Stamp of the day: Foxes and coyotes

This morning I saw a young red fox that had been run over by a car. It was laying dead on the road.  Such a waste of a good life.

A few days ago LA and I saw an equally disturbing sight - along a rural road on a snow covered field an animal much larger than a fox was running.  It was a coyote, with big ears.  But it was so emancipated and its fur so thin that it looked more like a greyhound, and its tail was thin, thin, thin.  Mange, scabies, rabies, who knows, but something was afflicting it severely and you wondered how long it would survive.

We have had living visitors here too in the last week. A fat, ugly and white-faced oppossum occupied our porch for an hour one night and refused to leave.  They really do play dead if threathened.  It finally went away after LA stood on the outside of the porch railining poking it with a stick, hard and repeatedly. 

Racoons you mostly see dead too here in New Jersey, run over at night.  Grey squirrels do their thievery at the bird feeders or look for their hidden nuts that they can't find in the forests.  I saw another interesting thing today, an emu!    It is at a farm just a few kilometers from here. 

Deers are the absolutely most common wildlife mammal here, both dead and alive.

During 1 March to 15 May I am part of a personal bioblitz effort and challenge, where we will try to see as many species as possible of any living thing on Earth.  It started this morning and my first species was of course, Homo sapiens.  Second - blue jay, out the window :)

Dan före dan (The day before The Day)

Today is the day before THE DAY, at least in Sweden.  Swedes don't care much about Santa fitting through the chimney, reindeer sleighs in the sky, and stockings hanging precariously (and fire unsafetedly) at the fireplace.  What Swedes do is very different. 

Santa actually comes to your house on Christmas Eve, knocks on the door, and asks 'Are there any nice children here?'.  And the kids have to answer (and you better say 'yes' or you will be in trouble.  And then he takes out presents out of his big burlap bag, and hands them out to everybody.  After a while he says that he has more houses to visit, so he is just going to leave the bag with presents for all of you, and then he leaves. 

Soon after, Dad/Uncle/Big Brother/Grandpa shows up at the door after getting more firewood/checking on the ham in the basement/trying to find a screwdriver in the barn and all the kids say 'You missed him, he was just here!!!'.  :) 

 

 With this tradition Santa has had the most curious clothes over the years in our family in Sweden.  He always has a Santa hat and a fake beard, but the rest is up to innovation and whatever is at hand.  I have seen him in fleece jackets, big green wool coats and so on.  One year I was Santa and I had a red Margrete bowl on my head for a while. 

Santa's name in Swedish is JULTOMTEN.  Jul means Christmas, same word as Yule, and tomte are the little gnomes that are helpers around the farm.  Before the tradition of jultomten, it was a goat that came to the house and delivered presents, called JULBOCK.  I am not making this up, it is true, and it was the tradition before Santa became common.  We still put up things in our Christmas tree that looks like goats, made out of straw. There are also lots of little 'tomtar' (gnomes) hanging in our tree, supposedly keeping it safe.  Now when the cats are not inside anymore, we don't have to worry too much about the safety of the tree ornaments.

Swedes also have lots of candlelight, angels, stars, birds, and pigs around for Christmas decorations. We have Christmas trees too of course. 

Here are some Swedish Christmas stamps for you all to get the Swedish Christmas feeling.  The illustrators are Ilon Wikland (above) and Björn Berg (below).  God jul!

La Paz Waterfall Gardens

In the rainforest, on a mountain side, down towards some magnificent waterfalls, on the side of an ancient (but active) volcano named Poa, in the central highlands of Costa Rica, on the eastern slope of the Central American mountain ridge, facing the Caribbean, but still miles and miles from the coast, there is a small wonderful place called La Paz Waterfall Gardens. There is a small hotel at this place too,  the Peace Lodge, looking out over the deep valley and the rainforest tree tops.   This is obviously a place designed to pull in ecotourists, but I loved the small scale, down to earth, and simplicity of this place.  I could easily spend a few days here and be happy!

We arrived by bus at the top of the mountain side, where the Peace Lodge is, and started our slow walk on well-maintained steps and paths down towards the aviary and butterfly houses, restaurant, and waterfalls. This is also a wildlife refuge, where animals that have been illegally captured or held as pets can live out their lives, if they can't be released into the wild again.  


This is the view from the Peace Lodge, and you can see the aviary to the lower left. The purple flowers are bougainvilleas, with gingers in the foreground and tree ferns lower down.  A short time after we arrived it started to rain, which is very appropriate for the rainy season in a rain forest, and I was very grateful for bringing both a rain jacket AND an umbrella.  Lots of photos could be taken without a wet camera...


