Monthly Archives: January 2016

Day Sleeper

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If you’ve ever done door to door sales you may have run across a sign in the window or taped to the door that says “Day Sleeper – Do Not Disturb”. This sign has been put there because the occupant is a shift worker and works the night shift. 11:00pm to 7:00am in the morning. This is a tough shift to work as it turns your life completely up side down.

They are usually ready for supper when they get off work at seven am, lunch for them was about 2 or 3 in the morning. Then they have to do what ever needs to be done during the day so they can go to bed around 1 to 2 in the afternoon. It’s hard to sleep in the daytime even if you’re in a completely dark room. Noise creeps in, sirens, kids playing, traffic noises, you just don’t sleep well. This leads to sleep deprivation and very soon you are one very cranky individual.

 You’ve unplugged the phone, done everything you can think of to try to sleep and then the worst happens. Someone knocks on your door. Once, twice, sometimes more, until you get up to see who it is and you find a salesman standing there. One  with a terrific price on a vacuum cleaner or a set of encyclopedias. Or it’s some self-righteous person who is desperately certain that your soul needs saving and if you’d just let them come in they would help you find Jesus.

You no longer ask “Didn’t you see the sign?”. You already know that they think their agenda is more important than your sleep. So you casually pull them into your cave and dismember them. This normally takes a good 1 to 2 hours, so right there you’re that far behind when you try to go back to sleep.

This is Dazma the Amur leopard who lives at the Denver zoo. She is a day sleeper. Wake her at your own peril.

When Sandhill Cranes Play Practical Jokes

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Sandhill cranes are interesting birds. There is much known about them, their migration routes, their mating habits, their principal diets, what they like to watch on cable. But what most people aren’t aware of, and has seldom been reported, is that they have an extremely high propensity for practical jokes. That’s right. They screw around with each other constantly.

*The Institute has a researcher permanently stationed at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge to watch for and record events just like this. This is why our phones are constantly ringing with people from Audubon, Western Birds, Birds International, Birds Birds and More Birds, Teenage Birds, Bird Watcher’s Journal, and numerous other publications, to ask what new discoveries have we made and can they piggy-back on our research. We always say “No, Go do your own research.” as we have been duped before from people saying one thing and doing another, then stealing our research for their own enrichment, so we don’t trust them.

In the corroborating photo above you can see a Sandhill Crane actually caught in the act of playing a practical joke on one of his friends. This is an old joke, where the first Crane leaves a disgusting present for the second crane on his doorstep, then rings the bell and runs. The second crane finding the disgusting pile left on his doorstep responds in a particularly hilarious way, at least to Sandhills anyway. His surprise and outrage can be heard for miles as he bellows how he ‘will get’ the perpetrator of this obnoxious joke.

This old but reliable joke provides much hilarity for any one observing it and gives the offending joke player something to laugh about for days. Retelling the story down at the bar will get him free drinks of pond water for days and days, or at least until somebody else plays a better joke on someone anyway,

This is just one small bit of information we pick up and store in our knowledge storing database. Soon we will have amassed as much pertinent data on all the species we observe that will rival The Smithsonian, or the NSA which has its own database on bird and animal migratorial behavior, especially those groups that cross international borders on their migration routes. You never know when some kind of subversive bird will try and insert itself into one flock or another to do ‘god knows what’ to free people everywhere.

We are pleased to be able to bring you this new insight into Sandhill Crane behavior. This what we do here at the Institute, and you can rest assured we will be posting many more new items on bird and animal behavior as we make them up in the future. Thanks for tuning in. Remember, “We are The Institute and we’re here to help”

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Caught In A Murder

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Many dastardly deeds are done in Bosque del Apache under the cover of darkness. But some are done even in bright sunlight. Drugs and violence and the arrival of gangs never before seen in the refuge are now common place. It’s gotten much worse since the advent of the internet and being able to get restricted bad seed and other prescription only drugs from Canada with nothing but a fake prescription and a fax machine. Consequently gangs have formed to take advantage of this situation and have infiltrated nearly every level of society in the Refuge.

