Perfect contest for a Willamette Naturalist!

Quoting the Presidential View of Crows

Tomorrow at the Faculty Meeting I plan to share the following quote in reflection before our meeting.

"I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases."
Harry S. Truman

This would be a great talk to attend for all the Willamette Naturalists.

Homesick

The trees are changing color, fiery and vibrant in their blankets of gold and red. The birds are almost gone, and the only ones I see frequently now are ducks and crows. The squirrels are growing fat on nuts to prepare for winter. I saw a raccoon near the Library; it floundered through the Mill Stream as it fled me and my hall mates.

There are raccoons here, and crows, and squirrels, and robins and blue jays and bears and wolves and coyotes.

There are chickens back home.

At night, the clouds take on an eerie red tone. The first time I saw them, I felt as though the sky were about to bleed. It's worse on some nights than others, ranging from the palest of pink to deep, rusty hues. And sometimes there are no clouds, and the sky is clear and dark... but I can rarely see stars. Or perhaps I'm just used to seeing more, used to the darkness of Kauai nights, the clarity of Kauai's skies. There are no red clouds at home. The sky is lit with a thousand stars, and the clouds are white, or gray, or black, depending on the strength of the moon.

I can always hear the ocean back home. Here, I can always hear the trains.

I tried to find similarities for a time: In Oregon, it's green. It rains. It can get pretty damn hot. The people are wonderful. The weather fluctuates. It's cold in the winter. It snows from time to time. There are eagles, and vultures, and other predatory animals. There are big cities. There are mountains, and only one line of coast, and you can't swim in the ocean without a wet suit.

There are trains, and freeways.

There are skyscrapers.

I am not very good at finding similarities.

I woke up one morning to a thick blanket of fog outside my window. I ran out and wandered around in it, smiling in the chill. It was around this time that it finally hit me: Oregon's not like Kauai. But for the next four years at least, Oregon is like home.

For the next four years, Oregon is home. And I might as well get used to it.

Thoughts on Trees

Sept. 28

"Hey, I need a tree climbing buddy. You in?" Erin asks me over Facebook, and I respond with a simple "Hell yeah. You should call me." A few texts and a phone call later, we've set a time- but we change it again later with a couple of messages sent through wireless signals.

As we've decided through our electronic contact, Erin and I meet at 7:45 on Jackson Plaza, armed with our phones and Erin's digital camera. Our first tree is outside 'Smulton': I scramble up it, climbing as high as I dare until I'm more than 20 feet up and Erin looks like a toy beneath me. Up here, I can forget everything: the people, the computers, the phones. All I know are the tree and sky, and my relation to them - if I forget that, plummeting to the ground is a simple matter. I'm not wearing shoes, and I can feel the bark beneath my toes. I can smell the moss, the moist skin of the tree, the animals that dwell here. For a beautiful moment, I'm one with this solitary ecosystem... and then the click of a camera brings me back to reality.

Erin tells me to move into a better position, and I'm happy to do so, laughing as I literally go out on a limb. I climb down soon, and we move on to another tree, this time switching positions: I have the camera, she's in the tree. The sun is setting, and the flash makes her picture look like some sort of deranged zombie, or werewolf creature. She's a wild thing up in that tree, or so it seems to me, blending into the foliage and watching from above. But again, the moment is quickly lost, and she climbs down. We curse the poor quality of her camera and the bad lighting, upset that the zooming makes images blurred and that it's not so nice a machine as that of Carmelle, who has joined us and is now avidly taking pictures of mating squirrels with Erin's camera. The squirrels leave, and Carmelle does too, while Erin and I go on with our hunt for the perfect tree to climb.

We don't really find it. Sure, we climb more trees - one of the best is situated by the Law School, and I snap some pictures of Erin posing on its limbs. We make a full circuit of the campus, passing by the Mill Stream, Westside, Eastside, and multiple school buildings. But there are so many more to climb, and we've only just begun. We wonder if we could, by the end of the semester, climb every tree on campus: would Dave give us access to ladders? Would anyone else be interested?

