The Industrious Beaver

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

I want to tell you a few more things about the Beaver, because they are such great engineers (builders), and so organized. I told you before that the Beaver builds a dam on a stream In order to form a pond for it, and it's family, to live in. But just how does it build this dam? The answer is the really neat part.

First the Beaver has to cut down some trees. Well "cut" isn't the right word , it's "chew". That's right, the Beaver uses its two front teeth to chew through the trunk of the tree to make it fall. You may have seen your father, or some tree men, cut down a tree with a chain saw. Well, imagine having to cut the tree down using your teeth. And the Beaver is so skilled at bringing down a tree that he can make it fall exactly where he wants it to fall.

After the tree is down, he chews off branches just the length he needs to build his dam. He will drag rocks and stones into the water as a base, or foundation, for his dam, and then bring in some larger branches to drive into the stream bottom; and others toweave between the branches and stones, along with some mud to put between the branches and stones to patch any holes. And, because the water in the stream might wash the interwoven branches away, he will include in the sides of the dam some longer, stronger branches that are not only woven between the branches and stones in the water, but also extend out onto the bank of the stream where they are anchored to large boulders, or the trunks of large trees. This gives the dam a great deal of strength, and keeps it from being washed downstream.

Keep in mind that all of this initial work is done underwater, where it's hard to see what you are doing. It's not until the very end of building the dam that you see the top part, where the stream is flowing over its top. But believe me when I tell you that most of the hard work is on the bottom, where you can't even see it.

And you know what? At the same time the Beaver is building the dam, he is busy building his house, which I told you about before. He needs to make the house just the right height too, so that when the pond is finished the level of the water is exactly right. If he builds the dam too low, he won't be able to have an underwater entrance. If he builds the dam too high, the pond will flood his living quarters.

Because the Beaver has no defenses against predators (just like us rabbits), he has to be in the water most of the time. (Us rabbits don't need to be in the water because we just outsmart predators). If he has to go under the water to escape danger, he can hold his breath for up to 17 minutes -- and that's pretty good. You probably have a hard time holding your breath for 1 minute. In the winter time he has figured out something else that helps him. And that is that when the pond freezes solid, he will let some of the water out of his pond, which lowers the level of the pond. That creates a space between the water and the underside of the ice, and the Beaver can breath the air in this space. The ice doesn't sink down as it is supported by the sides of the pond.

With all that to do the Beaver is the hardest worker in the animal world. And that's why you hear people say that someone who is working all the time is "busy as a Beaver!"

Keep you chin up

Robert P. Rabbit

The Woodchuck

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a very good day.

I have a friend in North Georgia whose name is Woody Woodchuck. In some parts of the USA they are called Marmots, but they are all still Woodchucks. Actually they were here when the first settlers came to America and spotted this little furry creature and decided to call it "Chuck". Then later, some bright person, for reasons nobody knows, started calling it a "Woodchuck", even though it doesn't eat wood, chew wood or have much of anything to do with wood.

The Woodchuck lives in a den it digs on the side of a hill - to keep its house from flooding. It is an excellent digger, moving as much as 700 pounds of dirt in the process of building a bunch of tunnels and rooms. It will have a room for a nest, one for a bathroom, and rooms for each newborn (called "chucklings") to have its own place to sleep once it's big enough to walk around on its own. The Woodchuck is so organized that it will have a main entrance to its den that is noticeable by the piles of dirt from the digging, and then an escape exit a good distance away that it digs from the bottom up, taking the dirt out the front entrance so that when he breaks through to the surface, he doesn't even disturb the vegetation around the exit. In this way none of his predators know where he will come out of the ground when he needs to escape.

With all that digging, you would think the Woodchuck would be very dirty, but in fact, they are very clean animals -- always cleaning themselves. You will never see a Woodchuck with so much as a single bit of dirt on its fur.  And mama Woodchuck will clean the den, which can be 5 or 6 rooms, and 75 feet of tunnels, every day, and will replace the nesting material whenever it gets soiled.

