Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Michigan cougar kills horse This just in... Alert correspondent and full-blooded Yooper Jim Junttila just sent me this press release. Cougars gotta eat, too, but you wonder why, with all the deer in that state, a cougar would attack such a large animal! Maybe it was thinking, "Man, I'm so hungry I could eat a ..." FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR MORE INFORMATION September 6, 2005 Dennis Fijalkowski 517-641-7677 HORSE KILLED BY COUGAR IN JACKSON COUNTY Bath . . . the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has released results of a detailed investigation of a horse killed on August 31 in western Jackson County's Parma Township. Evidence collected by the Conservancy's Director of Wildlife Programs, Dr. Patrick Rusz, two Jackson County animal control officers, and Parma Township supervisor Wendy Chamberlain indicate the healthy 26-year old Arabian show horse was killed at night by a cougar (mountain lion). "Sometimes it's hard to tell what killed a large animal," said Dr. Rusz, who has been researching cougars in Michigan for the past seven years. "But this was a no-brainer. The cougar left tell-tale bite marks along with tracks--everything but a business card." Rusz came to his conclusions after officer Machelle Dunlap and Ms. Chamberlain had already realized the same. The pair called him after they had ruled out everything else and the supervisor spotted the cougar crossing a road about a mile from the kill site the following day. "At first I couldn't believe my eyes," said Chamberlain. "I was in my car at about 10:00 a.m. and was suddenly staring at a full grown cougar staring back at me right in the road. There was absolutely no dobut what I was looking at from less than 35 feet away. It took its time crossing the road." Rusz found that the horse was killed by a powerful bite to the neck just behind the base of the skull that likely dropped the horse, literally, "in its tracks." Rusz noted in a detailed report available at www.miwildlife.org that the spacing between the tooth punctures and the locations of the bites matched cougar in every detail. He also found three track prints consistent with cougar where the horse was killed. "It is now obvious to us that Jackson County has a large, wild cougar," said Chamberlain. "I've seen it with my own eyes at close range, I've seen the adult horse that it killed last week and I've seen its tracks and signs. No one should get worked up about this cougar, however, it is prudent to educate our citizens about the big cat. Free copies of an informative brochure "Living With Cougars In Michigan" are available at the Township Office, and several other prominent locations around Parma Township. Remember, the cougar is an endangered species, and protected by Michigan law, and cannot be hunted, said Chamberlain." The non-profit Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has compiled evidence of cougars in Michigan including photographs and video tapes of cougars and their tracks, and cougar DNA in droppings (scats) found in eight counties. For information about the Michigan cougar, or the work of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy to save this endangered species, visit the organization's website: www.miwildlife.org. Copies of the brochure "Living With Cougars In Michigan," are available free of charge by sending a business-sized, self-addressed stamped envelope to Michigan Wildlife Conservancy, PO Box 393, Bath, MI 48808. Large quantities of the brochure can be obtained free for distribution at organizational meetings, sporting goods outlets, retail establishments and tourist destinations. -30- Editors Note: Attached is the actual Investigation Report as completed by Dr. Patrick Rusz, Director of Wildlife Programs, of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy. Photos of the cougar-killed horse are available upon request. Michigan Wildlife Conservancy PO Box 393 6380 Drumheller Rd. Bath, MI 48808 Phone: 517-641-7677 Fax: 517-641-7877 wildlife@miwildlife.org Become a member of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy today! Your gift will help save our natural heritage for future generations and support our environmental training programs at the Bengel Wildlife Center, in Bath. For only $35/year, you'll receive six issues of "The Wildlife Volunteer," Michigan's premier newsletter about wildlife. To join or learn of other member benefits, visit www.miwildlife.org. INVESTIGATION OF A HORSE ATTACK IN WESTERN JACKSON COUNTY, MICHIGAN Dr. Patrick J. Rusz Director of Wildlife Programs Michigan Wildlife Conservancy September 6, 2005 On September 2, 2005 I inspected a 26-year old Arabian horse found dead by its owner on the morning of August 31. The location was a residence and horse ranch in western Jackson County; the precise location is on file but is being withheld from this report at the horse owner's request. The horse owner stated his neighbors reported they heard his horses whinnying at about 1:30 a.m. His dog, kept indoors, also began barking at that time. He found the dead