Exploring Nature Blog

Besides for an endless supply of cool biological things to gawk at and wonder about, walking in the woods has always been a source of recuperative therapy for me. When annoyed at the world, a fierce stomp (usually muttering to myself) down an old logging road deeper and deeper into the green will slowly transform into a brisk walk with deep breaths and slow awareness of birdsong and forest smells. That soon gives way to a walk with the irresistible urge to scan for amphibians and wildflowers and all thoughts of politics, economics and interpersonal relations having completely evaporated, like so much dew.

So when I was suddenly and unceremoniously yanked out of any ability to go into the green, you can imagine my… well… extreme sense of helplessness (which sounds better than transformation into a frustrated, babbling idiot).

On April 26th I was driving north on 9W after doing a strange but interesting book signing at Macys in NYC (and on my way to a series of author visits at schools all over NYS), when a teenage driver crossed the midline and hit me head on.

There is nothing quite like a 100mph collision (we were each going 50mph) to bring you up short on things. The fear and anxiety associated with such a moment are best left unspoken, but leave it to say that airbags hitting you like a blow from a prize fighter, sirens screaming, the smell of fuel, broken glass everywhere and some extremely loud machine cutting you out of your wrecked car like a giant can opener gives a whole new meaning to the term “car accident.” (Which sounds downright dainty compared to the real thing.)

I spent a week in the trauma center in Poughkeepsie in and out of X-ray machines, CAT scans, MRIs (no fun), being poked and prodded by needles (and very kind nurses and attendants, by the way), in a vague, drug-induced state of, “Holy cow, did that just happen?”

Family and friends gathered around and heaped phone calls (where I groggily said – I’m ok like a million times) and giant arrangements of flowers, plants, cards, and a little stuffed elephant who became a symbol of my floppy, helpless state (he’s still with me propped up next to the computer right now).

Then my poor, worried husband took me home, my sister flew out from Colorado and between the two of them and an army of girlfriends, they did everything from cooking, laundry, phone calls, canceling visits, fending off well-wishers (I was exhausted) to shaving ice for cola syrup slushies (No kidding).

In the mean time, late winter turned to spring, buds burst, leaves came out in full, the field morphed into a rich green, birds returned and started nesting, wildflowers popped, and I watched it all from the couch, my broken ankle propped up on pillows and my neck in a brace. Even getting out to the porch was a struggle, let alone down the steps or into the woods.

In May my husband searched out a Nature Conservancy boardwalk into a wetland out into which he could push me. It was a long drive and hard work getting me out there, but it was amazing and rare (and a one time deal).

Now it’s been 6 weeks. I had surgery on my ankle and soon will start physical therapy on my neck. I won’t walk until August but hope to recover enough to be back in the woods by fall even if the stomping will have to wait. A nice stroll sounds like heaven to me about now.

I still spend most of my time on the couch with a couple of hours a day in front of the drawing table — propped up to help my neck, because I have 2 books to illustrate by fall (hey, it could happen… maybe). It’s not going perfectly, but I am trying…

I hope, beyond hope, that when I start driving again this fall that I won’t be a nervous wreck (riding in the car has proved to be an exercise in flinching or keeping my eyes closed). This unexpected detour has been nothing if not proof that life can take huge, unanticipated turns and yes – appreciate every moment – even the ones that you spend muttering to yourself and swiping at innocent ferns on your way to emotional peacekeeping.

Be careful out there and slap anyone (for me) that you see text messaging while they are driving – you might just save their lives.

Why do pandas have black and white spots? a student asks.

That is an interesting question and one many people have asked before, including wildlife biologists. The most accepted explanation that I can find is as follows.

Pandas are solitary animals –  they live alone except when breeding or caring for young. They once roamed on thousands of acres of bamboo forest. When their breeding cycle began, they would have to somehow find another panda with which to mate. In all that forest, their striking black and white pattern helped them locate each other. A reverse camouflage as such. And because they show some territoriality, their colors might also warn other pandas they are in the area — a territorial display as such.

So, put simply, the pandas’ black and white fur pattern may have helped them find each other to mate during mating season. During the rest of the year, their “colors” may have warned other pandas to stay out of their territory.

If I might use a silly analogy… think of a clown, with bright red hair, nose and shoes, striped leggings and yellow coat. His bright colored costume might attract kids who want to see a clown, but send most of us, who are afraid of clowns, moving quickly away. Survival instincts are strong in animals.

