tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13207583605770347452024-03-13T15:38:00.746-07:00kay frydenborgto return to my homepage,
click <a href="http://www.kayfrydenborg.com">here</a>KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-47204803111069172352017-03-14T13:27:00.000-07:002017-03-14T13:27:37.328-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ANOTHER WINTER, AND A NEW BOOK!</div>
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Just when we thought we might be getting by with one of the balmiest winters in memory (and trying to enjoy it without thoughts of global climate change), today we're in the middle of a late winter storm here at the farm. Above is the current view from my office. Kinda makes you want to just take a little nap! </div>
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But today is also Publication Day, and that makes you want to do a little happy dance! <i>A Dog in the Cave: The Wolves Who Made Us Human</i> is finally, officially, out in the world. So before Saada and I head out to shovel the walk and play in the snow, I just want to say how excited I am about this book.</div>
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Every book is hard in its own way, and this one was no exception. I think it was forever ago that I started it; all kinds of things got in the way of finishing it as soon as I'd thought I would back then. But from the beginning, this was a book I felt incredibly lucky to be able to research and write. After finishing the previous book (yep, also hard. Also took longer than I'd expected), I asked myself what I'd like to write about next, if I could choose anything at all. Well, what if I could combine some of my very favorite things: science (and scientists), history (especially the loooong sweep of history, going back as far as I could), and. . . dogs! <i>A Dog in the Cave</i> is that book, and I'm just so happy with it, and grateful to my team at Houghton Mifflin helping me to transform that glimmer in my mind into such a beautiful book. So here it is, in all its doggy glory! Happy birthday, book! </div>
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-34288720387128027342015-05-17T18:56:00.002-07:002015-05-17T19:00:32.607-07:00Time Does Fly, But THIS Is Ridiculous!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It's been a looooong time! About a year, to be exact, since I last posted here. I really didn't mean to be away so long; not sure what happened, except that the last few months of 2014 and the first few months of this year were punctuated by some serious and unexpected family/personal health issues, aging parent issues, and life events that conspired to derail my best writing intentions more often than I'd ever expected. Sometimes, as my super-understanding editor told me, you just have to deal with life and family first, and let the <i>writing</i> life take a temporary back seat.</div>
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But I'm back to say that <i>Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat</i> is out in the world at last! Its birthday was actually last month (April 7). I think it looks pretty great, mostly thanks to that awesome editor, Cynthia Platt, and my most excellent publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It's garnered some lovely reviews and "best" picks in these early weeks. For example, <i>Kirkus</i>—<i>Kirkus!</i>—called it, "a deliciously informative, engaging and sweeping chronicle of one of the most popular treats in the world." <i>School Library Journal</i> called it "deep" and "multifaceted," and judged it "engaging—even witty in places—and enlightening." <i>Publishers Weekly</i> weighed in with "fascinating, fast-moving narrative," plus, there's a growing collection of lovely reader reviews up at Amazon. The book also picked up a Junior Library Guild selection honor and a "Richie's Pick," among other happy surprises. It's officially a YA (12-up), but I think readers of any age who like chocolate and want a little history and science with that deliciousness will find it worth a read. Also, kudos to the HMH design team for this amazing cover! (I never expected to see my name writ in chocolate, but here it is.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkM7TcH6_m0F5hQkcAl99EOru9RsKlonFDVr-6zG1BzFz5vOsR8bJ-Gpx0RDcwkRayX1gB_CwXc_AECHAZF6b_82HUsNIjq1ZaV4KdW_CYN9ljaFBOLDOj5avRzDW8tmwpCi-ZSVC1GzJ/s1600/CHOCOLATE_SM1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkM7TcH6_m0F5hQkcAl99EOru9RsKlonFDVr-6zG1BzFz5vOsR8bJ-Gpx0RDcwkRayX1gB_CwXc_AECHAZF6b_82HUsNIjq1ZaV4KdW_CYN9ljaFBOLDOj5avRzDW8tmwpCi-ZSVC1GzJ/s200/CHOCOLATE_SM1.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
I'll be signing books in New York City on June 27th, at the Fine Chocolate Industry Association annual meeting, which promises to be fun and delicious (chocolate buffet, anyone?). I'm proud of this book and so happy to see it making its way in the world, at last.<br />
