The Field

What to do after graduation? Kill some Russian olives, perhaps?

The intensity of the last month is over.  I'm a college graduate, with a bachelor's degree in Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology from CU.  It hasn't really sunk in yet.  After the whirlwind of activity last week (including a fantastic visit from my lovely girlfriend, finals, and graduation) I found myself feeling a little restless today, not knowing what to do with myself, as if I should be frantically working on a term project and worrying about an exam or two.  When you've gotten used to it, it can be hard to stop being stressed out and just enjoy a little free time.  I need to find a real job now, hopefully something related to biology/ecology/conservation, but maybe it can wait a day or two.

Today I looked at the male cones on our pines that are currently coating my car in a fine layer of yellowish pollen.  I took a walk and did some amateur forestry.  The cottonwoods are fully leafed out with beautiful fresh, shiny, broad, bright green leaves.  They're heavy with developing seeds, which will soon be released to the wind on cottony sails.  The prairie dogs are doing their thing, burrowing, foraging, and barking at passersby.  I'm concerned about them now that, as I've worried for years, some have spread over the feeble boundary that was the stream bed, and they may begin to spread through the rest of the field.  If they grow too numerous, someone will probably complain, and the city may have the lot of them exterminated. 

The Russian olive trees are still proliferating.  I removed one small sapling today.  It isn't like me to kill a tree, but these are noxious weeds, endangering the native ecosystem.  It's alarming, but at the rate they're popping up, all too easy to envision the little grassland/cattail marsh of the field being replaced with a Russian olive woodland.  I fear the invaders may out-compete the beautiful cottonwoods, and for that, I despise them. As I was tearing out the sapling, it occurred to me that while I may not be able to remove larger trees altogether, I might be able to girdle them.  This is something I learned about last summer in the mammal class, where I saw that the foresters in Boulder county had cut off a strip of bark all the way around the trunk of some trees in order to create standing dead trees for use by owls and so forth.  While most of the tree's wood is composed of water-conducting xylem, sugar-conducting phloem exists only in a thin ring inside of the bark.  Removing the bark all the way around a tree removes the phloem, which leaves the tree unable to transport sugars generated in the leaves down to the roots, and the tree dies.  Surely cutting off a ring of bark would be easier than trying to cut down and remove a whole tree, and some more dead, standing trees might actually be a habitat improvement for birds in the field.  I went home and grabbed a little saw.

However, Russian olives tend to branch in an almost bush like way very near the ground, and the limbs are covered in pointy 1-2 inch spines, which are probably designed to prevent just this sort of thing, so even reaching the main stem is difficult.  Its nearness to the ground also makes the angle difficult for sawing.  And the buggers are apt to send out new shoots from stumps anyway, so I'm not sure if this method can even kill them off.  But I decided to try anyway, for science, to see if it would work.  I wrestled with them and managed to cut a ring around several small trees.  They fought back, scratching up my arms with their spines.  One drew a nice line of blood on my elbow.  Maybe it's fitting, since I drew theirs, but I survived the encounter; hopefully, they will not.

Bitten! or, The pre-spring cleaning: mean dogs and air guns

Finally, a warm day with little snow on the ground that happens to be on a weekend when I'm also not feeling too lazy.  It was sunny and beautiful today, so I got out and cleaned up -- two bags and one large item -- for the first time since September, I think.  Now that the snow's melted off, you can see tunnels that mice made under the snow all over the place, on the hill, in the field, and near the stream.  Bits of vegetation that presumably lined the tunnels and shallow depressions in the ground mark the tunnels, which sometimes branch out this way and that or run straight into their owner's hole.  I wonder what species it is.  I'm tempted to say deer mice (Peromyscus  maniculatus) just because I know they're common as dirt and live everywhere. 

