C R I T I C
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dad
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Yellowstone
G R A N D P R I S M A T I C S P R I N G
Yellowstone sits atop an enormous dome of magma
that comes to within three miles of breaking through
to the Earth's surface, which would create lava flows
or even a volcano of historic size. The heat generated
from this vault of intensely hot rock, fuels all of the
iconic geysers and hot springs you see at Yellowstone.
The temperature of the pond water above, reaches to
over 180 degrees at its center, where it is blue like the
sky. It is also empty of life. The pond's color bands
indicate the type of bacteria that thrives best in a specific
temperature range. The colors are pigments that act
as sunscreen to protect the particular species of bacteria.
As you see above, the waters cool as they radiate away
from the pond's central heating.
B I S O N E L K F A C E O F F
A newborn calf is standing and able to run within
minutes of being born. Welcome to the life of a bison,
a herd always on the move in search of prairie grass,
a diet both tough to digest and with little nutritional value.
Yet it is the staple of North America's largest mammal
because it's a hardy plant. It survives severe drought
and long snow covered winters. Most important,
prairie grass can handle the trampling it gets from
herds of buffalo by the tens of thousands
passing through.
W O L F
A wolf pack is a highly structured family made up of
breeding parents and their multigenerational offspring.
Wolf stamina enables the pack to pursue its prey
for days, all the while harassing their target with
lunging bites.
It's a dangerous business for a
hundred pound dog to take on a large animal
such as an elk, moose or buffalo, even if the dog
has partners. You occasionally lose a dog going
after big meals, but when you work as a pack
you need more than rabbits to fill up the group.
O S P R E Y
They mate for life. For the next twenty years they will
come back to the same nest to raise another family.
If food is tight one year they will favor the larger,
more dominant nestling, to increase the chance
that one chick survives. This tough choice has already
been made by instinct. The animal responds to instinct
because it feels right. It's intuitive.
Starve the smaller.
P R A I R I E R A T T L E S N A K E
Your eyes aren't too big for your stomach
if you have the remarkable unhinged jaw.
Now you can safely swallow the neighbor's dog
in a single bite. Of course, you will have to reengineer
your neck and digestive tract to accommodate
a large dog decomposing.
With luck, you will pass him in a few short weeks.
G R I Z Z L Y B E A R
Grizzly's rely on their salmon summer diet in order to
build the fat reserves they will need to survive winter
and its six months without eating.
A pregnant grizzly will abort its embryo in the autumn
if its body determines there is insufficient fat available
to sustain both mom and cub through hibernation.
The overriding priority of DNA is survival.
Life continues only through reproduction.
Saving the female provides another
opportunity for future birth of new life
and the continuance of DNA.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Saturday, June 20, 2026
Shore
B L A C K O Y S T E R C A T C H E R
These shorebirds spend their entire life within
the narrow corridor between low and high tide.
They spend all their days in the same spot with
the same mate, year round. Their eggs can
survive brief periods being submerged because
exceptionally high tides sometimes sweep over
their nest.
The real parenting begins once the young nestlings
become juveniles, capable of flying about on their own.
Months of training are required before an oystercatcher
has the precision to unlock the mussel's shell with a
single blow... despite churning surf that shakes
their target and blurs their vision. Another skill
the young oystercatcher needs to master
is to strike just as the mussel cracks open its
shell to quickly sweep the water for plankton
with its food filter.
Of course, you could use your bill as a hammer and
eventually bash in the shell like a woodpecker.
But that is last resort, real migraine material.
P U R P L E - S T R I P E D S E A N E T T L E
These are colorful jellyfish that rely on the lively
ocean currents that sweep the California coast
from southern San Diego to Bodega Bay,
a bit north of San Francisco. They feed on
larva, fish eggs and small animals that are
stunned by the stinging jellyfish tentacles
that stream from its brightly colored bell.
Four large arms hang like an umbilical cord
from the bell's center. They are used to
gather up the paralyzed prey and deliver
them to an orifice for digestion.
Juvenile cancer crabs make their home in this
very bell, where they are protected from ocean
predators. In turn, the crabs eat an assortment
of parasites that infest the jellyfish tissue.
Their alliance is mutually beneficial.
Sea turtles feast on jellyfish.
It's a beloved staple in their diet.
There is no jellyfish sting that penetrates
the turtle's shell and leathery skin.
That leaves the sea turtle free to savor their
favored jellyfish cut of dangling arms brisket.
P U R P L E S E A U R C H I N
It looks like a broach displayed in a Tiffany's window.
The purple spikes are all tube feet, providing not just
locomotion but also responsible for the animal's
ability to breath. The nerves at the end of each spike
provide basic evidence as to the nature of the
animal's immediate surroundings. They aren't picky.
A hard surface to cling to and plenty of kelp to eat
is all they require.
Urchins are a hearty breed of invertebrate.
They can live to over one hundred years.
If starved for food they enter a zombie-like state,
enabling them to survive years without eating.
You find them in tidal pools all along the western
coast of North America, from near the Arctic Circle
in Alaska, then continuing south, all the way to
the subtropics of Baja California.
G I A N T S E A S T A R
These starfish grow to two feet in diameter
in deep waters. In a normal tidepool their size
would make them a quick meal when seen by
the first passing gull.
The Purple Sea Urchin described above is the
principle food for the Sea Star. Without starfish,
sea urchins would quickly explode in population
and devastate the rich kelp beds they feed upon.