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So I'm now in the middle of revisions for my next book for HMH, <i>A Dog in the Cave: Coevolution and the Wolves Who Made Us Human</i>. As is pretty obvious from previous posts here, I'm crazy about dogs, and I'm really psyched about this subject. It encompasses so many of my favorite things, and my office staff is working hard to keep me inspired every day as I work:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghpur894ZSGjZJIc1GGr78lwMT_-JVMIeNCTIbYcR4fRRCnlkdzg88XNYWWJ4DWY5Zc5X_PUzlAN7gLWF44cfGYuZC9B7KHpTJpc9Hfx3Wg4x-CQ6eI_bFWL2WVT7EL5UWPcc63gibMjeZ/s1600/IMG_0620.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghpur894ZSGjZJIc1GGr78lwMT_-JVMIeNCTIbYcR4fRRCnlkdzg88XNYWWJ4DWY5Zc5X_PUzlAN7gLWF44cfGYuZC9B7KHpTJpc9Hfx3Wg4x-CQ6eI_bFWL2WVT7EL5UWPcc63gibMjeZ/s320/IMG_0620.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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We made it through a long, hard winter. Spring is here, the creek is calling to the pups, the grass is up in the pastures where newly-sleek horses nibble voraciously and feel the sun and the breeze on their bare backs at last. I'm feeling hopeful and energized. </div>
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Back soon, I hope.</div>
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-58289203836202484082014-05-28T14:50:00.001-07:002014-05-28T14:57:05.185-07:00Musing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been too long since I've been here. Winter, as long and hard as it was, has definitely turned to spring, deadlines have come, more deadlines are coming, and I had to deal with some technical glitches with this blog, not being especially proficient at such things, so was actually <i>unable</i> to post for many weeks. I know, lame, right? "The dog ate my homework" lame! But true. I'm glad to be back in business, so to speak. So some things have been happening here in writing land, even though I haven't been by to tell you about them. <i>Chocolate</i> is well on its way to being a book next spring. Houghton Mifflin's amazing design team is creating what I think (from the few advance peeks I've had) will be a thing of beauty, and copy is being composed even now for the catalog and the ARCs. I'm excited, and can't wait to see how it all shapes up.<br />
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At the same time, writing two big books like this in close succession has been keeping me very, very busy. I'm writing, writing, writing my first draft of <i>The Dog in the Cave</i>, and I wish I could say it's going quickly. What I <i>can</i> say is that the stuff I'm writing about is amazing, especially for all the dog people out there (and we know who we are). But really, for almost anyone interested in people, animals, science, and history, which probably covers most of the rest of us.<br />
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I love writing books, but one thing I don't love about it is the many hours of sitting it tends to require. Technology has made it so much easier to research and interview without physical travel, at least some of the time. But the sitting, that whole requirement to apply butt to chair in order to research and write, gets to me more and more. That's one reason among many why I'm so grateful that I have dogs, and my awesome horse, because all of them require me to get up and move on a regular basis. But last year I also added another strategy to combat chair-butt: I installed a treadmill desk in my office! Do I totally love it? Yeah, pretty much. I walk most every morning, while I work, and it's great. However, as you can see from the photo above, there are occasional glitches there, too.<br />
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That's Saada, my muse (especially for this book), and the larger half of my office management team. The smaller half is here: <br />
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Working hard, as always. Obviously a deep thinker, and so sweet.<br />
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Saada is a real love, too, and she loves to be close. Very close. It's great inspiration when I'm writing about how the long, long bond between humans and dogs began, and how it's changed us all, dogs and humans. But having an 85-pound hound turn your very cool treadmill into yet another dog bed is slightly inconvenient, even when she gives you the googly eye of guilt to remind you that you've been inside far too long. Walking comes to a screeching halt, and sometimes work does too. Then it's time for a reboot, or maybe a walk in the fields or a splash in the stream, which has become Saada's favorite summer activity. Then it's time for yet another hosing off, before work can resume in the office. It's a slower way to write a book, but I guess it's my way. Hoping to pick up the pace, though. My editor might not take "my dog commandeered my desk and prevented me from writing" as an excuse for missing my next deadline.<br />
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I'm hoping to check in a little more frequently now, so I'll let you know how it goes.KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-4619973079500241272014-03-03T12:53:00.000-08:002014-03-03T12:56:14.530-08:00Is it STILL winter? Really??Well, I see from the date of my last post that it's been quite a long time since I had anything to say here! Or more precisely, time to say it. It's been a very, very long winter in many parts of the country, including here in south central Pennsylvania; between shoveling snow, chipping ice, keeping up with my various critters and finishing revisions and photo research for my next book, this little corner has gotten short shrift. Sorry! As an example, here's what the view outside my office looked like one morning not long ago:<br />
