Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

Fast-growing pine

Several months ago, we were quite dismayed to find loggers destroying a significant number of trees (and hence shade) where we walk dogs. I just ran across this photo I took, illustrating why it’s less dismaying than it might seem. My shoe is size 13 (45), so that stump grew from nothing to 24″ (61 cm) in 18 years.

In a wonderful book The Hidden Life of Trees, the author tells of doing a core sample of a spruce sapling, the width of this thumb (say, the first two rings) and about a meter tall. He was astounded to discover it was 80 years old!

So the trees will be back, as long as people stop setting fires.

It is widely accepted now that the last big fire was the work of an arsonist.

A tortoise!

A first!

We have never before seen a tortoise on the dog walk. You think that, if there were tortoises around, the dogs would have encountered them. But they acted absolutely mystified by this thing that wasn’t moving, but they knew by smell was alive.

We gave them a few minutes to be curious, then left the tortoise in peace.

Carpinchos

We visited a place in the hills below Minas, Uruguay, whose owner had taken on two brother capybaras (called carpinchos locally) from the local zoo. Apparently when they get to be too many in too small a place, they fight, and it’s ugly. The one who runs away in the first clip decided to go swimming rather than deal with the handful of humans watching at feeding time.