This wild ginger has a funny name, Ker-Gawler (Hedychium gardnerianum). It is not from Costa Rica but an import from Himalayas.


Inside the giant aviary tent where birds flew free and were nearly tame.


Hello. I am a toucan.

The butterfly house will get its own blog post :)  After checking out the birds, the monkeys, the butterflies, and then passed by the hummingbird feeders in rain (which didn't stop the hummingbirds from visiting the feeders), it was time for lunch. (I bypassed the snake house, I don't care much for those cold blooded animals.) Buffet lunch of traditional Costa Rican food, and it was the best food I have ever had in Costa Rica.  Rice and beans (of course), tortillas, curry beef, chicken in Costa Rican BBQ sauce (not overly sweet), salsa, vegetables, salad, pork chili, mmmm, fresh fruit, and lots of other good stuff... no food in Costa Rica is spicy, but it is tasty!  I forgot to take a photo of the food, sorry!


This place has 24 hummingbird species, the most of any place in the world.  They come right up to you if you stand still by the feeders.  Flying jewels, that is what they are!


The view from the restaurant.  I loved it!


The trees were full of epiphytes. True rainforest style, indeed! It rained too, a lot.

The 'Big Cat' house was kind of sad.  They can't let these animals out in the wild, but they seem so lonely.  Here are the back feet of the jaguar, which was much lower and stronger than I expected.  I wonder if you hear the cats at night if you stay at the Peace Lodge...


The ozelot was not a lot bigger than our biggest house cat, but incredibly quick.  No way you could get a good photo of it.  But the paws are in focus, kind of! :)


And then, after passing the frog house, the farmer's house (and tasting fresh cheese), we hiked down towards the waterfalls into the rainforest... in the rain, of course.


The 120 feet (37 meter tall) waterfall, one of at least 4 waterfalls along the trail.  OK, OK, this is a little photoshopped in the colors because the low light in the rain made it an imperfect photo to begin with... please forgive me.


The rainforest in the rain... looking out over the valley.  I really, really want to come back here. And that time, I want to sit and look at hummingbirds for hours. They are truly amazing.

More photos from this place here.

On this day... now and 9 years ago

9 years ago, the periodical cicadas were buzzing, the fireflies bleeping, and we got married. PP,  thanks for the fantastic dinner at Brothers Moon tonight.  (If you haven't eaten there, you should, if you have the opportunity.)  Local, well-made food, and their Caesar salad with extra anchovies are to die for.

Other things that happened today:

The high school had to be evacuated after a bomb scare.  No bomb was found, but all kids were sent home at 2 PM.  Yesterday Princeton University got evacuated for the same reason.  Prank, lunatic, or what?  This is not funny. Neither was it funny when the two old couples sitting next to us in the restaurant talked about the bomb threat in Princeton and one of the elderly men at their table said 'well, I wish the bomb threat had been true and all the liberal professors had been killed off'.  Sigh.

In New York City two window washers got stuck at the 44th floor (about 600 feet, 200 m above ground) on the outside of the building.  They were eventually rescued by firemen cutting holes in windows so they could reach them and bring them back inside.  This was only one block from where AREA works right now.

The fireflies are out!  Blink, blink, blink! Special photo for KV with fireflies from Japan.

The bull frogs are croaking in the dark, right now.  And big black crickets are cricketing.

We are waiting for another giant weather event.  This one isn't named (yet), but we are expecting 4 inches (100 mm) rain tomorrow, storm-level winds, maybe tornados and hail and definitely big thunderstorms.  We haven't even dried up after the most recent storm, and our rivers are so flooded already that roads and bridges are closed.  Not good, the ground can't soak up any more.  But we are prepared, with pumps, generator (if the power goes out), charged cell phones, lots of food, and playing cards and candles. And while we get soaked, Colorado burns. There doesn't seem to be any 'normal' in the weather anymore.

Finally, our cat Smokey believes that the way to get of loose undercoat wooly fur is to lick it off, get it stuck in your teeth and then have it hanging from your lips like if you were an old goat.  Sorry, no photos yet, we are working on it.  She isn't the most cooperative cat when it comes to photography or brushing.

The amazing world of candy cultures: Sweden

I believe that candy and desserts are one of the few areas were strong cultural differences still live on. Thai, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, and American food have conquered the world and anybody knows what sushi, burgers, and ketchup is now.  But I think candy has a long way to go to become more global, at least candy outside of the chocolate main stream.

