The Fish Did It!

A few years ago a friend of mine bought a house with a pond and shorty after they moved in found out there were mussels living in the pond. Something under the cover of darkness was eating them and discarded broken open mussel shells all along the edges of their pond. "But how did they get their in the first place?" was the question she posed to me one evening.

The pond in question.

I thought this was going to be a bit of a challenge and that I would have to study the hydrology of the area mapping the streams which flow through the swamps nearby looking for those two tough mussel who crawled this way there and then created all the future generations. Or maybe it was a bird flying overhead who lost its lunch and dropped a pregnant mussel into the pond.

Not being a hundred percent able to remember how freshwater mussels reproduce, after all its been 26 years since I took invertebrate zoology in college,  I did a quick Google search. BAM! There is the answer; fish!

Graphic swiped from University of Vermont

If you look at the graphic you'll see something called a glochidia which forms a cyst or a little cocoon on a fish were it hangs out and goes through a metamorphosis until it falls off the fish and finishes it life cycle.  Long ago the previous owner of the pond had it stocked with bait fish, so when the bait fish were introduced into the pond somewhere on one of those fish was a glochidia or two. Once they completed their use of the host fish they fell off and reproduced over and over again.

So, is there anything cool about freshwater mussels you ask? Oh, heck yeah!

 1) They produce freshwater pearls.
 2) The United States contains over three hundred different species of freshwater mussels which inhabit all 50 states. The United States contains 1/3 of the estimated 1,000 species of freshwater mussels known worldwide. Some states have conservation programs to help the mussels avoid becoming locally extinct. 
3) They range in size from a tiny pebble to as big as a dinner plate.
4) If you happen to be a racoon, river otter, or muskrat they are one of your favorite foods.
5) Freshwater mussels can live up to 100 years and if you want to know how old the mussel is all you have to do is count the rings. Each year mussels much like trees add new growth ring.



Want to know more check out some of these websites.
http://www.uvm.edu/~pass/tignor/mussels/
https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/7360/546179
https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/freshwater-mussels/

Just how many cat littler boxes would that be?

Twenty-three years ago I was living in a very unique place in the United States, Mosca, Colorado, home to the largest pile of sand.

Great Sand Dunes National Park photo by NPS

Back when I worked there as an intern it was just a National Monument which after the addition of land which use to be a working ranch it is not Great Sand Dunes National Park and Wilderness Preserve and it should be on your bucket list of places to visit before you die. It is about 8 hours south east of Denver, Colorado and approximately half and hour north of Taos, New Mexico. Why visit you might ask well, there is tons of wildlife to see, cool looking insects which only climb around on the dunes at night, and the highest point of the dune field stands a staggering 755 feet tall. Also if you hit the park at just the right time of the year you can body surf along Medano Creek. Trust me it's a fun time.

Kids surfing Medano Creek photo by NPS

Ok, by now you are probably wondering where the cat litter boxes come in. One afternoon I had just gotten done giving the afternoon terrace talk and was standing there answering questions; one of the most common being what can you use this sand for? the answer to that question from a commercial perspective is nothing. The sand after tumbling across the dry river valley for years and years has become very rounded making it useless for concrete and there is something about it but I can't remember what that makes it unfit for glass production.  This guy walks up to me and says "how many cat littler boxes could you fill with that? I turned to him thought for a second and replied I have no idea. I meant to sit down and figure out this answer before the season ended, but sadly between writing papers for college and doing everything needed for my internship something had to give. Also I HATE math. Really, I do with a passion of 10,000 fiery suns. There are those occasions where I will sit down and do math to figure out something. For example, in 2013 I figured out how many years it would take for all the of the water in Lake McDonald to completely change. Answer 2.5 years on average. (If you want to know how to figure that out send me an email and I'll let you know.)
I am pretty sure that kids in the United States would be much better at math if we gave them math problems like the cat litter box and how long does it take for all the water in Lake McDonald to completely change instead of asking if train A is traveling 25mph headed towards train B which is traveling 65mph how long would it take before they collide.

