Tag Archives: Yellowstone National Park

Buffalo Spawn

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Boy oh boy oh boy are we here at *The Institute excited. It’s Spring and time for one of the greatest, if not the most unlikely, spectacles ever to occur in Nature. We’re talking about the Buffalo Spawn that happens every April along the Firehole river in Yellowstone National Park. This phenomenon was first discovered several years ago by one of our free range wildlife photographers working on a separate project in Yellowstone and we have been fortunate to document this amazing process ever since.

The Institute, as has been noted many times in the past, has many ongoing projects underway at all times and the one our photographer was working on at the time this spawning phenomenon was noted, was a study on why river banks are just wide enough to accommodate the water that flowed through them and no wider, when he noticed strange behavior in the buffalo herds. The buffalo began gathering at the riverside jostling and shoving each other until they began to frantically enter the water and begin moving up-stream. Sometimes singly or in pairs, cows and bulls alike struggled upstream against the current in a single-minded desire to reach the shallows at the headwaters of the river to begin their spawning.

No obstacle was too great to keep them from moving ever upstream, clamoring over rocks and boulders, leaping mightily up water falls, their coats and horns glistening in the sun as they swam exhaustedly against the raging current, struggling until they reached that final tributary where they had been created many years ago. There under the light of a full moon the cows released their eggs and the bulls their sperm and as the river slowly allowed fertilization the eggs containing the new buffalos began to tumble downstream through rapids and wide gentle bends until catching up against a snag lying across the  stream, or a pebble bed where they could sink into safety amongst the stones and germinate, the eggs rested, began to grow, and thereby begin a new generation of buffalo.

Life is never a sure thing here in Yellowstone and the eggs were at constant risk of being found and devoured by predators. Wolves hungry as only wolves can be searched constantly along the riverbanks looking for egg clusters that had attached to rocks or plants along the shore and finding them, greedily devoured them for the protein that future young buffalo calves could provide them while in their embryonic state.

 Grizzlies could be seen out in the middle of the river casually turning over great snags, the remains of giant trees that had fallen into the river to float downstream until they lodged themselves in the shallows and found a permanent home. Ripping the snags apart with their tremendously strong forearms and sharp claws, the egg clusters of the new buffalo generation were easy pickings for the mammoth beasts to find and consume.

But life always finds a way. And many of the eggs escaped detection and over time developed into their next phase of development which of course is the ‘buffpole’ stage where they began to grow their little hooves and tails and assume the shape we recognize as ‘Buffalo’. By now they had been fed steadily by the nutrients in the river and were beginning to break free from the egg sack that had enveloped them. If the light was just right these small fry could be seen forming little groups or herds, galloping from one place of safety in the water to another, gaining strength and nimbleness needed to leave the confines of the river and move on to land to begin their new lives as the Giants of the Plains, the buffalo.

Once established on land the new young buffalo, now known as ‘calves’, would be adopted by an adult female or ‘cow’ and be nursed and shown how to graze. They grew rapidly and were now totally independent of the river from which they formed. Yet you can still see some remnants of the behavior established in their early stages, such as when they gather in large groups or ‘herds’ and run thundering from one place to another for no apparent reason. This is a hold over from their schooling behavior when they were freshly formed fry in the river, and now it has become established as part of their genetic behavior on the land.

If you want to observe this spawning behavior of the buffalo you must hurry to Yellowstone because it doesn’t last long. Once it starts the buffalo are tireless in their obsession to get upstream and complete the spawning process that ensures that the new herd will be replenished. It is often over before you arrive, in fact if you are reading this now in May, you’ve already missed it. Sorry, but we can assure you that it does happen as proven by the huge number of buffalo seen grazing in the vast meadows of Yellowstone National park. After all where else could they have come from.

* 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.

Time To Smell The Leaves

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When bears first wake up they are very, very hungry. They haven’t eaten since way last fall and they have to get something in their stomachs like right now. If it can be chewed they will attempt to eat it. Grass, old semi-used carcasses, any footprints in the dirt if some one walked by carrying something edible, peanut butter, nuts and/or berries, pizza, knapsacks with food in them, Chinese food either take out or eat in, gluten-free stuff, stuff with extra gluten, French food, cereal of any variety, tires that have run over roadkill, chili, chili dogs, dogs, manioc, coconut and coconut byproducts, leaves, buds, disgusting stuff that can’t even be written down, cook books, quarter pounders, quarter pounders with cheese, and lard. All of this and more is on the menu when the bear first wakes up.