I see saplings popping up in secluded corners. Some of the trees we've found are still too young to support our weight. In twenty years, how many more trees will there be to climb?

How many of the trees we found today will be gone?

Bring me the Broken and Unwanted

Seeing the museum exhibit a second time, I noticed some more subtle aspects of the artwork. The giant bottles picture is not one clear shot (the same bottle can be found over and over and over and... again). I looked at the materials used to create the large bird-like creatures. I noticed the stream in the mess of unwanted artist's waste (paint brushes, tubes, and other plastic trash). This impressionistic piece inspired me.

The artist's writeup intrigued me more than the other explanations. He spoke of his youth and described people wrapping everything (such as lunches) in newspaper and reusing their resources. At hearing this I felt not only appreciation but also a connection. As a college student, I have a low budget and I want to avoid being wasteful for environmental reasons, so I have taken on some more sustainable habits as of late. I wrap food in some handkerchiefs and hand clean them daily, rather than using paper or plastic. I dry my laundry on a clothes line. I go to Zena farm! I make my artwork out of things that people don't want- such as the broken mirror that someone from my hall tried to throw away. I go looking for make shift canvases. My door has a sign reading "BROKEN THINGS WANTED for artwork".

That painting embodies my lifestyle and mindset: the concern, the creativity, and the mode of expression.

The Wonders Near By

Starting Wednesday afternoon I could not imagine that Dave would actually have us go into the Mill Stream because it was cold outside. I showed up to class wearing jeans and a sweatshirt expecting to simply either stay in the classroom or walk around campus. Then, I saw Dave with all his gear; fish nets and a tank. I knew that it was time to go to the Mill Stream. When we got there, everyone in class, including Dave, hopped into the Mill Stream. Not wanting to go change, I decided to stay on the edge and see what I could find. I did not expect to find anything interesting right next to the edge of the stream, but then I found one fresh water clam, then another, then another. I just kept finding more and more. I picked them up and dropped them into the tank. After a brief amount of time, these clams started adhering to the glass of the tank. I had never seen a clam do that before! Finally, I found a crayfish. It was a small one who had an appendage that appeared to be re-growing because it was smaller than its other claw.

Climbing Trees

Climbing trees is a typical childhood activity that normally does not seem scary. Trees are strong and sturdy, especially the tree that my colloquium class and I climbed on Monday afternoon. This tree had huge branches. I probably could not even wrap my arms around a single branch. Still, I felt that I was going to fall out of the tree. While sliding along the branch so that I would not fall, I noticed that this tree had moss covered bark that with just a single touch would fall off the branch. Soon, Dave told us that this type of tree actually sheds its bark because then it does not have the moss living on its branches.

Twinkle Twinkle Fading Star

As I look up into the night, I see a multitude of shining stars throughout the sky. They are beautiful and yet something seems off about them. I remember the stars at my house (only 30 minutes away from here) being much more bright and stunning. Perhaps this is just a side effect of homesickness manifesting in some type of rosy retrospection. But as I turn my head toward back toward the ground, I see the many street lights glowing brightly and the windows of nearly every dorm room lit up. My house isn't in a city and so I am not used to the level of light pollution that comes with the territory. I wonder if this has gotten worse over the years. When I go home this weekend I think I will take some pictures and night and try to compare them the here at Willamette.

As I walked about in Salem, I heard a noise from above. High up in a nearby maple tree, a squirrel hung upside down expertly chewing at the seeds still attached to the end of the branch. When we climbed the tree, I remember a feeling of uneasiness up in the branches that is not shared by my furry friend. Upon seeing me, he hurriedly scuttled backwards up a branch no thicker than my finger, and watched me suspiciously. I wished that could climb like that squirrel, knowing that it is a ridiculous notion but thinking it just the same. When the squirrel scurried up the branch, a small helicopter seed pod was let loose and sent spinning towards the ground. I remember playing with these as a child and subsequently remember getting their sharp spines lodged in my fingers. I supposed that these were for protection from animals such as squirrels, however their effectiveness seems to have been brought into question. Perhaps this species of squirrel has evolved a way to ignore the spines, or maybe they were never affected by them in the first place. Maybe they learned some clever way of getting around them? Maybe that particular squirrel had had its buried nuts stolen by some other enterprising creature and was forced to gnaw on the uncomfortable spines?

