Natural World

Ed Park doing what he liked best in the "Good Old Days." Photo by Jim AndersonEd Park, Central Oregon's best outdoor writer, cross-country skier,
runner, and wildlife photographer has gone out among the stars.

Ed
was a gem and an Oregonian through-and-through. He was a graduate of
the grand old "Cow College" (OSU) over in Corvallis, and a student of
Oregon's wildlife treasures. He lived with, studied and wrote a superb
book on our elusive and fun-filled, Northern River Otter, Lontra
canadensis; and for years, was the guts and feathers of the Outdoor
Writers Association of America. As such, he was a prodigious writer for
several outdoor magazines that spanned a time warp from the mid-50s
into this century. Moreover, from the early '90s to when he left us, he
did it with one finger, the result of a terrible stroke in 1991.(Go to
www.owaa.org/legends/legendEdPark.htm, and read the delightful
interview Ed gave not too long ago.)

Cal Elshoff of Bend and Mt. Chickadee of the forest looking each other in the eye. Before you go any further, pick up your indelible pen and mark the
dates of December 14 through January 5, 2009 and write "CBC." Those are
the dates for the 109th Christmas Bird Count, from which
ornithologists, biologists, land managers, habitat scientists and
millions of birders throughout the country glean data and great fun
regarding birds. Can't beat that, no matter what.

During this time,
tens of thousands of volunteers throughout the New World of the
Americas – North, South and points in-between – will take part in a
family birding tradition that has no end of joy and scientific value.

"Mr. Anderson," my caller said last Wednesday afternoon. "I have a
mystery. What in the world is going on with the butterflies? I smashed
a beautiful orange and brown one on my windshield this afternoon - I
didn't think I'd ever see a butterfly fluttering about in November! Is
this the result of global warming, or what?"

That same day, driving
home from Sisters on Highway 20, I had the very same thing happen near
the 8-mile post. It was unavoidable, but it still saddened me. Killing
animals with my motor vehicle is something I try diligently to avoid,
but traveling along at 55 mph on a collision course with a butterfly is
not like avoiding a mule deer or elk. I saw and heard it hit the
windshield and then in a horror of horrors, it caught under my
windshield wiper right in front of my eyes and stuck there all the way
home.

Those of you who keep chickens and other livestock know what joy there
is in talking to them. (Yes, chickens are "livestock," even though the
sheriff doesn't think so when a stray dog kills one of mine.)

"Good
morning, chickies," is my usual greeting. Then I ask them, "How many
eggs are you going to lay for me today?" slyly pointing to the pile of
empty egg cartons I keep close by to remind them to keep their minds on
their business.
I have a few beautiful Buff Orpingtons, a
couple of Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds and handsome Aracanas, the
last of which lays lovely green-shelled eggs. When I greet them in the
morning, they all respond with the usual clucking and chicken grunts
that means "all's well" and "What goodies do you have for us this
morning, James?"

In the 80-plus years I have lived on this grand old planet we call
home, I have come to realize that the world of nature is so complex I
will go out among the stars with only a hint of what's really going on.

Take
bot flies for example. These pestiferous little buggers (pun intended)
make life miserable for any mammal they come into contact with,
especially rodents, livestock and humans. Scientists have placed bot
flies into one big family: Oestroidea (OH-est-ROW-eh-dee-ah). The bot
fly is a "true fly" that is, they belong to the order Diptera, which
means, "with two wings." While all the other billions of insects are
flying around with four wings, flies have only two, and a "balancer"
that gives them the remarkable agility to avoid fly swatters and such.

Snow Geese & MonarchsThis is it, Good People, the time when Mother Nature's Children must
obey the Sun. Whether it be Monarch butterflies, Snow Geese,
hummingbirds, night hawks, plovers, whales or Flammulated Owls, they
can not stop themselves from obeying the Call of the Sun. Even human
Snowbirds traveling south in their gas-guzzling Mini-Winnies must obey
the call of our Sun.

