Arctic

  

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 Santa's reindeer.

Sleighs powered by caribou is the way to go, 

if you live above the Arctic Circle.  Caribou live through

-140 degree nights.  Horses die.  And where's the food?

You might get hay if you're Donner or Blitzen but 

everyone else scrapes about to get by.  You live 

in a vast, snow and ice covered tundra.  There

are no tree leaves to nibble on while browsing.

At times there is nothing more to eat than lichen,

growing like moss on the hard face of rock.

It's buried deep in ice and snow.  Use your 

hoof to break through.  Take what you can get

and keep moving.  Birthing the next generation

is the one event requiring the migration to stop.

Females are particular about where they raise

their calves.  The location chosen needs to have 

the right food available while also posing the

least danger from predators.  Herds will trek

hundreds of miles to find what they want, or

settle for close enough if time runs out.

 

 

 

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 Salmon automatically makes this a special occasion.

Much of the time the food pickings are skimpy, at best.

You'll settle for seaweed, if you can find it.

Here's a tip.  It pays to follow a polar bear out onto

the ice flow.  Risky, yes, but the seal remains left after

a polar bear has had his fill, is a fitting carnivore

happy ending.

The Arctic Fox is nomadic.  It ranges over hundreds

of miles in search of food.  They hunt, even on dark

winter nights, when the sun takes months for it

to finally rise again, and daylight returns.

There is no hibernation in the Arctic zone.

No Time Out.  No Free Parking.    

There is no surplus fat here for the taking.

The Arctic just isn't that generous.

 

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 This is an ancient mammal that lived among

the woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger.

They survived the Ice Age and are with us today.

Layers of hair protect them from extreme cold.

The exotic innermost layer provides eight times

the warmth of sheep's wool while also being softer

than cashmere.  What a magnificent beast...

and now he's providing us with Sweaters by Yeti.

 

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 The carcass of this musk ox has more than enough

meat to satisfy this canine.   A wolf can take in as much

as 22 pounds of flesh in one sitting, stocking up for the

possibility of sometimes going weeks before the 

next meal.

Wolves stick together, roaming their territory in packs

of up to seven.  When it comes time to breed, only

the alpha male and alpha female are allowed to mate.

Consummation is the exclusive privilege of the Prom's

king and queen.  It makes for dreadfully successful pups.

 

 

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 Seal is the best! ...packed with nutrients and plenty

of high energy blubber.  There is enough bad cholesterol

here to drop a human in their tracks, seized with congestive 

heart failure.  The polar bear has biological work arounds

so this result doesn't apply to them.  Their survival

depends on a diet filled with fat-rich blubber.

Here's something else about the picture above.

Water is everywhere but nothing there to drink.

You die of thirst if you rely on fresh water here.

The polar bear doesn't drink.  It creates water

for itself when it metabolizes the seal's fat.

In a sense, the blubber is like a refreshing 

glass of water.

S   N   O   W   Y       O   W   L

 The thick insulation covering this bird makes it 

the heaviest owl on the continent.  Its body is no 

bigger than other owls but it flies about blanketed

from head to toe with double the down.

Lugging this extra weight about is the price paid

for survival in below zero cold.

Most owls work at night.  They are nocturnal.

Snowy owls are diurnal.  You work both day and night.

There is no avoiding it.  In summer the sun 

never sets while during winter the sun 

takes months before it rises again.   

In any event, the owl does what is needed

to stay alive.  Food is often scarce.

Except for the lemmings, small rodents like mice.

Amazing breeders.  A gift that keeps on giving.

A typical Snowy Owl could pack away 1,600 

lemmings a year, and still have room for dessert.

Many years ago a Disney documentary claimed

lemmings periodically committed mass suicide

and showed a film clip of thousands of lemmings

running off a cliff, falling onto the wave-battered

rocks below.  The scene was apparently staged,

but the myth of the lemming urge for suicide

lives on as biological fake news.

 

 

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©  Tom Taylor

 

 OVER   EASY

 

coldValentine