So, for your food education, here is some typical Swedish candy that you can't really buy in the US or other countries of the world (the northern parts of EU excepted).

First, Swedes love licorice, and they love salty, sour or very fruity candy.  Generally speaking, American candy of today is either supersweet (sickly sweet), or chocolatey, and that is different from the Swedish candy.  Swedes also like mixes of flavors (salt & sour, etc.).

Turkisk peppar ('Turkish peppar').  Horribly hot-spicy hard licorice candy with a dry powdery inside with ammonium chloride (salmiak) powder.  Great!

Classic Swedish candy called Gott & Blandat (= Good and Mixed).  It includes sweet and salty licorice and wine gum. This is the traditional classic kind and there are also newer kinds around (salty, sour, etc.). 

 Djungelvrål ('Jungle howl') are supersalty little licorice pieces that are very chewy and good.... also with ammonium chloride, which some people of this household call 'diaper candy' - I think ammonium chloride salt is a very acquired taste. You either hate it or love it, kind of like celery and cilantro.

 Salta katten ('The Salty Cat') comes in tiny old-fashioned small paperboxes and are small pieces of licorice, also with ammonium chloride.  Really good stuff!  I love the design - check out the tongue of the cat!

 

Dajm is a long, hard, flat crispy, hard caramel piece that is covered by milk chocolate. You can also buy it as small individual pieces in small wrappers.  No licorice here!

Then there is of course Swedish fish - WHICH DOES NOT EXIST IN SWEDEN.  This is the American version of Swedish fruity, chewy, sugary candy, which in Sweden comes in many shapes and forms, not just red fish.  The most common are 'sega råttor' (= chewy rats), which often are green, yellow, red or maybe even in black (licorice).  Oh, and this custom of calling non-black things licorice as you do in the US, that doesn't exist in Sweden.  Licorice is always black and always has true licorice plant extract in it.

Pirate cat

Grrrr says our cat Smokey... 

"This is my place"

fleece cat - Smokey, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Says Smokey the cat, content in our garden.

Snapshot: Smokebox problems

Smokey is having problems in her smokebox, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

It is not easy being a cat... or maybe it is easy, the camera just isn't fast enough to catch the speed...

Congratulations LA!

Guess who got into a competitive astrophysics summer program today!?

Here is the Cat's Eye Nebula for you!  (Image from NASA)

Wonderful comedian - George Carlin on Cats and Dogs

This is one of our absolute favorite stand-up comedians:


Enjoy! (And oh, this is not exactly appropriate for small children, just a warning, but it is hilarious!)

Our cat Smokey..

pole cat, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

..suffers from a strange, new syndrome named "I think I am a hawk so I am sitting on this fence pole hunting mice"...

It was dusk, therefore the photo isn't what it could have been. (Oh, and she was far away too and no telelens...)

1. Eat grass. 2. Spit out.

Our cat Smokey does not like yellow foxtail grass (Setaria viridis). But she seems to forget that in between her tastings.

Failed ad: cat tails

Maybe I am a stickler, one that loves things to be correct too much, but ads, news, and writings that get things botanically or scientifically really wrong bothers me tremendously.  Such as this ad for allergy medication Singulair.  Someone came up with the great idea to base an ad on 'cattails or cat tails'.  Well, if only... cattails, the plant (Typha), was allergenic (it is not or only mildly so), or looked like a grass (it does not). The photo is of a grass (timothy probably, Phleum, also sometimes called 'cat's-tail', but that is not common knowledge) spreading its pollen.  Having a common cattail plant there wouldn't have been a great design, I guess... So now, readers of this ad think that 1) cattails are allergens, and 2) look like grass, because of this miseducation from Merck.  Sorry guys, this will be one of my prime examples of lack of botanical knowledge in the advertising community. Embarrassing. 'Pinsamt', as we say in Swedish.  Would anybody put a sheep in an ad and call it a pig?  Didn't think so. But that is what happened here, but with plants.

Oh, no, it is not just this ad, I just found some more with similar issues.  They are doing the same thing with thistles (not allergens), and willows ('catkins', true, but not allergens either...).  This is like when people think they are allergic to goldenrods because they happen to flower at the same time as the ragweeds.... 

My son's allergy doctor didn't like when I asked her exactly which weeds my son was allergic too, because all she could say was 'weeds', that is what was written on the test results.  Same with 'trees', another positive allergy test.  I tried to explain to her that insect-pollinated plants didn't have large amounts of wind-dispersed pollen, so not all weeds and trees are allergenic...  Why are we letting ourselves be dumbed down in the flow of information? Isn't it better to know the truth even if it is slightly more complicated? Or am I just a cranky scientist?

