Where the Science Goes

I am very happy to report that I shall be a regular writer for the excellent and nerdy mini-lecture video series The SciShow. If you like learning about bizarre phenomena, famous brainiacs, current science news, and super awesome stuff, check out the YouTube channel. Recent topics have included: What happens when a body is subjected to the vacuum of space, how birds get drunk in spring, the history of blood transfusions, meteorite hits and near misses, giant squids, spider rain, genetically modified foods, and what happens if identical twins procreate with identical twins.

Oh, and my very first scripted episode on Extreme! Animal! Cannibalism! (Don't worry, there is a little bit of brother-eating, but no bath salts are involved.) I'm super excited about this gig and to be part of such a curious and creative team. Upcoming assignments range from Explaining Gluten, to updates on Human Enhancement Technology, to Why Do Cats Purr? Hope you'll check in on occasion and get your learn on...

Sleeps With The Fishes

Early this week, in an attempt to both be useful and begin the process of getting back into field shape, I volunteered to schelp a bunch of heavy, awkwardly-shaped gear into the backcountry for the USGS Fish Crew. Once loaded down with net panels, new rubber grundels, about two dozen pairs of gloves, three tents, and various odd-shaped tools, our six-person pack string set out for one inevitable destination: Quartz Lake. If you're looking to get a hold of the fish squeezers during the months of June or October, this North Fork lake and adjacent small, stuffy cabin (sometimes decorated with hanging fish carcasses) is the place you'll find them.

Beautiful Bullies

For the last three years the USGS Fisheries project in Glacier National Park has been waging a three-man, one-boat war against the abundant invasive lake trout population of Quartz Lake. You see, lake trout punk on the federally threatened native bull trout by out-competing them on their own turf. The situation is becoming grave, and a lot of the park's west side lakes are beyond saving. Thus, the sort of last stand at Quartz. But it isn't always easy removing one species of fish while steering clear of another... and so the fish crew spends long, long cold and wet hours dropping long, paneled nets into deep water, often  at night--catching, radio-tagging, and tracking any large breeding lake trout they can get their hands on, and humanely whacking the rest. All while being careful to avoid the diva bull trout. During their limited down-time, the guys do the things you'd expect three to four guys might do when isolated in a remote cabin for a month, reeking of mildew, sweat, and fish guts: namely, they hit rocks with sticks, practice throwing knives, play cards, bicker, heckle, laugh, and invent a string of changing (manly, of course) nicknames for each other. To date: Chopper, Bonesaw, Farmcart, Tea Cup, Big Man, Partyboy, Tomahawk, and "The Don" have been in steady rotation.

So you can see, that although I am quite used to being outnumbered by men in this line of work, it did feel like I was stepping behind the veil on this outing. And this was just the pre-game warm-up of dropping off supplies and getting the boat into the water and the engine fixed up. Roll up to the Quartz cabin on a rainy mid-October day and you'll grasp the true dank meaning behind the term "man cave". But anyway, I'm always happy to help out friends with a good cause and start pounding my winter body back into fighting shape. Keep up the good work, guys.

Fun With Feathers On Screens

Hey! Do you like birds?

Do you possess and enjoy touchscreen digital technologies which sometimes flash the icon of a half-eaten apple? Do you like to learn new things and listen to nature sound effects while riding the train, waiting for the elevator, or zoning out during a meeting?

Maybe you have some kids? Maybe they like birds. Maybe they like screens. Maybe they are always pestering you about your precious iDevice? Maybe they often point to the sky, or to the woods, or to the sea, demanding to know who guy?!, what bird is that?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of inventive and interactive game that helped kids get tech-savvy at the same time they were getting nature-savvy? If there were a way to help them recognize birds on telephone poles during road trips? Or help them to identify the call of that owl that is always hooting outside their bedroom window? Or teach them why they will never meet a condor nosing around their birdfeeder, cracking seeds?

But wait! Such a magical game does exist!