Millstream

We caught crawdads and sculpins in big white nets while squishing clams and mussels between our toes. We shouted as we found new specimens and laughed as we threw them into the aquarium. We even caught a dead crawdad and threw it in with the rest. None of it seemed strange till I was thinking later about how different we perceive animals to ourselves. I definitely feel that it is important to learn about other creatures because then we gain a desire to understand them and help their existence. However, it did seem kind of disconcerting how while gathering information about these creatures, we hardly considered their well-being. We played with them like toys. I feel it sheds light on our generally egocentric selves. We seem to care more about animals that appear more like ourselves. While holding a strange spidery looking crawdad, we hardly see any similarities to ourselves so we have no problem throwing it into a glass case. But if it was a mouse we might think a little differently about pulling it apart to understand its digestive system. And if it was a monkey, one of the most similar animal species to humans, most of us would definitely oppose to killing and dissecting it. I'm not saying we should not explore the wilderness and the animals and insects that it houses, I just find people have very strange ways of categorizing what is acceptable in their mind. If we are going to brutally kill a fish, why would we treat a dog any differently? It seems to me that we all are about the same we just have different external shells or containers. Who are we to judge which animals we can do this to and which animals we can't. Is it merely because some animals are vague representations of ourselves and we are uncomfortable treating a symbol of ourselves in such a barbaric way? If so, how can we reconcile our own egocentric tendencies?

Tree

My one foot rested in the crook of one of the tree's branches as my other foot clamored up the trunk scraping off ferns. I reached up into the tree searching for something to pull myself into the higher branches. My hand brushed a fern and I grabbed on, climbing higher. Finally I rested on a branch and thought about being here in this tree. It was a strange sensation to be sitting in a giant organism. I looked around at the class climbing on this one organism. I couldn't decide if I felt parasitic, scrambling around on its body. I felt kind of guilty because I don't really let other creatures hang out on my body. I mean this giant tree is its own entity yet it houses so much more. Not only does it sustain entire ecosystems of moss, ferns, and holly bushes which house countless insects and other creatures; but it can also hold groups of individuals swinging and sitting on its limbs. As far as I know, I don't really do anything like that for other organisms. I feel like it should be a give and take kind of deal.

One tree Two tree Big tree Seuss tree

You like that clever Suess-y title? Me too. I'm pretty proud.

After dinner on Monday (Sep. 27), Cameron and I had the pleasure of showing off all our new tree knowledge to one of our friends - Sarah. We gave the grand tour of all the 3 or 4(!) different types of trees and berries we'd learned the names of (or at least the ones we remembered). We decided to go back and re-climb the Big Tree we'd climbed that day as a class. Not too much of interest happened, so we went over to the Frankenstein/Seuss tree next to the capitol building and ate the roots of a licorice fern. It was awful. To wash out the flavor, we found some gooey little berries in a Taxus (a kind of yew tree) bush thing. They were tasty, and we didn't die from eating them. No explosive diarrhea, either! Success.

Lack of Believers

"We caught fish and crawdads in the Mill Stream!" I tell my friends as I see them after class today.

"No! Where? I didn't think that anything was in the Mill Stream." Multiple people made statements like this. I hope that they were exaggerating with the choice of saying 'anything'. There had to be something in the Mill Stream, like the snails, leeches, and clams.

Our bigger findings were surprising. I thought that crawdads (or something similar) would be upstream in between Rogers and the library, where it's quieter and shadier, so I was surprised at finding them right in the middle of all of the activity. Even thought the stream may be 'artificial', it's the perfect place for finding 'Urban Wilderness' activities.