Here we see a murder of Crows swarm a lone Eagle, a peace officer who had accidentally stumbled on them distributing bags of hallucinogenic seed. This was a shipment of treated Bulgar seed that had just arrived on the refuge disguised as medical supplies and food for indigent migratory birds.

Undeterred by his unexpected presence they brazenly rose up in a swarm to surround him and to force him to the ground where they in their superior numbers could do him in, thereby fulfilling their designation as a “Murder of Crows”, the most ruthless gang in the refuge. Filled with crows from Columbia and other South American countries they will stop at nothing to defend their territory and protect their profits. These are very bad crows.

Fortunately for the eagle the crows had been distracted by the business of cutting the seed with cheaper non-hallucinatory wild bird seed available in bulk from any of the big box stores. This is done to allow them to maximize their profits even more. One 50lb. bag when cut to street tolerances will provide enough seed for several thousand birds. It takes more and more seed per bird to get high, so the sales, and of course profits, go high-sky. Due to their being occupied with this process he was able to fly the through the crime site before most of the crows even noticed he was there. This didn’t stop the crows from rising up to confront him however and soon he was surrounded. The eagle was able to gain enough altitude to avoid the crows tactic of flying over him and pecking at his back with their needle sharp bills, causing him to fly lower and lower until he was grounded and then swarmed and pecked to death.

Due to surprising the crows and his superior ability to gain altitude quickly from the use of his powerful wings, our eagle was able to make his escape and return to headquarters. There a task force of Eagles and a few of the larger hawks were able to return to the sight of the crime to try and catch the perps in the act. Unfortunately the crows were able to make their escape by eating as much of the seed as they could carry and still get off the ground. The rest they pushed into the pond hoping to retrieve it later.

The peace eagle didn’t make the bust that he wanted to, but at least he foiled the Murder of Crows from creating one more victim. The crows will be back though, the possibility of making this much profit is too compelling for them to be run off by one lone eagle. And once the other birds get hooked they’ll be back in business again. The good news is our eagle didn’t get caught in a murder. His. He did cause one more drug center to be closed and for that we’re all thankful.

Italian Morning Bosque del Apache

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It has been said that if an artist has real talent they will often have an aura about them that extends outward from his presence. This aura extends out to a distance that corresponds to the artists talent. The more accomplished the artist the further out his influence or aura spreads. Leonardo Da Vinci had an aura that went out approximately 1130 miles. This would be a radius not a diameter. This aura will leave its influence on anything that it touches. This is why some of those old European towns like Venice and Florence look the way they do. Leo walked down their streets.

There are many of those old retired painters of the Renaissance, Leo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Giorgione and many others. Most of these painters have made their money and are no longer painting. What many people don’t know is that all of these artists traveled extensively looking for inspiration, seeing the sights, trying to find new colors that they could incorporate into their work and generally taking advantage of frequent sailing miles they had built up in their travels.

Of course everywhere they went they left their indelible mark on the landscape. Giorgione was a frequent traveler to the New World and one of his favorite spots was to hit Bosque del Apache whenever he was in the neighborhood. Since passport control was fairly lax at that time, there aren’t many records left that document exactly where in his travels he visited, but there is one telltale method that can be used to determine where he has been.

That would be an aura check. Each of the artists had a distinct and identifiable aura once you learned how to identify them. Rembrandt and Michelangelo both leaned heavily into the Chiaroscuro style which was very heavy influenced by extreme contrast and heavy use of brighter colors, gold, silver, etc, which is why if you walk by the coliseum you will see part of it in bright golden sunshine and the other side of it in deep shadows. That’s the Michelangelo effect. Giorgione liked a lighter more open palette, lots of soft backgrounds, muted shades, not so much contrast, earth tones, and highlighting the primary subject in his painting.