Check out award-winning Birdcage Press's new virtual game My Birds of Prey from their up and coming digital division, 5 Ravens. I have collaborated with Birdcage for several years, researching and writing educational text for their wildlife books and card games, helping to get kids excited about animals. Following seemingly universal trends, the publisher is now branching out into new digital worlds. Having always favored the feel of paper in my own two hands, at first I was skeptical. Then I saw My Bird World, created in conjunction with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and was thoroughly impressed. As an adult I had fun playing the games, had fun learning about the birds and their vocalizations. I was thrilled when the publisher asked me to write some of the text for their new raptor game, which just came out last month, and is gorgeous.

Whether you have kids or not, if you have a touchscreen device, a few extra bucks, and an interest in birds, please think about heading over to the Apple store, making a few clicks, and purchasing one of these games. I promise you will learn something new. And enjoy it. And, ahem, help keep this freelance writer in job security...

End of pitch. Thank you. And good night.

A Neighbor is Who You Meet Each Day

This month I am back at the microscope, finishing up some aquatic invertebrate sampling work, or as we in the USGS call it, pickin' bugs. This means I am still guzzling tea, listening to hours of books on tape, whimpering while rubbing my sore back, and seeing larva floating around whenever I close my eyes. It also means I can provide you with a critical piece of advice when it comes to hanging out around a microscope: do not be tempted to look at your hand under such high magnification. You will not like what you see. Unless you aspire to be the Crypt Keeper. Skin is not meant to be seen so close up. We'll leave it at that.

Anyway, really I am here today to introduce you to some of my new friends, and remind you why its not a good idea to drink unfiltered water. Portraits have been provided by the resident entomological wizard, graphic artist, and heavy metal enthusiast, Joe Giersch.

The Neighbors:

First up, meet the ever-present Allomyia, case-maker, weaver of silty sleeping bags of stone.

Kind of cute, right? Sort of reminiscent of dog. With six legs. And a body like a tube sock.

                                            

Next, we have Simuliidae, the baby black fly, always with frivolous headgear. What a dandy.

  

And, as it turns out,  not unlike a certain dapper blue-haired British worm 
who clearly goes to the same hairdresser.... 

Incidentally, while I was looking for an image of this unsung hero of Labyrinth, I came across more than one photo of his visage immortalized on flesh. Yikes. While I will happily channel David Bowie, stuff my tights, and strut around like The Goblin King for a night, putting ink to skin to permanently honor a sassy Muppet worm on your lower back requires taking it up several more notches than I am near comfortable with. But I digress.

And here is the superstar of the lot. Lednia tumana, that rare little glacier-loving stonefly we're petitioning for endangered species status.

Admittedly, this isn't his best angle. I'm not the only one getting a distinct Nosferatu vibe here, right? The milk-pale flesh-equivalent, the shrinking posture, the contracted limbs raised up defensively against the light...

And last but certainly not least, we have my favorite little duffer, Hydracarina, the water mite. Again, this two-dimensional photo does not do the happy mini-Buddha-of-mountain-streams justice. I love finding these small friends amid the gravel and muck. Their pinprick eyes somehow seem smiley, friendly even. Yeah, they are dead, pickled in ethanol, but they seem at peace. No big deal. They have perfectly plump and rounded bodies, eight spindly legs (they're in the Arachnid family) usually curled up underneath. 

Whether pink-tinged, yellow-tinted, dappled or translucent, the sweet mites always remind me of magical Miyazaki-like forest spirits. And ultimately, all of these creatures are exactly that.  

Heads Will Roll

Rhyacophila belona

Rhyacophila potteri

Rhyacophila vaccua

*All photographs by Joe Giersch and his fancy equipment

The Most Astounding Fact

Peep this beautiful little astro-video replete with wisdom bombs from that big, badass astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We are, all of us, made of stardust and guts, sewn up with the double-twined, shining umbilical threads of the universe. 

Gluttonous Glutton

Hey there, Nasty Cat

Doug Chadwick, local author of The Wolverine Way, calls Gulo gulo--the biggest land-dwelling member of the weasel family--an "unmitigated badass". True that. As evidence of said badassery, I give you some facts: (1) They have one of the strongest bite-forces in the world. They don't just eat bone marrow, they eat whole bones, son. (2) They are voracious eaters. There isn't much of anything, alive or dead, that they won't eat. (3) Among their charming nicknames? Skunk bear. Nasty Cat. Quickhatch. Carcajou. Huge Jackman. (4) They roam insanely large tracts of land. A male's home range can be over 240 square miles. (5) Those home ranges are comprised of primarily high, steep terrain, which wolverines prance and skip around, no problem. M3, a famous Glacier gulo, ran up the steepest face of Mount Cleveland (the highest peak in the park at 10,479 feet) in about 90 minutes. In the middle of winter. Because he could. (6) Females den around the edges of treeline, tunneling burrows in the snow of up to 75 feet long to give birth to their adorable kits.