Now that the bamboo forests are almost gone and what are left are fragmented by highways and development, the pandas’ need for a flashy warning display may not be as helpful, except that it does help biologists monitor and protect them. And for pandas, in this day and age, that might be the most important survival technique yet.

Someone emailed asking “What is the most dangerous animal in the world and why?”

My initial response was the mosquito. Thousands of people die from mosquito borne illnesses every year, after all.

One could argue that there are bacteria that kill more people, but technically speaking bacteria are not animals (they are in a different kingdom).

That being said, the question probably was referring to a predator, like a tiger or shark. Yet both those predators kill far few people than say the deadly box jellyfish or the tiny blue ring octopus. And even then, if you live in Arizona, none of those animals will ever endanger you.

Finally I called Scott and asked him. As our resident “zoo vet” I was curious which animal he would choose. I knew he never liked the cassoways at the zoo, because they were quite dangerous, but how often does one run into a cassowary?

His response was, as usual, well thought out and quite on target. It went roughtly like this:

The most dangerous animal on Earth, which kills more than any other animal, including those of its own species is – the human.

And of course this is true. The most fearsome animal on this planet is none other than ourselves.

I have finally begun the process of writing a biography of my brother Scott’s experiences working for more than two years as a veterinarian at the Los Angeles Zoo (and how he ended up there).

After vet school, Scott worked for a series of International Environmental and Animal Conservation Organizations where he traveled all over Asia, Indonesia and the Amazon working on animal rescue projects. In the Amazon he helped relocate river dolphins from areas being developed to protected regions in Central Brazil. On the Penghu Islands in China he worked for the release of dolphins yearly captured and killed by local fisherman. In Thailand he worked on tiger conservation. In Borneo he helped Birute Galdikas (one of the famous primate researchers, whose work was initialed by Dr. Louis Leaky) develop protocols for repatriating rescued orangutans back into the wild. His work there culminated with the International Great Ape Conference, where all three of the major primate groups came together for the first time in history to discuss primate research and conservation. Though the meeting was fascinating and historic, the high point actually occurred after it was over when he spent the afternoon at the Jakarta zoo with Jane Goodall.

When Scott flew back to California after his years over seas, he was emotionally and physically exhausted. He came home to no job, no plans and no idea what he wanted to do next. After all his traveling around the world, he was ready to settle down in one place for a while. He wanted hot, running water and time to read for pleasure. Yet how do you go back to treating dogs and cats after you have worked on pink dolphins and orangutans in the jungle? The answer came with a phone call.

One of the veterinarians at the LA Zoo had fallen off an exhibit and broken both his ankles. The zoo needed a replacement vet with exotic animal experience immediately. Even though it would just be for a few weeks, Scott agreed readily. After the marathon hours of conservation work, he thought the regular hours of the zoo would be less stressful. Instead he began one of the most challenging and wild experiences of his life.

One of the biggest tests for a new zoo veterinarian was the huge diversity of animal species. A vet could be a primate expert, but would be starting from scratch when a tiger got sick. Plus many of the animals at the zoo were endangered and priceless. The stress of treating such valuable animals was exponential. Then after just a few weeks at the zoo, the other vet took a few days off but instead of returning he took a leave of absence and Scott was on his own.

Scott’s “trial by fire” started with Emma, a Sumantrin rhino, one of a very few in captivity, who stopped eating. Treating Emma began a long line of rare and valuable zoo animals that Scott had to quickly learn to care for during his time at the zoo. He also learned that life at the zoo was fraught with politics. Alliances and feuds formed and dissolved daily and determined a lot of how smoothly things went at the zoo. For Scott, a strong advocate of the, “Can’t we all get along?” philosophy, life at the zoo could be a minefield.

The zoo was not all danger and stress. Many of the animals were affectionate and looked forward to visits from the vets. Scott’s favorite was the mountain tapir that covered him with sloppy kisses whenever he stopped by. The zoo was also a stunning botanical garden and Scott loved to arrive early in the morning to roam the beautiful, fragrant vegetation and listen to the calls of animals from across the zoo. This was a good time to visit with keepers and check in on animals before the rush of the day began.

After Scott had been at the zoo a couple of months, a new female veterinarian was hired. She had been working as the relief vet on the weekends, but Scott had never met her. He had heard about her though, as the vet who trained him mentioned often that he had hoped to hire her when the other vet was injured (instead of Scott). He praised Michelle’s work so much that Scott began to think of her as a giant, mythical figure. So it was with some relief that Michelle turned out to be a tiny, pixy-like woman with an infectious smile. Instead of a rivalry, they teamed up to make one of the strongest veterinary alliances in which Scott has ever taken part.

