Jenny

Writing some of these posts is really emotionally draining. - Jenny H.

I'm really sorry you went through all that and thank you for being willing to share it with us. - Spidra Webster

Morning Jenny! (I am doing it wrong, I know ;) ) - Pete's Got To Go

Wow, have I really been awake for almost 8 hours already? *yawn* - Jenny

"A wildfire burning northeast of Santa Fe has now burned nearly 15 square miles of forest. Santa Fe National Forest officials said Sunday that the fire is just 10 percent contained after burning more than 9,300 acres. Winds on Saturday were gusting above 30 mph, driving the fire through thousands of additional acres of forest to the east and sending up a huge plume of smoke. No structures are immediately threatened. Fire crews using retardant-dropping aircraft kept the flames from moving north. The wildfire began on June 18 about 2 miles north of the Santa Fe Ski Basin. It's burning in steep, rugged terrain and there's no timetable yet for full containment. Authorities say the fire's cause remains under investigation but they're asking anyone with information to call them. NM 475, Hyde Park area in Pacheco Canyon, will remain closed through June 26." - Jenny

#jennysmokejumper - MoTO Boychick Devil

They are doing it right. - Derrick

They had some fun in the sun at the pool earlier. I think that zapped their energy more than LOTR. ;) - Jenny

My puddle :) - Eivind

Amongst other beautiful things, e.g. Nia. ;) - Jenny

Your gtalk status. :P - Jenny

Yeah, that. :D - Jenny

Before: http://ff.im/GwJfc - Jenny

O.O - #cryptic

:) - Eivind

Ahh. :) - Jenny

LOL; I was raking up wood chips in sensitive butterly [butterfly!] habitat yesterday. How could you not recognize that as a powerful piece of restoration equipment?! :P - Jenny

*peeks into the Zappos box* - imabonehead

"When flames engulfed part of Kyle Canyon less than a year ago, the fire was stopped just 50 feet from some homes in the Rainbow subdivision. Many residents and firefighters credit the patches of thinned forest, known as fuel breaks, for a safe outcome of the 20-acre Cathedral Fire. Firefighters had created the breaks in that area as part of the Spring Mountains Hazardous Fuels Reduction effort, which was completed last fall." - Jenny

Indeed. Our WUI (wildland urban interface) project ended last fall and we are now doing surveys for a new hazardous fuels project on our NRA. :) - Jenny

That's horrible :( - Eivind

Helen, I was driving back from the coast once and stopped for gas in Redding. It was 118 degees at 6 pm. G-ross! - Jenny

:( - Tamara J. B.

THere are times when I repeat to myself, "A year from now this will be funny." It gets me thru. Meh, besides no one is judging and no one should judge. XOXO - Gabrielle

"Wildfires burning across more than 1.4 million acres in the United States have forced the evacuation of 1,800 homes and businesses in one Texas county and claimed the lives of two firefighters in Florida, authorities said Tuesday. The two Florida Division of Forestry firefighters died Monday while fighting a wildfire in north-central Florida that had been declared contained but suddenly burst out of control, Amanda Bevis, a division spokeswoman, said Tuesday. "They were both in tractors, and the fire literally just caught up with them," she said. The firefighters were identified as Josh Burch, 31, and Brett Fulton, 52. Both were rangers with the forestry division working the Blue Ribbon Fire in Hamilton County." - Jenny

:(( - JB

:) - Eivind

:) - Jenny

Smoking with one hand, shaking fist at traffic with the other? - CAJ was here

Thought you were talking about diving. - Micah

CAJ, you might not be too far off. :P Micah, someday, I would like to practice that, too. :) - Jenny

What did they do this time? - Eivind

THE MAGNIFICENT PIMP HAND OF JENNY BAD-ASS IS MIGHTY AND TO BE PRAISED! - MoTO Boychick Devil

"When you think of animals that sing, birds will certainly come to mind. Whales might, too. But mice? Or fish? It turns out mice and fish do sing, although "vocalizations" might be a more technically correct way of describing the sounds they make. Bret Pasch, a graduate student at the University of Florida, says there are plenty of mouse species that sing. "The more we search, the more we find that rodents and other small mammals produce vocalizations," he says." - Jenny

"The mice Pasch studies are called Alston's singing mice. They're easy to find if you're willing to spend days on end crawling around in the cloud forests of Latin America. Pasch says it's mostly males that sing. Their song consists mainly of a rapidly repeated note, like a trill. To see which songs are most attractive to females, he changes the frequency and rate of this trill. In one study that he reports in the current issue of Animal Behaviour, he put female mice in a mouse-sized arena with two speakers at opposite ends. Then he played them male songs with different note rates or trill rates, and watched what happened. The females showed a clear preference. "They approached the speakers that were emitting the faster trill. They approach that side more quickly, and spent more time there," says Pasch. Pasch thinks the faster trillers probably have other qualities that make them better mate material." - Jenny

"Fish also make vocalizations that warn off intruders or attract mates. Andrew Bass, who studies sound production in fish at Cornell University, says fish make their sounds by vibrating the walls of an air-filled sack they have inside them called a swim bladder. And like singing mice, fish can modify their songs in a way that influences a female's behavior. "The calls — attributes of the call — clearly contribute to a female's decision whether to go to one male or another," he says. And since fish don't have access to genetic testing, a good song is probably the best way a male has to prove he's from good genetic stock and worthy of a female's attention." - Jenny