Tomorrow, some kid will go to his fort after school and find that it isn't there anymore.  I wouldn't mind some kids using the sheltered area under a copse of trees in the middle of a field as their fort so much, except that they trashed the place.  All sorts of food related garbage, including a bag of chips and jar of salsa sheltered under their sleds.  Were you really going to eat something you'd left out in the field?  I even found their secret stash -- an air pistol, complete with a carton of bb's.  Oh, how very naughty.  Hopefully they weren't shooting at birds or anything.  I scribbled a note on a scrap of their own trash and left it where the stash was, asking if this was their own fort, why did they trash it?  And firearms (including air guns) are illegal out here, as is harassing, harming, or removing animals and plants.  I left my number.  If they want the gun back, we'll talk.

After dropping off the gun and bb's, which were annoying extra weight, at home, I returned to keep cleaning, and was greeted by the most aggressive dog I've ever met outdoors.  It's common practice around here, even though it's against the rules, for people to let their dogs off-leash while they're out walking them.  But it should have been obvious to the girl (perhaps in her late teens) walking him that this dog, who was perhaps annoyed about the ridiculous silver dog jacket he was being forced to wear, was extremely aggressive and should have been on a leash.  He was a medium sized dog, large enough to give me pause when he ran up barking at me.  The girl called him, but to no avail; if your dog is going to be off-leash you should at least have good voice command of him!  He seemed to be trying to hold me at bay, becoming more aggressive whenever I started walking.  When I tried to walk away, he bit me!  Lunged from behind and nipped me on the thigh!  I told the girl that he bit me and he needs to be on a leash.  When she finally chased him down, I saw her put it on him.  A less tolerant person would have called animal control and had the dog impounded and possibly killed.  The owner could be fined, at least, for so recklessly turning a highly aggressive dog loose on the public.  I guess I let her off easy.  But that dog gave me a good welt, and a very minor breakage of the skin, so now I might have to get a tetanus shot.  Either that, or be forced to stalk the night as a weredog, which admittedly would be pretty cool.

I made my circuit, I cleaned up.  It got a little hard on the last leg, when I was dragging a long, thin strip of metal in one hand and hauling a full bag in the other.  And I stopped when I reached the prairie dog colony, because I noticed a large number of holes that had been maliciously plugged up by someone.  I spent a good twenty minutes at least, until it was getting dark and chilly and I felt a need to get that bag and metal thing to the drop off already, pulling out big rocks and digging out those holes.  Next to one was a dead prairie dog, which appeared to be pretty freshly killed.  I couldn't tell by what, obviously not a coyote or bird of prey, because there wouldn't be anything left.  If it was some kid... I hope it wasn't.  I put the trash in its spot and walked home. 

It really was a beautiful afternoon and evening, scarcely a cloud in the sky, and even in the dark on the way home I was in a t-shirt.  It was kind of an adventuresome afternoon -- I've never been bitten by a mean dog in the course of cleaning before!  Nor have I found a gun before.  And I'm troubled at just how many of the prairie dog homes had big rocks stuffed in them.   As I pried the rocks out, I directed a thought to whomever did it: I love them more than you hate them; that's why you, and people like you, have already lost.  Really, don't you have to believe that love conquers hate in the end?  It's easy to believe that on a beautiful day, at least.

NO MOTOR VEHICLES Part II: The Revenge

Several ago I decided to step outside for a minute.  The sun had gone down and it was mostly dark; the air was crisp and there was a slight breeze.  The field presented a pretty, refreshing scene.  Then I heard engines roaring, and noticed the cars down by the baseball fields.  Go-peds and dirt bikes are bad enough -- please tell me they're not driving in the field! I thought.  Then I distinctly saw the truck go rambling up the hill.  This was one of the most offensive transgressions against the field I've ever seen.  Again, a scooter with a noisy gas engine is bad enough, but a truck?  You do not go driving a stupid truck through my field!  They had to hear from me on this.  I ran, uncertain of whether I would ever catch up to them.  Fortunately for me, the truck stopped near the top of the hill and stayed put as I approached.  I walked up the hill behind it, and it became clear why it had stayed in the same place -- it was stuck.  This made me a little bit happy, I freely admit.  I walked up to the driver's window.  A teen aged male idiot was at the wheel, spinning the tires uselessly.  "What are you doing?" I asked. 