The vets decided early on that they had to find a way to smooth over some of the interpersonal issues at the zoo that might interfere with animal caretaking. They needed something that would allow everyone to hang out together and have some fun, something that would calm down rivalries, promote teamwork, help everyone develop healthy bonds and communication skills. They decided they should play – roller hockey. So every couple of days, after the zoo closed, they would all gather in the huge, empty, zoo parking lot, put on roller blades, helmets and pads and whack each other with hockey sticks. It seemed to really do the trick and over time Scott imagined he saw a real difference in how smoothly things were going at zoo. He was also relieved that Larry, the angry elephant man (who would have loved to take a hockey stick to Scott) couldn’t rollerblade.

The reason the elephant keeper hated the vets so much was that Scott had inadvertently supplied the zoo administration with a reason to move Larry – something they had wanted to do for years. So when Larry refused to follow a veterinary protocol for one of the elephants, Scott went to the zoo administration for help and Larry got transferred to a place much better suited for his cranky temperament. They sent him to – the petting zoo.

There were actually some real dangers at the zoo, as one might expect when working with wild animals. Though all zoo workers knew the protective protocols, there was the possibility for human error. While Scott was at the zoo, a keeper was accidentally run over by rhino, which is a lot like being run over by a small truck. Scott’s respect and caution around the large animals grew as time went by. He hoped not to get on the wrong side of anything cranky, carnivorous, or weighing more than a thousand pounds. This was not always easy, because if you treat large mammals sooner or later you will have to dart them and they remember the insult. Having zoo animals spit, hiss, growl and generally give you dirty looks tended to give one a mild inferiority complex.

Once the animals were under anesthesia things got a little easier – usually. Then there was the time an anesthetized tiger that they were transporting up to the hospital started to go into respiratory distress and the subsequent stimulant Scott injected started to wake the tiger up en route. There was also the real possibility of getting lost in the honeycomb network of back service roads or getting darted accidentally with narcotics deadly to humans ¬– both of which Scott managed to do during his tenure at the zoo.

Over the next two years, through changing zoo administrations, earthquakes, injuries, stress, exhaustion, and many close calls, Scott and Michelle worked as a team caring for the animals at the Los Angeles Zoo and in the process developed a very close friendship. So when, in the spring of 1994, Michelle was almost killed by a Bactrian camel, Scott cut his hours at the zoo to help take care of her. Over the next few months, as Michelle slowly recovered, Scott trained a new veterinarian to take over for them at the zoo. In the face of Michelle’s injury, he began to phase out of zoo life. He felt profoundly lucky that he was leaving the zoo without any major injuries, as opposed to many unfortunate vets before him.

When Michelle was well enough to take a new job at Tampa Busch Gardens later that summer, Scott retired completely from the Los Angeles Zoo. He moved up into Canyon Country to hike in the hills with his three dogs and work for a small emergency clinic. His would not soon forget his amazing experiences at the zoo and one day would return to exotic animal medicine, but right about then working with cats and dogs was about as exciting as he wanted to get.

Is this a book you would read?

May in Missoula, Montana is warm and sunny. In 1980 I was living in a little house right down town with several other college students. The house sat along the Clark Fork River that flowed sparkling blue through the city. We’d torn up a whole stretch of lawn that spring and planted a garden and it was already green and ankle high. The cherry trees were pink with blossoms.

You could climb up Mount Jumbo on the Northeastern side of town and look out over the whole Missoula Valley. To the west you’d see Squaw Peak still covered in snow and just south the giant M on Mount Sentinel stood out like a beacon. Between Jumbo and Sentinel, Hellsgate Canyon funneled the frigid East wind from the plains that tore through the city in the winter, but now was a mild breeze smelling of cottonwoods and river banks.

On Sunday, May 18th I was wandering around at an outdoor market on the river feeling rather complacent and bored, when a thick ash started to rain down from the sky. We stood around confused, not quite sure what was happening.

“Maybe there’s a big forest fire up the valley,” someone said.
“There’s no smell of smoke,” someone else said.
It was true. There was no smoke or fire, just this thick, gray ash — falling and falling. Then the word trickled through the crowd at the market. Mount St. Helen’s, had erupted. It was 600 miles from Missoula, in western Washington State, and still this ash was falling impossibly fast and thick all over our town.