So they go forth and ravenously eat anything that is remotely edible until they finally fill up that spot that says “I’m starving. Feed me.” After that happens they begin to become a little more selective in what they eat. Some even become connoisseurs and quite sophisticated gourmets, choosing only the choicest of the new offerings provided them by Mother Nature. Here we see Ms. Eula Ndego Jones, a new resident of Yellowstone National park, having come down from the famine stricken wastes of southern Saskatchewan through Montana and finally reaching the park just as the new leaves are unfurling. She carefully inhales the aroma of the young leaves before choosing the most delectable ones to eat. A few weeks ago she would have eaten the leaves, the bush and all its branches, plus about a pound and a half of the dirt around it.

But now, having regained some of the weight she lost through her long hibernation, she is being quite choosy about what she eats, taking delicate little bites from this bush and that, enjoying the moment, slowing down her intake just a little while she enjoys the warm spring sunshine. This is a time to enjoy the coming of the new season. It won’t be long before the elk start having their young and the calf selection will be at its premium, if the winter kill wasn’t too severe amongst the herds that is. But if it was then the carcasses will be plentiful and that will make living a lot easier. And there will be all those young ground squirrels that haven’t learned burrow safety yet so life is looking pretty good right now.

Spring is a time of rejuvenation and the animals here in Yellowstone have learned how to take advantage of it. I think we could all take a lesson from them about slowing down a little and savoring the moments of this time of year, after all Spring doesn’t last that long. I think we can forego the old carcasses and young ground squirrels though but those leaves might be nice in a salad with a few Fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Grace and Tranquility

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Grace and Tranquility are recent graduates of Swan Training School and are back in Yellowstone National park as new members of swan society. Their job is to swim the quiet rivers of the park, displaying all the qualities of mature young adults, preening, posing gently in the smooth backwaters of the river bends, projecting an air of beauty and refinement you’ve come to expect from swans.

Those of you who are quick studies will notice that Grace is doing what she was trained to do but Tranquility, her classmate, seems to be missing. This is unfortunate because swans, although beautiful when seen alone are of course doubly beautiful when displayed in pairs and the normal procedure would be for the two of them to show up at their appointed places and work the river together.

It seems that Tranquility, always a willful child had a few problems at Swan Training school and nearly missed her graduation due to some disciplinary problems. A quick note here. Sometime, back around the first of last year, we at The Institute made a startling discovery of the existence of the Swan Training School and wrote about it after infiltrating the school to get the inside story of how young swans are made. You can read about it here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2014/01/17/ . The training we found was harsh and rigorous. It’s a difficult road for young swans and the molding process used at the school is designed to break down individuality and force a form of collective thinking that produces a “Finished Swan”. Many make it through but some don’t. Tranquility was one that had some trouble.

. The training nuns of Our Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage, the nuns who run the school, despaired of Tranquility ever being able to graduate. They were quite firm with her and found her resistant to many of the aspects of swan training despite the measures used to get her “to get her mind right”. Finally they resorted to extreme training procedures, ones similar to those used in a large celebrity religion where there was shunning coupled with intense group crisis intervention methods, until nearly at her breaking point Tranquility agreed to be a “Good” swan. Nervous but convinced they had reached her, the nuns of the Fallen Plumage allowed her to graduate.

One of the events the recently graduated swans look forward to is Spring Break. They’re allowed to spend the two weeks prior to reporting for swan duty to attend the mass gathering of all the young swans at Padre Island and there enjoy the fellowship of their peers, laughing and singing and frolicking in the Texas sun. Being young swans they are expected to comport themselves in a manner that reflects well on swandom in general, which of course most of them do. But then there’s Tranquility.

It was a bad idea to send Tranquility on Spring Break. She fell in with some bad swans. Some really bad swans. Swans that had gone to Spring Break several years ago and never left. Once Tranquility met these kindred souls there was no looking back. Grace did her best to try and convince her to return and take up her life as a Yellowstone swan but her entreaties fell on deaf ears, Tranquility had found her place. Grace left soon after, winging her way back north until she reached the Yellowstone river, assuming her place as a  resident swan in a quiet stretch of river as it flows through the Hayden valley.

