Humor

ZE PLANE, ZE CRATES, ZE CRANES

In 1978 an old television show called Fantasy Island, a character named Tatoo, came running on camera, peeping in his small French accented voice, “Ze plane, ze plane!”  At that time, an estimated one hundred or so wild Whooping Cranes were still very much on the edge of extinction in North American. Certainly, none of them ever arrived via airplane. They summered in northern Canada where they bred, fledged their young and migrated 2,600 miles to wintering grounds on the coast of Texas.

That meager flock of Whooping Cranes were the sole descendants of the last 15 wild Whooping Cranes still alive in 1940. Extinction was possible, where they would only be available as museum mounts, paintings, photographs, and romantic stories of how the largest remaining bird on this continent disappeared from the horizon on our watch. These amazing great white cranes slowly increased in number, and now labelled the Western Migratory Population they are the lone genetic lineage for all Whooping Cranes. Whooper’s bond for life and generally produce only one chick that lives. Reproduction rates are low and after more than 70 years the western population still numbers less than 300 birds.

Hoping to maintain a species comes with knowledge that a single event, an oil spill, hurricane, or a drought causing a lack of fresh water on the Texas wintering grounds could create a life-threatening disaster for this flock. They face new problems from oil-sands, pipelines, and potential wind energy fields on the migration route.  And we cry for the yearly birds killed by hunters, those by accident, or worse, by intent and cruelty.

A little over a decade ago, a second backup group of Whooping Cranes was considered for introduction.  However, there were no native birds in the eastern United States.  This flock was going to be developed from captive birds. They would have no migratory patterns learned from previous generations passed down for millions of years by parents to their fledglings. Humans would need to intervene, but humans raising wild birds doesn’t work. Birds imprint on the first thing they set their eyes on. If it’s a human the bird will grow up and never learn how to be a bird. An entirely new science was going to be put to use, joining several different research groups with one goal.

Whooping Cranes of the Eastern Migratory Population are genetic offspring of the western flock, however, these eggs came from monitored Whooping Cranes via careful selection to maintain diversity.  All of the eggs were hatched under careful monitoring and supervision,  and when grown the birds were then reintroduced into the wild to form a second flock migrating between Wisconsin and Florida.  Different methods of raising chicks at several locations in Wisconsin are being used. Only one is monitored for the public to view via computer thanks to Operation Migration.org.

In a few days, similar words to Tatoo’s greeting will be on the lips and tips of many chat room fingers. They are a dedicated group of Whooping Crane fans,  old and new friends, known affectionately as Craniacs. Daily, for approximately six months they sit in front of their computer monitors, laptops and smartphones to watch the morning and evening antics, routines, growth spurs, and comedic errors of a yearly clutch of endangered Whooping Crane chicks in central Wisconsin. These birds, under the skillful hands of an organization named Operation Migration.org will raise these birds this summer, flight train them, and this autumn lead them behind a UltraLite aircraft skillfully imprinted as a parent bird teaching them the migratory route between Wisconsin and Florida. Next spring, a miracle happens when the birds return to Wisconsin using their own remarkable instincts.

The chicks hatched at  Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland where they undergo physical testing that would undermine a candidate for the Navy Seals. Their personalities are testing to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive. Some tolerance is allowed for chicks to establish a pecking order, as long as they don’t actually continue to nit-peck like a wife that discovered mouse breath on her husband who said he was working late at the office. After a class is chosen they’re allowed to attend a mixer and see who wants to dance and who’s going to become the wallflower. Of course, someone always trips over their own feet, another peeps and runs, one takes a firm hock sit and won’t be moved, and the sudden bully chases all the other kids around the block. Only the block is round and heavily supervised by people who look like Casper, the friendly ghost with a misplaced appendage – a single wooden crane-like head where a hand would be..

Crane chicks are never allowed to visually come into contact with humans during the nearly year-long training process. With clever manipulations and puppetry the birds own genetic code will imprint onto puppetry and even lite aircraft substituting as parents. It allows the Whooping Cranes to remain wild. Rules number one through one hundred! All humans attending to Whooping Crane chicks for any purpose present in costumes aka ‘tumes’. Imagine a construction helmet and black muck boots, covered in a hybrid of your grandmother’s white sheets drying in the summer sun and a half-blinded person wearing a backward burka in 100 degree heat while all the juicy bugs of summer jump up your petticoat.

Gotta love the dedicated Whooping Crane people. The same crew training in Maryland with the eight chosen finalists will soon be moved to Wisconsin to begin phase two of the training program. But first the chicks are gently backed into standing crates and loaded onto a private airplane where they will receive first class attention on their flight over. Sorry, no reclining seats, headphones, movies, or mixed drinks allowed for the birds and crew. The Craniac’s are free to celebrate the impending arrival of the new kids on the block in any manner they choose. Virtual parties are probably already being planned. Tissues are being stockpiles by laptops, vacation days planned, people will be calling in late, this will be a cheers and tears celebration.

ETA, July 9, 2013, 1 pm CST at

Operation Migration Whooping Crane Cam
http://www.ustream.tv/migratingcranes

HOW MANY POUNDS OF ROCKS WILL PETE PICK?