I got on my bike and pedaled for home. The ash was falling so thickly now that I had to pull up my shirt over my nose to breathe and squint through ash covered lashes to see. There was a real sense of panic in the air and excitement. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

By the time I got to the house, ash was already covering the lawns and gardens. The cars were just mounds of snowy gray. I huddled with my housemates in the livingroom and listened to the radio (we were too cool to own a TV back then). The eruption had begun with an earthquake at 8:30 am underneath the north side of the mountain that had caused a whole section to crumble. This opened a steam vent down to the molten rock trapped below. Hot magma and steam escaped from underground and shot up to the surface. The explosion that followed blasted ash 12 miles into the sky.

They didn’t know this right then, of course. All they knew was that an explosion as big as 22 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs had blown the top of Mount St. Helen’s clean off. In fact, More than 1,200 feet of the top of the mountain had blown off. Mount St. Helens went from 9,677 feet tall to just 8,363 feet tall in one spectacular moment.

Scientists had known that Mount St. Helens might erupt, but no one knew exactly when it would happen. For months before the eruption the volcano had been active with earthquakes and steam venting and we’d all gotten pretty cavalier about the whole thing.

For one thing it could go on for a long time and never erupt. No one knew. Plus it was 600 miles away from us! I admit we had gotten a little bored by the whole thing. Well… we weren’t bored any more…

A volcanic eruption can be a violent thing. Ash, boiling water, boulders and poisonous gas shoot out of the volcano into the air. A landslide of mud, broken trees and rock rush down the mountain as fast as a rocket, crushing everything in its path. On Mount St. Helen’s that landslide spread out for more than ten miles around the volcano in less than a minute. It was the biggest landslide ever recorded on Earth and was thought to have exceeded the speed of sound. Nothing in that fan of destruction survived. Nothing.

After the eruption was over, the land around Mount St. Helens looked more like the surface of the moon than the forest it had been. Bridges, roads, railroad tracks, homes and forests were all lost in the avalanche. 57 people and thousands of deer, elk and bears were killed. Then flowing lava and hot gas boiled out and scorched the forests beyond.

Volcanologists had come from all over the world to study Mount St. Helens. The volcanologist on duty that morning, David A. Johnston, was six miles away monitoring its activity from a ridge top when the volcano blew. The scorching explosion rushed at him faster than a rocket and reached him in mere seconds. He was too close to escape in time. The ridge where he stood is now called Johnston ridge in his memory.

Strong winds high up in the atmosphere were blowing east that day and pushed the ash hundreds of miles away to cities like Yakima, Spokane and our city – Missoula, Montana.

By the afternoon the sky was as dark as night. The streetlights blinked on. The ash kept falling like a blizzard. Car’s drove by with their windshield wipers on. The ash got deeper on the streets. One housemate came home from work, his car sputtering. He looked under the hood and shook his head. “The air filter is completely clogged with ash,” he said. He took it out and banged it on the bumper. Clots of ash showered out.

That night, the roads, airports, bus, and train stations were closed. They closed the University for the first time in 100 years. People were supposed to stay indoors. No one knew how much ash would fall and what it would do to us. There was a rumor that they had declared Marshal Law. My father called from New York and said, Come home! I said, How? We were going nowhere.

The next day the it finally stopped falling, but the city was covered in knee deep volcanic ash. We walked out into a world covered in gray. The lawns, trees and gardens were covered. The Clark Fork River, once blue and sparkling, was clogged with ash in a muddy swirl. As we walked around to look at things, the ash kicked up into the air in dusty clouds. It was a mess. In one day Missoula had gone from a green sparking city to an ashen hell. It was surreal.

People shoveled the ash into piles like snow, but as soon as the wind blew, it threw the ash everywhere. The day got hotter and dustier. People walked around with scarves over their faces looking dazed. The cherry blossoms were gone and the garden look dead. That night we tried to sleep. It was hot and suffocating. We hung wet sheets over the doorways to try to catch a breeze without letting any more ash into the house. It was terrible.

We got up in the morning feeling a desperate need to escape. We packed as if for a camping trip with food and sleeping bags and piled into Dave’s Duster (no pun intended) and headed south to the Big Hole Valley. Driving through the city was very strange. The streets were empty. This city of 50,000 people was hunkered down under a blizzard of gray.