Ok, so what do we need to know to answer the cat litter box question?

             1) The volume of a cat litter box.
                  Wow, who knew there were so many cat litter box styles!? Using just the open top cat      

               litter boxes found on this website  I sat down and averaged the volume of seven different open topped litter boxes. Answer= 3,320 cubic inches

              2) Volume of sand contained in the sand dunes. 

        Truth be told this is the point where I thought the math was going to push me over 

                the edge and send me screaming from the apartment.  Scrolling through the frequently   asked questions page you find this: 

                  "The large, main dunefield covers approximately 30 square miles, but there are 

                   many more square miles of smaller dunes in the sand sheet surrounding the main 

                   dunefield. At the widest point, the main dunefield runs six miles and at the greatest    

                   length, eight miles."

                   Oh, sure how the heck to do calculate that? There must be an easier answer so, back to 

                   the Google! Bingo!!! Thank you once again Andrew Valdez! In his post on the park 

                   website he answers just this question: 4.8 billion cubic meters.

Now I have all the information I need. All I have to do first is determine how many cubic inches there are in a 4.8 billion cubic meters of sand. Answer if  I have converted correctly 

                                  1 cubic meter = 61,023.7 cubic inches

                                  292,913,760,000,000 cubic inches

Dividing our cat litter box average into the above giant number gives us.....drum roll........

                                             88,227,036,144.57831 Cat litter boxes that can be filled using the sand found at Great Sand Dunes. 

HOWEVER, this is not accurate I don't think. Taking a quick poll of some cat loving friends of mine on Facebook this morning I found out that most of them put between 3-5 inches of litter in the bottom of the kitty box, so the above number might be a little small. I need a new average for the cubic volume of the cat litter box because the above number assumes we are filling the box to the TOP with sand. Adjusting the height of the cat litter boxes to be between 3-5 inches I redid the math. New volume average: 1,566.3 cubic inches. This means there is 

                                               187,007,852,901.743 Cat litter boxes worth of sand.

Ok, my head hurts from all this math I'm gonna go read a book. 

If you happen to be a mathematician and determine that my answer it wrong PLEASE send the correct answer. I will not be offended after all I stink at math. 

Nature Mystery Number 2!

I was out for a walk not too long ago and came across an awesome sight; evidence of a 6 foot tall beaver!!!!

Could this be a hold over from the last ice age which has been hiding out in the deep dark wood of Maine? After all during the last ice age there were beavers which measured about eight feet long and weighed close to 220 pounds.  What are the chances? Well, about as good as me seeing Bigfoot walking through the Oregon woods, not going to happen.

So, what is going on here?  Walk a few more feet further into the woods and you will find a beaver dam and the beginning of a beaver lodge. Since beavers can cut down trees as large as two feet around the beaver strolled by and thought hey this would make an excellent log for my beaver dam and got to chomping. Now while birch trees are a rather hard wood those amazing incisors they have easily make short work of this tree.  

Now the top set of chew marks is about 3-3 1/2 above the surface of the ground and the bottom cut is about 2 1/2 feet above the surface of the ground. Why is the top one so far off the ground?  It is a little hard to tell the how I took the picture, but there is a pretty significant hill on the left side of this picture. By looking a the wind blown shape of the tops of the surrounding trees it is obvious the wind blows over this area pretty strongly from the west (left side of the photograph.) As the wind blows across the hill the snow builds up deeper and deeper until the wandering beaver scopes out the tree for chopping.  As the winter nears an end the snow slowly starts to melt more of the base of the tree becomes uncovered and the beaver came back for another section of log. However, the beaver never had a chance to completely chip through the second section of tree before the snow melted out from underneath it.

Keep and eye out for mysteries in the forest around you!


Ps: If you have never seen just how into building dams beavers are take a look at the largest beaver dam anywhere in the world. Found in 2007, it is over 2,800 feet long!