If you need a laugh

"the cat ate it", hehehe! (found by PP)

The season of....

...imaginary ticks crawling on your skin has started in New Jersey.  Only problem is, some are not imaginary.  Our garden are full of ticks, brought there by deers and then caught in cat fur and pant legs and, for some reason, my long dark hair. So you go out in the garden, stuff your pants into socks (well, not always...), and then you go inside and an hour or two later you feel something crawling on your neck or arm, and it might be a tick.  The problem is that it isn't always one, often it is an imaginary feeling, a mirage from your brain.  Few ticks actually get stuck on us, but on the cats they love the area around their neck and we have probably pulled of 50 ticks from them in the last few weeks. We put them in a plastic bottle with water and soap to kill them.  The ones we found on ourselves we usually just put between two pieces of tape and throw in the garbage.  Did I mention how hard it is to kill ticks?  I honestly can't see any good ecological feature of ticks.  Do they have any positive use at all in an ecosystem?  I think they are just plain bad parasites, and annoying such as well.  I think it is time to buy Best Yet for the cats.

Gorgeous but shy...

regal cat (Ella), originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Our long-haired cat Ella and her sister Smokey (not on this photo) have survived ice storms, snow, and visits by opossums, raccoons, labradors and Billie the Wildcat during their first winter outside. Here is Ella enjoying the spring sun, like an Egyptian queen...

Winter morning walk, tracing steps

A nightly light snowfall covered the sides of the road like airy powder.  Over by the fields, a fox had crossed the road to walk into the forest, with determined steps in a semi-straight line.  Further down the road, another, or the same, fox had followed the road for a while, equally determined to get wherever he or she was going. Suddenly some new tracks showed up on top of the fox tracks for a few yards - a racoon's longer-fingered paws had left irrationally patterned tracks on top of the fox paw prints and then went back down in the wet ditch again.  On the highest point of the road, near the giant oaks standing tall in the forest, squirrels jumped their 4-steps pace across the road, maybe looking for lost acorns on the other side of the road.  And up near the barn, a barncat (not ours) had created a beaded band of small round prints, with five round shapes in each, swirling its way up to the barn on the hill.  Not a mouse or vole track did I see.  Human tracks - mine and some kids', from front doors to school bus doors on the road - ending in nowhere when they got on the bus.  There were one more kind of pattern in the snow - giant salt crystals from the salt truck that were surrounded by melted areas, a perfect square salt crystal, sometimes even double, with a dark halo in the white snow.  It was all telling stories, hinting at things that had happened when nobody else had been looking, silent life on the Sourland Mountain in New Jersey. And then the sun got up and melted the snow away .

Winter, winter, more winter

It is snowing again in NJ, large aggregated snowflakes that drip down slowly from the sky.  The cats are lower than the depth of the snow, so they use our shoveled paths to get around (to bird feeder, compost, barn with firewood, and basement...)- severely restricted pathways compared to their usual garden wanderings.  A deer lept through our yard and left deep double tracks over 1.5 m (=yards) apart.  Winterwonderland out there, so unusual, and reminds me of Swedish winter landscapes.

The cats hang out in their new cat houses, homebuilt and homedesigned by PP and with real cedar shingles on them. They are spoiled rotten with attention, hot water to drink and hot water bottles at night :)



A cat house.


Our walkway to the cars from the house.  I know, you have it like this in Sweden all the time, but 30+ cm snow overnight is less usual here.  And even less usual is that it seems to be staying and not melting away quickly.



Ella in snow. 

It was a cold, snowy morning...

..and our two cats got to experience their first real snowfall that stuck to the ground.  Don't worry, they get heating pads and hot water bottles in their little insulated boxes, so they are fine during the cold nights, and their thick fur has thickened even more and they burr themselves up as little furballs with just ears and legs sticking out.  When they walk on the cold stones on our paths they seem always to be equally surprised at each step how cold the stones are against their paws.  Just like Sweden's current Arctic chill, we have a much colder fall than previous years, but not the giant snowstorms and 0 degrees F that Swedish people had to deal with for the last couple of weeks.  Maybe we will get a white Christmas here in NJ, that would be nice.

Her new favorite spot

beer cat, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

...which actually is already gone with the cardboard recycling... The box I mean, not the cat Smokey.