Houdini had the run of our hearts

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

There's a lot of joy missing from our house.

Nearly two years to the day after I wrote about the loss of our dog Molly, we are experiencing the heartbreak of the death of a pet again.

Houdini, our yellow Lab, was only 6 years old, but cancer is no respecter of birthdays.

We took Houdini to the vet last spring because he seemed to have something stuck in a nostril. He was sneezing and breathing uncomfortably. An examination didn't find anything at first, then in June, A CT scan found a nasal tumor. It was cancerous.

It’s a common story for this unfamiliar cancer. Nasal tumors make up only 1 percent of tumors in dogs, but 80 percent are cancerous. Nasal cancer is more common in larger breeds and older dogs.

We were referred to the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School. The tumor was inoperable, the cancer incurable.

Snow day good for reflection

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com 

There’s something magical about a snow day even when you haven’t had to go to school for more than 30 years.

It’s like bonus time — unplanned hours. Time to decorate the tree and order those last-minute gifts. It also gives us the outdoors reborn with a fresh coat of beauty.

The office for my day job shut down because of Thursday’s snow. I would have made it in OK, but eight hours of heavy snowfall and gusty winds would have kept me from getting back up the steep driveway that takes us up on the sandhill we call home.

I’ll take some of the bonus time to look back on random events from the year in nature.

•  Wisconsin has 110 fewer wolves after the first hunt since reintroduction. Hunting wolves was always going to be a reality to stay within the goals set by some real smart guys at the DNR. My objection is that more than half of the “harvested” wolves had to endure leg-hold traps before being dispatched.

•  We have one more eagle than we might have. When an adult bald eagle flew into the grille of Brian Baker’s pickup truck as he traveled down State 10 in Weyauwega last June, it seemed the bird had no chance. Baker called the sheriff’s department, which called DNR warden Ted Dremel, who gingerly pulled the eagle’s head from the plastic shards of the grille. New London bird rehabber Pat Fisher and vet Jim Ziegler nursed the eagle back to health and, a month later, I was able to watch it leave Ziegler’s gloved hands and fly back into nature. The story was picked up by CNN and a picture Baker snapped with his phone made the DNR’s top 10 list of wildlife photos for the year.

Expert says crane hunt inevitable

By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com

The offer was more than I could refuse. Sit on the bank of the Wisconsin River on pioneering environmentalist Aldo Leopold’s former farmstead, watching thousands of sandhill cranes with an international expert on the big birds.

The evening, and the conversation, didn’t go as expected.

Stan Temple         Aldo Leopold Foundation photo

The program was offered by the Aldo Leopold Foundation, located between Portage and Baraboo. The expert is Stan Temple, a retired University of Wisconsin professor of wildlife ecology. He has helped in the recovery of many bird species, including the sandhill, peregrine falcon and California condor.

It was a great opportunity to talk with a man who held the same seat the great Leopold had 80 years earlier. I asked him how cool that was. Temple said it was so intimidating that he didn’t mention it much when he had the job. Now that he has retired, he uses it for instant woods-cred.

He also rubbed elbows with “Silent Spring” author Rachel Carson as a boy working at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He remembered being thrilled by getting a set of birding binoculars that were the same model Carson used.

Unfortunately, there was little to interrupt the conversation, especially cranes. It was Sandy’s fault. Winds from the hurricane made the bend in the river where the observation blind is located inhospitable for cranes. Complicating things further, an imposing adult bald eagle was perched above the cranes’ usual evening hangout. First time I ever regretted seeing an eagle.

Paddle locks up season three

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

See photos on Flickr

Check on plans for Fox-WIsconsin Heritage Paddle 2013 at www.wisconsinpaddlers.org

Season three of the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle ended last Saturday (Sept. 29) on about the most perfect day you could order up.

With the temperature in the low 70s and the wind just a whisper, kayak and canoe paddlers launched from Lutz Park, passed through all four Appleton locks and landed 6.5 miles later at Kimberly's Sunset Point Park.

I was the member of the Heritage Paddle organizing committee who questioned whether the locks paddle had run its course. People may be thinking, been there, done that. Cars with boats strapped to their roofs started arriving early, and kept coming. In the end, 147 boats took to the Fox River. So much for me having my finger on the pulse of the paddling community.

The perfect weather had drawn them all out. The woman with the pristine wooden boat. The two boys with matching recreational boats. The guy paddling his young daughter and her two stuffed dogs. They all paddled with a smile.