By the way, just like the bear, the Woodchuck hibernates, which means it sleeps all Winter.  But one of the most interesting legends about the Woodchuck is that in each territory where they live, they will elect one of their group to predict on February 2nd of each year when Springtime will arrive. On that day,  the Woodchuck will wake up, and come out of its den in the morning. If it sees its shadow, it will go back in its den and sleep for six more weeks, as it knows Spring is six weeks away. If it doesn't see its shadow, it will start its work for the Season, as it knows Spring is just around the corner.

Usually the Woodchuck is more accurate than the TV Weatherlady. Maybe she needs to go to Woodchuck Weather School.

Keep your chin up.

Robert P. Rabbit

The Amazing King Salmon

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a good day.

Being a rabbit, I don't like the water. It's wet, usually cold, or even icy, it makes me shiver when I'm drying out and I can't hop as well if my fur is so heavy with water. But there is one creature that lives in the water that I think is amazing. It's a fish, and they call it a King Salmon, and it can teach us a lot about determination.

Let me explain. In the Fall, mama Salmon will lay 30,000 eggs (one thousand at a time) in a small stream in the Northwestern United States -- Like Washington State. Within 15 seconds of the eggs hitting the floor of the stream, papa Salmon must fertilize them, or they will never hatch. He does this by covering them with a milky substance. Mama will then cover the eggs with sand and gravel by swishing her tail back and forth. The eggs will stay there all winter while a tiny tinny fish develops inside. Then, in February, 30,000 little biddy salmon all come out of their eggs. And since hundred of salmon lay their eggs in the same stream, that means millions of little salmon come out at once.

And this is where their adventure begins. They stay under rocks while they grow bigger feeding on the egg sack of food that they hatched with, but that soon runs out and they have to leave the safety of the rocks to go find food. Then the danger comes. They can freeze if the water gets too cold; die from too much sun; get eaten by bigger fish; get caught by birds, weasels, turtles, frogs or any one of a number of other predators; or can get washed down stream by heavy rain.

If they survive all of that, they swim to the first lake they come to, and start growing bigger so they can follow the stream all the way to the Pacific Ocean. There are still dangers in the lake, but they persevere (which means they don't give up) until they are big enough to swim to the Ocean. When they are hiding under the rocks it's called their "fry stage". When they are growing in the lake, it's called their "smolt stage". And when they are swimming down to the ocean it's called their " parr stage". And what's interesting, is that when they reach the place where the stream goes into the ocean, they have to wait until their body changes to the point where they can live in the salt water of the ocean. The river is fresh water, with no salt in it, so this is a change they need to make, because if they just swim from the fresh water into the salt water without making this change, they would die.

Finally, only one King Salmon of every ten that hatched upstream makes it all the way into the ocean -- nine of them die along the way. And in the ocean they swim as far down as 100 feet to escape all the bad things that want to eat them, and then they come to the surface to feed at night, when it is safer for them. They will stay in the ocean for about four years, traveling in a big circle from the Northwestern Territory (Washington and Oregon) all along Alaska and then back to where they started-- going hundreds of miles in the journey. By some magic God has put into their brains they come back to the very stream they were born in four years earlier. And remember, they've only been there once in their life before, and they still find it.

And their determination is still just as great. They will swim up this stream as many as 25 miles a day for weeks, and even months. They have to swim against very fast currents; swim up steep waterfalls; and dodge bears, otters, weasels and other predators. And they don't spend any time eating anything at all while they are doing it. They have only one purpose in making this long and hard trip, it's just so they can lay their eggs in the exact same place they were born.

Now that'swhat I call real determination. I wish I had half as much determination. If I did, I could sure get a lot done.

Keep you chin up.

Robert P. Rabbit

Owls Are Amazing!

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day,

There is a bird in the Forrest they call The Great Horned Owl. Actually it doesn't have horns at all -- just little tufts of feathers that are pointed and look like horns. And most people think these are their ears, but we rabbits know they aren't that either. The Owl's ears are very unique, and are located lower down on their heads than those tufts of feathers. And here is where it gets really interesting. You see, the Owl has one ear on the side of its head about eye level. You can't really see it, as it's covered by feathers. The other ear is down about as low as its beak.

