While ice skating tonight, I ran into my neighbor and her daughter. They were both at my presentation at First Congregational Church earlier this year. My neighbor politely said to her 9 year old daughter, "you remember Mrs. Zajac don't you?" The little girl looked puzzled and shook her head. I looked at her and said "grizzly bears?" Her cute little freckled face lit up into a huge somewhat toothless grin "oh yeah," she said with a great deal of enthusiasm. That made me feel good.

I did a little test of this Insight feature on Youtube yesterday. I ran my seal/glacier video 3 times just to see what it records. Sure enough, today looking at 7/21 shows CT as viewing the video. It gives me a little hope that it is somewhat accurate and that my videos were indeed viewed all over the world.

I found a new toy on Youtube that I've been entertaining myself with. It's called Insight. It gives you geographical information about your videos. I checked all of my videos for a one year period. Here's what I found out (not a comprehensive list mind you):

The dall sheep video has been played in Alaska, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Brazil
The sea lion video has been played in India, Spain, Ireland, and Saudi Arabia
The glacier/seal video has been played in Germany, Greece and the U.K.
The grizzly bear video has been played in China, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, Germany, Turkey and Argentina

Cool!

Todays excuse why I can't do any work - The cat is sleeping on my research and I don't want to wake her. Do I have to admit that not long ago I was in the same spot, asleep.

It's 3:45 A.M., I made a few blog settings changes to allow viewing more than a handful of old entries. That's when I became alarmed at all my middle of the night blog entries. Don't I ever sleep? After a quick check, I discovered the time was in Pacific time - 3 hours off. OOPS!

I found this baby leatherback turtle video today. Aren't they cute? But they grow to be enormous!

Last night I had a dream I was in the kitchen. From the window I could see a really good band playing outside. It was exciting. I was itching to get out there - my own backyard. But I didn't have a ticket.

As a writer of nonfiction, I know it brings the words to life when you do first hand research. You can see, smell and hear the action. More often then not, this is easier said then done.

Last night at dusk, I was swimming with my head out of the water. Straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, bats were swooping low over the water plucking mosquitoes out of the air - way too close. What if one of those mosquitoes landed on my head, would I have been bitten by a bat? I was not stickin' around to find out!

Recently, I've been digging through newspaper archives of newspapers from the Philadelphia area. I'm working on another animal/technology project (what else is new?). For 6 days of excitement, I found NINETEEN newspaper articles! Then I found a couple more from another newspaper. Apparently, this was big news back then. Hopefully, one of them will give me the details I am seeking.

I found the Connecticut DEP website very exciting. About a month or two ago, I sent the list of bear sightings to my brother who moved to a town with a lot of bears. At that time, there wasn't even one sighting in Vernon (nor had there been any in past years). Recently, I had heard there were several spotted and again found none on the list. Yesterday I was looking through the state parks and found the list updated. Of course now my brother is accusing me of calling in the same imaginary bear 3 times.

Found this interesting statement in the listing for wolves on the IUCN list of endangered species:

"The grey wolf is protected in various national parks and reserves in Canada and the United States. Extensive legal protection in many European countries; however, enforcement is variable and often non-existent. "

In legends and folklore, wolves have a bad reputation. For years they have been shot by park rangers. I received a comment on my June 28, 2008 blog entry from Mike Wagner, founder and director of Heart of the Wolf Organization . In his comment he mentions the existence of other methods to deter wolves from livestock that don't involve killing wolves. I have reprinted some of his comments here.....

"livestock issues can successfully be prevented through the use of livestock protection dogs, fladry, cattle rotation, and well constructed fences. The reality is most government agencies, a la the USFWS and state agencies like the Fish and Games, rarely use them and promote them. This is despite constant proof of their success."

Why aren't government agencies promoting these methods to deter wolves?

I just noticed that Highlights magazine has added an interactive version of my July 2008 article on wolves on their website, www.highlightskids.com. It's a related article about a study of wolves and moose on Isle Royal in Michigan.

Also, after two days of feeling like I wasn't accomplishing much, I actually did accomplish a lot. I came up with 6 fun activities for a class I am proposing about the wolf article. The class isn't until next winter. Although it is for K-2 it will be held at a local college. I am eager to test out these ideas to iron out any kinks. My 7 year old niece will be a big help here.