Tranquility on the other hand is still down at Padre. She works part-time in an Ink shop called the Quill and Skin pushing tats on unsuspecting young swans who will probably never make it back to their places either. She is very different appearing now and her ex-classmates and the nuns who taught her would never recognize her. She has dyed her wings feathers an emerald-green on one side and fire engine red on the other. Her peers have named her Traffic Stopper. Her long neck is shaven down one side to better display the Kanji tattooed there, the symbols supposedly saying her name, Tranquility, but due to a session with a drunken tattoo artist they say Hotel Bicycle instead. This was pointed out to her, but high on several prescription pain killers she simply shook her beak rings in irritation and went on her way. To her they will always say Tranquility.

Grace on the other hand can still be found at that very wide bend in the river, the one near Mt Mary trail, arriving every spring to take up her place and display the beauty and of course the grace of swans. She thinks of Tranquility often, wondering what her life is like now, but hasn’t had any contact with her since that fateful trip graduation year. Tranquility has been invited to the 3 and 5 year reunions held at the swan school but so far has not responded to any of them. The nuns presume her lost.

Table For One Please

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We have been getting cards and letters lately bemoaning the wretched state of table manners in Yellowstone National Park. Many of you, and by many I’m saying, fives of ones of you, have taken it upon yourselves to write critical letters regarding this phenomenon.

We recently received this letter from one Tilda Flapondo of East Pimple, NJ. She writes

Dear Director, While recently visiting that miserable place in Wyoming they call Yellowstone National Park I have to comment on the deplorable state of decorum, especially in the table manners of the citizens of this uncouth, backwoods landfill, and their total disregard for the most rudimentary knowledge of dining amongst well-mannered people such as my family and I.

Not even mentioning that as you travel the narrow twisty roads which are filled with nothing but trite mountain scenery, overfilled rivers and streams and disgusting animals, there is not a decent salon where one can get their hair and nails done. Plus my daughter wants to get her tattoo re-inked and this has simply been impossible. We’ve been subjected to the indignities of watching these barbarians, one might even call them animals, partake of their meals, eating with their mouths open, dropping parts of their food around what should be a dining table and generally behaving as if they were from New York city. We felt like a group of discarded pubic hairs tossed out of the roadway of disregard, yes, we felt so disrespected.

What has happened to our country, when decent people such as we are so mistreated and our insensibilities ignored. I can only say we are disgusted and shan’t return. I will be writing my congresswoman as soon as I get home. You’ll be lucky if they don’t close this place down.

I remain,

Disenchanted in East Pimple, N.J. (exit 9)

Here is our considered response,

Dear Disenchanted, First let me say that I am terribly sorry that you had a less than stellar visit to the grandmother of all national parks and understand that you were disappointed. But I must ask you one question. Is it true that you live in a town named East Pimple, New Jersey? What the hell were you people thinking when you named that garden spot. East Pimple, my god, and you criticize the beauty in the west.

First and by no means last, we must take exception to your statement that our ‘animals’ as you call them, have no table manners. The image above shows that you don’t know whether you walked to work or wound your watch. This is a young grey wolf of the Better Table Manners clan dining alone at one of the tonier establishments along the Yellowstone river. He has selected a table for one and is leisurely dining on a delectable meal of dead buffalo. This is not an overly mannered young wolf. He is in fact typical, and feels quite badly that you have mis-characterized him and his pack mates in this fashion.

Our animal citizens have been put through a rigorous training program by Mother Nature and taught good table manners in spite of your opinion. Our wolf packs tend to dine in areas set back away from the roadside and our grizzlies will often take a young elk or buffalo calf they are dismembering into the brush to consume it out of sight of our more squeamish visitors.

As a lesson in public relations we have circulated your letter amongst the different groups mentioned and to an individual they have decided that they would like to have you and your family for dinner. This is a rare honor and one I would hope you would take them up on at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your comments and please, don’t hesitate to visit us again.

I remain, The Director of The Institute, an organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of the images and reputation of our western cultures, heritage and traditions.

As always we want your cards and letters and your comments are always welcome. Rest assured that we will do our utmost to answer any questions or concerns to the best of our abilities. Remember, we are The Institute and we’re here to help.

