Black Dogs, Inc

Late fall 2011

2011-10-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

These photos were shared by a guest who recently visited. They are wonderful photos which capture the beauty of the late fall, when nature can still be enjoyed with the leaves off the trees.

These footprints were also captured by the same guest:

Bear Prints (I assume)

Wolf print (Again an assumption).

Wolf Wannabe?

Hard to believe it is AUGUST!

2011-08-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

Running a lodge is a many faceted thing. Saturday cleaning is embraced with gusto. A great cleaning crew - Elaine, Julia, Tianna, Gina, Aunesti, Rachel, Cora and Zach comprise the core team with some guests appearances by yours truely and Brenda Garrett. If you were to view us all from the backside on that day you would mainly see posteriors and elbows - there is a more catchy saying ... A******* and Elbows.

Guests begin to arrive as the weary cleaning people are dragging themselves out of the last few cabins.

Pretty soon the cabins are bubbling with activity again as people move into their new home for the week. Leaving parents to haul all the stuff into the cabins, the kids run off to the lake.

Kayaking is great by yourself, with your child or ....with your favorite four-legged fan.

"I got one!"

Where's the paddle dude?

The gang's all here...looks like there is some discussion or debate about the fish.

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

The early August crew enjoy a meal after a hard day on the bikes.

More proof that there are fish in the lake.

Fishing's great - cigars optional.

Scooter! Get out of here!

Biking on the Camba mountain bike trails.

Hay Lake.

What happens to frogs in the winter?

2011-05-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

This answer is from http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/can-frogs-survive-being-frozen-0326/

Warm weather brings thoughts of spring peepers and leaping bull frogs. But what happens to frogs in the winter? If they can’t dig down far enough into the soil to avoid the ice or aren’t lucky enough to live in warmer climates, some actually freeze.

Fortunately for them, they don’t freeze to death: Most survive to mate another spring.
There are five known species of freeze-tolerant frogs in North America, including the well-studied wood frog, as well as Cope’s gray tree frog, the eastern gray tree frog, spring peepers and the western chorus frog. In the fall, these frogs bury themselves under the leaves on the forest floor — but not deeply enough to escape the icy fingers of Jack Frost.

Frogs are “cold blooded” (or more precisely, ectothermic), so their body temperature closely tracks the temperature around them. Temperatures have to dip slightly below 32 degrees Fahrenheit to freeze a frog, and ice begins to grow when an ice crystal touches the frog’s skin. Like falling dominoes, the ice triggers a cascade of particles that form as the temperature drops.

But these amphibians don’t just turn into a block of ice. A chain of events occurs to protect the freezing frog. Minutes after ice starts to form in the skin, a wood frog’s liver begins converting sugars, stored as glycogen, into glucose. This sugar is released from the liver and carried through the bloodstream to every tissue where it helps keep cells from completely dehydrating and shrinking.

As the wood frog is freezing, its heart continues pumping the protective glucose around its body, but the frog’s heart slows and eventually stops. All other organs stop functioning. The frog doesn’t use oxygen and actually appears to be dead. In fact, if you opened up a frozen frog, the organs would look like "beef jerky" and the frozen water around the organs like a "snow cone," says Jon Costanzo, a physiological ecologist at Miami University in Ohio who studies freeze-tolerance.

When in its frogcicle state, as much as 70 percent of the water in a frog’s body can be frozen, write researchers Jack Layne and Richard Lee in their 1995 article in Climate Research. Frogs can survive all winter like this, undergoing cycles of freezing and thawing.

If it gets too cold, though, they’ll die. Frogs in Ohio, in Costanzo’s neck of the woods, can survive about 24 degrees F. But frogs farther north can live through lower temperatures.

When the weather gets warmer, the frog melts. "The frog has to go through a repair process," says Costanzo. It can be sluggish when it first thaws out, and its body needs to replace some damaged cells. Scientists, however, aren’t sure what tells the heart to start beating.

Researchers are still studying this and the mechanisms that protect the frog, aside from glucose. Urea, a waste that frogs get rid of in their urine, was recently shown to help them survive freezing. And proteins may bind to the inside and outside of the cells to keep them from shrinking too much, suggests Kenneth Storey, a professor of biochemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who also studies freeze-tolerance.
While humans aren’t going to survive being frozen any time soon, Storey does say that studying these methods may help preserve human organs longer for transplantation.

"We’re on the edge of what you might call nature’s mechanism of transplants," he says.

This answer is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.

Last Day of Winter/First Day of Summer

2011-04-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

These beautiful winter photos were taken yesterday, April 29th, by Joe Martell of Grand View, WI, who put in one last ski on his old three pinners- rock skis.

While Joe skied, these two Drummond students, Alex Mertig and Alex Hill, spun around on their sleds for one last time.

On the same day, April 29th, most of the snow was absorbed into the ground in Delta. I looked out my window and noticed a lone biker approaching. I went to investigate and steer this weary road warrior in the right direction.

What a pleasant surprise! It was a summer cabin guest who is staying at a friend's cabin in Cable this weekend. He rode up to Delta and was going back to the cabin via Mason and Grand View. A simple 70+ mile trip. I didn't have the presence of mind to take a photo of him yesterday. This photo, provided by his wife through email, will have to do. Great job Bruce!

Winter to Summer in Northern Wisconsin - it happens! "If you use your heater and your air conditioning on the same day you know you are in northern WI!"

Check out Zach's unique artwork on:

"Haroldtheelephant.blogspot.com"

Still snowing after all these months.......

2011-04-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

We thought winter was behind us. It has been snowing off and on since Tuesday. Kinda pretty, kinda ready to be over winter and kinda bizarre.

Good Dog Jake: father of the pups, keeper of the order and
all-around fantastic dog.

Amanda and the pups, WallE and Charlie. They are 5 months old today. Well behaved but still ripping stuff up on occasion. Yesterday it was toilet paper - I can live with that. Amanda is still sort of a pup herself so she plays with them - wrestling and keep away.

WallE is 3/4 dog and 1/4 human. He wants to know what is going on - what am I doing with the little black square thing. Look at those eyes!

He also is very treat-oriented. Maybe the black boxish thing has something to do with treats. She gives me treats when I sit down and am calm.....hope.

Phenology report - return of the loons to Delta Lodge

2011-04-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

Northlanders are particularly sensitive to phenology, the scientific study of cyclical biological events, such as flowering, breeding, and migration, in relation to climatic conditions. (Online dictionary - thefreedictionary.com)

We northlanders are not strictly following the above definition. After enduring 6 months of ice and snow, we are looking for any small hopeful sign that this damn winter is behind us!

Wednesday night I was on my last pee/pooh of the night walk with the dogs (black dogs). After a few nights of almost sunny night, full moon, it was nearly pitch black. Something howled (howled?) in the distance. It sounded lonely, almost like a wolf howl. After the hair on the back of my neck relaxed, I realized that my favorite birds are back.