Now you might wonder why God made the Owls' ears like that. Well, I'll tell you. When sound reaches the Owl, one ear hears it a fraction of a second before the other ear. This helps the Owl pinpoint the source of the sound very accurately , and means that when he takes off from the tree limb at a very high speed, he knows exactly where he is headed.

And added to that are two amazing things about the Owls eyes. All bird's eyes have these little things called "rod cells". This is the part of the eye that captures light, and the more of these that a bird has, the better the bird can see in the dark. The Owl has many more of these rod cells than other birds, so many more that the Owl can almost see in the pitch black dark. You humans don't even have those. If you want to see in the dark, you have to put on "night goggles" --- just like the characters in some of the video games you play use. If there is the slightest bit of light in the Forrest, even from the stars, the Owl sees just about like it was daytime.

The second thing the Owl's eyes have are "overlaps". That means that each eye brings in what it sees in a slightly different place. It is like when your parents take you to a 3D movie, and they give you those glasses to watch the movie. The picture on the screen is "Overlapped", and if you don't have on the 3D glasses, the picture looks blurred. The glasses make the picture look just like it is supposed to look, and it has a depth that a regular movie doesn't have. The "overlap" in the Owl's eyes helps it determine depth much better, and just how far away an object is, so when the Owl flies it knows the spot it is going to; as well as how far away it is.

Well, with all that going for it, the Owl is a bird we rabbits want to avoid, so we won't be dinner for some greedy Owl, who ought to be eating seeds like other self respecting birds. So we figured something out about the Owl. That is that the Owl nests very early in the Spring -- way before other birds. And it lays its eggs right away. After that, the Owl won't leave the nest for three or four months while it waits for the eggs to hatch. This is because the Owl knows it can get very cold in the Spring, and if it leaves the nest to hunt, its eggs can easily freeze, killing the little Owls inside. When the eggs have hatched, we rabbits know to stay away from the Owl's nest. After three months of no food, and with three hungry little Owls to feed, it has to get busy hunting. In addition, Because it laid its eggs so early, the leaves haven't come out on the trees yet, making its job of finding some little mice a lot easier.

The problem with all of this is that those little fellows will grow from about three inches when the hatch to over two feet in just three months. Then we rabbits have three more Owls in the Forrest to worry about ---Ugg!!!!

Keep your chin up.

Robert P. Rabbit

Safety In Numbers: The Eurasian Coot

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

There are a bunch of creatures that look like ducks that come from time to time to Tallulah Lake to take up residence. Sometimes there are as many as 100 of them. They are solid black with white beaks and red eyes. Not bad looking for duck like birds, and they are good swimmers too. They are called coots.

Most of the time they are swimming about the lake in small groups, or by themselves. But once in a while they will all gather in a very tight group looking like a great big black blanket on the lake. They are so tight together you could drop a dime in the middle of them and it wouldn't hit the water, it would stay on a coot's back!
When this happens I will immediately look up, and be very careful. That's because there will be a hawk in the air. If a coot leaves the group, the hawk would easily dive down and swoop it up. If a coot tried to swim away under water, the hawk would just follow it and, when it came up for water, the hawk would get it.
But by staying in their tight group, the hawk doesn't dare try to get just one coot. It would get caught in the bunch of birds, not be able to fly away, and then drown.

Sometimes there can be safety in groups -- especially if the group is my 25 brothers.

Keep your chin up!

Robert P. Rabbit 

Flying Squirrels Might Surprise You

Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

One time when Katie and I were hiking around Tallulah Gorge near her house... ok, Katie was hiking, and I was in her backpack. Anyway, we looked a little ways off the trail and saw a bobcat climbing up a pine tree. That's not unusual in the North Georgia mountains, but at the very top of the tree, out on the stub of a limb, was a squirrel happily eating some pine nuts it had gathered in its cheeks. "Oh dear!" exclaimed Katie "that poor squirrel is trapped. There is no way it can escape that bobcat."

