Rozworld’s WebLog

Here’s a video I shot of a bison walking down the road in Yellowstone. I’ll be publishing pictures shortly.

Northland Wildlife Studio now has a new Website! We’re currently adding more content to it, so check back periodically for updates. This will help the gift shop and taxidermy reach out to their customers.

http://northlandwildlife.com/

Rosalind has been talking about having fish as pets this summer, so we decided to put together the aquarium again. This is a multi-day process that insures everything that goes into the aquarium is clean for its inhabitants - both animal and botanical. The rock collection we have available for the aquarium includes rocks from 5 different U.S. States. They all blend into the environment seamlessly. I get most of the water from our dehumidifier, which works pretty well since I know the water is pure from condensation. This year I purchased some live native aquatic plants including Hornwort to give an added touch of realism. After we had everything ready we went down to the park to catch our pets. Within a couple hours we caught a bunch of pumpkinseeds, bluegills, and a green sunfish (these are shaped more like a largemouth bass). We picked out 2 bluegills, 2 pumpkinseeds and the green sunfish to be the occupants of the aquarium. The fish adjust quickly to their new surrounding. Last time I had bluegills they liked eating a pet store bought food called tubefex worms but this lot was rather indifferent. They liked red worms and wax worms but I prefer to get non-live food for them to eat on a daily basis. It’s just easier and cleaner to deal with. So I’m trying dried meal worms now. They seem to really love those. The fish get use to people coming into the room and will swim to front and wait to be feed. They are very smart fish. They have a definite pecking order. The green sunfish seems to be on top followed by the others by size. I really enjoy keeping fish. It will be sad to see them go back to the pond after the summer is over.

Coming back to the Chetek chain of lakes was nice; however I did notice a change. No, the water was not any greener, nor was there a lack of Illinois tourists trying to bag the prized bluegill, there was however a drastic change in the fauna of the lakes. My Grandfather and I worked on Prairie Lake for several days this summer straightening out a dock and we encountered a multitude of large snails. You would walk in the shallows or bush your foot across the lake bottom and dislodge dozens of 1-2 inch to nearly the size of golf balls sized snails. At this density there must be millions of these snails infesting the lakes. Fifteen years ago I do not remember any large snails like this being in the lake. I remember the Chetek chain having two very distinct snail species. One was a small elongated spiral, at the most a 1/2 inch long, the other was a curled shell, the shape of a nautilus, also not more than a 1/2 inch in diameter, often much smaller. Where are these two species today? I didn’t find any. I recently found out that this new variety of large snail is an invasive species from Asia and it’s a real-life mystery. Better known as the “Chinese Mystery Snail”, it was imported to the United States as an aquarium cleaner/pet and let go into our lakes by some careless folks. The Mystery snail is not just infesting the Chetek chain of lakes but also other Lakes around the country, including the Great Lakes and their tributaries. I wonder if fishing communities like Chetek have considered the impact of the Mystery snail on the local economy, native species, and the environment? Here is more on the Chinese Mystery snail from the Indiana DNR website : http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/fish/ais/snail.htm

I would advocate not purchasing any plant or animal from pet stores, unless you are sure that they are native to the area where you are from, even then I would not recommend this because of questionable harvesting practices. I would recommend getting your aquarium pets from your local lakes and rivers. Then when you’re done with them put them back where you found them.

We had a great time Memorial Day weekend on the Elroy-Sparta bike trail. We stay over night at a bed n’ breakfast in Sparta and then hit the trail the next day. We got a shuttle service to take us down to Elroy and we biked the full 32 miles back to Sparta. It’s really a beautiful scenic area of Wisconsin. Flat and graded, it a really nice bike trail. The highlight is the three railroad tunnels. The longest being the third and last one at a 1/4 of a mile long. We did the whole trail in about 7 hours. Rosalind recently got a new bicycle that fit her size. The Elroy-Sparta trail is celebrating 40 years of being a bike trail, with it being the first rails to trails bike path in the nation. I highly recommend this as a great little vacation trip.

Sea Otters of Trinidad, CA enjoy a fish dinner at the pier. I filmed this in June 1997. Sound track is the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Jean recently found a pseudoscorpion in the house. It’s only the second one I’ve ever come across in my life. This one measured 3 mm from head to abdomen. My Audubon insect guide says that there are over 350 species in North America alone and 2500 known world wide. Many species have poison glands in their pinchers which they use to subdue their prey. I would also guess that they are also mostly nocturnal, since this one was found after the lights went out. I just think it’s so intriguing that something so small could have pinchers like a lobster. We let this one outside after I photographed it.