Northern Lights at 9pm March 17, 2014A Lily Fan neighbor has cut up fallen trees on the WRI. Bears had climbed some of them. He has let them dry for a couple years or more. Now he has volunteered to turn them into benches for the Northwoods Ecology Hall at no cost to us. It’s another case of a Lily Fan stepping up when they see a need, just as Lily Fans have been doing with regard to the bear-feeding law the DNR is working very hard to push through the Minnesota Legislature.
Another good thing happened a few days ago. A reporter told me northern lights were predicted for that evening. I checked the north horizon shortly after dark. It was glowing green and yellow. I clicked and the camera also showed magenta that I couldn’t see with my eyes. Magic.
Bench made by CharlieAt the Capitol, the DNR is working to push through the ban on feeding bears even though their motives are ever more transparent.
At the Bear Center, a weatherman stopped in and suggested a local beginning for our poster on animal adaptations for winter with a human connection. He told me of a man who slept outside overnight as temperatures dropped lower than 64° below zero Fahrenheit in Embarrass, MN, some 12 miles south of the WRI. I called the man, an old friend who had never told me he did that. He told me how he made a quinzhee (Athabascan snow cave) and put two sleeping bags in it. He slept so well that he was a little late going outside in the morning to check his thermometer. Actually, he mainly depended on the official weather thermometers that were nearby, but those broke in the cold making his thermometer the only record. He looked at the thermometer enough to see that it was well into the record low range and was rising as he looked. He ran for his camera and photographed the thermometer at -64. He sent the thermometer to Taylor to check the accuracy, which was right on. That same night, 10 miles from here, Tower, Minnesota, set the official Minnesota low temperature record of -60°, which was a surprise because cold records around here come from Embarrass, which is lower altitude. The -64° verified by Taylor is now being mentioned as a record here and there. We’ll have the picture and the verification letter from Taylor in a small framed winter exhibit.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center