Because they inhabit high elevation snowy terrain, and because they need so much space to roam, there just isn't that much room for wolverines these days. Glacier is actually the best place in the lower 48 to spot the sassy, solitary beast, although it can only support about 40-45 individuals. Wolverines have been proposed for Endangered Species status several times in recent years. Apparently it has been tossed out of court a couple of times due to "lack of information." Huh. It is up for status again, this time linked to climate change. Here's hoping.

Badasses brush their hair with gun brushes, yo.

Last month I did a little volunteer work for the Park's wolverine DNA project. For the past two winters a dedicated group of volunteers has braved gnarly mountain weather and extra butter portions (for increased caloric intake to deal with said cold weather) to set up hair snagging stations throughout Glacier. We know wolverines are here--and previous projects involved capturing and collaring the animals--but any process that involves building little remote log cabins for traps that an industrious and pissed off animal can actually chew their way out of in a matter of hours is bound to be challenging. Non-invasive sampling through remote camera placement, track surveys, and hair collection (just like the bear and fisher projects) is a much easier way (for animals and people) to keep tabs on a population.

I just called. To say. I love you.

But of course every animal has its own habits, so biologists need to tailor their traps accordingly. Sultry bears enjoy scratching their booties on tree trunks. All we have to do is locate the trees where they've already rubbed, and throw up some barb wire to snag a little fur. Fishers want forest cover. They don't typically run around in the open, so it makes sense to put those enticing tubular stations, equipped with a chicken wing, down on the forest floor. Wolverines go everywhere. And they can climb where local coyotes and wolves can't. So we entice them with a meat flag nailed to a tall pole, covered in wire gun brushes. Because frozen meat doesn't smell much, we augment the whole operation with a little scent lure called "Gusto". Believe me when I tell you I have smelled a lot of bad things through my wildlife work, and this stuff is particularly naaasty.  It is the kind of intense odor that feels almost palpable in your mouth--a solid lump of rotten skunk meat lolling around. If that skunk had been eating garlic and shit sandwiches. And the smell lingers, too. So that is awesome. 

Stinky stick

Still, any chance to get into the woods for a good cause, right? Today I heard that one of the remote cameras crews put out in the Belly River area picked up a wolverine going up a bate pole. The really cool thing is that when folks zoomed in on the photographs, they could see a set of earrings. It was old M3, the badass who ran up Cleveland and was tagged nearly ten years ago, still alive and kickin' it in the park! I hope I'll be lucky enough to run into him by the water cooler sometime. Maybe I need to enlist a little Gusto....

Meat flag

I'll Take a Pennanti and a Panini

In keeping with my growing laundry list of random winter work, last week I volunteered for the Forest Service on a forest carnivore monitoring project for a few days. My friends Carly and Shannon work for Lolo National Forest, and the three of us snowshoed in about ten miles to a remote backcountry cabin on the edge of the Scapegoat Wilderness for a couple of nights. We did carnivore track surveys and set up fisher hair snags along the way.

Princess Leia?

It was about five below when we left the parking lot. Obviously my thumbs stopped working, which is really handy when you're fiddling with straps and such. The first mile or two of trail had been walked, and the sound of our creaky snowshoes shuffling along the hard-packed snow was reminiscent of a couple of kittens fighting in a Styrofoam cooler, and noisy enough to prohibit conversation. After that the snow got all fresh and deep and pristine.

