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Come back to this page each day to read another entry from Frederick R. Gehlbach's almanac of suburban natural and unnatural history, "Messages from the Wild," which chronicles the world of a forested ravine in central Texas.
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An American woodcock, dressed like dead leaves, nonchalantly probes for earthworms on the creekbank, where I sit contemplating water's odyssey. First Americans drank from and bathed in this creek, and Anglo settlers dug wells here. Their descendants switched to treated public water drilled from the rocks, then pumped water from reservoirs that drowned wild landscapes. Moderns buy even more distant water in plastic bottles, which many throw away. I wonder what the Biosphere charges us to pollute or overuse local water and import water mined elsewhere, bottled and exported, and for the pollutants released in water processing and transport. |
Frederick R. Gehlbach is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies at Baylor University. His ecological studies have taken him from New Zealand to Slovakia and, in the Americas, from Alaska and Newfoundland to Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. His research interests include the life-history strategies of small owls, small burrowing snakes and urban wildlife ecology.
From MESSAGES FROM THE WILD: AN ALMANAC OF SUBURBAN NATURAL AND UNNATURAL HISTORY by Frederick R. Gehlbach, Copyright © 2002. Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.
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