Probed in the Woods

It has been a long time since I posted anything here mainly because I could see that my experiment was not reaching the pedagogical goals that I had for this exercise. Oddly, something I had not expected was the continuing number of visits that this site gets resulting from searches for honeydew or science cartoons. That said something weird happened in the comments of the last post so I thought I should post something to see if I should close this site down altogether.

So let us speak of sidewalks and their consequences. Our little university is having a major expansion that has resulted in a significant change in our view from the front. As part of the upgrading of the property it would appear that the sidewalk has been extended across the front of our property

What I noticed was that the sidewalk would extend into the woods at the edge of our property. This resulted in the destruction of the oldest tree on our property, a very large and sound oak tree. Progress I guess.

What I then noticed was that the same workmen that had removed the tree were also installing a storm drain that exhausted onto our property. It turns out that the installation of the sidewalks mean that the road no longer drained naturally and needed storm drains but in an amusing twist the municipal sewer system extended only to the university property not past it so the storm drain would have to have a discharge into the local natural waterway.

Well, the local natural waterway would be the North-West Branch of Hall's Creek which runs through the University property and is one of the marvellous natural resources that we have been blessed to have on the campus. Every year I have had classes and laboratories based on the stream with huge positive responses from the students. It is a lovely little stream.

But this new storm drain will discharge into our stream (mostly when it storms of course but the street runoff will go directly into the stream in large volumes now and the run-off in the winter will be heavily laden with salt). So, in a frenzy of concern for the stream, I decided to take a day and measure as much water chemistry as possible for the stream before the discharges begin. So I wander down to the stream near the new drain and set up computers and probes and I am standing in the middle of the stream, water level near the tops of my rubber boots, festooned with probes and wires like some sort of scientific Christmas tree.

I had just touched the master keypad to start data collection when I heard crashing noises in the woods coming in my direction. I swear this is true, a monster sized dog was coming down to the stream dragging a tree (really, a big dead tree with roots and branches). When it saw me in the stream it dropped the tree and struck a pose.

Where I grew up dogs running loose in the woods are never good this dog just stared at me. I avoided eye contact and spoke in a low calm voice. The dog did not move and kept staring at me. I figured that when the searchers found my mangled body a photo of the monster that attacked me might be useful so I carefully removed my camera and took a quick picture.

Then there was this more frantic and crazed crashing in the underbrush and I was just about to drop $ 2000 of scientific equipment in the stream and spend the last twenty seconds of my life re-enacting the more disturbing scenes from the Blair Witch Project when this blur flew past me.

It turned out to be this other dog who promptly dropped into the stream and rolled in it while drinking water. I could tell that there was some kind of family relationship between the two dogs since the larger dog seemed to look at the black and white dog with the some-what disgusted look of an older brother. B and W Dog knew I was there but just wanted to drink and cool - off. Big Dog seemed to want to think this through more but nevertheless came down to the stream to cool off also.

So, now I have two good-natured dogs wallowing in the stream upstream of all my carefully placed probes so without overtopping my boots I carefully got to the master computer pad and turned off the probes just as clouds of silt and rafts of dog slobber floated through my study area.

On the edge of my hearing I heard a woman's voice calling though the woods, a voice that galvanized the dogs and they left as quickly as they could ... straight ... though ... my ... probes and sensors.

I have a complete intact data set, my equipment is fine and none of my internal organs have been ripped out. All in all this is what a Biologist calls a sucessful day in the field.

I am a chemist, what am I doing field Biology for anyway, this stuff never happens in the chemistry lab.