I told her not to worry, the squirrel wasn't trapped. The bobcat was climbing the tree for nothing.

"But there is no way the squirrel can get by the bobcat down the tree, and it's as far up the tree as it can go" she said. I told her the squirrel wasn't worried at all, to look how calmly he is eating the nuts while watching the bobcat get closer. “That's what I mean," said Katie. “The bobcat is almost to him. He can't escape!”

"Just watch" I told her. Just then, as the bobcat reached the branch where the squirrel was sitting, the squirrel launched itself into the air, spread its front and back paws and the folds of skin between those paws just spread out like a parachute. The squirrel glided 150 feet to the boughs of a big oak tree where it swooped up to make the softest of landings.

"Wow, that was beautiful" said Katie. "I know, it really was. That's because that is a flying squirrel" I said.

I knew it was a flying squirrel because it was smaller than a regular squirrel, and had a rounder nose, and a flat tail it uses to guide itself while in flight. It doesn't actually fly, though, it just glides. But flying squirrels have been known to go up to 300 feet in the air if the wind is right.

It's good to know that you are safe when faced with what otherwise might be danger. It's kind of like being with your parents in a bad storm. You know they will take care of you even though by yourself you might not know the safest place to go.

Keep your chin up!

Robert P. Rabbit 

Sometimes You Find Yourself Hanging Upside Down

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

Have you ever heard of a snare? It's a trap that hunters sometimes use to catch small game in the forest. The way they set it is to make a loop out of wire, or string, and put this loop low to the ground on a path that small animals might take to the creek, or to a place where there are berries to eat. Then they tie another string onto the loop, and run the string to a tree branch that will spring up if something is caught in the loop. Father taught us not to walk down the paths all the other small animals take for just this reason -- hunters set snares on these paths.

Well I forgot. And one night on my way back from putting the chicken in front of the foxes den, I ran right into a snare. As soon as I realized it I leapt as fast as I could, hoping I would make it through the loop before it closed. I didn't make it, and the loop closed on my back foot, the tree limb sprang into the air, and I found myself hanging upside down in the air. I was toast. In the morning the hunter would surely get me.

But just then I looked up and low and behold, on the branch right next to me was my friend Pogo the Possum. She was hanging upside down with her tail wrapped around the branch. "Hi" she said, " I see you've decided to hang upside down like I do. Fun isn't it?” "It may be for you", I said, " but I'd rather be on the ground. I can't with this string holding me up. Will you please help me down?” "But I like having you here like this" she said, "if I help you down, when I talk to you you will be upside down. This way when I talk to you you are right side up.”

Pogo isn't the brightest star in the sky, but she had a good point. So I told her if she agreed to help me down, I would talk to her for a while. Actually, the conversation was quite enjoyable, and we lost track of time. But all of a sudden I could hear the hunters coming down the path, and I thought it was too late. It would take too long for her to help me down. But I forgot something. Possum have more teeth than any other animal. Most have from 20-30 teeth. Possums have 50 teeth.

It took Pogo one quick bite and grind to break the string and I was on the ground running. When I looked around Pogo said, "You'll have to get snared again sometime, I enjoyed that!"

I don't think so Pogo.

Keep your chin up!

Robert P.Rabbit 

How to Deal With Being Sprayed By A Skunk

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

Yesterday I told you how Robert Q. Rabbit discovered what a skunk is. We were headed home, and Robert Q. wasn't going to have to tell father what he had done. Father would know by the time Robert Q. got within 50 feet of him, he smelled so bad.

When we got home Robert Q. asked "am I going to be punished?" Father answered "I think you've been punished enough. You will smell for days and days, and no one will want to be near you, so you'll have to sleep outside." "Won't something get me in the night?" asked Robert Q.

"No" said father "everyone will think you are a skunk, and unlike you, they have enough sense not to come near a skunk. But I know something that will help you.” And he looked at the rest of us and said "some of you boys come with me.”

