Friday, July 31, 2015

Nature Deficit Disorder: A Classic

 
I thought my readers, especially in the West, might get a kick out of reading this short article.  It appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.

The treed hiker was from exurban Philadelphia, and she was hiking in the Pinelands National Preserve in east-central New Jersey.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess she doesn't know that coyotes can climb trees. We had one come to our yard in Port Townsend, WA and eat the apples in the tree. Quite a surprise. I found this video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShaYScrub80

packrat said...

:):)

I don't mean to laugh about this poor woman's plight, Scott, but it did strike me as funny. I think the bit about tying herself to the tree elicited the biggest chuckle. Coyotes always get a bad rap, and people are often paranoid about any contact with them. I'm not suggesting Coyotes can't pose a danger--they are wild canids, after all--but people often overreact to them.

Scott said...

Robin Andrea: The whole incident is so absurd I thought you would enjoy it. Thank you for the YouTube video, too.

Scott said...

Packrat: Coyotes have only been "obvious" in our area for the last five years (though I'm sure they've been here longer) and people are still getting used to them. I get about one telephone call a month asking about the danger that they pose, and I tell people that they should be very careful with small pets and with small children, but that coyotes pose a minimal (but not a zero) threat to adults. The coyotes inhabiting our preserve are larger and huskier than the lean coyotes I've seen out West (and which you photograph occasionally)--sort of the the size of a small, underfed German shepherd--so people ought to be careful. But, they hardly need to act foolishly.

Mark P said...

That is kind of funny. Every time I have seen a coyote it ran the other way.

I'm not sure how big ours are compared to yours. They are fairly large, but not as big as Zeke.

Scott said...

My feelings exactly, Mark. Our coyotes are about as large as a small, lean German shepherd.

Mike, Studio City said...

Even here in Hollywood we have wildlife, and not the 'go out dancing all night wild life'. We live about a mile from Universal Studios, and four miles from downtown Hollywood. Coyotes strolling down our street in the middle of the night. We also have a couple of raccoons, and a few possums, and too many squirrels. Anyway, on another topic, I wanted to send you this link to Yosemite Valley/Mono Lake. This is my favorite web cam. It really gets beautiful in the winter. At this time the Sierras are having some smoke pollution from some fires west of the park. Here is the web cam link.

http://www.tranquilityimages.com/cams.shtml

Scott said...

Mike: I saw a "Nature" program on PBS a few years ago that dealt with urban raccoons. They're everywhere and numerous in our cities, and few people realize how ubiquitous they are. I had a fox in my backyard last evening as I went to my compost pile; I know there are foxes on my property, but I had never seen one so close to the house. And, my brother, who lives in San Diego, nearly lost a pet cat to a coyote in his very suburban subdivision; the only reason the cat survived the attack was probably because the coyote was young, and it dropped the cat and ran off when my brother confronted it.

Thank you for the link to Yosemite/Mono Lake. I'm going to bookmark it and check in frequently. One of my blogging colleagues, Robin Andrea at The New Dharma Bums, reports smoke and ash at her house along the coast in Arcata.

Mike, Studio City said...

As you may have heard, California has four seasons. 'Fire, flood, landslide, earthquake'. Also here is one more of my favorite web cams. It is on Mount Wilson, above Pasadena Ca.. I can drive up there from my house in about 25 minutes. The mountain in the distance is Mount Baldy. Mt. Baldy is nearly twelve thousand feet in elevation The camera is usually looking northeast. Sometimes it turns around and you get to enjoy a great shot of Los Angeles. There are archive photos you can visit.

http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/towercam.htm

Scott said...

Mike: Thanks for the Mt. Wilson webcam link; I've added it to my favorites, along with the Yosemite/Mono Lake cam.