Dog + Stick + Camera

Mount a video camera on the stick that your dog is retrieving, and this is what happens.

Coca-Cola Plays 600-pound Gorilla

Nothing actually needed to be said: Coca-Cola kills Grand Canyon disposable water bottle ban. Park Service crumbles like a chocolate-chip cookie.

Most Honey Ain't Honey, Honey

Most honey sold in the supermarket barely deserves to be called "honey."

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.
 
Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey — some containing illegal antibiotics — on the U.S. market for years. 

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin. 

The old advice that you should eat local honey to reduce the severity of hay fever is bad science anyway, because the problem pollen is blown by winds, not carried by bees, so it will not be in the honey. But if there is any good to eating honey beyond the taste, local honey (definitely not Chinese or Indian honey) would be the best.

Wolves Expanding Territory in Wyoming.

More than thirty wolf packs now live in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park—a report with statistics on population and livestock depredation from Cat Urbigkit's Wolf Watch.

Breweries and Brew Pubs of the Mountain West

An interactive map, part of a larger one covering the whole country. Note the concentration in Colorado. Beer-buying has certainly become more interesting over the past decade or two.

(Via Borepatch.)

The Yoga Instructor and the Cattle Drive

They figure in "Sad River Roundup, a short short story by Tim Cooper from Mountain Gazette.

"Texas Vertigo" is a useful phrase for southern Colorado and New Mexico—I am going to remember it.

How the Humane Society of the US Does Not Help Animals

It's too busy managing its investments.

From the New York Post:

HSUS's advertisements employ the images of downtrodden dogs and cats to tug at the heart strings and wallets of America's pet lovers. But CCF's new analysis finds HSUS is a "Humane Society" in name only, sharing a meager $527,566, or 0.4 percent of its $120 million budget with sheltering organizations nationwide in 2010. In the same year, HSUS spent $47 million in fundraising-related costs (37 percent of its total budget) and put $32 million in hedge funds.

Yep. $32,000,000 in hedge funds. That's where your donation goes, if you are uninformed enough to give HSUS your hard-earned dollars.

Light-Colored Cars Get Better Mileage

That is, if you are running the air conditioner.

I never understood why anyone in the sunny Southwest would buy a black car or truck, but some do. They're looking cool while being hot—and not in a good way.

Some Colorado Springs Ghosts—and the Unquiet Ghosts of Teller County

Western Federation of Miners hall, Victor,1903.

A Colorado Springs blogger offers some ghost stories, mostly from the West Side.

In my young newspaper reporter days, I did my part for Cripple Creek and Victor.

At the time, I was covering both the gold-mining boomlet of the early 1980s and also some Colorado labor history, such as the activities of the Western Federation of Miners in the early 1900s.

They did not make it into the book, but I had a couple of woo-woo experiences in Cripple Creek and in the nearby ghost town of Goldfield of my own.

In one of them, I was walking into faded glory of the 1904 Teller County Courthouse to cover a hearing about leakage from a cyanide heap-leaching operation killing some horses. Just ordinary reportorial stuff.

I had never entered that building before. At the foot of the staircase leading up to the courtrooms, I almost had a panic attack. I was sure that I was walking up to my doom — but I wasn't "me."


In the second, I was leaving Victor and decided to drive through the site of the mining town of Goldfield, "a strong union town," instead of back via Cripple Creek on the way to Colorado Springs and the newspaper office.

The scene out the windshield was 1980 or 1981 Goldfield, which is to say, not much.  But to my ears and inner senses, it was all shouting and turbulence and emotion of the 1894 miners' strike, when the Cripple Creek police shot down the Goldfield constables, mines were dynamited, the militia was called out, and gunfights flared between miners and sheriff's deputies back by the mine owners.

It was like being in two places at once, one foot in the past and one foot in the now. The experience lasted less than minute but left me feeling emotionally exhausted.

That strike was just the beginning of the Colorado Labor Wars, when things got even worse.

Bad times—more or less swept under the rug of history now. Now we hear only of a street vendor selling  "hot waffles to miners, railroad passengers and barflies."

Michael Pollan's New Food Rules

Michael Pollan's new food rules, from the upcoming of the book of the same name.

I like #7, "Enjoy Drinks That Have Been Caffeinated by Nature, Not Food Science"

This also reminds me of the advice that I gave to students in magazine-writing class: you can always sell a story built around a list.

What Do You Think about Falconry?

Two British researchers, Helen Macdonald (University of Cambridge) and Mike Nicholls (University of Greenwich) have created an online survey on people's understanding of falconry and their opinions about it.

Although some questions are particular to the UK, respondents from other countries are welcome.

Not Always Happy Endings

Two day-old mule deer fawns after their rescue.

Last June 24th I wrote about how two mule deer fawns, the surviving pair from what had been triplets, were transported in a relay from the western San Luis Valley to some wildlife rehabilitators who live near us.

I learned yesterday that the smaller fawn, the little male seen here being fed from a syringe on the day he arrived, had gone into a sudden decline and died.

His caretakers were a married couple, both retired schoolteachers, and yesterday she wrote,

[Tuesday] morning he didn't want his bottle, and that was very strange. I noticed he had a very runny stool and then it turned to blood. He made it through the day quite comfortably and I had some hope  Last night when everyone left for the night I kept him in the shelter, knowing that if I didn't he would have a very miserable death out in the snow. The little guy never got to see the snow. I slept in the shelter with him til about eleven and then went inside. This morning I found him in his favorite corner in the fresh straw.

You have to be emotionally strong to do that job year after year. Yes, maybe this fawn was too undeveloped, being the smaller of the two survivors. Yet I had seen him just a week ago, running around the pasture and looking OK.

It is even worse at the Raptor Center, I know, where only something like 25-30 percent of the birds brought (if that) survive. Like the great horned owl that I picked up in September—it was alive and feisty, but a wing was shattered beyond repair—probably from a power line collision—and the director decided to put it down.

They have a couple of one-winged birds in captivity, but those birds never can get around well, and the protocol nowadays is to euthanize them.

Supporting San Juan Wilderness Act

Click to embiggen

Newspaper ad sponsored by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and other pro-hunting, pro-wilderness advocates after introduction of the San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act last month. Now to see if my congressman, Scott Tipton, can get behind it too.

Improbable Mountains

Last month the Denver Post's daily website quiz was a list of Colorado mountain ranges with the question, which name is bogus?

Anyone with a little historical sense could get it right. All the names were assigned in the 19th century, and there were no moose in the state then, so "Moose Range" has to be the right answer.

But a lot of people thought that the Wet Mountains were mythical. Perhaps that is a Good Thing.

Colorado Seeks Big-Game Hunting Photos, Stories

News release:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is giving big-game hunters the opportunity to share their hunting accomplishments with others.  Hunters who were successful during Colorados 2011 big-game seasons can submit stories and photos to be posted on a Hunter Testimonials page featured on the Parks and Wildlife website.

Hunters of all experience levels, ages and backgrounds are encouraged to participate.  The best photos may be used as covers for upcoming regulations brochures or in future editions of Colorado Outdoors magazine.    

Hunting stories should be limited to 250 words and be accompanied with high-resolution, digital photos detailing the experience. All submissions will be edited and reviewed to ensure rules and hunting regulations are followed. Publication is not guaranteed, and all submissions become the property of CPW.

For submission instructions and to view the "Big-Game Hunter Testimonial" page, click here.