I love the growling fish. The mouse song was annoying. - Eivind

They inspired me to do some barefoot scrambling- I tore my pants. LOL - Jenny

Most of it is for me, too, but I love scrambling. The technical climbing is way too tedious for me. I always worried that whoever was on belay would not be paying attention at the wrong time, as well. o_O - Jenny

I think we should allow it :) - Eivind

Good news for me! :) - Jenny

I think it should be promoted and celebrated! - Absentee

True enough! :) - Jenny

I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation And the only explanation I can find Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around Your love’s put me at the top of the world - Halil

"I am a hot, dirty, sweaty mess at the end" #DoingItRight - Absentee

Wow! Was this recent? - rowlikeagirl

Not yet! Someday... ;) - Jenny

Just spent a small fortune on these boots so I can go work on a fire. Luckily, I can also use them for climbing mountains. #fuckyeahsilverlinings - Jenny

Thanks! I hope they won't be too difficult to break in! - Jenny

♪ My love, leave yourself behind ♫ Beat inside me, leave you blind ♪ My love, look what you can do ♫ I am mending, I'll be with you ♪ You took my hand ♫ added a plan ♪ You gave me your heart ♫ I asked you to dance with me ♪ - Jenny

+++ - Sepi ⌘ سپی

:) - Eivind

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! - Melly #FForever

FTW! - Absentee

Not this time! :D - Jenny

Those are the best apes. :-) - John (bird whisperer)

It looks serious. :| - Derrick

:) - Eivind

:) - Zulema ❧ spicy cocoa tart

:)) - Jenny

"From the country that brought us the French Paradox — healthier people who pretty much eat what they want — there's a new study that suggests olive oil may help reduce the risk of stroke in older people. More than 7,000 people age 65 and up in took part in the French project, which looked at how much olive oil they consumed and whether they had strokes. After adjusting for all sort of other factors that could affect stroke risk — from body mass index to exercise habits — those people who used a lot of olive oil had a 41 percent lower risk of stroke than those who never touched the stuff.   The findings were just published online by the journal Neurology. Now, it must be said, there were only 148 strokes recorded over a study period that lasted a little more than five years. And the proportion of people who had strokes was not huge: about 1.5 percent of the people who used a lot olive oil had strokes compared with 2.6 percent in the group who didn't use any." - Jenny

MWM, I am the same. ;) - Jenny

"The red fox is one of the most widespread and adaptable mammals on Earth. In the American West, however, there are populations of native red foxes that occur only in alpine and subalpine habitats, which may be at risk from human-caused and natural pressures. One potential threat is global climate change, which is likely to reduce both the amount and connectivity of suitable habitat for these unique red foxes. Until recently, the evolutionary history of native North American red foxes, which also occur in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska, was largely speculative." - Jenny

"Based on fossil, archeological, historical, and ecological evidence, he hypothesized that contrary to prevailing theory, native red foxes arose from two distinct lineages that had been isolated from each other during the last glaciation. Using modern molecular genetics, a team of researchers led by Aubry has confirmed his hypothesis and revealed important new details about the evolutionary history of North American red foxes. Their analyses provide the foundation for revealing the red fox’s genealogy at finer levels, and aids conservation efforts by making it possible to distinguish native from nonnative populations, and identify those that may be threatened." - Jenny

"Pronghorn antelope are experts at survival. The only ungulate endemic to North America (meaning they evolved here and nowhere else), they're also the only remaining species in their family. They've lived on this continent for 20 million years, about 19.99 million years longer than humans. They shared the plains with American cheetahs and enormous dire wolves, now extinct, plus millions of bison that used to surge over the land. They watched the Teton Range rise up out of the Snake River plain and they weathered ice ages." - Jenny

"One strategy that's helped them prosper for so long is migration, the ability to seasonally cross huge distances of country to seek better climate and habitat. Some of the antelope this winter traversed 250 miles of Montana before they found adequate range south of the reservoir, near the town of Jordan and along Highway 200. When Johnson went there in February, he noticed something strange: the antelope's legs were dark gray rather than the usual white. He found they were scabby and bloodstained with the hair worn off from traveling through brush and crusty snow. Making this difficult journey south of the worst snow paid off at first. The antelope fared well for the rest of the winter and were in good health when spring started to soften Montana, while those that stayed north of the Missouri River died by the thousands from freezing, starvation and collisions with trains when they went up on the tracks to escape deep snow. However, for those that did migrate, their main trial was still ahead, and like the trains, it was something for which evolution did not prepare them." - Jenny

"This is not the first time antelope have faced extreme weather. The last record floods on the Milk River happened just 50 years ago, a mere blink in antelope evolutionary history. But recent landscape changes such as dams, fences and subdivisions threaten migration as a survival strategy for the pronghorn. Add to that, the record 391 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and dire predictions for more extreme weather to come. In an angry Washington Post op-ed responding to flooding throughout the Missouri River watershed plus recent wildfires and tornadoes, climate change activist Bill McKibben wrote, "you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air." (I recommend listening to a reading of the letter here.) It's this dual threat of human-built obstacles like reservoirs and fences blocking migration on the ground and a shifting climate pushing wildlife to cover more distance in their search for suitable habitat that puts migrating pronghorn in danger. They survived the die-off of prehistoric species and a brush with extinction from overhunting a century ago. Now the landscape these animals evolved with for millions of years is deteriorating. If we can't protect the climate and habitat enough to enable this long-term survivor to continue its ancient journeys, I have to wonder if we're doing enough to protect the land for our own fledgling species." - Jenny