We went on a long walk that night to Farmer Early's garden to get tomatoes. Farmer Early doesn't mind if we use some tomatoes every now and again. We took the tomatoes back home and father showed us what to do.  We put the tomatoes into a big bowl and crushed the up and swirled and swirled.  "It's tomato juice" said father, "and it's the only thing I know of that will take away the smell of a skunk.”

At home father broke open the cans on a rock, and gave Robert Q. a good bath of tomato juice. None of us helped because he smelled so bad.
The tomato juice helped, but for the next week Robert Q. was not just a smelly rabbit, he was a bright red smelly rabbit.

Keep you chin up!

Robert P. Rabbit 

Robert Q. Rabbit Meets A Skunk

Thank you for reading my blog today. I hope you are having a really good day.

Every family has someone who is always cutting up, playing jokes on the others and always running off doing the unexpected. For us it's Robert Q. Rabbit, my older brother. Father always told us to stay away from the little critter with the white stripe down his back. He didn't tell us why; for him, it was enough that he told us not to do it, and he expected us to obey. But sure enough, Robert Q. had to know why. So one day while we were out playing, there, at the edge of the field, was one of those black critters with a white stripe down his back. "Let's go see what this is", said Robert Q. "No" I said, "father said to stay away from him." "Well, I'm going over to see what he's all about" said Robert Q, and off he went. When he got close to the critter he started poking him with a stick " Look", he yelled " he can't hurt us, he's no bigger than we are". Just then the critter turned around, raised his tail and squirted something all over Robert Q., who immediately started yelling, crying, rubbing his eyes and nose and rolling around on the ground like he was trying to rub something off his fur.

And he was trying to do just that. Robert Q had discovered a skunk, and I mean really discovered a skunk. I didn't want to get near him, he smelled so bad, so I made him walk way behind me -- but even then he was smelling up the whole forest.

I guess we ought to obey our parents, even when we aren't exactly sure why. After all, if we don't obey we might just run into a skunk.

Keep your chin up!

Robert P. Rabbit 

A Mama Opossum and Her Babies

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you are having a good day today.

I have a little friend in the mountains named Pogo. Pogo is a Possum. Oh I know, the way it really is spelled is "Opossum", but nobody ever pronounces the "O" -- it's like it isn't even there. So I just spell it the way it is pronounced.

Anyway, Pogo is a girl possum, and she doesn't come out at all in the daytime. She is what is known as a nocturnal animal. That means that she spends most of her time awake at night, and sleeping during the day. If you have ever seen a possum it was probably crossing the road in front of your parents’ car, and it was caught in the headlights. Pogo doesn't have a home of her own, she sleeps in whatever hole or small space she can find, and it might be different every day.

When she had her babies, she had no where to put them. But that's ok, because the way God made her she just carried them around in a pouch on her tummy. And it was easy, because her babies were so small when they were born you could put 20 of them in a teaspoon. But she only had 11 of them, so there was plenty of room. Then, when the babies were two and a half months old they got too big for her pouch (each was then the size of a small mouse) so they came out of the pouch and crawled up on her back. They stay there for another month, going every where she went, and for 30 days they went every where she went clinging to her back. At the end of that time, they went off on their own.

There are lots of mothers today that are like Pogo. They don't have anywhere to call home, and they have to take their children from shelter to shelter, sometimes a different one each day. Ask your parents how you might be of help to such a mother.

Keep your chin up! Robert P. Rabbit 

The Importance of Being Modest: A Lesson Learned From Turkey

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope that you're having a really good day.

Most of you know that the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States of America. But did you know that there were some people at the time our country was founded that wanted the national bird to be the turkey? One of those people was Benjamin Franklin, the man who discovered electricity.

Some people refer to a turkey as a "gobbler" because, as we all know when a turkey communicates it goes " gobble, gobble, gobble".