horse on flat ground within dense shrub cover at the edge of his pasture. The horse owner saw a long trail of blood on the dead animal's neck and soon after called 911, which contacted the Jackson County Sheriff's Department and Parma Township police, reporting that he suspected his horse's throat had been slashed. Jackson County Animal Control Officers Machelle Dunlap and Mark Abbott received the call at 8:31 a.m. and arrived at the scene at approximately 10:00 a.m. (August 31). After determining that the horse's wounds were not knife cuts or bullet wounds, they performed a more detailed investigation in the presence of the horse owner and Parma Township Supervisor Wendy Chamberlain, who had been contacted by the Parma Township police. The ACOs took color photographs of puncture marks and various measurements. These are noted later in this report. They thoroughly inspected the animal, and skinned back a section of the neck to determine the depths of the more obvious punctures. They also searched the ground where the dead horse was found. They finished their inspection around 3:00 p.m., and the animal was buried that evening in uplands about 250 feet from where it was found. I visited the scene at 9:00 a.m. on September 2. I was met by ACO Dunlap, Ms. Chamberlain, the horse owner, and a backhoe operator. After reviewing the photographs and measurements taken on August 31 by the ACOs, I (with the help of the backhoe operator) uncovered the horse carcass, which was under about 5 feet of dirt. The carcass was not badly decayed; undried blood was still evident and the neck and head could be easily moved to allow careful inspection. I identified each puncture mark noted and/or photographed by the ACOs. In addition, I found two punctures the ACOs had not seen in the tongue, and two more in the lower neck/throat area. I took photographs during my inspection as did ACO Dunlap. A total of 8 sets of puncture wounds were noted. The puncture wounds corresponding to the upper canines of the predator were approximately 49 mm (2 inches) apart; the marks of the lower canines were 39 mm (1.5 inches) apart. Two were found at the upper (back) of the neck just behind the base of the skull. Considerable hemorrhaging was evident there. The puncture holes extended downward 50-60 mm to the depth of the neck vertebrae and spinal cord. The horse was also bitten at the base of the left ear, penetrating part of the skull. There were three claw marks within 100 mm of the wound. Two prominent puncture wounds were also found on the left side of the horse's neck. Two puncture marks (39 mm apart) were found lower on the throat; they appeared to penetrate less than 30 mm. I assumed these to be from the lower canines. Two puncture marks were also found in the horse's tongue. One was almost exactly near the mid-line and although very evident, only penetrated about 15 mm (1/2 inch). The other was on the edge of the tongue. No other puncture or scratch marks associated with the predator[base ']s attack were found anywhere on the horse. No significant part of the carcass was consumed. However, ACO Dunlap and Ms. Chamberlain noted that on August 31 some of the blood on the horse was matted and appeared to them to have been licked. Following my inspection of the carcass, I examined the spot where the horse was found dead. There was no evidence the horse had been dragged to the spot; rather it appeared to have been killed within an area less than 20 feet in diameter. About 6 square feet of ground was covered with dried blood several mm thick. Three track prints consistent with cougar were found within 15 feet of the blood. Each measured about 3.75 inches in length and width. They were found where the hard-packed ground had been disturbed by horses. ACO Dunlap, Ms. Chamberlain and the horse owner stated emphatically that the cougar tracks were too visible to not have been seen on August 31. Therefore, it seemed that the cougar had returned to the kill scene sometime between the afternoon of August 31 and the morning of September 2. I then visited the scene of a reported cougar sighting by Ms. Chamberlain. She was traveling north on a road about 1.25 miles from the kill site at 10:30 a.m. on September 1, and reported seeing a cougar she estimated was about 6 feet long slowly cross the road less than 35 feet from her car. She had returned to the sighting area later that morning with ACO Dunlap, a State Police officer, and another woman. They reported finding three prints where the animal had walked into a cornfield. I was led to the tracks, but could see only one consistent with cougar in size and shape. Details of the print were not evident. The other two prints had been accidentally stepped on before I arrived at the scene, so I could not examine them. Based on my observations and measurements, I conclude that the horse was indeed killed by a cougar. No other explanation is plausible. The locations size and pattern of the bite marks were consistent with that of a large adult cougar in every detail. The only other Michigan predator capable of killing a large, healthy, adult horse is a big black bear. The bite pattern and lack of claw marks on the sides and back were inconsistent with bear, a species seldom seen in Jackson County in the last 100 years. Additional evidence -- the tracks found and reported sightings by Ms. Chamberlain and others -- points to a cougar attack. 9:50:04 PM    comment []

