…by squirrels and thrushes having their fun.
Category Archives: Natural history
So, a fish lands in a parking lot…
…and this is a joke whose punchline has yet to cross my threshold. In an incredible ongoing saga, yet another animal engages in one-upmanship in Fairbanks and STEALS THE SHOW!
The Home, It Groans
We’ve had an unusually warm winter – until now. It’s hit the 40s (below) finally. The air is unbelievably crisp, reminding us what living in Fairbanks is all about this time of year. It’s a great time to get things done inside, that’s for sure. All systems are working well; the boiler comes on frequently and the wood stove is stoked and radiating very welcome heat.
Thinking about polar bears
It has been unseasonably warm here in Beringia so far this winter, with temperatures up into the 20s and even 30s—above zero! It has also been unseasonably dry, with very little snow so far. It makes you wonder about climate change and how it might affect us at a local level.
While I was out splitting wood, my mind was wandering, as usual, and I remembered that polar bears diverged from brown bears a long time ago, and that polar bears had survived through the last interglacial period, which was warmer than this one (so far). In refreshing my memory, I (re)learned that polar bears split off from brown bears about 600,000 years ago and actually survived through multple interglacials. The last interglacial (we’re in one now, the Holocene), was called the Sangamon interglacial or the Eemian. It was about 130,000-115-000 years ago and was perhaps the warmest of the interglacial cycles experienced by polar bears. That interglacial period was warmer than today, and it is considered that the polar ice caps melted—the Arctic Ocean probably only had ice in the winter.
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A-Hunting We Will Go!
It had been three long years since I’d gotten a moose, and the freezer was clatteringly empty. We hadn’t done so well with fishing this year, either, so it seemed like a good time to shake things up. As I hopped in the truck to go, I didn’t realize that someone I didn’t know was just down the road brandishing a gun and threatening to shoot police officers. This guy’s escapades caused one of the oddest beginnings to a hunting trip I’ve ever had.