Since the last undocumented visit by Giorgione was roughly March 18, 1510, which was a Friday, his aura is beginning to fade a little. While when it was new, you couldn’t even walk in Bosque without tripping over his aura. Now not so much. But every once in a while when you least expect it the landscape will explode into his palette that had been imprinted onto the landscape when he was here as if he stood right beside you. That is exactly what happened when this image was made. Prior to taking the photo the landscape had been drab and uninteresting, almost boring. Then the sun came over the rise and activated the Giorgione aura and you can see the result. Soft muted colors, perfect earth tones, it’s all there. What a joy to be able to see and bask in the reflection of such talent, let alone document these events. We heard that Michelangelo had visited the Grand Canyon so we’re off to see what effects his aura has had on that masterpiece. We’ll try and post that visit later.

Road Trip

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Every once in a while we take a chance here at The Institute and do something really nice for our employees. This year we shut The Institute down completely for the entire holiday season, banked the fires, put the computers in standby, turned off the electricity to the fence, turned our livestock loose to fend for themselves, gave all of our interns a bus ticket to the last place they remember being from and The Institute went into hibernation until the New Year’s bells rang.

Now we are ramping up again. Everyone is slowly trickling back from where ever they spent the holidays. Just yesterday the bright, shiny, baby blue bus that the Sheriff’s department uses to transport prisoners hither and yon, hither being County road 56G where they cheerfully spread blacktop for the entire fortnight of the holidays, and yon, back to the tent city up near the Soapstone Wildlife Preserve where they ate sagebrush and tried not to freeze to death, dropped off the interns and two of our PhD’s that had spent the Christmas holidays in the bosom of the Larimer County Work but not release program.

Fortunately our critical employees like our chef returned a day early to get the fires built back up again. Of course he returned because we kept the back seat out of his 1968 Buick Boattail Riviera as an incentive to come back. You can not find replacements for those anywhere, I don’t care if you look on Craigslist, eBay, AutoZone, or any junkyard from here to the Philippines, they’re just not available. It’s good to see that coal-black smoke roiling out of the commissaries chimneys again. It won’t be long before the scent of coal fires and Lamprey stew and frozen dinners will coat the buildings with a thin layer of grease again. I know some of our interns cannot wait. Which is good because they’ve already chewed so much bark off the aspen I don’t know what the elk are going to eat this winter,

Our Chief of Security was also an early returnee. She had to put new brushes in the generator that keeps the fence electrified and to test fire the AR-15’s that were stored in the gun locker. Plus she just likes shooting stuff and it’s difficult to find a place where you can discharge automatic weapons with impunity. Our med staff came back because there would be a lot of cases to treat amongst the returning interns due to their living rough as they call it. Rashes, bites, broken teeth, infected tattoos, malnutrition, loss of key parts of their bodies from unknown incidents, bruises from manacles and restraints, loss of body hair from attending New Year’s parties, colds, hypo and hyper thermia, hearing loss from listening to Mother’s and other loved ones telling them to get a real job, acute disorientation, many terrible nearly untreatable diseases from those who traveled outside the country to their home of origin, and sea sickness. Our med staff is ready, in fact some of them were walking around with their rubber gloves on already.

Our animals got time off also. The wolves went up to Yellowstone to visit friends, the grizzlies that watch the far-flung perimeter of The Institute had reservations at Sandals again this year. They just can’t get enough of the Turks and Caicos, Saint Lucia and Antigua. Our resident Elk herd made the short pilgrimage to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the in-laws. Our own Bighorn Sheep herd went to visit cousins and other extended family down in the Black Mountains near Kingman Arizona. They’re a little late checking in but they were sighted on Highway 34 near Allenspark just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park where they were going to stop for a night to see friends and drop off a few Desert Bighorns who wanted to see the park first hand, or hoof as it were.