Personally, I'm glad the turkey wasn't chosen as the national bird since they aren't as pretty as a bald eagle; their heads look funny with it’s carnuncles and waddles ( those bright red things that don't look attached to its head very well) and the fact that their feet change color from red to grey to silver as they get older. In addition, male turkeys are always puffing themselves up, spreading their wings out and strutting around in circles trying to impress the female turkeys.

It seems to me that when somebody has to go to all that trouble to get noticed; there probably isn't very much worth noticing about them.

Watch out that you don't go around bragging about yourself; other people won't think much of you for doing that.

Keep your chin up!

Robert P. Rabbit

Making The Right Choice Isn't Always Easy

A family of bitterns

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope this day is a good one for you.

We have a bird in the North Georgia mountains that lives in the marshy areas where the cattails grow. Not many people have seen one, even though it stands nearly two feet high, and when it flies its wings spread out a little more than a yard stick. It is called a Bittern, and it can teach us a lot about being flexible.

By that I mean that many times we have choices to make, and we need to be ready to make the choice that best fits the circumstances. I'll use the Bittern as an example.

Let's say she is sitting on her nest when she spies a red fox close by who is looking for supper. She has three choices. She can attack the fox and use her sharp beak to harm the fox so it will run away. But to fight a fox like that will probably get her hurt. She can bristle her feathers up so she looks twice her size, but while that may scare away a snake, itprobably isn't big enough to scare a fox. Or she can stand up on her hind legs, with her beak pointed straight up into the air, and her neck stretched way up and look all the world like the cattails and reeds surrounding her. If the reeds sway in the wind, she has learned to sway with them. This is the best choice to hide from a fox and will work almost all of the time. The fox just won't see her.

Sometimes our best choice is to just stand in the cattails where we won't be noticed, rather than making a lot of noise, which could get us hurt.

Keep your chin up

Robert P. Rabbit

Family Is Important Even Among Wolves

Thank you for joining my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.

When I was out West with Katie,  there was another animal I heard a lot about, but fortunately did not have the occasion to see. It is the wolf. The wolf is just like a great big dog, only smarter, stronger and more ferocious. You don't really want to meet a wolf in the dark of the night all alone. But the chances are pretty good you won't meet one wolf, because wolves run in packs. That means there are more wolves together than just one, usually seven or eight. And they all have rather unpleasant personalities when it comes to any animal other than another wolf, or when it comes to human beings.

But there are a couple of good things you can say about a wolf. When they have their young, which are called pups, both the mother and the father wolf will help to take care of these pups. They each babysit, they each hunt for food for the pups, they each try to train the pups to be good wolves and they are very protective of their pups.

Another thing about the wolf is that they mate for life. That means that when a male wolf and a female wolf mate with each other, they stay together for life. If one of them dies, they never take another mate. You might have heard of the expression being a "lone wolf". Well that's what this means. If a wolf loses his or her mate, they stay alone for the rest of their lives. They still are a part of the pack, but they are generally by themselves most of the time.

So you can see even with the scariest of animals, family can be very important.

Keep your chin up

Robert P. Rabbit

A Silly Game Called Golf: Part 02

Thank you for joining my blog. I hope you are having a really good day. 

Okay, here's part two on what I learned about golf. The players all keep track of how many times they have to hit the ball to get it into the little hole. And there are 18 little holes on the golf course. And the winner is the one who does it in the fewest shots. But actually, that's not really true. Everybody kept saying they were "taking a mulligan", and then they hit another shot, and didn't count the first shot. Then they took "free drops", which meant they could move the ball and not count it as a shot. And once I saw one of them kick the ball with his toe, and I'm sure he didn't count that shot (Katie said not to tell who it was, as that is cheating). And there were more such times they moved the ball, but didn't count it, so I really think in the end they had absolutely no idea who had the fewest shots. Maybe it was because they were all three having so much fun no one really cared who won. 

Now isn't that a good way to play a game? Try to win if you can, but if you don't win, have so much fun at it that doesn't really matter if you didn't win. 

Keep your chin up

Robert P. Rabbit