Year's End Roadtrip

Not in Fort Collins.

Yeti Crossing?

Hey, Nice Horns!

The internet connections are not as good at the moment so some kind of year end wrap-up will have to wait. Have a good and safe New Year!

Five Assorted Arthropods

Ah, the last one of the twelve days:
So, in review we can say:

On the First Day of Christmas: An Abominable Snowman from the Greeley Museum,

On the Second Day: Two Reindeer from Bath,

On the Third Day: Three Forensic Limitations,

On the Fourth Day: Four Elves from Woodward's

On the Fifth Day: Five Assorted Arthropods,

On the Sixth Day: Six Carolers Jamming,

On the Seventh Day: Seven Morris Dancers,

On the Eighth Day: Eight Bubbas Drumming,

On the Ninth Day: Nine Pipers Piping,

On the Tenth Day: Ten Mounted Lepidoptera,

On the Eleventh Day: Eleven French Crepes, and

On the Twelfth Day: Twelve Nature Lectures!

Happy Holidays

from

ROADSIDE MYSTERIES

Seven Morris Dancers

In Old Town Fort Collins:

Border Morris Dancers

Of course there are Maroon Bells and Breathless in Berthoud in Colorado, of which the latter is represented above.

Ten Lepidoptera Mounted

or butterflies if you prefer:

Not from around here...

These are mounted specimens from Peru, France, China, Kenya, El Salvador and Cameroon.

A person who catches and collects, studies, or simply observes lepidoptera (members of an order encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies) are called Lepidopterists.
Famous lepidopterists include William Stephen Atkinson, Jean-Baptiste Boisduval, Bernard d'Abrera, Robert Denno, Henry Doubleday, Henry Edwards, Edmund Brisco Ford, Frederick William Frohawk, Walter Gieseking, Frederick DuCane Godman, William Jacob Holland, Johann Siegfried Hufnagel, Julian Jumalon, Napoleon M. Kheil, Bernard Kettlewell, Michael Majerus, Vladimir Nabokov, L. Hugh Newman, Princess Olga of Greece, Walter Rothschild, Camille Saint-Saëns, Otto Staudinger, James William Tutt, Geoffrey de Havilland, Edward Pelham-Clinton, 10th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne and Sergeevich Zolotarenko.

Nine Pipers Piping

At yet another parade:

Per Robert Browning:

Once more he stept into the street

And to his lips again

Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;

And ere he blew three notes (such sweet

Soft notes as yet musician's cunning

Never gave the enraptured air)

Of course this is a fractured blogified version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. There really could have been eleven pipers in this parade, but 'PhotoShop can Crop' and crop it does.

Having some kind of limited theme like this lets me pre-post a bunch of stuff while I'm actually busy with the usual holiday madness and it's likely that any real-time posts won't return until 2010. So what's left? 5, 7, and 10 I think. The prediction: Expect arthropods to dominate. They usually do.

Eleven French Crepes

At Lee's Cyclery in Fort Collins:

Mr. Bruno Gerard Krioussis

Remember back in June at the Ride to Work Breakfast? Well, for some reason the organizers of that special bicycle day decided to do the same thing in December! When there's snow. And it's cold out. There were not as many stations and not as many riders (why not?) as in the Summer, but it was worth a bike trip to greet a few of the locations and get some free grub.

Staking out New Belgium early on was a mistake. They were quite popular in June so I got there early so I could have a chance to try whatever they were offering... Apparently they were not in to it this winter; No coffee was made at the start even though several employees were milling about. Ten minutes after the start of their supposed breakfast someone decided to heat up some cider on a propane heater. Fifteen minutes, still no coffee; I'm out of there so I rode up to Oak Street Plaza where there was hot coffee and egg & cheese burritos.

Later on in the morning I rode to Lee's Cyclery where Bruno was making breakfast crepes. Bruno was from the "Institute of Ecolonomics" which made me hesitate for a moment because I thought it had to do with "E. coli" but no; it's basically economic ecology but what they actually do -- I'm not sure. Check out the website and see if you can figure it out.