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I can't remember if this was before or after the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad ice storm that knocked out not only our electricity, but that of many of my friends and neighbors for up to 4 days at a time when overnight temperatures were in the single digits, while at the same time making our farm look as if a tornado had passed through, with branches and whole trees down everywhere, fences knocked to the ground, and shiny icicles on all the trees that would have been a lot prettier if they hadn't been so destructive. I'm not making excuses, but . . . yeah, I'm making excuses. Anyway, the good news is that Winter Storm #Who-Knows-What? that was supposed to bring us another layer of ice and then a big dump of snow on top of that today kind of fizzled. Yeah, it's still all white and mighty cold outside, but this storm (which one national weather prognosticator is dubbing Winter Storm Titan!) fortunately failed to live up to its billing. We still have a lot of cleaning up to do one of these days, when spring finally shows up and we can actually get to the piles of branches and toppled trees, but the days are getting longer! Another week, and we get back on Daylight Saving Time, giving another hour of precious light at the end of the day.Yay!</div>
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In the meantime, I wanted to share this really cool poster that my friend Laurel Ross sent me. Laurel lives in Chicago and is a dedicated Tai chi practitioner, among many other things. Her Tai chi school held a fundraiser to celebrate the Chinese New Year recently, and because it is now the Year of the Horse, they donated the more than $1,500 they raised to the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in Hot Springs, South Dakota. </div>
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I think that is awesome! If anyone else wants to celebrate the Year of the Horse the same way, there are a lot of wonderful groups out there working to provide both sanctuary and solutions to the perceived problem of wild horse population densities. (Laurel mentioned that making a similar donation last year, the Year of the Snake, was a harder sell to her group. I would have liked to see THAT poster!)</div>
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Finally, an update on my coming books. CHOCOLATE is almost finished (copy edits on their way to me now) and ready to move on to Houghton Mifflin's talented designers. I can't wait to see what they come up with. Here's a teaser, a view of the Amazon rainforest of Peru (where cacao trees, from which we get chocolate, grow) that I bet you've never seen before (huge thanks to both Laurel Ross and Alvaro del Campo here):</div>
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I'm deep into research for the next book, on a subject even more near and dear to my heart than chocolate: dogs! I'm happy to report that our new pup, Saada (see my post from December) has settled right in and loves the snow. Unlike some of us, she's not a bit tired of it! How dogs got to be dogs, and walked right into our lives and hearts, is going to be a really fun story to track down and tell. Stay tuned, as I'm sure I'll have lots more to say on this over the coming weeks!</div>
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-86059823583800925212013-12-04T10:40:00.000-08:002013-12-04T16:10:12.401-08:00Dogs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Finn Oct. 31, 2003–Nov. 17, 2013<br />
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It's a sad fact that for the second time since I started this blog, I find myself writing about the loss of a wonderful dog. Finn and his late, great buddy Asa are featured prominently, well, everywhere in my life. They were my designated office assistants and mascots, their image is my computer screen saver, and photos of them cover many of the walls in our home, along with photos of the horses that have also been such a big part of my life. Asa succumbed to cancer on August 20, 2012 (see blog entry for 10/01/12); not long ago we also lost Finn, to a different type of cancer, leaving, for the moment, only the small white dog you see hogging the larger bed in the photo above. Finn was okay with that; he was that kind of guy. His absence has left a rhodesian ridgeback-sized hole in our lives here. And if you knew Finn, you know that's a pretty big space. We miss him.<br />
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But we have a new young ridgeback coming to join our family very soon, and that helps us quite a bit to get through these days where there are too many dog beds around, and too much space on the couch when we sit there in the evenings. Our new girl is coming all the way from Texas, and she arrives on Saturday! Even though we haven't met her yet, we think she's pretty special. She's large (80 pounds), not quite 2 years old, and a pretty unique color for a rhodesian ridgeback these days (though not in the early days of this fairly young breed, which developed in South Africa beginning around the 1920s)—brindle! Her foster mom tells me she's the sweetest thing, and smart, too. She is a rescue, but one with a happy story, in that her original family gave her up to the ridgeback rescue when they realized they just didn't have the time or space that she needed. So she's always been loved, and we're pretty sure we're going to love her too. Her Texas name was Sadie Belle, which may have been fitting for Texas. But we're going to pick up a little bit of her African heritage, and call her Saada, which is an African (Swahili) word for "helper." We're pretty sure she's going to help us a lot, in all kinds of ways. Here's an advance photo of her, still Sadie Belle in her Texas foster home:<br />