The unusually warm marine waters of recent years
has stimulated the spread of a bacteria lethal
to starfish. The resulting drastic drop in starfish
numbers at various locations has led to the
predicted devastation of kelp beds.
H E R M I T C R A B
It's a crab without a shell. That makes it a lobster,
Still, finding a shell is a life or death necessity.
The hermit crab is actually very social.
Even cooperative. They do something
scientists call a synchronous vacancy chain.
It starts when an empty snail-like shell rolls
in on the surf, then left lying on the beach.
It is soon discovered by the hermit crab
community and a number of curious crabs
gather round.
The crabs assess the shell's size and then
they do something remarkable. They organize
themselves by size, largest to smallest.
The largest crab that can fit into the empty
shell has found a new home, passing its
discarded shell to the crab a step smaller
in size. The process continues to the end
of the line, with each member left guaranteed
a new home.
In this instance cooperation among individuals proves
to be the behavior that best serves the community.
C A L I F O R N I A S E A L I O N
Seals and sea lions all agree that a public beach
includes them, as well as their pups. Some folks,
like those in La Jolla, California, make it happen.
Now you can see a thousand pound sea lion
up close and personal.
There are limits to the benefits of cohabiting
a beach with marine mammals.
You don't play volleyball among sunbathing seals.
Then there is the issue of privacy.
When is it appropriate to take a selfie with
celebrity wildlife?
They can be terribly rude
if you try.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Himalaya
P A R O T A K T S A N G M O N A S T E R Y
The Tigress's Lair in English.
This monastery is perched on the face of a
sheer cliff, overlooking the Paro Valley nearly a
thousand feet below. Buddhist monks started
this audacious architectural project in 1692.
As you might expect, making a spiritual pilgrimage
to this sacred site is a bit of a walk. The total distance
is a short but rugged four miles. Your botanical tour
includes climbing 700 steep stone steps cut into
the walls of a sheer canyon gorge. You use a
forever wet bridge to cross the face of a 100 meter
waterfall along the way. You arrive at a pleasant cafe
at the halfway mark. Here's your chance to turn around
and go back.
Instead of proceeding to the monastery
you settle for buying a T-shirt that says:
I Bailed on My Spiritual Journey.
G L A C I A L P A T H N E A R E V E R E S T
Our planet is molten. The landscape we inhabit is one of a
number of continental sized tectonic plates that make up
the Earth's crust. Over the hundreds of millions of years
these land masses move about and sometimes collide.
Roughly fifty million years ago the plate of India crashed
into the Asian plate at speeds of up to 15 centimeters
yearly. That's around a 6 inch movement by the continent
over the space of a year. You wouldn't notice were you
to be standing there.
The collision continues to this day at about 2 inches a year.
The result is slow-motion violence over geological time.
Any galactic body shop mechanic would take one look
at the Himalayan Mountains and say you've got a badly
crumpled fender. India had its flat plains elevated tens
of thousands of feet over the past 50 million years.
The rise of these mountains interfered with the globe's
jet-stream, shifting it south in order to go around this
obstruction. This enabled the expansion of cool, polar
air and changes in weather patterns. Some meteorologists
claim this shift was a major contribution to the formation
of the Ice Age.
B H A R A L
Agility is more important than speed for survival.
These mountain goats feed in Alpine meadows
where steep, rocky terrain is nearby as defense
against sudden ambushes from the snow leopard,
its most lethal enemy.
The Bharal has rubbery, split-hooves that act like
suction cups on near vertical surfaces, giving it
near flawless traction. The male's horns are
impressive but not showy. Larger horns
increases the animal's instability while
navigating a precarious situation.
H I M A L A Y A N T A H R
They segregate on the basis of sex into herds of
either all-male or all-female year round,
except when its mating season. In the autumn
the mature bucks pay a visit to the female camp.
They have a good time, then leave.
Little do they know that all this rutting frolic
has been their contribution to a worthy cause.
There will be no male presence to guard
the Spring batch of newborns from hungry
predators. At half the size of the adult male
these Tahr mothers could use some help.
But the biggest male, even with all its
220 pounds of resolve, remains little more
than a hero sandwich for the prowling
predator nearby.
Only when the Tahr herd reaches the sanctuary
of nearby sheer stone cliffs, are they safely
out of reach of the ever patrolling Snow Leopard.
H I M A L A Y A N M O N A L
His Gaudy Highness.
This is the standard from which a female monal
decides who is most desirable. Today's
female pheasant wraps her man in something
off-the-rack Broadway. Something psychedelic.
He becomes everyone's dashing Rocket Man...
Elton John, in topknot and orange tails.
The female sits on her nest, camouflaged in
muted colors. Not far away is her husband,
a shimmering knight in the sunlight,
standing guard.
S N O W L E O P A R D
They've been known to cover twenty-five miles in
a single night to track the scent of their mate.
It's sex. Nothing more. The big cats are loners
and afterwards, go their separate ways.
Providing for genetic diversity is the primary biological
role of the male species, while the female creates new
individuals to renew the species. On and on it goes
a couple hundred million generations and more.
Cats.
Everywhere across the globe some version of this
animal's basic engineering sits atop the region's
food chain as the apex predator. Each species
of cat, modified through eons of trial and error,
remains the most successful carnivore approach
to its environment, wherever it appears.
Genetic diversity gives this organism the mechanism
to adapt, as a species, to the changes that occur
to its environment over time.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
coldValentine
Sunday, June 7, 2026
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