Link Liberation

Via my fave Logcabineer, a photo essay by The Selby on a home I could move into THIS MINUTE.

Rinalia over at For the Pit Bulls has a great post on "rehabilitating" fighting dogs. Go read it. Right now. Please. I love that Rinalia doesn't just talk the talk, as they say. She actually has a rescued pit bull, the most excellent Mina [and a terrific blog].

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Ranching, recreation collide in the great outdoors. If you're guessing the rancher loses, and his dogs [and many of his sheep] die as a result, you probably saw this item already over at Brent's blog. The story's a tragedy from any angle.

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I'm so envious of Daniel Hernandez I could just scream.

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Way cool tape art in NYC, from Indian by Design.

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Nina of the Nature Remains blog is in Indiana, photographing Sandhill Cranes. Photos here, here and here. So beautiful.

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How to fight. "Continue to shake it as much as you possibly can" LOLOL. H/T: Logcabineer.



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The Gray Lady has 1) an article on "the urban deerslayer" [see comments here], and 2) a gear test slide show featuring shotguns. Will wonders never cease.

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Last, but far from least: check out the fall colors at Indigo Hill. The joys of a 42' high birding tower...!

More coyotes: dog snatched off porch; "kid fends off pack attack with backpack"

Coyote of the First Snows, by David Cartier on Flickr.

Coyote grabs Boston Terrier from front porch as shocked owner looks on! 70-year-old sister off-roads to the rescue! Dog is saved! And the kid with the backpack is OK, too. [I swiped the post's title from commenter Mike in that same thread, because it was irresistible.]

But note: neither the Big Bear Discovery Center nor the Big Bear Lake Animal Hospital report any uptick in coyote attacks. It's the forest, for crissakes: if cats and small dogs look available, coyotes will take 'em. The local paper hasn't published any articles on coyote attacks, and the only mention I've seen of the backpack-wielding youngster was in that forum post. Not that I'm cavalier about taking the dogs outside at night, up in Big Bear. I'm just sayin'.

Meanwhile, "Don't Feed the Wildlife" signs are installed in Griffith Park:

In a ceremony Monday, Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge installed the first of these signs. LaBonge told those assembled that he often sees coyotes on his daily hikes through the park but never feeds them. "We just say hi to each other."

It occurs to me that while LaBonge and Br'er Coyote are enjoying their Dr. Dolittle moment, we've hit Level 6 on the Risk to Human Health and Safety scale:

According to Baker and Timm (1998), there are several signs that indicate a human health and safety risk between coyotes and humans. The following, in order of occurrence, are signs that coyotes pose a risk to human health and safety:

1. Increase in taking of pets at night.
2. Increase in observance of coyotes on streets and yards at night.
3. Observance of coyotes on streets and in parks and yards during daylight hours, in early morning and late afternoon.
4. Observance of coyotes chasing or taking pets during daylight hours.
5. Taking pets on leashes and chasing joggers, bikers, etc.
6. Observance of coyotes in and around children’s play areas and parks during mid-day.
[Source (pdf): Management of Urban Coyotes and Attacks in Green Valley, Pima County, Arizona, by C. D. Carrillo, J. Schmidt, D. Bergman, and G. Paz.]

So, is chucking a rock [or worse] at every too-close coyote the best way to keep them wild? According to two studies, once coyotes have moved onto your porch, what gets rid of them isn't guns and such — what scares them off [in SoCal, at least] is trapping:

Baker and Timm (1998) and Timm et al. (2004) noted that of all techniques used in controlling problem coyotes in southern California, trapping had the greatest observed effect of re-instilling a fear of humans into the local coyote population. When 2 to 5 coyotes were trapped in a problem locality, the remaining coyotes would often disperse. [Source (pdf).]

I love wild coyotes. I love hearing them, and I love knowing that they're playing their part in forest and foothill ecosystems. But I don't want coyotes standing outside the front door and waiting for a handout or a pet dog to grab, and I don't think anyone else in Southern California does, either.