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I've been away from here for way too long. Very busy finishing my next book, which, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is all about chocolate! The research has been yummy. I'm finishing revisions and getting together some great photos for the book, which will be out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the spring of 2015.<br />
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As soon as it's ready to go, I'm getting to work on the next book, which will be, so fittingly, about dogs. And about humans, and humans and dogs together, evolving. I'm very excited about it. The title is <i>The Dog in the Cave: Coevolution and the Wolves Who Made Us Human</i>. Also from my wonderful publisher, HMH, and due out in 2016. That seems like a very long time from now, but I know I'm going to be working like crazy to meet my deadlines. It's going to be fun, though, and I'll once again have two very special office assistants who should inspire me daily. I'll keep you posted. I'm sure I'll have a <i>lot</i> more to say about dogs, dog breeds, and the wolves from whom all domestic dogs are descended as I get into this book! And just to round out the dog theme, so much on my mind these days, below is an old photo of me and my first dog. Her name was Lady, she was (as you can probably tell) a little dachshund, and we lived in Florida. She was my best buddy then. For a long time, I thought I had no photos of her, and then some old family pix unexpectedly came into my possession. This one brought back a ton of memories.<br />
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<br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-73202371821395255532013-08-28T14:22:00.003-07:002013-08-28T14:39:21.101-07:00Where did THAT summer go??I never meant to stay away this long. Really. But I've been busy, working against a deadline to finish my next book, whose subject is multifaceted and much more complex than you might guess. What's it about? Well, here's a hint:<br />
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If you guessed that the book's about funny-looking orange footballs stuck onto trees, you'd actually be wrong! It's about <i>chocolate</i>, and this ripening pod hanging on a cacao tree's main branch is the first part of a long process that eventually gives us the "food of the gods" that more of us crave than any other foodstuff, so studies tell us. Making chocolate from this tropical fruit is a long, involved process with an equally long and fascinating history. And it took me a long time to write about it, too, but I did finish the draft (almost) on time. Yay!! Believe me, I found some chocolate, and a little bubbly, to celebrate that day! There's a lot of history in this book, many stories, lots of science, and even some recipes, so it all seems good. Since making a book is a long process, too, <i>Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat</i> won't actually be out from Houghton Mifflin until spring of 2015, but I hope it'll be worth the wait. I learned so much in researching this book, and I'm sure I also sprouted lots of new gray hairs while trying to figure out how to tell such a big story in a (relatively) few pages. This is kind of what I think I looked like that last week or two, as the deadline approached:<br />
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Except my desk was a little messier than that . . .<br />
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But now that <i>Chocolate's</i> off to my awesome editor, I've started researching the next book, which is on a topic very near to my heart. Okay, I won't make you guess. It's dogs! But not <i>just</i> dogs. Also proto-dogs, otherwise known as gray wolves. And about how scientists think the two of us, dogs and humans, might have hooked up in the first place, longer ago than anyone ever thought. I love research, so this is going to be fun.<br />
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In the meantime, I'm also finally catching up on all the stuff I didn't have time to read during the last few weeks and months, and here are a couple random things I've learned:<br />
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1. On Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, 150 wild bison roam free. They're the descendants of 14 animals brought to the island in 1924 for a Hollywood film shoot. But the movie never got made, and the bison never left the island. With no natural predators, their population had exploded to more than 600 by the 1980s. Sound familiar? Well, 600 bison is a lot for a little island, and eventually biologists were consulted to figure out what to do. Just as with the once-expanding wild horse herd on Assateague Island (described in my book <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>), the bison population explosion has been brought under control using the immunocontraceptive PZP. After only three years, the herd is down to a sustainable 150. One slight difference that would make a <i>big</i> difference to me if I were the one darting them: Instead of running away when the dart hits them in the butt, the way wild mares do, sometimes the female buffalo will charge! Yikes! You can read about this, and/or listen to the original story on NPR, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/08/13/211440302/of-bison-birth-control-and-an-island-off-southern-calif">here</a>.<br />