Something to the effect of "Hey, dude, what's up?" was his answer.  I said that this is not an off road area, and asked what he was doing with a truck in here.  I didn't get a clear answer.  He got out to look at the truck.  It was badly stuck, high-centered on a snow drift, with the front bumper bashed off.  I secretly found this to be satisfying. 

"I didn't think the snow was so deep here, did you?" 

Well, yes, you idiot, I should think that in the middle of one of the snowiest winters in our lifetimes that would be perfectly obvious.  I gave a token show of neighborliness by pushing as he tried spinning his wheels again.  I conjectured that it would take a large vehicle with a wench to get it unstuck.  Another teenage idiot walked up, this one from the direction of the tennis courts.  I could see that there was some commotion over there as well.  He explained that the other car I had seen -- a jeep -- and an ATV were stuck as well.  The two idiots left, walking down the hill, apparently going after a shovel, which obviously wouldn't help. 

I decided to check out the rest of the mess.  Sure enough, the ATV was stuck in the ditch between the tennis courts and the jeep was high-centered in a snow drift just beyond them.  Here were three more teenage/young adult male idiots, two wrestling with the ATV and the third in the jeep.  I started talking to them; apparently the plan had been to have some fun off-roading through our park in the ATV, and that when awry when it got stuck.  Then idiot 1 called idiots 2-5 for help, and they brought the jeep and truck and proceeded to get them hopelessly stuck as well.  I was conflicted, enjoying the sweet justice of the moment, but decided it would be good to help out -- at least if they were unstuck, they might leave.  Surprisingly, three of us managed to get the ATV out.  They tried to use it to help the jeep by attaching a rope to it and pulling, but all they accomplished was digging yet more ruts into the the grass with spinning tires.  They gave up, and idiot 1 left on the ATV, apparently seeking more help.  They were actually talking about bringing in another truck.  Stupidity, thy name is drunk teenage male.  (Could they all claim the excuse of being drunk? Either way, they were still being idiots.)  I had to tell them before I left that this is a park; they're not supposed to have vehicles here, and they're making ruts in the grass and a lot of noise.  Not cool.  That got a blank stare.  I wished them luck and went home, thinking I had half a mind to call the police.  I did, and it turned out I wasn't the first!  Most of the neighborhood had surely noticed.  Units were already en route. 

I'm sure they were caught -- the jeep and truck especially were not going anywhere. They deserved a ticket, for disrespecting the field, the park, and the neighborhood, and for generally acting like teenage male idiots.  They also deserved to pay for the wrecker the city must have had to call in to free the the jeep and truck.  A few days later I saw the truck parked on the road by its owner's house, bumper still detached.  I wish I knew exactly how it played out.  Hopefully the experience taught them a lesson.  To echo my dad's sentiment, maybe next time they'll just take a walk.

Russian olives

Cleaned up 1 bag today.  I also picked up a few wasp nests attached to unassuming looking pieces of trash, one of which was in my bag for a while before I noticed it!  I've been contemplating weeds lately, as it seems the plant life of the field is increasingly composed of nothing else.  The Russian olive trees are the biggest noxious weeds around,and at the rate they're popping up all over it's easy to foresee the field becoming a sort of Russian olive woodland.  Back when the neighborhood was built, they were still being planted as ornamentals.  I don't know why -- they're short and thorny, with dark brown bark that peels in vertical strips; they're smelly in spring (the scent of their tiny white and yellow blooms is deep in my memory -- I think there was one in the front yard of the house I spent my first years in -- but it's pungent and, I think, unpleasant) and they don't change color in fall.  Not a particularly attractive tree, if you ask me.  But a quick look at the neighborhood reveals their silvery leaves still common in people's yards and on street corners and medians, even though they're now illegal to buy or sell in the state of Colorado.  This is because they are an invasive, non-native species that quickly spreads out of captivity and chokes riparian areas, crowds out native species, and does not provide favorable nesting habitat for many birds.  There are thick stands at several places along the creek, as well as individual trees spread throughout the field, with new ones popping up all the time.  There is exactly one cottonwood sapling that I know of in the field (the one whose old mother sadly fell on it, but which is still kicking) and several young trees, but they just don't reproduce at the phenomenal rate of the Russian olives.  I'm afraid they'll be crowded out.  In the center of the field, the husk of a long dead cottonwood is surrounded by a thick copse of Russian olives, currently heavy with seed. 

