Wildlife/animals

Aspen’s Covert Cotton and Other Subversive Traits

 in Colorado / travel / Wildlife/animals  tagged Aspen trees / cotton / cottonwoods / deer / elk / Grand Mesa National Forest / oldest organism / photosynthesis by

Cottonwoods are notorious for spewing cotton each spring, but the trails my husband and I followed on Colorado’s Grand Mesa were far from cottonwood country. So why was cotton everywhere? We were surrounded by aspens and spruce, and as far as we knew, neither produced cotton. Spruce trees launch their seeds in cones. Why would they make cotton? Suspicious. I scrutinized grove after grove and finally spotted fluffy tufts wafting off an aspen treetop. I’m a fifth-generation Colorado native who’s spent considerable time in the mountains. I’ve also watched three aspen clusters in our yard for over 35 years, so […]

spider

Can Spiders Fly?

 in travel / Wildlife/animals  tagged Charles Darwin / flying spiders / granddaughter / Oregon / spider research / travel by

At a scenic overlook in northeastern Oregon, an iridescent green spider caught my eye. Our granddaughter Mysa has a fascination for spiders, so I got my camera out. Then I noticed that the spider was struggling. One of its legs seemed to be stuck to our truck door. It twisted one way and then another, fighting a stiff breeze along with being stuck. I helpfully took a video. Glancing around to see if my husband was ready to go, I turned back to the truck and saw the spider glide by using a long strand of web as a magic […]

Loose-Leash Encounters

 in camping / travel / Wildlife/animals  tagged baby fawn / bears / dog leash / hiking / moose / Sawtooth Mountains by

    High in the Sawtooth Mountains, my Molly mutt charged into a small valley. Through the trees, I glimpsed the creature she’d spotted. It was a little bigger than Molly, dark, and slow. Bear cub? The glance I’d gotten had left a calf shaped impression, but rough-cut, like a Gumby character. Bear or bovine, that critter’s mama was not going to stand for this. I shouted with little hope. I knew that Molly was too excited to hear me, and that my lumbering pace would make me a fine target for that mama’s wrath. This sort of situation is […]

Are Turkey Tails Truly Colorful?

 in Colorado / Wildlife/animals by

Sometimes my family hangs around with a bunch of turkeys. I was lucky enough to get a nice shot of them, or at least one with a background I love. It seems strange to me that these gobblers are black. As a kid I learned turkey anatomy by way of art projects featuring a tail of brightly colored feathers. I’ve never seen a turkey with a tail like that, but then I’ve seen few turkeys–none of them very close. I only started siting the big birds around our family’s western Colorado ranch in the last couple decades, probably because turkeys […]

Have You Seen the Painted Ladies?

 in Colorado / travel / Wildlife/animals by

     “The painted ladies are migrating.”        Puzzled looks prompted our biology teacher to describe the butterflies he’d noticed.        Sure enough, as I drove home that afternoon, I glimpsed a smallish orange and black butterfly wafting along. Then a few more and a few more, all fluttering north. Unreal! As a lifelong Puebloan, I’d lived in the path of the great painted lady migration for 35 years and never noticed. That evening, I shared the news with my mother. She’d seen no signs of a butterfly migration in her area of Colorado’s Grand Valley. […]

From Hero to Rat-Bit Crack-Up 2

 in Colorado / Our Quest / Wildlife/animals  tagged book launch party / Colorado / hero / lab cart / Mile High Lab Rat / Pueblo Community College / rats by

After my Mile High Lab Rat book launch, we wheeled the scientist photo props back toward the van. Unfortunately, one of the cart wheels hung up on a sidewalk crack and upset the load. The crash was gentle, thank goodness. Nothing broke, but one of the live rats in the terrarium bailed. The rats were breeders on loan from a raptor center and highly replaceable—I’d guess, but I didn’t want to find out. Also, the college staff had been so accommodating in hosting my book launch party. Introducing a rat infestation to their campus seemed seriously shabby. I’d tried not […]

How Pueblo Community College Metamorphed a Lab Rat into an Author

 in Colorado / Our Quest / Wildlife/animals  tagged college safety / CSU-Pueblo Chemistry Day / Dr. Mike Davis / Kids Chemistry Kits / mentors / Mile High Lab Rat / Packard Foundation / Pueblo Community College / reaching for stars / Rocky Mountain Walkabout / science lab coordinator by

Not long after becoming Pueblo Community College’s science lab coordinator, I saw a notice that the Packard Foundation was offering small grants to boost preschool learning programs. I’d just left a preschool teaching job, and I’d been admiring the lab gizmos and thinking how much kids could get out of experiencing them, so I had a brainwave: wouldn’t it be cool if we could check kits out to teachers, so every kid in class could have a set of bottles full of magical but harmless chemicals to explore? I talked to my bosses Regis Opferman, who approved the project, and […]

Great Read Coming Your Way 2

 in Colorado / Our Quest / Travel media / Wildlife/animals  tagged book launch team / Denver Colorado / free book / Mystery novel / Rocky Mountains / science lab by

In 2002, I started a mystery novel set in the science lab where I worked. I wrote and rewrote so long and hard, it got stuck in my computer and wouldn’t even try to find its way out. Finally, lockdown gave me time to coax it through the maze, and Mile High Lab Rat will launch on March 31st. After all my efforts to make it thrilling, it needs readers to thrill, so I hope you’ll try it, love it, and spread the word. 

Mystery in the Mud

 in Arizona / Snowbirding / travel / Wildlife/animals  tagged camping / desert / donkeys / Imperial Dam / Senator Wash / tracks / travel / Yuma Arizona by

Outside Yuma, Arizona—not far from the Mexican border—my husband and I got lucky in finding a dispersed camping spot along the Senator Wash lake front. The reservoir water level had receded, leaving extra beach space, and I spent hours soaking in the view while walking a swath of dried lakebed. Strangely, the mud had dried into zillions of baseball size pockmarks. I wondered if some special property of the soil caused it to dry with depressions. Had some aquatic species somehow excavated indentations? Too small for people tracks…dog, coyote, bobcat, deer? Maybe, but probably too small, and anyway, that many […]