Trees

Somehow all 14 of us managed to get up into that tree. I kept expecting some part of it to break or crack or at least bend with the weight of 14 college students on its limbs. But it stayed sturdy and solid while we climbed all over it. I thought about what made these branches so sturdy, really it was just a lot of cells stuck together. No part of it is particularly strong, only when all the cells are combined does it make a sturdy branch. It probably seems like I am going to make this a sappy metaphor about community, like I am going to compare those cells to college and how if we all stick together we can do amazing things. Well... I guess I just did, oops.

Dreamcatcher

Monday afternoon the class of heat seeking naturalists once again abandoned the confines of a classroom ventured out across campus in a much appreciated sunny day in Salem. With ladders in hand, Dave led us to Jarrett’s type of tree, some large thick hybrid something or another. We proceeded to get up onto the sturdy branches and just enjoy life for a while about eight feet off the ground. We are taught to be normal people by interesting sayings such as, “being down to earth” or “being grounded”. Sitting in a tree contradicts both those statements and admittedly I didn’t seem normal, nor did I feel like I was in a normal naturalist class. I liked it much better actually. Sure you get a couple odd looks when people walk by but who cares? I’m in a tree! Get on my level! I have inspiring anecdote that is still fresh in my memory and refreshed when I was dangling my legs off the branch I was perched on.

The date or the day of the week I cannot remember, but sometime in the last two weeks or so, my dorm room was graced by the presence of two very unlikely guests. My roommate had seen this pair of girls wandering around Kaneko looking very intrigued by the complex. He gave an acknowledging nod and was quickly rushed and questioned as to what this place was. He explained it is part of Willamette; the pair was still interested and asked if they could see our dorm. Soon thereafter I open the door to two girls clad in what I would call “hippie” clothing and they introduce themselves as Dreamcatcher and Angela. Dreamcatcher moved to Denver from Ireland about a year and a half ago. She worked for a while but became fed up with it all and just started traveling with a very limited supply of cash. Angela is a run away from Detroit after a nasty breakup among other things. She hitchhiked and biked her way out east to Maine and worked on a lobster boat for a couple months. Angela had her fun there but decided to come back west. Managing to score a free, working car along the way, she planned on moving into British Columbia but didn’t have sufficient funds. The unlikely pair met in Seattle where they formulated their current plan to make their way into the California redwoods and settle down in a tree. They are simply homeless drifters with a car and a plan to build a tree house somewhere in the redwoods and survive. Sounds crazy but I love it. I was so pumped on what they had just told my roommate and me that when they asked if they could stop by a class at Willamette the next day, I went online and found them an anthropology class that they said would be fun. I printed them out a map and schedule and after referring them to Bush Park as their sleeping quarters, they went on their merry way. I wish the best to those gals and I am inspired by their spirit of adventure and abandonment of social norms.

SQUIRREL SEX!

I was on my way back to my dorm from eating dinner at Goudy commons, when I spotted Erin and Kaliko taking tree pictures for their blog posts. They invited me to tag along with them and join in on the fun. I didn't have anything else extremely important to get to, so I decided to join.
We had barely gone 10 yards when Kaliko and I noticed something quite odd; there were 2 squirrels that appeared to be running around a tree and fighting...atleast that's what it looked like at first. Upon viewing the squirrels tackling eachother for a while longer we soon realized that there was only one squirrel attacking another. I couldn't help but wonder if the 2 squirrels were quarling over the tree as a means of territory, or if there were some bits of food laying around that we couldn't see. However, when we saw one squirrel mounting the other and flexing its tail, I realized that that was not the case. I stole Erin's camera while climbed down from the tree she had been sitting in and tried to take a picture, but alas, it was too dark and the shutter speed to slow. We watched and lauged at the squirrels as ran around the tree until the male managed to tackle the female down from it and mount her again. Then suddenly, 2 more squirrels popped out of nowhere and started participating in the same act running around the same tree! Something about this tree must have been attracting the squirrel couples to it. It almost looked like a scene kids would see on Looney Toons back in the day; what a sight to see on the way back from dinner.