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2. In Ghana, West Africa, live some ants that are sort of farmers. They compete with the human farmers who grow cacao trees (yes, I know, I'm still obsessed with this whole chocolate thing). Anyway, these ants tend a peculiar breed of livestock, which happens to be a mealybug—a small, sap-sucking insect that, according to the article I read in <i>Aeon</i> magazine, look "like woodlice dipped in flour." There are photos, and it's true. The ants protect the mealybugs so they can "milk" the sugary nutritious fluids in their waste (yuk!), which are sugary because the mealybugs drink that cacao sap! The ants also strip the cacao pods to build tents for themselves and their mealybugs, protecting them from predators and pesticides. That's all well and good for the ants and the mealybugs, but very bad for the cacao trees, and the human farmers who grow them, because it leaves the trees vulnerable to several destructive pathogens that can even kill the trees. Worst case scenario? No more chocolate! Okay, this is an over-simplification, but that's it in a nutshell. Nature is just amazing. The article is long, but well worth reading, and you can find it <a href="http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/what-can-ants-teach-us-about-agriculture/">here</a>. (Thanks to my writing friend Rebecca for the link!) But don't be too alarmed, some crackerjack biologists are on the case. Here's hoping they thwart those little herder ants and save chocolate for the next generation! Yeah.KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-38918152249297253862013-06-17T20:32:00.000-07:002013-06-17T20:34:00.869-07:00June odds & endsI'm deep into my WIP, my magnum opus on chocolate (stats: 16,644 words at the end of my writing session today). The research is eye-opening, and the writing is going pretty well. More on that soon, but I just had to check in with a few odds & ends about <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>. First, my good friend and critique partner, Sheri Doyle, was kind enough to share this pic of her cat Mimi, who looks like a potential fan:<br />
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I think Mimi looks contemplative, don't you? (though she may need reading glasses, judging from how close her nose is to the page!) Those Big Sky mustangs from Montana are definitely something to think about. Especially in light of this video story that appeared (in the <i>New York Times</i>) today, which you can find <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/06/17/booming/100000002284527/wild-horses-no-home-on-the-range.html">here</a>. If you're interested in background on the problem with wild horse populations that I wrote about in <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>, checking out this short (under 10 minutes) video would be a good start. It includes some amazing footage from the original wild horse legislation days in the early 70s, and shows how it was a huge effort by the iconic "Wild Horse Annie" and legions of concerned kids who made it happen. Now it's time to look at where we are today, and some of the unintended consequences of that humane legislation.<br />
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And one more thing: I heard from National Park Service ranger and wild horse specialist Allison Turner today, and she sent a kind of blurry, distant photo (from about a half mile away) of the newest foal on Assateague Island (see my post from last month), spotted by Allison just today. Ta-da! You saw it here first!<br />
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Meanwhile Carol's Girl, the wild horse mom extraordinaire who has thus far managed to thwart all efforts at contraception, has not yet delivered this year's foal. But Allison says Carol's Girl has been very grumpy with the rest of her band lately, which probably means the time is soon. Stay tuned!<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1547798055"></span><span id="goog_1547798056"></span><br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-5954781895785066392013-04-30T09:44:00.001-07:002013-04-30T15:08:52.462-07:00Update!Where the heck did April go?? It was so chilly in these parts most of the month that it seemed spring would never spring, and now, tomorrow, it's May already! I've been busy and haven't checked in for quite awhile, so here's some of what I've been up to:<br />
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On April 1, I was in New York to attend a lovely awards luncheon at the American Museum of Natural History. <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i> was one of five books that received the 23rd annual Riverby Award for excellent natural history books for young readers, given by the John Burroughs Association! Very cool. The lunch was delicious, the people we met delightful, and here's a picture of the certificate I was given: <br />
