By: Wendy Langhans What do Elmer Fudd and Spider-Man have in common? (besides being comic book characters) Answer- They both struggle against vermin. Spider-man battles against Vermin, a genetically-altered humanoid rat, and Elmer Fudd is forever hunting that “wascally wabbit”, Bugs Bunny. From a human perspective, vermin are defined as disease carrying rodents or insects. An example of ...
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SCV Outdoor Report: A Huddle Around A Puddle
By: Wendy Langhans A Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly drinking sweet nectar from flower Whenever butterflies stand still long enough for us to see them, they are most likely feeding on a brightly colored flower. Butterflies use their long, tongue-like proboscis to sip the sweet nectar from deep inside the blossom. But sometimes we can observe a group of butterflies ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: A Tale Of Two Cities
Story by: Wendy Langhans Santa Clarita, California and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: one city is twenty years old and the other is 325 years old. But both cities have rivers running through them. Every river is part of a larger watershed, an area of land where water collects and drains into small creeks, which flow into streams, then into rivers and ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: A Flash Of Lightning
By: Wendy Langhans A lightning strike in the Mojave. Photo by Paul Levine Last week, I was awakened just before dawn by a flash of light across my face. As I nestled back into my pillow I heard the faint rumbling of thunder coming from the direction of the Antelope Valley. Hmmm….thunderstorms…. I sat up in bed took a ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: Leaping Lizards! It’s Dancing Rattlesnakes!
By: Wendy Langhans [view:node_ad=5]The other day MRCA Ranger James Latham stopped by my desk. He had a big grin on his face. “I have the most fantastic photos! These two rattlesnakes were dancing! Right along the side of the road in plain sight.” “Oooo”, I grinned back. “Have you downloaded them yet? Can I see?” There they were ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: Invasion Of The Water Snatchers
Incredible! Invisible! Insatiable! By Wendy Langhans A mature tamarisk tree can produce 500,000 tiny seeds That was one of the taglines from a 1956 sci-fi movie entitled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. I think it also could be applied to the invasion of the tamarisk, a plant sometimes known as saltcedar, which grows as a shrub or small tree in ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: How Owls Hunt
By: Wendy Langhans Photos courtesy of Lilian Darling Holt I remember an amazing scene in one of the early Harry Potter movies, where a “parliament” of various species of owls descends upon the dining hall at Hogwarts, delivering air-borne messages and packages to the students. Each owl somehow managed to drop their package to the right person while avoiding running ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: Make It Stick
By: Wendy Langhans [view:node_ad=5]When my daughter was young, I taught her how to bake cookies. We learned that in order for the colored sprinkles to stick, we had to first brush the tops of the cookies with a mixture of egg white and a tablespoon of water. The same thing holds true for flowers. Once a grain of pollen has ...
Read More »SCV Outdoor Report: Feathers Tell A Tale
By Wendy Langhans This red tailed hawk displays blunt ended tail feathers and tapered wing feathers. Provided by: Lilian Darling Holt When you see a feather on the ground, have you ever wondered where it came from? Was it a Red-tailed hawk or a Western scrub jay? Did you ever wonder why that bird lost that feather? Was it an ...
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