What's Up? Oh, Wait. That's Right I Am.

Today, Kaliko and I decided to take full advantage of our tree climbing assignment seeing as we may quite possibly never have a legitimate reason to climb tree on campus (fine free) again. Our climbing victims: one between Eaton and Smullin, one near Smullin, one near the Law Library (as shown above), one near Jackson Plaza, two near Mathews, and one near Doney.

All the trees hosted a wide array of epiphytes although a few were more heavily burdened than others. The tree I'm pictured in contained a nice growth of licorice ferns to my left but they are hard to see in the photo.

As a final note Carmelle would have you know that in the process of tree climbing we interrupted squirrel sex. To bad we didn't have any Cheez-Its on hand. We could have used them as a peace offering.

Tree-ific Class

Naturalists in a Tree 18
Originally uploaded by Willamette Biology

Today the Willamette Naturalists pursued a different perspective on natural history by climbing a tree. For more great arboreal images you can go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/willamettebiology/

We are Animals at Home

I watch Kaliko walk along the branch and Andrew hang off of another, and I see people that are completely comfortable in the tree. They are so at home that they could be monkeys that spent their lives swinging from branches. The people that love climbing trees and making tree houses often end up in houses that are made with similar attributes as a tree. There are ladders, lofts, big windows, and places that height-fearing-people would never want to go in a monkey-person's home. I can see Kaliko in her future home full of such things.

Friday night I saw a house on stilts about fifteen feet above a river walking along Broadway Street. The house looked like something out of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It intrigued me because I loved it and feared it at the same time. How could something like that be stable? How could you sleep there? Someone does live there, and someone designed the house intending to live in it. The house looked like the home of a falcon: almost a nest on a cliff where the dwellers could perch and watch the river go by.

And, there are so many other types of people: frog-people who prefer swamp land next to a pond with bugs and tall grass, bear-people with their cave-like homes, and mountain goats with houses perched on rocky hills. We all have these natural habitat tendencies that are squashed by beigeville homes (suburbs with the same house over and over) and dorm rooms that all look alike.

Monday Morning

Rolling out of bed at 7:30 I expected to see blue skies and the sun shining out over the freshly watered grass quad because the weather report, the night before said, that it was going to be an 84 degree high. Sadly, when I opened my blinds all I could see was grey skies because there was heavy fog. The fog was dense and looming over the entire quad. This left me uneasy about what my wardrobe would be for the day. While walking to my Chemistry class in Collins, I looked to my right and saw another huge perfectly spun web hanging on to two branches of a small tree. However, I did not see a spider residing within this fine web. By the time I left my chemistry class, the fog had completely cleared which seems shocking that within an hour you can go from dense fog to absolutely no fog at all. When I came back to my dorm building, there was a wasp flying around the card swipe. This wasp shockingly did not seem worried by my presence, but rather kept flying around the card swipe making it nearly impossible for me to swipe my card.

The web

Across the street from campus, the web stretches right across the Mill Stream. My iPhone cannot capture the image. The spider web is too thin against the backdrop of the running water. I wonder how the spider made such a decision, to take a leap of faith across the rushing rapids below. Did it simply jump from the tree branch and land on the concrete on the other side? Upon closer inspection, I see that it is not one web but two. A second spider sits near the other bank, its web stretching out and weaving with the first one. I wonder if this was an intentional design or some kind of happy accident. I don't think spiders live in any sort of community but perhaps those do. Or maybe, the webs were just blown together by chance. I can't get close enough to glean any details about the spiders except that they are large and, well, spidery. I look down, and much to my amazement, there are three webs connected together, with three content looking spiders sitting in the middle of their respective homes. I wonder where the boundaries of each web lie, and if they had to sign a roommate contract like I did.

Almost Perfect

The Japanese Garden has green ferns, trees, sand, and a beautiful fence surrounding it. I sit on the bench that has a small roof over it. I'm sheltered and comfortable. It's the perfect place to study- almost.

