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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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Today a cold front blows in, dropping the temperature to freezing in twenty-four hours, bringing rain, then sleet, snow, and finally, over two days, a mixture that melts, refreezes, and coats the trees with an increasingly thick layer of ice as temperatures bounce back and forth between twenty-five and thirty-two degrees. Loud cracks like shotgun blasts and some cannon booms reverberate through the forest. Branches and trees are falling. Ice storms are nature's way of pruning and, if severe, they are forest-thinners. But unlike bulldozers and their dump truck accomplices, ice storms leave wood to nourish the injured forest. The openings they create allow new generations of plants and animals to grow and diversify the landscape. |
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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