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After lunch and the award presentation, Thor Hanson, winner of the John Burroughs 2013 award for a distinguished natural history book (for his fascinating <i>Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle) </i>gave an engaging talk about how he came to write the book, and then it was on to book-signing! In addition to Thor Hanson and the John Burroughs folks, I got to meet fellow author Laurie Lawlor, who won for <i>Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World. </i>We all signed one another's books, as well as many more books, and had a great time.<br />
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In wild horse news, I heard from National Park Service ranger Allison Turner that the lone foal expected to be born at Assateague Island National Seashore this year had still not made his or her appearance (as of mid-April). Here's a picture Allison took of the very-pregnant chestnut mare, with her mate, Charcoal, standing behind her:<br />
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The great news is that the wild horse population on Assateague Island, Maryland, is now down to 103—just three horses away from the goal! This will make the Assateague horses the first wild population to be reduced and maintained entirely with PZP, and NO removals or gathers! Yay! This truly represents the fulfillment of Jay Kirkpatrick's life's work, as I wrote about in my book. In other good news, Jay reports that the BLM in Billings, Montana has just released a new management plan for the Pryor Mounain wild mustang herd which is based on the successful Assateague protocol, after years of resistance from both the BLM and the advocacy group, the Cloud Foundation, which has done a complete reversal and now strongly supports the PZP program! I'll keep you posted as I learn more.<br />
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As much as I love talking about these wild horses, I'm now up to my ears in researching and writing my next book for Houghton Mifflin, which is about . . . chocolate! I know, kind of a departure from my usual animal-centric topics, but delicious! (Yes, I've been succumbing to chocolate cravings way more than usual since working on this book. But hey, chocolate is good for us! Just wait till you hear!) The book is slated for publication in the spring of 2015, and I have a lot of work to do before then. But it's pretty fascinating. And after chocolate, I have another project lined up. This one will be about dogs, and how we humans and our dogs have evolved together through history, and how that relationship has changed both our species. I can't wait to really dig into this one.<br />
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So I was trying to think about how I could tie chocolate and dogs together in this blog post, and the obvious thing is, <i>don't!</i> As most of us know, chocolate may be good for us humans (at least <i>some</i> kinds of chocolate, in, um, moderation), but chocolate is bad for dogs. Especially the kind—dark chocolate—that's good for us people! Bummer. The culprit is mainly one of the many chemical components of chocolate, <i>theobromine</i>, which dogs simply can't handle as well as we can because their bodies process it much more slowly. The same goes for the lesser amounts of caffeine found in chocolate. It turns out that, as closely as we and our dogs have evolved together throughout history (and new studies suggest that dogs actually did experience evolutionary changes making it possible for them to digest some other things we like, such as grains), there are many foods we love that can be harmful and even lethal to dogs—including, besides chocolate and cocoa, also grapes and raisins, onion, garlic, and macadamia nuts! So hold the leftover pizza, no matter how much your dog begs for it! And while it's okay to enjoy chocolate every day if you like—think of it as a health food!—<i>never</i> share it with your dog. (Finn and Junie asked me to mention that pizza <i>crusts</i> are safe enough. Because of that little wheat-digesting evolutionary change I mentioned!) Lots more on that to come . . .<br />
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<br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-86887966164477599122013-03-04T09:49:00.000-08:002013-03-04T09:49:29.354-08:00Happy March!It's March already! Not quite spring, but here in south central Pennsylvania, we can almost see it coming. The forsythia bush outside my office window has already burst out in yellow blossoms, and both dogs and horses are shedding winter hair like mad. In March, Allison Turner and Jay Kirkpatrick will be PZP-darting mares again on Assateague Island. These can be some of the loveliest days on Assateague, as new life appears in many forms, and before the biting insects arrive to make things a bit more uncomfortable for both humans and wild horses. I'm looking forward to hearing if there are any new foals this spring, too, and will update you here!<br />
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Last month my guest columnist, T.J. Holmes, described how PZP and activists have begun changing how wild horse population numbers are kept in check in one BLM-managed herd in Colorado. Today I was reading about how the BLM is using science to inform management decisions for the Pryor Mountain wild horse herd. You can check this out at the BLM site <a href="http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram/science_and_research.html">here</a>. I think it's really interesting that the agency has commissioned a study by the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate their past management strategies and policies, and make recommendations based on scientific evidence.<br />