A vent of some sort makes a loud consistent humming nearby. Who planned that? There is an almost perfect sanctuary, but it's not protected from the loud noises of the surrounding buildings. Only a few people come by while I sit. Apparently the place isn't appreciated as much as it should be. That's okay; it's a secret almost-quiet spot.

Roof Ecology

Looking out my window I can see the top of the roof over the porch of Belknap. Over the years, the roof has accumulated gravel and soil on top of it and moss has grown. Scattered around the roof are pine cones and various other debris, either fallen from trees or tossed onto the roof by students. The diversity of the mosses is in fact greater than any I have seen elsewhere on campus. Here is an independent little ecosystem, it will be interesting to see if it develops further over my time here.

Crows in the Theater

Sunday saw me off campus and heading down to Portland to watch Oedipus Rex with my Latin class. I was struck by the blue of the hills as we drove past; apparently I make a rather bad traveling companion because I spend so much time staring out the window and commenting excitedly on everything that passes. Upon reaching Reed College, where the play was being hosted, I noticed two things: one, the great, mulchy and rather untamed-looking river, and two, the crows.

The river was rather beautiful, despite being covered with pale green plants and algae. As I sat waiting for the play to begin, I saw two blue herons swoop down and land within the water. Their dusty blue feathers made a beautiful contrast against the greenish water; it was truly picturesque. I also saw ducks, although they were too far off to identify, and other fisher birds swooping through the trees and down upon their prey.

Oedipus was performed in an outdoor ampitheater, which of course means that nature poked around while the actors went about their business. Nature, which means random wildness, right? Maybe not, in the case of Reed's crows. As we learned in Crow Planet, crows are pretty intelligent birds. Even if I had not known that before, I would have had my suspicions after Sunday. As the character of Oedipus spoke of the cries of birds that would echo through the skies, the crows circled, cawing racorously; when he spoke of the hush that would descend over the city, they sat still. My class and I watched in amazement as the crows volunteered their services as extras within the play. Had they seen it performed often enough to understand their 'cues', or was this truly a miracle of nature? Maybe we'll never know.

As the play wore (and I do mean wore) on into the rather gory ending, enormous dragonflies began to buzz overhead, swooping down and eating insects and generally adding to the eerie setting. They were unlike anything I had seen before: while I am accustomed to beautiful, colorful, fairy-like dragonflies, these were black, with curved abdomens that looked like stingers. I'm not even certain they were dragonflies. They swarmed around our heads, coming far too close for comfort and yet never descending onto our shoulders, although they did occasionally drop their prey onto our unsuspecting laps.

As we drove back to Salem, tired and hungry, I stared out the window and dozed. The sun was setting in a beautiful field of yellow and orange clouds, and as ever I was struck by the majesty that is all around us. We live here, on Earth, in nature. We're so, incredibly lucky. If nothing else, this class has taught me to appreciate that fact: we are lucky. The world is beautiful.

Foggy/Misty Morning

This morning when I woke up I walked outside and immediately noticed the fog that covered the morning sky. I love the fog. Fog, to me, makes everything seem a little more quite or a little more "dead". It makes it seem like there isn't anyone out except you. Maybe because fog seems like it usually occurs in the early morning and no one is ever up. What is the difference between fog and mist anyway? I have heard people say both when talking about the same thing. Are they the same thing? The word mist seems more like it would be a wetter type of fog but not as dense as fog. I looked it up online and it says that fog is more dense. You distinguish mist and fog only by their density. Fog has a visibility of less than one kilometer and mist has a visibility of less than two kilometers but more than one kilometer. However, it doesn't state anywhere that mist is wetter. I never knew this and I randomly got the urge to want to know more. I believe the only reason I did so was because this class has made me more observative and has made me want to know more about the everyday stuff we see in nature but don't really know about.

Bugs!

