April 19, 2007

• Walking around Thinking about Search Engine Surprises

  Sitting at the computer this morning, reading comments and backtracking Xanga Footprints, I saw the first mosquito of the season drift slowly across my field of view.  I had made a couple of interesting discoveries in my feedback log, but the mosquito distracted me by reminding me that it’s breakup now.  The snow is melting away and all sorts of things are surfacing outside.  I picked up the camera and went out to see.

  One pot of pigsqueak (Bergenia cordifolia), the pot I didn’t get divided and repotted last year, has emerged from the snow.  Last fall, I propped this one up above all the rest on an upturned pot so that it would be uncovered first and get a head start on the blooming period.  That’s a risky move, because those exposed leaves are more vulnerable to frost now if we get more cold nights.  On the other hand, since I need to wait until it’s done blooming to divide the roots, having a longer time to grow new roots in the new pots will help them survive next winter.
  
  The green you see above in the Bergenia leaves, and all the rest of the green in this batch of images, is “evergreen,” chlorophyll that has been frozen under the snow since last year.  In more temperate areas Bergenia remains green through the winter and doesn’t get that bronze frost damage.  Those red leaves will die and have to be removed.  Because the roots are cold tolerant, the plants survive in our climate but they lose foliage and get set back every winter.  Long summer daylight helps compensate for some of the setback.

  The green below includes two kinds of moss and a few sprigs of lowbush cranberries, AKA lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea).  To get to these, I had to leave the path and wade through granular snow over my boot tops, nearly to my knees in the deep areas.  I cut across the yard, through the trees, toward the road, and found a 6-inch flowerpot with a few inches of soil and leaf debris in it, twenty yards or more from where I’d left it last fall.  Maybe the wind carried it over there, or it might have been some animal.  It’s a mystery.
  

  Here’s a closer view of Vaccinium/low bush.
  

  I kept thinking about the search engine surprises.  After I came back
  in the house, I was still thinking about them as I saved my pictures. 
  When Greyfox called me from the library, I told him about some
  half-amusing, half-disturbing search strings that had brought people to
  my site today.  On my Footprints page, the “referrer” column is most interesting to me, seeing some of the sites that link to me, and reading the search strings people have entered in search engines that have led them to my site.

  Below are tufts of bear hair clinging to a tree in my yard, about halfway between the house and the corner of our lot.
  

  Someone early this morning found my site by entering in the Google search box, “Virginia Tech shooting was Illuminati plot.”  Someone else arrived at my Xanga by searching with Google for, “Virginia Tech shooter had brain tumor.”  The first one is mildly amusing and very intriguing.  I wonder if the searcher had heard somewhere that it was an Illuminati plot, or if this is someone who in inclined to believe that just about everything that happens is an Illuminati plot.  Of course, neither of my entries about the shootings mentioned the possibility of an Illuminati plot, but since I’d written about the Illuminati in days just preceding the shootings, that entry was still on the page.  I can imagine the frustration the searcher might feel upon sorting that out.

  At first, I found that second search string mildly disturbing because I couldn’t imagine how anyone might think that even if Cho Seung-Hui had a brain tumor, such information would be public at the time.  Then I realized two things:  (1) many people would either not have thought it through that far or would not understand that fact even if they’d thought about it, and (2) it is possible that if he’d been known to have a brain tumor before the shootings, it might actually by now be public knowledge.  I suppose it’s safe to assume that an autopsy will be performed on Seung Cho, and that we may eventually learn if there were any gross abnormalities in his brain.  Neither of those assumptions, however, is a sure thing.

  The image below was captured just around the corner from here, on the track to the cul de sac.  Today is the first time I have been able to walk out there since the snow got deep.  That looks like a big leather sack, torn open and spilling sawdust.  In a way, that’s what it is.  It’s a moose’s stomachs.  Seeing it there, I saw some clues that suggested a few conclusions about the moose and how its gutpile came to be perched atop that big pile of snow.
  
  It was a small moose.  That was evident from the size and shape of the
  “nuggets” spilling from its intestine.  They were ovoid but more nearly
  round than those of older, larger moose, and they were smaller than
  those of a larger moose.  Also, during the winter I had seen only one
  set of moose tracks in the neighborhood, and they were small footprints.

  There was nothing here but the gutpile, no bones or skin, so even though it was probably an orphaned calf it wasn’t killed by a four-legged predator.  The gutpile was located where the snowmobile trail crosses the cul de sac, and there was no road access to that spot, so the meat and hide were probably hauled away by snowmachine and the poacher might have approached the moose on the snowmachine trail, too.  It had to be a poacher, because moose season was over before snow fell last year.
  
  The amount of snow under the pile and its early emergence suggest it was killed about two months ago, and that is about the time I noticed the moose tracks around here.

  There was further evidence that this little moose had been staying in this area for a while before it was killed.  The willows in the lower left corner of the image below are about ten feet from the gutpile, and most of the willows in the immediate area have been eaten back as these have been.
  

  Okay, that’s it for the gross stuff, unless you think birch trees with their bark peeling off are gross.  I deliberately did not take any shots of other animal droppings, which are plentiful and fragrant this time of year.
  

  Pussywillows are still the only flowers showing.
  

  

  • 11:57 pm
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