Personal Narrative

Spring and Wildlife Comeback Follow Up

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Click photos for larger.

Yesterday I posted about Spring and the comeback of wildlife in my area and I solicited comments from others in different areas of the country to see if their experiences are the same. It seems like a resounding “yes” (both at ChicagoBoyz and at Life in the Great Midwest). I am always amazed at how nature can adapt and thrive.

If the cougar population goes up, EVERYBODY here in rural Wisconsin will be packing heat, especially farmers (Wisconsin is one of only two states that has not decriminalized conceal carry – the other state is Illinois). Personally, I think that livestock will be targeted by the cougars and that a farmer will simply shoot them and toss their carcasses into one of their fields before they can get steady footing. I sure would shoot it if I were a farmer and was losing livestock.

Wolves have already made somewhat of a comeback in the northern parts of the state, and I have even heard of moose and elk up there as well.

On to Mr. Doughty’s email:

Good morning. I’m writing this as an email rather than as a comment on the Chicago Boyz blog because I’ve got some photos that I want to include.

I live in Colorado, in a development on the western edge of Colorado Springs, in what’s known as an “urban-wildland interface”. Here is a list of larger animals that I’ve seen from my deck or on the road up the hill to my house in the past year or so:

Deer on a daily basis
Fox
Wild Turkeys
Bobcats
Coyotes
Bears (actually ON my deck on a number of occasions)
Mountain Lions

All this within a 15 to 20 minute drive of the middle of downtown Colorado Springs. There is no doubt that wildlife is making a huge comeback in urban/suburban areas. Most people think this is great, as do I with the following reservation: When wildlife returns, predators soon follow. Here in our area, some people are growing increasingly concerned with lions. Here are photos taken this past Monday shortly after midnight outside the house of a guy that lives roughly a third of a mile (as the crow flies) from me. He has motion activated lights and cameras at various points around his home and quite often gets shots like these:


This is a large lion, looking in the sliding glass door of this guy’s bedroom, approximately 10 feet from his bed where he and his wife were looking at it through the glass.

We have had instances of large dogs (over 100 pounds) being attacked, people being stalked, lions around homes in the middle of the day, etc. Inevitably, I fear, we are going to have an attack on a person. Of course, the majority of the people here believe that lions are not a “real” problem and that those of us who have expressed concern are “fear mongering”, etc., although almost none of them have done any research or know anything whatsoever about these animals.

If you’d like to learn more about the whole potential problem with lions expanding their range into urban areas and the reasons for it, an excellent book is The Beast in the Garden. I highly recommend it.

I already ordered that book on Amazon and can’t wait for it to arrive. This subject is very interesting to me – and a little scary.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Spring and Wildlife Comeback

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Click photo for larger.

The above photo was taken one block from my house. We have been seeing lots of wild turkeys in my neighborhood the last few years. I live in a mature subdivision that looks like a lot of other mature subdivisions in the United States. In fact, if you were blindfolded and dropped in there and had to identify where you were, I would wager that you would have a lot of difficulty. In other words, it is a pretty unremarkable place.

With the Spring thaw I have been seeing tons of wildlife scurrying about for chow. The deer are all over the place. I have seen the geese heading back north. A red fox ran across the road in front of my car the other day. I have lived in this area of the country all of my life, and in Madison itself for almost 14 years. Is it just me or is wildlife in general making a comeback? Are the different species adapting to development better? I never used to see things like foxes, hawks, turkeys, deer, and coyotes but now these are commonplace.

Of course all of my evidence is anecdotal. I would like some more observations from our readers that live in urban areas around the country (and the world for that matter). Do you see more animals in general? What types?

Cross posted at LITGM.

There ought to be…

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Family member A is ill — cold? flu? Gets worse. Calls doctor.

Doctor is away. A speaks with doctor’s colleague. Colleague listens to A’s account of symptoms, tells A to go to emergency room.

Family member B accompanies A to hospital. Emergency-room doctor examines A — infection? what’s that thing in lungs? Doctor asks if recent chest x-ray is available. B and C (me) consult by phone. B tells emergency-room guy to call A’s doctor’s office to access whatever records are there. Meanwhile I track down most-recent CT-scan records at another hospital. B is now driving there to pick up a disk with the scans on it.

In the middle of our discussions B says something like: This is crazy. All of these records should be centrally accessible and under the control of the patient. Why isn’t all of the information we need available online?

B is right. In the current system service providers control most of the information but have little incentive to coordinate access with other service providers. Indeed there is a disincentive to do so: they can get into trouble if information is misused but don’t benefit directly when improved information-sharing helps patients.

Technically, this is not a difficult problem. Institutionally and legally, however, it seems to have much in common with drug-resistant bacteria.

At least there is progress in other areas. The practice of medicine itself seems to improve over time. And thank God for cellphones, and for the technology that makes it possible to put a copy of a CT scan onto a computer disk in a few minutes.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

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This is a nice story. An American airman is shot down in 1943 over a remote Pacific island. The natives rescue him, hide him from the Japanese and nurse him back to health. He eventually returns home, marries and starts a family and career. Years later he returns to the island and renews his relationship with the natives. Back in the USA, he sets up a charity to help them. Over the course of many years he helps the natives to build a school, library, clinic, etc. The natives’ lives improve, and he gains a sense of purpose and accomplishment, to such an extent that he is grateful for the misfortune that initially brought him to the island.

New Orleans Bleg

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When my wife and I were planning our wedding 13 years ago we reached the point where it started to get hairy.   You know what I mean…where is so and so going to sit, what color will the linens be, who will do the toast at the reception, etc, etc, etc.

 I will give you the very short version of the ending – the planning process started to involve way too many people and quickly spiraled out of control.   I remember to this day sitting on the couch in our apartment (yes, we lived in sin!) and saying to my fiance at the time, still my wife to this day the following:

Do you want to get the heck out of here and elope to New Orleans?

 The answer was an enthusiastic YES.

And so we did.   That was back in 1995.

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