Moose Dropping & Other Crimes Against Nature
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What role can natural history play in helping us understand the effects of climate change on the North Woods? What responsibility do humans have to try and mitigate damaging effects?
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The most important aspect of the natural history of an organism is how it interacts with other species and the environment throughout its life cycle. We know precious little about that for most species: The life cycles of two species that depend on each other or control each other may become decoupled as they respond in different ways to climate change. This may already be happening with warblers and an insect they prey upon, spruce budworms. Spruce budworm caterpillars are emerging earlier in the spring with warming temperatures, and warblers are no longer able to control their population and prevent them from defoliating spruce and fir.
The most useful thing people can do to learn about or contribute to the scientific study of natural history is to begin keeping notebooks and records on the seasonal and annual changes in things like timing of leaf out, bud burst, flowering, emergence of mammals, turtles, and other animals from winter hibernation, emergence of insects throughout the summer, and arrival and departures of migrating birds, and anything else wherever they live. Such records will be valuable not only in understanding the range of life cycles of different species but also how they will change with global warming.
There are a number of good books on how to keep a field journal, including guidance for drawing illustrations — Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles Roth is one of my favorites. Citizen scientists can share these observations with scientists and other observers by uploading their notes to the USA National Phenology Network. Citizen scientists can also assist natural history museums transcribe museum records on specimens into databases for scientists to study by going to Notes from Nature.
You illustrated the book and teach a biological illustration class at the University of Minnesota. What role can art play in how scientists study the natural world? Biology departments used to require that students learn how make drawings of observations, but in the past several decades this has gone by the wayside. This has been a big mistake. Drawing a specimen or landscape forces you to notice things that you would never notice even by taking carefully written notes.
Many of these observations could be the grist for future research. More importantly, drawing or painting an organism engaged in different activities or from different viewpoints or with different techniques helps keep my mind open to new possibilities and ways of thinking about the world. Was there anything you found in the course of researching and writing this book that surprised you? After over 30 years of living in and researching the North Woods, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of things, but I was surprised by something while writing every chapter. The most important surprise is how much we still have to learn about the North Woods.
A number of years ago I mentioned to a friend we were on the verge of a relatively complete understanding of how the North Woods works. Boy, was I wrong. Naturalists and ecologists often ask questions that most people consider, well, peculiar.
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As we become more urban, many people, especially children, are becoming increasingly estranged from nature. Natural history is the underpinning to conservation, to natural resource management, and to human health and food supply. We need to help people re-engage a sense of delight and wonder in the natural world to address these practical problems.
If the reader lives in the North Woods, I hope this book encourages them to go into the woods and observe things for themselves. If the reader does not live in the North Woods, then the natural history of where they live is the best place to start. When I was in college, there was a popular poster that proclaimed: Want more from John Pastor? Check out the ForewordFriday: We asked our authors: In today's age of slacktivism, has Earth Day become meaningless as a way to make impactful environmental change? How should one celebrate National Jelly Bean Day? The internet suggests guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, making jelly bean jewelry, or, simply, eating lots of jelly beans.
The internet also suggests a number of ways to celebrate Earth Day in my immediate area. All of this—the jelly beans, the festivals, and the signing ceremony—falls under the heading of marketing. The Earth needs good marketing. And so we do, Earth Day, April When Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in , he hoped to promote environmental activism and demonstrations, especially on campuses.
Today, some campuses still have demonstrations against environmental degradation, but these are not as large as they once were.
But I am encouraged by the growth of many environmental and nature organizations since the first Earth Day, such as the Xerces Society for the conservation of rare insects, WildOnes for the establishment of native plant gardens, and many others. Demonstrations on Earth Day may not be as common, but people seem to be putting their energy into actively doing something for and learning about nature and the environment. Nonetheless, the idea of Earth Day as a day to celebrate the wonder of life on our planet home is still worthwhile. So celebrate Earth Day: Given the magnitude of the challenge of climate change, for instance, biking to work one day a week is a pretty minor step toward reducing my carbon footprint.
Similarly, avoiding food waste in my home is only a teeny step toward reducing global agricultural production. These kind of good first steps have some value on their own, but their real value is getting people to be educated and committed to an issue. For a small subset of people, these kind of first steps lead to bigger, more significant steps.
Or they may lead to political support for broader legal or policy changes that do have a meaningful environmental impact. This holiday season, give the gift of an Island Press book. With a catalog of more than 1, books, we guarantee there's something for everyone on your shopping list. Water is for Fighting Over Longtime journalist John Fleck will give the outdoors lover in your life a new appreciation for this amazing river and the people who work to conserve it.
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Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man by Jason Mark Do you constantly find your friend waxing poetic about their camping tales and their intimate connection to the peaceful, yet mysterious powers of nature? What Should a Clever Moose Eat?: Looking for meaning in another titanium French press coffeemaker for the camp stove? What Should a Clever Moose Eat leaves the technogadgets behind and reminds us that all we really need to bring to the woods when we venture out is a curious mind and the ability to ask a good question about the natural world around us.