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And one more note: I was honored to learn recently that <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i> has been named one of five books to win this year's John Burroughs Riverby award, which recognizes outstanding natural history books for young readers! Very, very cool. You can read all about it, and about the fascinating John Burroughs, himself, <a href="http://www.research.amnh.org/burroughs/">here</a>. Click on the link for "full press release."<br />
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<br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-88283032798446516802013-02-04T10:11:00.000-08:002013-02-04T10:11:25.361-08:00The Wild Horses of Spring Creek Basin<i>Winter has settled in here in south central Pennsylvania, with frigid nights, cold days, and just enough snow on the ground to remind us it's February. But T.J. Holmes is accustomed to serious snow where she lives, in southwestern Colorado. She's a journalist/photographer, blogger, and volunteer advocate for a herd of wild horses living in the BLM's Spring Creek Basin Wild Horse Management Area who has come to know the horses well, and who documents their wild lives through the seasons. She is also an expert shot with a PZP dart rifle, having been trained by Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, and in cooperation with the BLM, she is authorized to dart Spring Creek mares to help keep the size of the herd within manageable limits. So today, I'm honored to introduce T.J. who has been kind enough to write a guest post about her work with the Spring Creek Basin mustangs. As an extra bonus, she's shared several of her wonderful photos. Thanks, T.J.!</i><br />
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My now-10-year love affair with mustangs, specifically Spring Creek Basin mustangs, started in a newsroom. The editor asked the newsroom at large if anyone was interested in writing about them. My hand shot into the air – alone.<br />
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The mustangs exceeded my skeptical expectations in every sense. They were stunning. Gorgeous in a way that was matched by their magnificent backdrop. WILD. A photo I took that led the story showed the romance: wild horses galloping into the sunset with the La Sal Mountains dominating the skyline. Since then, I’ve spent most of the last several years trying to dispel romantic myths while balancing my passion with reality.<br />
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In 2007, I was the editor of a small weekly newspaper. I attended the roundup that year – my first – and asked the question that would catapult me to where I am now: “Why do you round the horses up this way (with a helicopter)?” A government official responded: “This is the only way to do it.”<br />
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Are you kidding?! Ask 10 horse people how to do something, and you’ll receive 20 different answers. Just one way to do something with horses? That was an unacceptable answer.<br />
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Within a month of our roundup, I learned that official was very wrong, and the seeds for new, better management for our Spring Creek Basin mustangs were planted.<br />
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First, I attended the roundup at Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range, near Grand Junction, Colo. There, the only thing similar to our roundup was that a helicopter pilot herded the horses toward a trap site. But there, volunteers from Friends of the Mustangs helped BLM officials bring the horses calmly into a series of small pen, one family at a time. There was room for about four bands, and when the pens were filled, the roundup was done for the day. Then, because of extensive documentation by volunteers, particular horses were removed quietly and easily – AND THE REST WERE RELEASED. That was a huge moment for me. For our small herd (at close to 120 horses in 2007, almost double the population it should have been, according to our appropriate management level), the roundup took three days. Ten horses were released on the fourth day, and the remaining horses were divided into two other groups: one bound for the adoption event and one bound straight for Canon City, where BLM has a short-term holding facility within the prison complex.<br />
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Conclusion: The horses captured on the first day of our roundup were held four DAYS. The first horses captured that day at the Little Book Cliffs were held for about three HOURS. Documentation of the horses was key to making that happen.<br />
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Second, I visited Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range in Montana and Wyoming. There, I met Matt Dillon, then the director of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, Wyo. I had corresponded with him before I went and knew my education was about to take a leap forward.<br />
Matt went through PZP training in the winter of 2009 with Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick at the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Mont. In the summer of 2010, I followed his example. At the time, we didn’t even have a green light from our BLM officials in Dolores, Colo., to start a PZP program in Spring Creek Basin.<br />
