The Field

Skulls

Combing open spaces for weeds, it happens that we also see a lot of bones. Our open spaces are littered with the bones of animals past. I almost never see animal remains on a trail, but since this job started, we've found skulls (and in one case a disturbingly fresh head) representing six families of mammals from four orders. If you want specifics -- and I know you do -- here they are:

1. Order Rodentia (rodents)
Family: Sciuridae (squirrels)
Genus/species: Cynomys ludovicianus (black-tailed prairie dog -- these skulls are everywhere)

2. Order Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares)
Family: Leporidae (rabbits and hares)
Genus/species: Sylvilagus audubonii (desert cottontail (this is an educated guess based on the local abundance of this species.)

3. Order Carnivora (carnivores)
Family: Canidae (canids)
Genus/species: Vulpes vulpes (red fox)
Family: Mephitidae (skunks)
Genus/species: Mephitis mephitis (striped skunk -- this is an educated guess -- there are four species of skunk that live in Colorado, but this should be the only one in this region.)
Family: Procyonidae (raccoon family)
Genus/species: Procyon lotor (raccoon)

4. Order Artiodactyla (even toed ungulates)
Family: Cervidae (deer, elk and moose)
Genus/species: Odocoileus hemionus (mule deer -- there's a lot of these too.)

There are eight orders of mammals to be found in Colorado, with 22 families (nine and 23, if you count horses). I wonder how many more we might find?  I find this interesting because it's evidence of biodiversity that you don't usually get to see when you're hiking on the trail, and the abundance of bones off the trails reminds you that you are in a dynamic environment, where a multitude of life and death dramas happen all the time, and where nutrients (like the calcium in animal bones) cycle from the ground, to living things, and back to the earth again.  As we respectfully buried the raccoon skull the other day, I imagined it saying, "Hello IPM crew, I'm dead!  One day you will be like me.  You too must go into the earth."  Well, that's just not true.  We can be cremated and have our remains shot into space if we want, and if we have the money.  Then again, maybe giving back our nutrients and giving rise to future life isn't such a bad fate, even if it is a little creepy coming from the surprisingly toothy grin of a long dead raccoon.

Fishing for cell phones

It feels a little post-apocalyptic, being surrounded by heavily altered nature, fishing a piece of broken and toxic technology out of a small body of polluted water. On my walk today, breaking in my new Garmont Kiowa Vegan hiking shoes, I weeded the sprouting Russian olives some and then noticed pieces of a cell phone in the pool under the little old bridge. As more important people have noted, computers, cell phones, tv's, and other modern conveniences contain an array of heavy metals and chemicals that are fine while contained in their technological form, but horrendous if released into the environment (to say nothing of the fact that they also contain small amounts of gold and other things worth recovering.) That's why responsible recycling of old technology is so important. It's unfortunate, then, that it's so darn fun to break stuff and throw it in bodies of water. I managed to fish out the face plate, and the circuit board with antenna attached, but unfortunately I didn't find the battery, whose acids are probably still leaking into the water. There was a medium sized crawdad dead in the middle of the pool. Not an encouraging sign. Other than that, it was a very nice day.