Attribution: Photo by Fabian Kleiser on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in noting yet again that with very few exceptions all living things do something to prepare to survive the coming winter. Plants drop their sensitive parts and stand as invulnerable stems. Most mammals crawl into holes and sleep. And …
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Category:Nature
Kickass and the Profane Monarch Butterfly
Attribution: Photo By/CreditMeg Hedeen/USFWS By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper claims to have overheard a Monarch butterfly use profanity as it was grabbed by UW scientists who burdened it with a navigation reporting device just as the Monarch was about to head south for the winter. The exact wording is …
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Kickass and Campfire Companions
Attribution: Photo by Honza Reznik on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, poses the keeper’s question of the day: Why DON’T people eat dogs and cats, as has been hinted at by our outrageous demented leaders. It began with the keeper wondering how the dogs and cats came to make such self-serving evolutionary deals as they cozied …
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Kickass and Other Species
Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis still immersed in yesterday’s post about the cougar cut in half on the railroad tracks in Adams County. Kickass responders speculated that the reason the heart and lungs had been removed was to prevent the identification of bullet fragments, …
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Kickass and the Railroad Cougar
Attribution: Photo by Michael Jerrard on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, with a special feeling for cats, passes along to the keeper and Phyllis the news of a cougar found cut in half on the railroad tracks near Friendship in Adams County. The big cat was an adult male wearing a Michigan tracking collar from …
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Kickass and the Ice Age Trail
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, takes his hiking advice from Phyllis who has hiked in every national park in the continental US and has a hiking stick covered with park medals to prove it. She has also hiked portions of Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, as has the keeper, who …
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Kickass and the Wolf River
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, listens to the keeper’s message that in these days of calamitous and contrary events some really good things still happen. One of those good things was last week’s meeting of the DNR board at which the generosity and environmental conscience of the citizenry was …
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Kickass and Laila’s Bobcat
Attribution: Photo by Omar Ramadan on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis were invited by Bonnie and Ed to visit with one of their granddaughters–Laila, who had expressed an interest in writing. Ever willing to talk about himself, the keeper told his story of how Ed Gein, the Plainfield grave-robbing …
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Kickass and Surviving the Tornado
Attribution: Quincy Gordon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kickass and Carl’s Hawk
Attribution: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, naps as the keeper remembers the occasion of his Chinese friend Carl Lee and the red-tailed hawk with the broken wing. The keeper happened upon the injured hawk on a morning pheasant hunt and wrapped it in his jacket for transportation …
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Kickass and Flying Through the Night
Attribution: Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that while the keeper and Phyllis and their flightless crowd slept through last night, 25.2 million birds were in flight up in the night sky on their way to summer family- rearing haunts as far away as the arctic tundra. That is a …
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Kickass and Marsh Hawk Eggs
Attribution: Photo by Ben Lande on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in noting on this Easter morning that maybe one of the reasons he has lived so long is to give him time to make amends, or at least apologize for some of the thoughtless things he did as a farm boy …
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