Bruno can make excellent crepes so I have to give Lee's Cyclery the "The BEST Breakfast Award". Sorry all the rest of the places. Next time, make crepes!

Three Forensic limitations!

At a lecture about Forensic Entomology:

So, what does it mean?

1) On hot days, the maggots thrive!

2) There are computer programs out there for calculating the postmortem interval (PMI) from arthropod successional data. Entomology-assisted determination of the PMI promises to be a reliable technique in cases of homicide, suicide, accidental death, and unattended death due to natural causes.

3)The corpse could be ANYWHERE!

Dr. Boris Kondratieff (on the right)

CSU Entomologist, Dr. Kondratieff was on hand to help us understand how blowfly maggots help determine the time of death. Here he is pointing out a "maggot mass", where the maggots cluster together when feeding in order to maximize the benefits of combined metabolic heat.

After the lecture, we went out for dinner!

For further reading:

Necrosearch revisited: further approaches to the detection of clandestine graves. In: "Forensic Taphonomy. The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains."

Four Elves a Working

At the Woodward Company:

The Workshop

At the corporate headquarters of Woodward located in Fort Collins; They are "an independent designer, manufacturer, and service provider of energy control and optimization solutions used in global infrastructure equipment. They serve the aerospace, power generation and distribution, and transportation markets."

One Abominable Snowman

At the Greeley Freight Station Museum

The OC&E Layout

The Oregon California and Eastern HO Layout can be seen at the Greeley Freight Museum. Covering 5,500 square feet of floor space, this HO gauge layout features a 1,244 foot long single main line and thousands of hand-made rocks, trees and other scenery.

A Display of Railroad Artifacts!

The REA operated a Chicago based refrigerator car line beginning in the early 1900's and then converted its cars to leased bulk mail carriers by 1965. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1975.

The Yeti

Located in various places in the central layout are six dinosaur figures hidden among the rocks and forests that are not easy to find. Then there is a Yeti that is hidden someplace in the building. I found the Yeti behind an equipment box located on the east side of the museum. See above.

If you find the Yeti, you get this button!

When the museum opened in May, 2009 they would let the finder of the Yeti hide it again. They sort-of changed that policy when someone hid the Yeti so well that it was impossible to find! (It is not known if anyone has ever found THAT Yeti).

Twelve Nature Lectures

This year Kevin Cook presented Magnificent Connections. We reported on his Pine Beetle in the past:

Today was "Special Case of Special Cases"

Number 12 in this year's nature lectures, here is Kevin explaining the differences between commensalism and mutualism and a bunch of other 'isms' in the natural world.

We all liked the Crab-spider!

Crab-spiders are from the order Araneae, the air-breathing eight-legged chelicerate arthropods with the modified fangs for injecting venom. They're all over Colorado!

A Bullock's Oriole trap

Here the poor bird made a nest out of fishing line and got caught up in the line and could not escape.

Two Reindeers Grazing

or two caribou carousing

at Bath Garden & Nursery

Apparently this is the only place to see live reindeer in Fort Collins! And they are only there for a short time.

Caribu is the Mi'kmaq word for 'snow shoveler'

It is said that when you follow the reindeer spirit, you learn the power of adaptability in adversity and gain a tenacity to get things accomplished. The great reindeer can also aid in inspiritual transitions, communication and social abilities and skills.

Six Carolers Jammin'

in Oak Street Plaza:

Linda Anderson

of the Choice City Singers is shown here performing the drum solo from the song "Whipeout" on a chilly December evening. The caroling group met up with the internationally known Afro-Brazillian drum group "Bloco em Foco" for an impromptu jam session in Oak Street Plaza in Fort Collins.

Eight Bubbas Drumming

At Catalyst Coffee in Fort Collins:

The Drum Bubbas

Starting in December the Drum Bubbas will introduce an open drum circle at the Catalyst on Wednesday nights!

Once they start, they don't ever want to stop!

...and they even let me play along side! It gives me a chance to try out some of those home-made percussion instruments I have in the garage! TUA!