At this point, eliminating them from the field would take a huge effort from many people (no way could I do it alone) over a long term, to cut them, remove them, and monitor for more.  I don't see it happening.  The city has a volunteer force for controlling Russian olives, but they've never made here before.  I did, however, realize today that young Russian olive seedlings are rather easy to break and twist off at the base, and I collected three of them along with the trash.  They'll probably just grow back, but maybe if I nip enough in the bud it'll help staunch the Russian olive tide. 

Other than that, it was a nice cool day, cloudy with a refreshing sprinkle around 7:00 p.m.  Recent rains left a lot of trash in the creek near the road.  It hasn't rained in several days, but there was still standing water in the low ground near the creek bed below the prairie dog colony.  It gives me hope that the ground is too wet for them to expand further, and they wont find their way onto the manicured grass of Mayfair park and get themselves in trouble. 

Old, old litter

Cleaned up 1 bag full today, 1 large item (which, ironically, was a trash can).  Of note among today's catch is a thirty year old Pepsi can.  It was right on the surface of the ground, near the sidewalk.  It was also near a prairie dog hole, so perhaps a prairie dog turned up this little time capsule.  It's badly crunched up, but the red and blue is still vibrant and the type legible.  There's an circular emblem on the front with a "76" in it, "1876-1976" along the top and "Centennial" along the bottom.  I think it may be noting the centennial of Colorado's statehood, as the background is blue mountains.  On the reverse side of the can it says "CONGRATULATIONS DENVER NUGGETS 75-76 ABA REGULAR SEASON CHAMPIONS," and has a portrait of one Jimmy Foster, #16, Guard, 6'1" 180, Connecticut.  A six-foot-one basketball player.  Huh.  It's the old style of pop can -- thicker aluminum, not tapered at the ends, with the small triangular opening that must have been difficult to drink from.  I have previously found a similarly shaped Mountain Dew can that must be about the same age.  This is why we should heed the proverb printed on the top of the Pepsi can and "DON'T LITTER," because it doesn't pick itself up.  It will just sit there for THIRTY YEARS or until someone else cleans up after us.  As for the can, I think I'll finally fulfill the other request printed on the top -- "PLEASE RECYCLE".

Coyote sighting

Forget about the last post -- it's been hot and dry since.  However, I finally saw one of the coyotes in the field the other evening.  A distant siren sent them to howling, and I went to see if I could pinpoint the location of their den.  I only know about as much as I did before -- it's somewhere in the dense trees and shrubs near the creek -- but I saw one, briefly, bounding through the foliage before he disappeared into it.  I also found the thin little path they've made off of the trail to their den.  I followed it a few steps, and saw one of them looking back at me from the bushes.  It was too dark to see him well, but there he was.