Now in the summer, ten miles is a piece of cake, but in the snow, and with an extra fifty pounds stabbing the spine, I am not ashamed to say it feels like a long damn way. We started off alternating who broke trail every fifteen minutes, and by the final mile, we were switching it up every five. I was stumbling around like a drunk guzzling moonshine. We saw marten, lion, lynx, coyote, wolf, and hare tracks on the way in, and set out half a dozen non-invasive hair snagging stations under cozy tree boughs. The concept is pretty much the same idea as my summer grizzly bear work... let the animal do its thang, then just collect its hair and subsequent DNA after the fact, no need to poke and prod. Except that the long and lithe fisher (a larger member of the weasel family) doesn't  get its rocks off rubbing on tree trunks like our hedonistic Ursidae friends. No, these guys like to be romanced. Its like dinner and a movie with them. They want dangling poultry flesh and a high-tech tube to eat it in. So we lugged in said apparatii--requisite frozen chicken wings and collapsable, triangular shelters decorated with pokey gun brushes juting inward, which create a sort of painless gauntlet of small hairbrushes. A snack at the salon. Hopefully the weasel smells the most delicious and p-o-t-e-n-t scent lure (skunk flavor!) suspended from a stripped ribbon on a bit of bright sponge, comes close, sees that irresistable chicken nugget innocently chillin' in a funky space tube, and just weasels right on in to take a bite and get a little fur brushing.

You go back a few weeks later, collect any hair or scat you might find, and bada-bing! you're on your way to a population and distribution estimate. And while we all know I'd rather just scoop up the snugglers and brush them by hand, while cuddling, but this way seems easier.
For now. Still, those fishers don't know what they are missing.

Fact! Fishers rarely eat fish. They're kind of a sham like that. But, they are badass enough to be one of the only predators who regularly hunts porcupine.

Fishers were once widespread throughout North American forests, but like so many fur bearers, they were heavily trapped and their populations plummeted. They have been re-introduced into several states. There aren't a ton of them around Montana these days, which is one reason why we are interested in figuring out exactly who is hanging around, and where, and if they like our cooking.

Beginning of the long trek, a dozen folded fisher traps in tow

Holding Earth up, holding me up

Where the magic happens.
Kind of like a chicken wing docking in a space station

Burnt Cabin Frosted Gingerbread

Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem. --Conrad Hall

The snowbeast cometh

Snow sink

Edges they come, edges they go

What is: the opposite of Bikram

You just can't get away from these guys

Arraghh!!

Not so Smartwool

Mothra vs. Sea Monster

I've spent many years researching various charismatic megafuana... the kind of characters the Sierra Club slaps on thousands of those return-address labels no one specifically asks for... big cats, wolves, grizzlies... I've also spent several seasons slogging around ponds catching frogs and toads in the daylight and in the dark, and counting tadpoles. 

This winter I am mixing it up. Keepin' it real. I'm doing some invertebrate taxonomy contract work for the USGS aquatics project here in Glacier. This basically amounts to sorting through a small mountain of summer stream samples under a fancy-schmancy Leica microscope, and picking out all the tiny, tiny bugs. And oh, what bugs! We're doing this to get baseline data on the community of alpine insects in high-elevation, glacier-fed streams, and to learn more about the life histories of some of the more rare species, including a type of sexy stonefly (Lednia tumana) that has been petitioned for endangered species status. Though it is decidedly less glamorous than a wet-nosed polar bear cub tickling itself, this stonefly is imperiled by the acceleration of melting glaciers, and is thus another would-be casualty of climate change.

It has been a very long time since I've spent any time around a microscope, and I am learning that there are certain given truths a lab jockey must accept: (1) your back will hurt constantly, (2) your eyes get totally wonky, (3) you get to listen to an endless stream of books-on-tape (Pollan, Gaiman, Franzen, and Eugenides last week), and (4) you will need a constant supply of warm beverages within reach at all times.