Way back, when most of you were just a gleam in
your daddy's eye – and for some, even before that – I was a
duck-hunter. Yes, I do love to eat mallards and geese. Every
Thanksgiving I would head off for Summer Lake to shoot snow geese, and
Crane Prairie Reservoir for Canada Geese and mallards. (When I
discovered I was killing families of Canada Geese and leaving orphans,
I realized the error of my ways and quit.)
It was the discovery
of Russian bands on snow geese harvested at Summer Lake, however, that
also gave me further insight on the migration of birds. At the same
time, some of the pin-tail ducks I killed were also wearing bands

In these election times, it's all too easy to wave Old Glory; we see a lot of well-meaning folks standing in front of the flag when delivering a political message, or hiding behind it when things go wrong.
Last week, I received an e-mail from my daughter, Kristin, who manages a medical clinic in North Carolina. Most of what that dear girl sends me is fun and games, but every once in a while she smacks me alongside the head with a dose of reality and something to think about. To whit:
Three startling photographs of the largest re-enlistment ceremony ever held on the 4th of July, 2008 at Al Faw Palace, Baghdad, Iraq, with General David Petraeus officiating. This outstanding event was – as far as I can find out – ash-canned by our main-stream media. Even Jim Lehrer (may have) missed it, and that's a surprise. Makes me wonder why… Is there someone "out there" censoring our news…?
I have two USAF sons who are F-16 drivers, and have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of them on the UN "peace-keeping" assignments in Bosnia. At present, my oldest son, a Colonel in the USAF, is serving in Turkey, and his brother is a USAF Reserve Group commander in Florida.

A stranger to Central Oregon, but common to Florida, the American Alligator. You'd think any Oregonian with a grain of sense would wait until
January to fly off to Florida for a week or so but my son, Ross, called
me last March and said, "Pop, for your birthday, I'm going to give you
an all-expense paid week in Florida. Come on down!"
Well, this and
that got in the way for us to make it happen; two things that were
significant. The first being that my wife, Sue, went to work on a
summer-long contract with the National Park Service to do a butterfly
census in Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. The other
being a new job for Ross, who is a Lt. Col. in this man's USAF Reserve.
Sue
finished her contract on Labor Day, and Ross, who started out his
career with the Air Force as an F-16 Instructor Pilot, and whom, like
many service men and women, has done tours in the Middle East, recently
took command of the 482nd Operations Group at Homestead AFB in Florida.

Golden mantle ground squirrel mooching at Crater Lake.A little while back, I went to the defense of our much-maligned
rodent-eating reptilian friend, the Western Rattlesnake. In that piece,
I asked people to be considerate of where they go and how they act
while in rattlesnake country. The same holds true when among rodents.
No
one in their right mind would invite a rattlesnake into their lap to
munch on a rodent, the same holds true for our friendly – sometimes way
too friendly – peanut-eating, Golden Mantle Ground Squirrel,
Spermophilius lateralis.
Rattlesnakes injure and kill people by
biting and injecting venom; ground squirrels kill people by sharing
their fleas that in turn bite people and inject one of the deadliest
diseases to infect humanity: the Black Death. And, so you get the
point, the fleas that carry the disease can be found on several species
of rodents living throughout Central Oregon.

Where’s Big Bird?They were BIG, very big, stood about 12 feet to the top of their wooly head, about as long as a school bus and weighed around six tons. As long as you didn't bother them, they probably wouldn't bother you, if you got one mad, however, you were in a heap of trouble – but I'll bet they tasted good.
I saw a tooth and part of a tusk of one years back when I took a bunch of budding paleontologists on an OMSI fossil-collecting trip up the Columbia River near Arlington. One of the young men, an up-and-coming geologist (now retired), found it in sand and gravel deposited by the Missoula Floods. That tooth was massive, big as a football! Yes, by Jove, you have it: the Wooly Mammoth.
These magnificent early elephants roamed all over this country as the snow and glaciers of the last Ice Age melted, building up sprawling lakes around Millican, Christmas Valley, Fort Rock and Great Basin. Dire wolves and saber-toothed tigers feed on mammoths and ground sloths while cranes and herons that stood twice as big as present day species scavenged leftovers and man was living in his cave training wolf puppies to help him kill mammoths and sloths.