A cloud of ash blew up behind us as we drove south through the Bitterroot Valley. The further south we got the less ash had fallen. It was with a huge sense of relief that we pulled up into a little town in the Big Hole Valley that had a mere dusting of ash. We went into a Pub and immediately we ran into a group of tree planters we knew from Missoula. We decided to all go up to a camp ground in the Cabinet Mountains and have a bon fire.

We drove up ten miles of dirt road to a lovely campground, put up tents, built a huge fire and talked and talked about this amazing experience. It was still stifling hot and we lounged around the fire in barefeet. I had on a tiny cotton skirt and tank top and no shoes. When we all went to bed it was still so hot that we slept on top of our sleeping bags with tent doors open wide to catch the breeze.

What we didn’t know was that volcanic ash in the atmosphere does weird things to the weather. It seeds clouds and messes with temperature gradients. In the middle of the night I thought I heard rain on the tent so I zipped the door closed and crawled into my bag. It had finally cooled off, so I could snuggle in and sleep.

I woke early as usual and immediately knew sometime was not right. The light was weird and there was something leaning on the tent. And it was cold. Really cold. The temperature must have dropped 50° during the night. I unzipped the door and gasped. A foot of snow had fallen during the night. A foot!

I hopped the 50 feet to the car barefoot and dug out warm clothes and boots. I kept blinking my eyes in disbelief. How could we go from a green spring, to an ashen hell to a snowy winter in 48 hours? Every one woke with the same awed reaction. The snow ball fight that ensued managed to wake us up enough to come to one startling reality. No one plows these campground roads and the snow tires had been taken off the Duster a month ago. We made a fire, boiled some coffee and contemplated this new dilemma.

Finally we made a plan. We would explore an old mining ghost town nearby for the day, soak in the hot springs (that were not far from the campground) and let the snow have a day to melt and worry about it the next day (typical college student mentality). It was a fun day and I managed to keep them all from exploring an old mine shaft (did no one but me watch Lassie… sheesh).

The next morning the snow was still 8-inches deep, so the tree planters in their 4-wheel drive trucks and subarus, plowed their way out the road first to make it easier for the Duster. We started inside the car but had to get out every mile or so to dig the car out of the ditch and get it back on the road. After a while we just followed behind pushing and urging it on like a lazy, drunken elephant. When we finally reached the main road, we were soaked and starving. Then the engine died.

“The air filter is clogged solid,” one tree planter announced after looking under the hood. “It’s not going anywhere, unless you have a spare air filter,” We all moaned. Would this never end? Dave, ever the practical mechanic, yanked the air filter out of the car and winged it into the ditch. He closed the hood and said, “Problem solved, Let’s eat.” We drove to the famous Peking Noodle House in Butte, Montana and feasted. Food had never tasted so good. Then we drove speculatively back to Missoula to face the mess we left behind.

Much to our astonishment, things were a lot better. What had fallen as snow on us up in the Cabinet Mountains, had been a drenching rain in Missoula. The rain had washed the ash off the trees, bushes, grass, cars, houses, sidewalks and roads and flushed it into the storm drains in the streets. Then the Clark Fork River had simply carried it away to deposit along riverbeds downriver.

The gardens, that had looks destroyed by the ash actually grew better that summer than ever before, as if the ash was some kind of magic nutrient they had been missing all along. We climbed Mt. Jumbo and noticed that the hillsides were covered with more wildflowers than ever before too.

We looked out over Missoula and marveled that it was almost back to normal – green and beautiful with the blue ribbon of the Clark Fork River flowing through it. It was an amazing recovery, but left me with this odd sense of being about as an insignificant as a flyspeck in light of the awesome power of this planet. It had shrugged its shoulders violently and then washed itself clean, regardless of the little frantic ant-like motions of all of us humans. It was frightening but also a bit comforting that it would be here, doing its thing, long after we all were pushing up daisies.

So as I looked out over the stunning, pink sunset (created by the temperature inversion that trapped particulate matter from the cars, wood stoves and lumber mill in the valley, making Missoula one of the most polluted cities of its size in North America),  I thought, this planet will probably do okay despite us after all.

(If any of you tree planters, housemates or other friends that took part in this wild ride want to comment, please do. Dave Aceto, Rex Blazer, Richard Prime, Larry Evans, Sharon, Donny Evans, Tom Kimmell, Mike Downey (Boo boo), Beth Schenk, Kevin Barth, John Erhichs, Sally Remein, forgive me if I forgot anyone… and me, Sheri Amsel.)