Reed Canary Grass

Reed Canary Grass

Since frost out I’d been watching an elderly man in a vacant farm field picking rocks. Every day I’d gone past he’s been out there, dressed from cap to britches, in tones of faded UPS brown, baggy trousers tucked into practical rubber muck farm boots.  I have asparagus gone to fern and seed in my garden that’s brawnier than this petite man with his thin arms and barely wired biceps.

Last Tuesday I finally found myself driving behind him just as he was pulling to the side of the road to begin his day of rolling and rocking. I stopped behind him as a short thin arm extended out the rolled down window of his car and started frantically waving me ahead over and over again, the gesture reminding me of a sun worn whirligig before a big storm blows in.

When I opened my car door and started to walk toward him, he stepped out of his vehicle with a puzzled look on his face. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for weeks” I blathered. He backed off a few inches and looked up at the skyscraper frame of me, lifted off the worn brown cap on his head and scratched his seriously balding scalp. He chuckled and realized he’d just reeled in a captive audience for a country tale or two. I’d soon learn what makes Pete putter picking rocks and plunking them to haul back to the wee trailer hitched to his compact car.

I implored,  I was so curious, “Why are you in that field picking rocks every time I drive by?”

“Well, I wanted to plant corn in there this year and that damn ground just kept throwing up rocks!”

“Corn? What did you plant last year? I don’t remember seeing anything here.”

“Nope, wasn’t anything? I own 40 acres.”  Pete glanced down at his boots and lifted a foot a couple of inches then put it down again.  “ Well, to tell you the truth – it’s really only 39-1/2 but I like the sound of 40. Makes me feel richer than I am,” while carving his elfin aged face from ear to ear. I guess lifting his foot was his way of deciding if he was going to tell me the truth or not. “ Anyway, I owned these acres for over thirty years and never planted anything on them. Just felt like doing it this year. See that hunting stand back there, past the trees? Ben Bogbottom owns five hundred acres back there, nuthin’ but swamp. He never planted anything either.”

I look back of the small trailer he’s hauling and see it’s already got a small load of dirt and some grass clods. He catches what I’m looking at and flicks an explanation faster than a bullfrog on a fly.

“I already moved 145 wheelbarrows full of rocks outta that field this spring. Now I’m moving some-a-that Reed Canary Grass down to my last field, see the other two down there where the highway went and put in those new culverts onto my land last year but didn’t do a good job. Well that’s where I moved all those rocks and I’m dumping the grass to fill in where they missed when they put in the culverts where there wasn’t any before, you get what I mean?” I turned and looked at the two culverts each of which lead to a field bursting with Reed Canary Grass.

By then I could hear rocks rattling in my own head as I nodded yes to his query. When the county rebuilt a stretch of the highway last year they had closed the road to traffic and since no one lived on a five-mile stretch they rerouted all traffic. They had gone into the field across the road from Pete’s and removed marsh peat to raise the roadbed. That field, of course, had also not been farmed in decades. Pete told me, off the record, the field’s owner shall remain secret – well he tried last year to grow corn and he failed. He tried again this year and failed again. Pete crowed triumphantly, “Only thing that field can grow, is DIRT!”

Pete’s field was successfully growing a nice stand of corn and since he was so petite he would be able to walk among the rows and continue to hand pick rocks and put them into a ten-gallon pail he’d brought along to replace the wheelbarrow.

“How do you find the time to get out here and do all of this by hand?” I asked.

His shoulders humped up and down a couple of times while he thought about it. “I’m eighty-five years old. All I have is time. After I retired from the cookie factory, I drove school bus and helped my brother run his farm stand. Then my buddy, well he wanted to move down south and he had this garbage pickup route he wanted to sell me and I told him no thanks. I mean, why? The big company already picks up all the garbage around here, right. So anyway, see, he keeps asking me and I finally buy it from him and give it to my wife to go out and pick up garbage here and there. She’s been out picking up bits and pieces of garbage the other company won’t for over twenty years now.”

Pete’s still smiling, and he’s got all his teeth so I figure his wife can’t be too angry with him for dumping a garbage route on her. We’re still leaning on his car parked alongside the highway. Every once in awhile, I hear a high pitched whine from my car reminding me I left the engine running with the air conditioner going full blast and the window open so I won’t lock myself out.

Pete then wants to know who I am and what I’m doing driving down the road nearly no one lives on, so I give him a short course in Green Lake county Whooping Crane history and my horse down the road a bit. Pete gives me a bio on his five children, four of whom fairly successfully grew up to do what they planned as children.  The last daughter Pete described as “PFFT”.

Unless I was ready to surrender the next few hours I knew it was time to leave Pete. I promised I’d honk and wave next time I saw him and stop when I had time. He was made of finer stuff than me, less inclined to complain when things got rough, probably always measured his glass as half full, and would be thankful for whatever job he was given to do.

After I left, I found myself plagued by thoughts of Reed Canary Grass, that sterilizer of Mother Nature. Vast swatches of colors from pale yellow to deep violet in mid-June blocking all chances for native species to survive. With just one glance into Pete’s trailer I’d come face to face with an enemy I couldn’t fully comprehend surrounded me. In the past week all my favorite wetland roads and landscapes have become variations on a theme. Reed Canary Grass, in different stages of development. Nature can be choked in beauty.