Such as, why do leaves die? And, how are blowflies important to skunk cabbage? A few quality hours among its pages will equip your outdoor enthusiast to venture forth and view nature with new appreciation, whether in the North Woods with ecologist John Pastor or a natural ecosystem closer to home. Give the gift of fun, entertaining basic understanding of what is, undeniably and not up for subjective debate, scientific fact! Your friends and family will discover how chemicals are changing life on earth and how we can protect it.
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Stressed-out environmental advocates will appreciate Prospects for Resilience: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz The cat lovers in your life will lose themselves in An Indomitable Beast , an illuminating story about the journey of the jaguar. This is the perfect book for any of your feline loving friends, whether they want to pursue adventure with the big cats of the wild, or stay home with a book and cup of tea. The lush photographs of Wild by Design, and inspirational advice on cultivating landscapes in tune with nature, transport readers to spectacular parks, gardens, and far-flung forests.
This book is guaranteed to be well-thumbed and underlined by the time spring planting season arrives! Common Ground on Hostile Turf: This book gives lessons learned on setting down at the table with the most diverse set of players and the journey they take to find common grounds and results. If your holiday dinner needs some mediation, look to the advice of author Lucy Moore. The Past and Future City: Murphy When it comes to the the future of our cities, the secret to urban revival lies in our past.
With passion and expert insight, this book shows how historic spaces explain our past and serve as the foundation of our future. Red, ripe berries and fruits, such as those of mountain ash, cranberries, hawthorns, and apples, are a sure sign of a bountiful harvest at the end of summer, but after a few freezes in autumn these fruits can become deadly to wildlife. The cells of the fruits are broken open as ice crystals form, then melt, then form and melt again during cycles of freezing and thawing.
The glucose and other sugars they contain are then released to natural populations of yeasts on the fruit surfaces, which ferment the sugars to ethanol, much like what happens to grapes when they are first crushed to make wine. Recently, there have been several reports of moose that apparently became drunk after eating too many fermented crabapples in Alaska and piles of fermenting apples in Sweden. Moose, on the other hand, weigh between and pounds, so it would take a lot of hard cider to get them inebriated.
Petter Kjellander, Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, thinks that it is not possible for a moose to eat enough fermented fruit in one sitting to make it drunk. On the other hand, perhaps some moose, like some people, are genetically disposed to an intolerance of alcohol, and so only a small amount might get them intoxicated. The answer to this problem will likely tell us something new about the physiology of moose.
We have peculiar tastes in foods when we sit at a bar too long — witness the varieties of pickled things in typical bar food. Might a drunken moose also have the same tastes?
Moose Dropping and Other Crimes Against Nature: Funny Stories from Alaska
After the yeasts create the ethanol, bacteria turn some of it into acetic acid, otherwise known as vinegar, so apples, crabapples, and berries become pickled while they ferment. Perhaps the combination of fermented and pickled apples stimulates the moose to keep eating far beyond what is good for it. Salted nuts, chips, and popcorn are ubiquitous wherever alcohol is served, whether in bars or at a Super Bowl party.
Do moose have a craving for salt when eating fermented fruit and if so, where can a moose get it? Gary Belovsky and Peter Jordan found that aquatic plants are a major source of salt for many moose in summer and perhaps in early fall when fruits in the uplands are starting to ferment.
But once the ponds freeze in late fall, aquatic plants are no longer available. Then, moose are often seen licking the gravel on the sides of roads, presumably for the salt put down by transportation departments to melt the ice. A drunken moose on the side of the road is potentially a great danger to motorists, so beware if you are driving in moose country during late autumn!
And what should a moose do about the hangover the morning after a fermented fruit binge?
Amazon Renewed Refurbished products with a warranty. Here, even healthy bulls -- whose size, strength and rutting prowess make them the undisputed kings of the North Woods -- are dying from what appear to be a combination of exhaustion, exposure, wasting disease triggered by parasites and other maladies. After so many years of sickle trips to places across the nation on his '48 tank shifter, kick starting antique, he went modern and bought a later model with foot shift lever, electric starter and real brakes. A Yukon Adventure by Ann Mariah Cook This memoir chronicles Cook, her husband, her three-year-old daughter, and 32 Siberian huskies through the trials and rewards of pursuing their dream to compete in the Yukon Quest sled-dog race. Questions like these may seem simple or downright strange—yet they form the backbone of natural history, a discipline that fostered some of our most important scientific theories, from natural selection to glaciation.
We can go to the drugstore and pick up some aspirin, but a moose can go to the original source of this universal painkiller. Aspirin is salicylic acid and was originally isolated from the bark of willow in the genus Salix , from which salicylic acid takes its name. Willow twigs are highly preferred foods of moose from fall to spring.
By the end of winter, many willows along streams and in bogs look like someone went at them with a machete, but the many moose tracks in the snow tell us the real culprit.