As I sat on the bench at Bush park, absorbed in the lives of the squirrels I watched, time seemed to zip by and before I knew it the sun was starting the fall behind the trees casting an orange hew into the air. The faded sunlight illuminated the bugs in the air more vividly than I had ever seen before. There were bugs everywhere! Tiny mosquitoes and flies zooming around my head, crane flies patrolling for food, and some bugs that were so small I couldn't tell what there were, I could only see their shifting cloud move amongst the trees. I think I saw a damselfly or two in the mix as well. There were shrill buzzes, low hums, quiet rhythms, and obnoxious squeaks surrounding my bench. But none of these sounds or sight seemed especially unfamiliar, I had just never really paid attention before. We live in a bug metropolis.

Patient Predator

After my physical therapy this morning I came back to my dorm room and sat on my bed. I gazed outside at the top of a tree that is level with my fourth floor balcony. I noticed a few flies circle around and didn't think much of it. Then I noticed there was a leaf that was just dangling in mid air. I went outside to my balcony to check it out. As I examined it further I could tell that it was attached to one web of a spider. I spotted the spider. He was sitting in his web in the tree waiting for something. I recalled seeing the flies flying around and thought that maybe he was waiting for one of the flies to be captured by his trap. I must of startled him because he climbed off his web and onto the branch where he hid behind a leaf for quite some time. I waited a few minutes to see if a fly would fly into his web but it never did and I eventually grew tiresome of waiting. The spider doesn't have the luxury of just walking away like I did because he has to eat. The small arachnid doesn't have the privilege of eating whenever he wants like we do. He has to have patience.

Rippled Reflections

The past few days have taken me on a dizzying series of adventures, and I wish I could recall everything I noted in nature. Perhaps my most important discovery, in my mind at least, was the one Erin enlightened me to. Apparently the water of the Mill Stream is regulated, hence the fluctuating levels; also, ducks are bought and injected into the thing every few years. I cannot express how horribly saddened I was by this discovery. Is there nothing truly 'wild' left on our campus? The stream is shaped, molded, and the water level controlled by humans. I began to eye the campus critically. How much of it was there before, and how much did we landscape to fir our personal taste? The bushes outside Goudy, orange and flaming: were those planted deliberately? Probably. There are trees with nameplates, "In memory of so-and-so" or "In appreciation of such-and-such." Well, fine; if I were to gain some of nature in appreciation for my deeds, I would want a piece that was untouched. Not to say the campus is not lovely; it certainly is, and I'm very fond of it. But... I suppose it truly is an 'urban wilderness', one where humans have quite firmly made our marks as parts of nature.

[/endrant]

The ants go marching

Good news: I made a video!

Bad news: Youtube compressed the hell out of it looks like footage taken during some kind of blurry storm.

But if you like hard to see ants and jaunty harmonica music, check it out.

Also, if you thought you ever got strange looks just standing and starring at something, imagine holding a camera in awkward positions while filming something that is pretty much invisible. Yeah. Actually, I find it rather interesting that despite the fact that these ants live only a stones throw away from Lausanne, I got the impression that no one even knew they existed. Yet, unperturbed by their relative anonymity, the ants continue their endless journey between nest and tree. Actually, the ants split there time going between two different trees that are opposite directions from their nest. These trees are likely their sources of food although it was hard to tell what exactly they were attempting to bring back. A few of them carried insects, in fact there is a part in the video (thats impossible to see but trust me its there) where one ant's catch attempts to escape, causing the ant to tumble over itself. However, many appeared to be returning empty handed. Perhaps whatever they had was too small for me to see.