On the way home I found a nice bat viewing spot, on the hill with them swooping mere feet overhead.  Bats are cool, and their acrobatics as they hunt mosquitoes are fun to watch. :)

Wet July (so far); slightly disconcerting ants

We seem to have received our wet spring weather a little late -- we had a rainy 4th, and I believe it's rained (or at least sprinkled) every day here since.  Some places in the mountains have had floods, but we've been enjoying the moisture and relatively cool weather.  I was actually wearing jeans and a light sweatshirt on Sunday!  It seems to be remembering what month it is now, though.  It's getting warmer this week, with clouds and brief showers coming late in the afternoon.  The forecast is to continue drying and warming.  It was nice while it lasted.  Actually, I've been hoping that we'll get enough precipitation this year to keep the prairie dogs from breaking out of their current boundaries and into the bluegrass of Mayfair park, because I'm pretty sure if that happens people will complain, and the city will promptly call in exterminators to get rid of all of them.  I don't want the colony to expand beyond a certain point, for its own good.  This year, some burrows have appeared dangerously close.  My hope is that they wont want to move down into a slightly wetter area, and the creek bed and the area around it, which gets standing pools of water sometimes, will act as a natural barrier to them. 

Today, on the edge of the trail near the Mayfair playground, I saw some ants of a sort which I do not recall ever seeing before.  They were larger than the local black ants, and pale red -- more orange than red, really.  And they didn't make little mounds, but large holes in the ground, maybe half an inch in diameter.  There were half a dozen holes or more within a few feet of each other, all swarming with ants.  There were many larger, winged males, awkwardly climbing up grass blades and taking flight in search of queens.  I've been trying to think of any time I've seen these before.  Maybe I have, but I can't think of any instance.  Fire ants haven't invaded this far north yet, right?  Please tell me this is some harmless native species I'm not familiar with!

NO MOTOR VEHICLES

(That's what signs say at several entrances to the field.) 

Well, that wasn't a very relaxing walk at all, thanks to a pair of teenagers and their dirt bikes.  They rode all over the field and Mayfair park, leaving tracks in the grass and ruts in the trails, and turning the scent in the field from flowers to gasoline.  They passed me once and I tried to yell to them that they needed to take their bikes out onto the street, where they're actually legal, but to no avail.  They probably couldn't hear me over the roar of their muffler-less engines.  I would have liked to tell them that they live in a city, and have neighbors, and running their bikes in the open space and park is both illegal and inconsiderate -- to the people hoping to get away from noise like that, and the resident wildlife they're harassing.  Jerks.  It'd be nice if the parks and open space regulations were enforced.

I decided to go for a walk because the coyotes howled earlier, and I thought I could tell where it was coming from, so I thought I'd investigate.  They must have a den in the field.  I didn't find any evidence of them, though.  I also saw a plains garter snake (a little over a foot long) basking on a gravely area, and a large spider. 

The little tree and the foxes' diet

I cleaned up on Wednesday, three bags.  Luckily it wasn't as dirty as last time.  I didn't get out until 5:30, but it was still hot.  The cottonwoods are freshly leafed out, with their big spade-shaped leaves, including the little one that the old one fell on, so it seems it's still alive!  I somehow managed to cover all the trails, and even the creek itself to some extent.  Longer days are nice, and so is coming home in the evening without having my arms half frozen.  I noticed a scattering of prairie dog bones, including a skull, around the fox den, proving that they were a food source for the foxes.  I also saw a leg bone that had clearly been cut with a butcher's knife -- the foxes must have pilfered some food from trash cans.  And last time I also saw the dried wing of a bird, all of which shows the variety of food sources the foxes employed.  The den still appears empty, but I'm sure something will come to occupy it in time.  It would only be karma if it were a family of skunks.  The prairie dogs were very active... I just hope they don't spread through that one area where there isn't much in the way of natural barriers into the park and the rest of the field, at which point I'm sure some of the neighbors would get annoyed with them and they'd probably be poisoned.  I also hope that ousting the foxes (if indeed they are gone) doesn't have the unintended effect of increasing the prairie dog's population growth by relieving them of one of their chief predators around here.  At least it was a nice day, but it already seems dry... hopefully it will rain more this month!