One-legged cricket serenades us Actually, he tried to move in, or so it seems. The other day, Shivani said "There's a cricket in the basement." "How do you know," I asked. "I can hear him chirping when I'm downstairs." There is little hope in finding anything in our basement, let alone something mobile like a cricket. She left the basement door open anyway, hoping he would come upstairs. Then on Sunday she heard him chirping in the kitchen. Unlike most crickets, he kept chirping enough to let me home in on him and I caught him under the table. He had only one hind leg, but was managing to chirp just fine with one leg. (You do know that crickets chirp by rubbing a hind leg against a wing cover, right?) I put him outside on the patio and figured he would be happy to find a home outdoors. Apparently not, because after dinner tonight, I heard a cricket in the family room. He kept chirping as I moved books and a CD player to discover... a one-legged cricket! I can't swear it's the same critter, but he has the same leg and is about the same size (a tad shy of full size, as far as I can tell), and he was not far from the patio door he must have come back through to get inside again. We've had crickets in the house before, but this one seems to have adopted us. This time, I put him out the front door, just to see how good his logistics software works. If he comes in again, I'll take his picture and post it. Later... 9:34:12 PM    comment []

A Port-O-Gram from Michael Frome My friend, Michael Frome, sent me a message worth sharing. He calls it a "Port-O-Gram," so named because he now lives in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Here it is in its entirety. I'm sure he won't mind my passing it on to others in this medium: It has been a considerable while since I sent to friends a Report from Port, or Port-o-Gram (and which some may remember in previous incarnations as the Brandy-gram, Sombrero-gram and Zorba-gram). Now lately we have been listening to the honkers heading south across Wisconsin and to other evidences of oncoming autumn around us, all suggesting that I communicate and tell what June and I have been doing and thinking. One reason I haven't written is that I set up a website and thought that would do. I can't claim that I'm especially efficient at it and I don't update it very often. But they say it's important for writers to have a website so I do, though I think it serves a different purpose than the grams do. Another reason you haven't heard from me is that I've been working hard to finish my memoir, the story of my life's journeys and adventures. Now it is completed and I hope it will be in print in a year. For the present, I will share with you, first, the opening two paragraphs: I was over eighty when I found myself communicating in a college classroom with twenty- or twenty-one-year-olds, wondering how to bridge the years with something useful to them and worth listening to. I opened by offering the supposition that it must be hard for them to realize I once was their age, but they should indeed believe that once I was; further, that one day they would be my age -- but that first they would have to live long enough. And from the last chapter: I walked alone with my thoughts, which presently turned to the ultimate end of my life on earth, whenever and however that would come. Somehow, first came recollections of Sigurd Olson and of how he had lived and died. He was robust in his youth, working as a teacher and as a guide in the Boundary Waters Wilderness of Minnesota, before becoming a professional writer and vigorous wilderness advocate. In 1980 he underwent a cancer operation: he was pretty weak for a while and walked with a cane. His days of rough woodsmanship were gone, though he recovered some of his strength. On a bright January morning in 1982 he went to his desk and began typing, "A new adventure is coming up and I'm sure it will be a good one." and then went snowshoeing near his home at Ely, Minnesota. He suffered a heart attack, collapsed in the snow and died soon after at the age of eighty-two. Now I was more than three years older, and plainly vulnerable. As Cephalus said in his dialogue with Socrates: "When a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true; either from weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings." But I was not fearful, tormented, or filled with dark forebodings, nothing like it. My life even in the advanced years was filled with wonderful things going on all around me. As I walked toward home I looked down and suddenly saw a penny, a plain brown copper penny that asked me to bend down and look closely. The penny wasn't new or shiny, yet it wanted me to take it, examine both sides of it and heed it as a talisman of things to come. That little penny told me how