Trouble is, the concept of "re-instilling a fear of humans into the local coyote population" is offensive to many people in SoCal cities and suburbs, no matter how much it benefits coyotes. Trapping is anathema. Putting food outside [for feral cats, in particular] won't stop anytime soon. So the problems escalate, from coyotes taking pets at night to coyotes attacking pets on leashes in broad daylight, until a child is hurt or a neighborhood's cats disappear or a pet dog is snatched from an elderly owner and killed. Then something has to be done. I don't envy the biologists charged with keeping silly people and wily coyotes safe from each other.

Related:
Coyote news [from this blog]
Coyotes at home and away [from this blog]
More on coyote bounties in Saskatchewan
Special Report: On Coyote Attacks and the Death of Canadian Folk Singer Taylor Mitchell
Urban Coyote Symposium: Papers from the Proceedings of the 12th Wildlife Damage Management Conference
Information on Urban Coyotes — both from CoyoteBytes [website last updated 1/09 (?)]

I am thankful for Chet Baker

Puppy Chet wears his lucky [GIMPshopped] Lady of Guadalupe sock. Get your own pair here.

So I spent most of my Thanksgiving vacation with a 103F fever, wondering whether I would diiiiiieee, but actually I was more worried about Chet Baker. I worry about Chet a lot, partly because I'm a worry-wart border collie person but mainly because Chet Baker is the most terrific, handsome, charming, gentlemanly and doggish Boston Terrier in the history of the planet. [I rest my case. It doesn't hurt that his human is the most excellent writer/artist/photographer/birder/blogger Julie Zickefoose.] Chet Baker is, as Julie would say, totally ossum. Who wouldn't worry if he fell off a cliff or some such terrifying thing?

Chet, like your faithful blogger, was born on December 12 — a miraculous date any way you look at it, and I'm not even going to touch that impressive risen-from-the-dead business. Just let me say that I couldn't love and worry about Chet more if he were my very own, and here is proof, or at any rate proof of what certain border collie people mean by love: a tangentially related abstract from PubMed. I also worry something awful about coyotes, which snatch innocent Boston Terriers off porches; and when Julie didn't post a word for two days after his fall and recovery, I was curled up in knots [the fever didn't help], sure that Something Had Gone Terribly Wrong.

It hadn't. Chet is fine. And Julie loves him exactly the way she should. In fact, speaking of dog people who love dogs the way they should, here's a link to the best dog story ever written. [There's some white-man's-burden stuff in there, but dog people will push it off to the side for the story's sake. Also: Garm is what people today would call a pit bull.]

In a few weeks I'll be driving to San Juan Bautista for the Shepherd's Play performed in the old mission. It's wonderful. I will light candles in the mission church for Chet and for Lily who belongs to my sis and for all the dogs I love now and have loved over the years, and I'll think about how wonderful it is to have a great dog [several, in fact] waiting for me at home. Happy Late Thanksgiving and Happy Early Birthday, Chet Baker! May you have many more, and may each be happier than the last. And Chet? Watch out for coyotes, shorty. Also, did I mention you have more faithful admirers than you'll ever know? Because you do. You totally, totally do.

1913 Craftsman, restored

This old house: saved from demolition in 1989, moved to a new site, rewired, replumbed, repainted and refinished to perfection. Photos by Christine Cotter for the L.A. Times. Read the article here.

Before:

"In the living room, plywood once covered the stained-glass windows on the fireplace wall. In this family photo, homeowner Wendy Harn's father, Don Harn, uncovers the beauty underneath."

And after:

"Since 1913, it's had many different lives," Harn says. " The windows were covered with plywood. Wainscoting was plastered over. All the bookcases and cabinetry were painted white." Warms my heart, this most excellent transformation restoration.

Leopard seal wonders WTH is wrong with puny camera-wielding creature

Click here to watch the video in all its large, HD glory. H/T: Odious and Peculiar.