April Cleanup: bones; bad news at the fox den; help from my niece

So this is what the field looks like when I go three months without cleaning.  Well, I suppose it’s nice to be needed.  Not really.  Picked up 4 fat bags of trash today, 7 golf balls.  I spent about three hours just working on the hill, which I might usually spend thirty minutes on.  On the hill, I found what appears to be a cow femur.  Odd, since the nearest cow is at least one or two miles away.  It’s mostly clean and white, yet not desiccated, so it’s somewhat fresh.  One end was broken, the marrow eaten out, and it’s clearly been gnawed on.  I can’t imagine a coyote bringing down a full grown cow; perhaps one died by some other means, and the coyotes simply didn’t let it go to waste, and one strong-necked coyote decided to trot one all the way over here.

Under the stump of the tree wreck, I found the skull belonging to the animal whose bones I described some months ago.  I had found the mandible previously, but not the skull.  Now, it was just laying there.  It must either be a fox or a raccoon skull.  I thought a fox, but perhaps the nose is a bit short.  At the same place, beneath the cottonwood stump, I also noticed tiny, delicate bones, and found the inch-long jawbone of a field mouse (or some similar small rodent).  The fallen tree almost seems like a graveyard of some sort, a hallowed spot.  Later, as I walked toward the center of the field to grab a conspicuous bag, I was surprised to see another skull on the grass.  This one had a relatively short nose and large eyes.  Perhaps it was a raccoon, or a domestic cat, although I thought it was rather large for a cat.  These are the only skulls I’ve ever seen in the field.  (I didn’t take them, of course, as I think it’s better and more respectful to leave them in nature.  I took pictures of them.)

As the afternoon wore on I worked my way across the hill, west to east, and came near the fox den.  I hadn’t seen them lately, and wondered if there were any kits this year.  Kids have sledded on the hill very near the den this winter, crushing down all the tall grass, and I wondered if the lack of cover might have convinced them not to use the den this year.  Instead, I happened to stumble onto the den itself, a place I’ve always avoided before out of consideration for the foxes, and I worked the hill.  What I found outraged me.  Some bastard had plugged two entrances to the den with large rocks and wood.  A third hole, a little removed, was still clear.  Who would do this?  The sentiment I’ve seen in the past is positive, even protective, of the foxes and their cute little ones.  Who would want to get rid of our foxes?  Hopefully they weren’t in there when the exits were plugged.  What kind of person would do that?  I suppose the foxes just had to den somewhere else this year.  Thanks a lot, jerk.  It only takes a few malicious humans to mess things up.  I hope the foxes come back. I unplugged the den.  I’m sure something will move in; it’s too nice a hole in the ground to remain vacant. 

As I was finishing up the hill, I was called home to look after my niece while my folks went out.  She was sitting close to the TV, pouring honey into the palm of her hand and eating it.  After Spongebob and yet another episode of some very not-funny children’s sitcom, I got her to put on some jeans and come out with me.  She didn’t seem to mind – she was very helpful and even energetic.  I showed her the skulls and we hypothesized about what they might be.  We picked up near the prairie dogs and along the creek, past the playground, which she didn’t even seem interested to go play on – I think she was actually engaged in tromping around the creek and picking up trash.  She was surprised at the number of pop cans, wondered where all this stuff comes from, and started finding golf balls, which we counted.  We got a lot more done than I thought would be possible before dark; she quickly and thoroughly picked up several sections of the creek.  By the time we got to the old bridge over the creek, though, it was nearly dark.  And the place was a mess, dozens of pieces of Styrofoam littering the little water hole there, and teenager associated garbage over by their little spot under the trees – even a garbage can.  We picked up what we could before it got dark and headed back.  I had needed to open another bag as we worked along the creek, so I picked up that one as we went back, and she volunteered to carry the lighter bag, though it looked too big for her.  It was dark as we headed home, but I felt I’d done something good by getting her out from under the TV for a while, and she didn’t seem to mind.  And the field is four bags cleaner.