It’s always a good feeling to get The Institute back up and running. Soon we’ll be having our meetings, setting agendas and summer trips schedules, putting the interns back to work with planting and watering and hoeing. They’ll be getting that lower 160 acres planted to Rutabagas again and be busy stirring up the carp ponds. Fresh fish again, they like that. We here at The Institute hope your holidays went well and you’re back in the grind with a fresh mind and rested feet. Drop us a line when you’re not busy. Let us know how your holidays went. We’ve already heard from Aunt Pheeb. Uncle Skid got out of Rikers in time to make it home for Christmas. She didn’t even know he was in New York, he had just gone out for cigarettes, but that’s a story for another time. Have a good New Year.

Cowboy’s Monday Morning – Bull’s Saturday Night

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

Last year at The Blackfeet’s annual North American Indian Days or NAID we had a chance to observe this interesting phenomenon during their rodeo. It was a short little presentation of how the cowboy’s and the bulls get along. If you had any thoughts that bull riding was like professional wrestling you might think again as both the cowboy and the bull would try and convince you otherwise.

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The title of today’s post is Cowboy’s Monday Morning – Bull’s Saturday night. The cowboy is having a Monday morning due to the fact that for whatever reason he neglected to hold on very tightly to the Bull rope, his lifeline and anchor point to remain seated firmly on the bull’s back, and to maintain the proper posture required to look good to impress any ladies watching. This lack of attention on his part meant he would soon be leaving the safety and comfort of his seat on the bulls back.

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The bull being very, very sensitive to the rider on his back has been waiting impatiently for this slight error to occur. When it does that is the beginning of the Bull’s Saturday night as things begin to become very entertaining for the bull. There will dancing and singing and prancing in the street as the bull capitalizes on the cowboys lack of attention.

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As the bull causes the separation of the cowboy from his back he just glances back slightly to make any corrections in his form and to check that the cowboy will land in the spot where he can bring his hindquarters squarely down on the cowboys chest. This is called “stomping the cowboy silly” in rodeo parlance. The bull enjoys this part very much.

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As the cowboy lands perfectly and shows the proper amount of discomfort the bull raises his hindquarters for a perfect two point landing on the cowboys chest. This is called scoring and usually gets the bull big points. The cowboy not so much. His score is rapidly going down the tubes right now.

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Here we see the bull performing his trademark happy dance, similar to when a football player scores a touchdown. He is very pleased at this point. The cowboy isn’t as thrilled with how things turned out and is actively thinking that the job down at the Post Office doesn’t sound too bad at the moment.

This is just one little story of the constant battle between man and beast and rodeos and photographers and Blackfeet bull riders and rides to the ER and extra hay for the bull and all things rodeo. This time things went in favor of the beast. Next time Man might prevail. It’s up to you to decide who you want to vote for. In this particular battle the odds are slightly in favor of the bull. But every once in a while the cowboy wins. That’s nice too. How’s your Monday morning going. If it is better than the cowboys, well hell, go get yourself another cup of coffee. You deserve it.

2016 A New Dawn

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2016 A new dawn, A new year. We said good-bye to 2015 yesterday with a sunset image that represented the end of a less than stellar year so we thought it only fitting that we start the new year off with a sunrise image taken from the deck here at Blog Central. This is how we have decided the new year should be, bright, colorful, beautiful, vibrant, full of promise and generally a perfect start to what we hope is the same kind of year.

 If you are one of those that are thankful that 2015 is past (and even if you’re not) then join us here at Blog Central, home of The Institute, and the constant beauty that is Colorado at its finest, to move forward into the new year with enthusiasm and hope. From everyone here at BigShotsNow the blog, which as you have no doubt figured out by now is primarily me, I would like to say Happy New Year to all of you from the perspective of the first dawn of the year, and the wonderful events it will lead to in 2016.

Remember visit once, visit again, in fact just make it a habit, and tell your friends about us. Happy New Year!