A Little Open Space

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Some of you around the country have been thinking of writing in to complain about the weather and how you’ve been feeling confined and when’s it going to stop, etc., like I would know, and I sense your frustration. And as one of our great, but impeached, political leaders once said, “I feel your pain.”

Consequentially I have chosen to give you a little open space this morning. I know a lot of you have been cooped up and can’t get out doors to do the simplest things, like dump your litter box, or see if you can find your car under all that snow, or get away from that significant other who has been singing “The Spirit of New Orleans” for the last three days. It seems like a little relief is needed.

So OK then, rather than look for the shells for the 12 gauge, take a moment and reflect on this image of the north end of the Lamar valley looking up at Barronette Peak. Take a deep breath and smell the clean cool air of an early fall afternoon. The sun still has some warmth left and it feels good on your back. The grass, though yellowed and dry for the most part, still has enough life in it that the grazers can graze, and way off down there, past the drainage of Soda Butte creek, a small group of buffalo are settling in.

You have the whole place to yourself today because it’s too far North for the tourist busses to come and everyone else is down in the Hayden or over at Swan Lake flats looking for grizzlies before they head uphill for the winter. The grizzlies not the tourists. The tourists will be heading back to the Holiday Inn in West Yellowstone before it gets dark and scary out here.

If you wanted too, you could take off and just walk straight towards the mountains as long as you wanted to, just remember you have to walk back, so maybe just sitting on the boulder there and finishing off your thermos would be enough.

Well we all know that this isn’t as good as the real thing but hey, it’s better than listening to you know who sing. And as long as we’re on that subject, after you’ve had your fill of whatever serenity you can muster from viewing this special part of Yellowstone National Park, why don’t you go and tell you know who that you’ll let him out of the basement if he promises to stop singing. Maybe even show him this picture and fix him a nice hot cup of tea, and if that doesn’t work the shells for the shotgun are on the top shelf in the hall closet behind the Christmas decorations. Good luck.

Firehole Gold

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Every once in a while when conditions are perfect there is a phenomenon that occurs along the Firehole river. It is a rare event and only a privileged few have had the opportunity to see it. It’s called Firehole Gold and it’s a once and a lifetime experience.

As you might know, or are soon to learn, there is gold in the rivers of the west. In some of them more than others but every river has its share. The gold is in the form of almost microscopic flakes with the particles being small enough and light enough that they can be suspended in the water and carried downstream. Now you can walk up to the river anytime of day and scoop up a handful of water and you won’t see this gold, but it is there, its visibility is only brought out under certain circumstances.

The Firehole river that runs through Yellowstone National Park through valleys and meadows, past thermal geysers, along the highway where you and I can see it, is one of the most heavily laden gold-bearing rivers in the west. Where the source of this gold originates is still under speculation. Some say it is pumped up from a huge gold deposit underground by the many geysers that line the river. The scalding hot water softens the gold and in so doing causes the minute flakes to break off and rush to the surface to be swept down stream by the rivers flow.

Others say that there was once an enormous deposit of gold miles wide, about the size of two or even three of those little States back East and dozens, if not hundreds of feet deep up north a ways, simply lying on the surface of the ground until a glacier came through and pulverized it by using its tremendous mass and weight of ice and boulders to grind the chunks and nugget’s of gold the size of houses into the flakes we see in the river today. This is a very plausible theory because glaciers are really heavy. They don’t even make scales today that could weigh them. But even if you can’t weigh them, the glaciers weigh more than all the heaviest stuff you can imagine put together, except for a mountain, mountains and glaciers weigh about the same, and gold is soft, so a glacier could easily reduce even big fat giant pieces of gold to microscopic dust if it wanted to.

Whatever its origin the gold is there and it will occasionally display itself when the conditions are perfect and the necessary components are all optimally aligned. There is a place along the river’s length just south of the confluence of the Gibbon, the Madison and the Firehole rivers that provides these needs exactly. It is a flat portion of the river’s bank that acts as a giant pan, where the water with its rich load of nearly microscopic gold particles will flow over the many rough-edged pebbles lining the bank thereby sifting itself out of the rivers flow, much like a gold miner panning for gold will do, and briefly deposit itself just under the river’s surface, building up and up until the millions of flakes become visible as a solid sheet of gold only a fraction of an inch thick but thick enough that it can be seen.

