Golden Eagles Hunting Chamois or Goat

In Spanish, and a bit long, but some jaw-dropping photography here. A warning that this video does show nature "red in tooth and claw." Or red in beak and claw, if you prefer.
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Wild Cougar Shot in Chicago

A 122-pound male cougar was shot in a bustling, trendy North Side Chicago neighborhood on Monday night. Where did the animal come from? Biologists say they suspect DNA tests will show it is the same one spotted numerous times in Wisconsin making its way toward Illinois over the past three months (click on map at right for sighting notes and calendar), and that he is a wild cougar that came from the Black Hills of South Dakota, meaning this is an animal that traveled more than 1,000 miles.

Young male predators typically move out on long migrations in search of new territories and mates, and it's been known for a long time that cougars are coming East.

The Midwest and East were part of the original home range of the cougar, and we certainly have enough wild game and wild lands to support a returning population. And Mother Nature, bless her heart, does abhor a vacuum.

Since 1990, about 40 cougar sightings have been confirmed, mostly in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, but there are rumors and some small sign that a few animals may already be in Maine, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. No conclusive evidence yet, and it may only be leaping at shadows (probably is), but there is no doubt that cougar are coming East. On that point, we can be sure.

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Apocalypse Dogs of San Francisco

Fire and smoke from the 1906 San Franicisco Earthquake.

One hundred and two years ago today, the great San Francisco Earthquake struck. Up in the hills surrounding San Francisco, it was not clear how badly the City had been hit, but it soon became evident when hill residents found packs of dogs running up from the shattered City:

It was the dogs, wild with fear, couriers of the cataclysm, that gave me the first measure of our calamity... They had come far, for they ran slowly. Their jaws were dripping. They moaned and whined. All of them panted steadily up the steep hill. Then and thus I knew that, bad as it had been with us, on the hills the darker chapters of the story of woe were to be read on the lowlands and in the valleys. We were shaken but safe; below us were nameless horrors, the dogs knew, and knowing, ran to the high places.

The earthquake struck at just past five in the morning, and many buildings fell, but not all. The brick structure of The St. Francis Hotel, for example, initially remained sound.

Chef Victor Hirtzler and his staff swept out the kitchen and served breakfast in the café to tenor Enrico Caruso and other members of the Metropolitan Opera Company who, still in their pajamas, had fled to the Saint Francis after their own hotel began to crumble.

The young actor John Barrymore came in to the hotel just as the Earthquake struck and, stone drunk, seemed not to notice that the ground was violently shaking. He went upstairs to his room and went back to sleep until secondary alarms announced that fires were begining to race through the City.

San Francisco was burning. Most of the city was wood, and even when outside walls were made of brick, the tar roofs of the day burned, exposing wooden rafters and joists to licking flames.

The heat was so intense, it melted glass. Thick greasy smoke billowed miles into the air, choking residents who had little recourse except to let the city burn.

And burn it did, for three days, until at last there was nothing more for the flames to consume.

Dazed residents wandered the streets on the fourth day, stunned that they were alive and devastated by their loses.

Five days after the earthquake struck, work men looking for bodies in the rubble of the Saint Francis Hotel found the wine steward's fox terrier alive in the hotel basement. The dog was christened "Francis," and he came to be a symbol of the the City's endurance.

Just 19 months after the great San Francisco Earthquake and fire, the St. Francis Hotel reopened - proof to the world that City would triumph over adversity.

Today the Saint Francis Hotel still stands, and a children's book has been written about the little dog found in its basement.

• Related post:
  ** Whatever Happened to the Bubonic Plague?

The rubble of San Francisco's Chinatown after the 1906 Earthquake.
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These Are the Good Old Days

"They don't make them like they used to," says the fellow patting the hood of a '57 Chevy.

No they don't -- they make them better.

Today cars steer with one finger, have batteries that never need topping off, pollute less, get more miles per gallon, and have seat belts and air bags to boot.

So it is with many other things.

Take wildlife -- there's more of it now than there used to be.

Today, across the U.S., we have more whitetail deer, red fox, raccoon, coyote, possum, groundhog, Gray fox, black bear, wolf, duck, geese, moose, beaver, turkey, elk, alligator, cougar and bald eagles than we have had at any time in the last 100 years.

And the numbers keep going up.

The world of working terriers is better too. Getting out to a farm is pretty quick in an air-conditioned car. No one is riding 20-miles to a hunt on a horse, and then, at the end of a long day, riding 20-miles back.

• >> Click here to read the rest . . . .

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Scottish Terriers: Show Dogs from the Beginning

American Scottish terrier show, 1915

Working Terriers: Their Management, Training, Work, Etc., by J.C. Bristow-Noble was first published in 1919. The author quickly dismisses the Scottish terriers as workers, noting that:

"I shall not say anything about the breeds of Scotch terriers, for, although some of the individual members of the different breeds are often useful in the field of sport, in the aggregate the dogs cannot come under the heading of workers. The fox terrier and the comparatively new breed of terrier -- the Sealyham -- are the workers, and paradoxical as it may sound, the better bred these are, of less value are they for work. As a matter of fact, all the best workers are either cross-bred fox terries or cross-bred Sealyhams."

If you read this paragraph carefully, three points are being made: 1) That the real working terriers of the early part of the 20th Century were what we would call Jack Russell Terriers today; 2) The more a dog was bred for looks, the less likely it was going to do well in the field, and; 3) By the turn of the 20th Century, Scottish terriers were seen as kitchen companions and show dogs, not working dogs found in the field.

The Scottish Terrier was recognized by the Kennel Club in 1879 (six years after the UK Kennel Club began), and the first terrier entered was Paynton Pigott's "Granite" -- a very long-backed dog, whose dam and sire had both been registered as Cairn Terriers.

To buy a copy of Working Terriers: Their Management, Training, Work, Etc., by J.C. Bristow-Noble, see >> Read Country Books
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Cheney to Hillary: "Make My Day"

Headline in The Boston Herald

Cheney Challenges Hillary to Hunting Contest:

One day after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton professed an abiding affection for guns and hunting, her love of firearms came under attack from another sometime hunter in Washington.

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney said that a hunting contest between him and the New York senator was "the only way" to determine whether Sen. Clinton's tales of her gun prowess were for real.

"To be frank, Hillary Clinton's stories about her adventures with guns don't exactly pass the smell test," the vice president told host Tim Russert. "If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there's an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods."

... But shortly after the vice president issued his challenge, Sen. Clinton seemed to back off from her earlier claims of hunting experience, saying that she had "misspoke" about her hunting exploits as a child.

>> Read the rest of this fascinating story here (Hat tip to J.R. Absher).
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Bruce Springsteen :: Streets of Philadelphia

Did I mention that Bruce Springsteen has endorsed Barack Obama ? 'Tis true.

As Greg Mitchell notes in the article at the above link, Bruce started off apolitical, and "donated a fortune to Vietnam veterans groups, and from there, many other causes, while refusing to endorse candidates."

But, as I have said before, there comes a time. As Bruce Himself put it:

"[Barack Obama] speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where '...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.'"

Mitchell concludes his article by noting that "You might say that Obama just collected one of America's true 'super-delegates.'

Yes, you can. And donations to the cause are still being accepted.
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