Notes From A Bear's Journey

     We humans are an odd lot, and boy are there a lot of us.  Forget the billions and billions, numbers now so common with money that we just sort of walk away unimpressed.  Rather, just think of yourself at a football game or a concert, a protest or a crowded freeway.  All those people, and each of them thirsty and hungry and having to shower and poop and all the rest.  And that's just a few thousands or tens of thousands.  Now multiply that scene throughout the world.  It's rather boggling when you stop to think about it, the infrastructure that's needed to support it all...the water and the drains and the sewage pipes that need to go to each home or hotel room or whatever, the food deliveries that have to come from farm to processor to grocery shelf or restaurant, the electrical and gas lines that need to remain hidden but yet need to reach inside each home and building.  All of that operating smoothly...unless you're living somewher...

     It's not that easy being green, sang Kermit on Sesame Street.  And in today's world, hearing the words "being green" brings to mind everything from the Green New Deal to War Communism , which is not what you think (picture Kamala Harris vs. Joe Biden).  But I prefer to jump back to the words of Kermit:  It seems you blend in w ith so many other ordinary things, a nd people tend to pass you over.  When my brother and I were much younger --he single in Hawaii and us driving past an endless array of bronzed, fit, and scantily-clad bodies of all sorts in Waikiki-- I asked him how he seemed to avoid all the temptation since he was looking to settle down.  "They all use the same toilet paper, " he told me.  "You need to look for something more."  And right there, he had summed up life in a nutshell.  Take everything away --the money, the fame, the beautiful body, the youth, the muscles, the whatever else you've been led to believe ...

     Call it what you will --mountain lion, puma, cougar-- these cats are big (2nd largest in north America) elusive, fierce, and...social?  New studies recently reported in National Geographic are showing that the cats appear to share food with other possible "competitor" cats in their territories.  Said the article: “For more than 60 years of intensive research... we have said that [cougars] are solitary, robotic killing machines,” says Mark Elbroch, lead scientist for the Puma Program at Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.  “Instead, what we have unveiled is a secretive animal with a complex social system completely built on reciprocity.  That flies in the face of everything we ever thought about this animal...Elbroch hypothesizes, though, that removing a male from a cougar population may lead to social upheaval—potentially informing how wildlife agencies approach management of the species.  " If it is creating social...