This seems to occur near sunset as the sun must be low enough that its glancing rays can reflect the gold beneath the water’s surface. The heat of the dying rays of the setting sun are just the right temperature to cause the flakes to momentarily adhere to each other, forming what looks to be a solid sheet of gold. There can’t be any wind as the agitation of the water’s surface will break up the sheet and cause the flakes to simply continue on downstream. And one of the most important conditions is that you have to be there to see it.

You might think, OK Gold! let’s go get it. But it doesn’t work that way. The flakes are really too small to be filtered out of the water and although gold is still the most valuable object we can get our hands on, there is one thing even more valuable. And that is the fleeting beauty created by this rare interaction of the sunset, the extraordinary land the river runs through, and your participation in the experience. You will spend the gold and it will be gone but the memory of this sight of the Firehole gold will live in your heart forever.

Posted and filed under “Things that are true, kind of”.

Near-sighted Wolves

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As you can see by the above photo there is a new plague troubling our friends the wolves. It’s not just the Wyoming legislature or mean-spirited ranchers but a new disease called lupus prope aciei or Wolf Near-sightedness. It is a relatively new disease for these wolves, only having been discovered after researchers found them stumbling and bumping into things as the wolves tried to follow a scent trail on their hunt. The researchers had been following up reports of wolves with large swollen noses and bruises around their head and shoulders seen sitting listlessly along the roadside. They had taken to walking along the asphalt because of the lack of obstacles in their way, pathetically nose to tail, like tired circus elephants, sometimes the young pups even holding on to their parents tails with their mouths. If wolves could cry it would have been their Trail of Tears.

Just what is this affliction really though, you might ask. Well here you can see a prime example of this problem in action. The wolf in the foreground has just scented an elk or buffalo or a tourist with some pizza and is peering about myopically trying to locate its possible prey. See it squint its eyes, that’s not a Clint Eastwood imitation, no, that is lupus prope aciei  at work. That poor wolf can not see past the end of its own snout. The wolf in the background who is also afflicted is desperately trying to ascertain what it is it just stepped in.

The federal government sent in a canine Ophthalmologist to test the wolves hoping to discover the cause of the wolves ailments but due to over-zealousness in the doctor’s approach and his handling of the wolves he was never seen again. These are wolves. They’re near-sighted not domesticated. So as of right now we know little about the cause and/or treatment of this debilitating affliction other than don’t be grabbing no wolf by the nose to look in its eyes unless you get some type of formal agreement first. That, and wolves can’t digest badges and optical testing equipment. It’s not much but it’s a start.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, these wolves are now safe in a modified enclosure near Yellowstone National Park until they can be cured. All the rocks and other wolf-height lumpy obstacles are in the process of being wrapped in a protective foam covering and other taller impediments such as trees, large shrubbery, shovel handles, barrels to store wolf chow in, etc., are being modified with an application of foam Bollard covers, a technique borrowed from the maritime industry to keep large oil tankers from damaging those expensive metal posts on the docks they tie up at. This may safeguard our wolves for the time being but is not by any means a long-term solution.

One drawback to this approach is that it hasn’t been determined whether wolves like the taste of foam. If that turns out to be the case, that wolves do indeed like the taste of foam, perhaps a solution would be to spray the entire compound with an industrial strength product like Grannick’s Bitter Apple Spray, which is used to keep puppies from eating your credenza, and is available at fine pet stores nationwide. It’s just a thought.

But listen, a word of warning. If you should come across a wolf sitting forlornly along the roadside staring at his feet, don’t rush up to it and offer your condolences about its condition, Wolves don’t like that. Instead in a moderate tone say something like “Hey, dude, What’s up? You OK? Anything we can do for you?” Something like that. Do not and I repeat, Do not rush up and grab its snout and start looking into its eyes to see if it is near-sighted or not. I mean, this should go without saying but there are some of you out there that watch way too much TV and might be tempted to utilize the Disney approach and offer aid. Don’t do that. There are trained professionals on duty to handle situations like this. Call them. Let them do their jobs. Instead if you feel like you want to help, send cards, or donate those used eye glasses into the many drop-off boxes located throughout the area, or make a donation to the lupus prope aciei fund or simply drive on by. You can help more just by sending them your good thoughts.