-My train of thought is momentarily interrupted by an unnervingly large spider slowly creeping across my bookshelf. It manages to stay slightly in the shadows which is doing nothing to help my primal urge to smash straight back to spider hell. I don't like to think of myself as squeamish, and I am not normally one to shy away from animals, but there is something about the spider that gives me, for lack of a better word, the willies. It is nothing bad enough for me to go running out of a room or anything but enough to make me uncomfortable. There was a short story by Ray Bradbury called A Matter of Taste, about astronauts who land on a planet filled with giant telepathic spiders. They are completely harmless, having enjoyed thousands of years of peace, and yet the humans are repulsed by the sight of the very intelligent arachnids. Some are driven mad with fear, other, more open people, are forced to shut their eyes when talking to them. It is an interesting look at humanities inability to let go of superficial differences. Anyway, long story short, they nuke them all.-

Waxed Wing Birds

I was walking in front of Belknap when I noticed a ruffling in a tree. It wasn't a very tall tree and the ruffling was about head height. As soon as I was within five feet of the tree all the birds scrambled out and nearly almost hit me. I wasn't sure if they were the waxed wing birds that we talked about in class but they looked the same and seemed to have the same flight techniques. Once I passed the tree I realized that there was still some scurrying going on. I couldn't see what was making the commotion but my guess was it was either one bird trying to get out of the tree or it was two birds playing around. It is amazing how fast these birds can fly and change direction. I also have probably never seen on of these birds on their own. Are these a type of bird that likes to have company or do they need to stay together for survival purposes?

Slugs again

On my way back to campus today, I happened upon a slug sitting near the edge of the sidewalk. It was sitting there, moving it's head back and forth in a vaguely confused way. I watched as it sat there, contemplating its next move. When I came back an hour later, it was still sitting on the sidewalk, but was on the edge of the grass, and slowly inching forward. I think the slug made the right choice. If only all decisions were so simple. Not that I would want to be a slug. That wouldn't be much fun at all.

Birds. In the house.

Sunday, September 26, 2010, 1:15 PM

The weather is a rainy 60 degrees, rather than the sunny 75 or so it was yesterday. As I was walking around today, I noticed a birdhouse attached to one of the trees outside of Eaton Hall, so I decided to snap a picture.

This got me wondering: who put the birdhouse there, and for what reason? I’ve never really understood the birdhouse as a concept. Birds can, obviously, make their own nests, so why do we feel we need to supply a house for them? And why do we provide birds homes but not, say, raccoons? Where are the faux fox burrows? What is it about birds that makes us humans think they need to be taken care of? They can fly; they can go wherever they want. It’s sort of patronizing of us to think they need our support with a little fake hidey-hole.

But on the flip side…birds are pretty. And I think that’s a pretty good case for putting a house up: so you can see more pretty things drop by.

Just Thinking...

As I sat in one of those white chairs upstream the Mill Race on overcast, drizzling Friday two weeks ago passing the time before a short football practice I just watched the river run. I knew we were supposed to be making natural observations at that time and I just took in my surroundings. Leaves were slowly falling from a tree a little more upstream and making their way down towards my position. I pictured the scene blown up in scale by 100x, what a crazy white water rafting trip that would make if twelve of us climbed onto that giant leaf. It darted around rocks, bounced over more mellow rapids, and finally when it was directly in front of my line of sight, it was pulled under by the current. I watched it underwater, rooting it on to resurface. Eventually it did not that far downstream. I got to thinking that our human nature has the same properties as that leaf. The human spirit is buoyant. In many cases we are pulled underwater, in over our heads in some problem or another. But in a matter of time, our buoyancy pulls us back to the surface again.

Afternoon Delight

9/25/10, Early in the PM

Eugene, OR

Outside my friend’s smaller, crampier, state-schoolier dorm is a tree tall enough for me to see the top of it from my second story perch. Its appearance is that of the dogwood Dave showed to us on Friday. It differs in the sense that is has large pale red berries that are like the wintergreen ones on steroids. I would like to be able to grab a leaf and rip it apart to see if I could see the stretch phloem, but I’m just about to take a nap as a reward for writing one post. Spending the day in Eugene has been great way to start my quest for Oregon-ization, the process of becoming familiar and part of Oregon. I was able to use my bye week from football as a way to get out of Salem for the weekend with some buddies and experience something new. I hope to make trips to new parts of Oregon an activity I engage in often once the season ends. Next visit on the list: see the Pacific for the first time in more than a month.