Oh, and (5) you will absolutely and literally see bugs when you close your eyes. This is about as creepy and annoying as it sounds. And they aren't butterflies and ladybugs you know... no, they are mushy, gray flatworms and thin, tangled nematodes. They are the ghostly white larvae of various caddisflies and the other flies: stone, damsel, alder, may, crane, and dragon. The perfectly-round-bodied water mites, their speckled yellow backs covering the curl of eight spindly legs. And so many midges. Mostly midges, each curved like a pudgy clipped fingernail. My favorite find so far has been these little bowling pin-shaped deals, punctuated by a head crowned with two frilled antennae that look like ridiculous party earmuffs. Whenever I found one of those I'd imagine it speaking in a British accent. Maybe like that bizarre scarf-wearing worm in the movie Labyrinth. G' day, govna! I was a little bummed to learn that my dandy friends were actually black fly larvae. They aren't exactly the easiest creature to love, but I am trying. But then most baby animals are more charming than their parents... and really, you should see these frilly deely boppers. It did remind me of learning years ago that who we were endearingly calling Fuzzy Willis for weeks was in fact mosquito larva, writhing in mass. It was kind of impossible to feel affection for those little guys after that realization. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

So I spend several hours a day going through just a few ounces of water and vegetation and muck, picking out the bugs with a pair of sharp silver tweezers, which by now feel like cold and nimble extensions of my own hands, to the point where I can actually feel the pressure of grasping a nearly microscopic creature between my "fingers". It is a truly crazy feeling. At the end of the day, all those bugs, hundreds even, fit into a small vial of alcohol, like some etymologist's crack stash. 


But the best thing about this work is that it allows you to peak into a totally different world. There is a magical little alternate reality in these tiny universes. Dragons and basilisks lurk behind branch and bush, reed and rush. Sea monsters lurk. Aliens burst forth from chest cavities. Crazy shit goes down. It never ceases to amaze me how much of the world we cannot see with unaided eyes. It's incredible. In a lot of ways, we have no clue what the hell is going on. I love that. I love wearing the emerald glasses for a while. I'm ready to be surprised. I'm ready to be dazzled. See you in Oz.

All in a day's work

Smokey and the Bandits

This summer I embark on my third year working on the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project  in Glacier National Park, aka The Greatest Job in the World. The project has been ongoing, in one incarnation or another, since 1998. It started out in Glacier, but now encompasses nearly eight million acres around the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Our current objectives are to:

- Evaluate the efficacy of monitoring grizzly and black bear population trends using noninvasive hair sampling.

- Estimate population: (1) growth rate, (2) abundance, (3) distribution and relative density, (4) gene flow and genetic structure, and (5) apparent survival rates.

- Provide area-specific information on bear population status.

Noninvasive sampling methods involve collecting data in such a way as to not annoy, molest, stress, or piss off the wildlife in question. This could mean observing behavior from a distance, studying tracks, collecting shit, or nabbing hair in the woods. Nerdy lab-rats can extract DNA from hair follicles and tell us who is who in the bear world, down to the individual level. And so we are professional fur burglers. For reasons that are still unclear, bears love to rub their backs on trees, power poles, fence posts, wooden bridges, etc. I get it. It probably feels pretty damn good, and I bet it isn't easy to book a massage when you are a 500 pound grizzly bear. In previous seasons we identified trees that bears had already enjoyed rubbing on, and we numbered them and added four foot-long strands of barbed wire to the trunks. Now we can walk through millions of acres of habitat from Glacier to Missoula, and check thousands of trees for bear hair. We will do this all summer, hitting each tree three times, no matter the weather, no matter the state of our creaky knees, blistered heels, wet feet, or bruise collections. And, by and large, we will be grinning and grateful, even while grimacing, to be out in the hills, quietly following North America's biggest and baddest carnivore.

The crew completed a week of training a couple of days ago.
Collective highlights/items of note included:

- Snowfield and creek-crossing training in the cold, cold rain.
- Infamous the-woods-will-break-you-if-you-aren't-careful cautionary slide show of woe.
- One black bear and two grizzly sightings.
- Graham diving over a six-foot campfire and being caught by the crowd.
- Rotten fish grinding.
- Unknowable quantities of PBR and whiskey consumed.
- Salad with every meal.
- Rain every day.
- Sunset on Lake McDonald.
- Late night mission to make growly bear noises around the new interns' tents.
- Hair samples!
- And, because I was there, a mini-MJ dance party at the bar, just to wrap it all up.

Looking forward to an exceptional season.

Time to Dust Off the Old Bear Suit

At long last, I'm finally back in Montana.
Here is a little preview of what I'll be doing for the next two seasons.

More details to follow...for now, you figure it out.