fortunate I was, and that I had saved the best for last in my life. It assured me that dying was no cause for worry or concern, reminding me of the words of my old hero, John Muir. "But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony." June to a very large degree is responsible for those "wonderful things going on around me." It isn't only what she does for me, but what she stands for in her social conscience and how she evokes hope with truth and inspiration in these weary, needy days. So it happens that on September 4, 2005 as a retired pastor she was called to substitute for a vacationing colleague at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. It was a few days after catastrophe struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. June quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "'If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.'" Then she continued: "Racism has been the enemy of the American heart. Perhaps an invisible people, black and poor, walled into a sub-standard living condition, would never have flooded our conscience had their dead not floated past our TV screens. But they have been hungry, poor, without decent housing or opportunity, living under the threat of disease and death for generations, and we have not cared... "At first we open to them, but when the suffering and poor keep asking us to go further, to rearrange our priorities, we begin to back off. They are asking us to risk more than we dare. We want to write our contributions off on our income tax return and keep them in their place. They want more than canned goods, money donations, and public transportation. They want to be our neighbors... "We still don't know what time it is, but now is the moment for us to wake up. It is not what we can do FOR the; it is what we ARE with them..." But, of course, we live in a land of illusion, delusion and American mythology--of myths that rationalize bigotry, exploitation, homelessness, hunger, war, and degradation of the environment. And now, at long last, as the skunk recognized when once the wind changed, "It is all coming back to me now." The devastation in New Orleans is not the only American tragedy. Personally, I grieve over the tragedy of our national parks--and how easy it is to cover it up and make believe all is well. One month ago, I received a communication from Chesley Moroz, president of the National Park Service Employees and Alumni Association (of which I have been a life member for many years). The letter from Moroz includes the following: "The NPS continues to thrive with a dedicated workforce committed to mission." But that isn't true at all, not when the NPS is in sad, sorry shape, never worse; when today's mission plainly is to commercialize and privatize the parks, to convert our national preserves into noisy national popcorn playgrounds, and when able personnel are demoralized to the point of despair. And I grieve also over the ongoing tragic attack against wildlife in America, especially when conducted in the name of pseudo-scientific "wildlife management." Note this report by Margaret Pettis in the August 2005 newsletter of the High Uintas Preservation Council: A SAD STATE FOR CRITTERS The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has proclaimed victory (Salt Lake Tribune, 8/12/05) in permitting the killing of so many cougars in the past decade that Utah houndsmen will have to accept fewer "opportunities" to tree the magnificent wild cats with packs of radio-collared hounds and shoot them at point-blank range. The 2005 kill was down 30 percent from the previous kill of an incredible 447 dead mountain lions. The average age of a dead lion this year was 2 1/2 years. And they call this a sport! The prime directive of this division continues to be to build a mighty deer herd so lucrative hunting licenses can secure the life of the agency. Now, as always, those evil predators that compete with humans for hoofed prey have been put in their place. And with our borders secured against wolves and bear cubs, and with sows once again targets in an appalling spring bear hunt, the agency and its wildlife board can pursue its monoculture of big game at the expense of all other species. Public input that counters this approach has been eliminated. What a broken web of life the Division of Wildlife has spun in Utah. Margaret, the web of life has been broken in so many pieces and so many places that society scarcely knows how to recognize the damage, let alone to repair it. Albert Schweitzer wrote that the world has been reduced to horror in splendor, and that only the ethics of reverence for life, for all of life, can bring us back together. Or as my wife told the congregation at Cedarburg: "We are not to conform, but to transform through the renewal of our minds." To which I will add, It may not be easy, but let us be of good cheer and do our best! MICHAEL FROME Port Washington, WI MICHAEL FROME, Ph.D. mfrome@aol.com http://members2.authorsguild.net/mfrome/ PEACE NOW... "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees." -- Revelation 2:10 5:36:58 PM    comment []