ice on top of a surface underlain by permafrost melts creating a hummocky ground surface. Because the surface is underlain by permafrost (esentially frozen ground that never gets heated above 32F [0C]) the water from the melting surface snow and ice has no where to go, i.e. it can't just soak into the ground. So instead it tends to puddle or pond up in lower lying areas. These puddles start to melt the permafrost underneath by acting as an insulating, warming mass. As the permafrost melts the frozen ground depresses as it is consoldiated under the weight of the surface water - this is called thermokarsting. This is how a thermakarst puddle becomes a lake and how they eventually connect to each other.

As the melting of permafrost excelerates with other warming influences (such as it not being as cold for as long of periods to refreeze the permafrost) thermokarsting increases sometiems resulting in large pieces of collapsed ground (you can see pictures of this occuring here: http://www.mines.edu/~mgooseff/web_tkarst/tkarst_proj.html). A friend of mine from grad school, Dr. Katey Walter, has studied another worrying effect of increased thermokarsting - the release of ground methane gas by releasing organic material that was trapped in the permafrost into these thaw lakes (thermokarst lakes). This methane (CH4) is then released into the atmosphere which in turn accelerates global warming even more. In addition, when thermokarsting occurs in forested regions it often leads to boggy landscapes that cannot support trees (and sometimes you get the drunken tree affect - I have pictures of this somewhere but I can't find them at the moment...).

Note: I believe you may find a more comprehensive exlaination of thermokarst in this article by De Schutter: http://ougseurope.org/rockon/surface/thermokarst.asp.

Gloomy Day Luxury

It's been rainy and foggy for days now, the fog hanging so low over the mountains that they disappear and the ocean is shrouded in mist. When it lifts a little, ever so little, the clouds have the appearance of being stuck on the mountains, which, is actually what they are, so laden with moisture they cannot lift themselves over the peaks. It's gotten colder already. No more 60F (16C) degree days and I noticed the other day that it is almost dark at 10pm now. It feels like early autumn.

There is a local chocolatier here. Amazing really that we have such a thing. It is the height of luxury on such a rainy, gloomy day to go and pick out a single chocolate truffle to have with a hot cup of tea. Today I picked out one for each of my interns as well. This is contentment.

What we can do

So I thought that after that last post I should post some resources on what we can do to slow/ control climate change. It may seem like a small drop in the bucket, each of us working on our own behaviors, but I am reminded of my favorite West African saying "If you think you are too small to make a difference, remember what it is like to sleep in a room with a single mosquito."

Girls for Glaciers (http://girlsforglaciers.wordpress.com/) is a blog about two girls trying to change their habits to be more globally friendly. It's an excellent place for those who don't know where to start. For more ideas check out the Environmental Defense webpage (http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/index.cfm?source=banner_search). Here you can find out which machine is the most environmentally friendly before you buy and you can even sign up for weekly email tips. Check out the Global Footprint Network, Advancing the Science of Sustainability (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/) to learn about new technologies working towards a better planet. And finally, don't forget to estimate your global footprint (http://www.earthday.net/Footprint/index.asp) to find out your personal impact on the planet and to help your resolve to do better!