Coyote news

Coyote at Canyon, by jrtchris on Flickr.

From prairie naturalist Trevor Herriot's Grass Notes comes word that the government of Saskatchewan is offering a $20 bounty on coyotes. An excerpt from Trevor's post:

The provincial Environment department has ecologists who know that this kind of measure does not stop coyotes from eating livestock. Our universities have biologists and ecologists who could explain what happens when bounty hunters start killing a predator like the coyote. As a “k-selected” species, the coyote regulates its population according to food supply and mortality rates.

If there is abundant food but adults are being killed, the survivors, who are also the more successful and wise, immediately increase the brood size and numbers of pregnant females within the pack. Trying to control coyote populations by killing them has been compared to bailing a boat with a sieve.

Then why the bounty? Trevor again:

An interesting sidelight on the coyote bounty: I have heard via the grapevine that some of the loudest complaints have come from sheep farmers north of the Qu’Appelle in the Cupar/Lipton area, where British farmers have moved in recent decades to set up farming [...] They are undoubtedly a welcome addition to the local farm community, but if they come from Scotland or England they arrive with a certain set of expectations and experiences — about wildlife and about the government’s role in making the land safe for farming.

Trevor's post reminds me of the well-known [to border collie people, anyway] description of the shepherd's dog in England, written by Johannes Caius 400 years ago:

Our shepherdes dogge is not huge, vaste, and bigge, but of an indifferent stature and growth, because it hath not to deale with the bloudthyrsty wolf, sythence there be none in England, which happy and fortunate benefite is to be ascribed to the puisaunt Prince Edgar, who to thintent ye the whole countrey myght be evacuated and quite clered from wolfes, charged & commaunded the welshemë (who were pestered with these butcherly beastes above measure) to paye him yearely tribute which was (note the wisedome of the King) three hundred Wolfes. Some there be which write that Ludwall Prince of Wales paide yeerly to King Edgar three hundred wolves in the name of an exaction (as we have sayd before.) And that by the meanes hereof, within the compasse and tearme of foure yeares none of those noysome, and pestilent Beastes were left in the coastes of England and Wales. This Edgar wore the Crown royall, and bare the Scepter imperiall of this kingdome, about the yeare of our Lorde nyne hundred fifty, nyne. Synce which time we reede that no Wolfe hath bene seene in England, bred within the bounds and borders of this countrey, mary there have bene divers brought over from beyonde the seas, for greedynesse of gaine and to make money, for gasing and gaping, staring, and standing to see them, being a straunge beast, rare, and seldom seene in England.

"... about the yeare of our Lorde nyne hundred fifty, nyne. Synce which time we reede that no Wolfe hath bene seene in England." All killed.

It gives me a certain satisfaction to know [with as much certainty as I know anything] that the coyote will escape that fate and dance on Man's grave at the end, bounty or no. Check out Camera Trap Codger's photo of the trickster: Coyote beautiful.

Related:
Coyotes at home and away

Oreo: There oughtta be a law!

Animal activists protest the barbaric murder of Oreo. Oops, my bad — had a Fox News moment there. This photo is from a larger, yet remarkably similar protest.

That's the solution, people! A law that saves dogs like Oreo from murdering murders like bloodthirsty Ed Sayres and from people like you — yes, you, and don't be showing me your kid's stitches and weeping about mental-lapse aggression because I've seen Fluffy's darling picture and I know perfectly well that Cesar Millan could have fixed your dog, no problemo! How dare you order your vet to murder Fluffy! People, Fluffy could have gone to a sanctuary to enjoy a long and happy life at the end of a catchpole, in his little kennel run! We need a law! Start a petition! Call your congressmen! Damn you murdering murderers and your Culture of Death!


[Never spent any time with Oreo, but think the fate of dogs that attack their owners/caretakers should be determined by owners/caretakers and their vets, not by popular vote. Also: there is such a thing as a life not worth living; and if I am ever in a permanent vegetative state, for doG's sake, pull the damn plug.]