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“We” is the National Mustang Association/Colorado chapter. All the original founders since have left, but two people who joined the board shortly after its formation, Pati and David Temple, still are on the board today. In early 2008, Pati and David were two of the founding members of Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners, a coalition of groups that includes NMA/CO, Four Corners Back Country Horsemen and Mesa Verde Back Country Horsemen. Our goal was to bring all our voices to BLM as a single strong voice.<br />
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In 2011, with new management in the local BLM office and a roundup looming, BLM approved the implementation of a fertility control program using native PZP. We were ready! NMA/CO had sent me to Jay’s training and paid for my darting rifle.<br />
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Training with Jay was incredible. I did a lot of homework before I attended in order to write our PZP proposal, which was submitted in the spring of 2010. I was in contact with Jay before I attended the training, courtesy of one of my friends with Friends of the Mustangs (Little Book Cliffs herd). Interestingly, this person – and everyone else I had talked to – held Jay in such high esteem that he had become a rock star to me, someone to be admired, from afar. The idea that I could actually TALK to him had me shaking in my boots. When I finally gathered my courage and contacted him, I said as much. His response: “Ask me anything. I don’t bite.” When I finally met him, I might have freaked him out in my rush to give him a big hug! For making such a difference in the management of our wild horses, I can’t begin to thank him enough.<br />
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This winter will be the second season of darting in Spring Creek Basin. We won’t know until this spring how successful last year’s darting was – until the treated mares DON’T have foals. It’s important to know that nothing in the natural world is 100 percent, and it doesn’t happen overnight. A mare’s gestational cycle lasts 11 months – in effect, a year.<br />
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A couple of months ago, I told Jay that of the 10 mares we darted, only one – a 2-year-old filly – had changed bands. That’s pretty natural. So much for the hype that PZP will cause mass chaos and upheaval among the bands because the mares continue to come into heat every month. As of now, only one other mare has changed bands. In fact, more mares that were not treated have changed bands. The reaction to being darted has been nearly uniform: They trotted off a short way, then went back to grazing.<br />
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It’s important to mention that we don’t want to stop the population growth of the herd in Spring Creek Basin but rather slow it, with the goal of limiting roundups and the number of horses removed – which is necessary to enable the range to sustain a healthy population of mustangs – in favor of in-the-wild management. Also, we hope BLM will move from helicopter-driven roundups to bait trapping, as was successfully done on Pryor Mountain last year.<br />
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-45447036850218513272013-01-08T08:53:00.000-08:002013-01-08T09:55:11.327-08:00And now a word from Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick!It's 2013, already. Happy New Year to all! I've been busy with new projects, but I'm so pleased to hear from a lot of people that they're enjoying reading <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>. One really great thing is that I've gotten to know (in the cyberspace way) T.J. Holmes (see December post below), who writes a wonderful blog <a href="http://springcreekwild.wordpress.com/">here</a> about some wild horses in the area of southwestern Colorado where she lives. This sagebrush desert land has the wonderful name (for a storyteller like me) of Disappointment Valley, but to the BLM, it's also the Spring Creek Basin Wild Horse Management Area. T.J. chronicles these wild horses in words and lovely photographs, but she's also actively involved in work that may help to ensure their continued survival, because as one of Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick's trained army of volunteers, she darts selected mares of this herd with the contraceptive vaccine PZP. Another exciting thing is that T.J. is working with others to help educate young people about the dilemma of wild horses in the western U.S., and was therefore happy to discover my book. It could be a good teaching tool for middle schoolers, so I'm grateful to have made this connection with T.J. Look for a guest post from her soon!<br />
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But in the meantime, I'm pleased to give you a guest post from Jay Kirkpatrick, the scientist responsible for the success of PZP. Wild horses in America are the center of a complicated, hotly-debated controversy, and he has written eloquently of that dilemma elsewhere. He could write a book on this subject (and I think he should! Actually, he did write one, back in 1994 (<i>Into the Wind)</i>, which I highly recommend if you can find it. It's lovely and informative. But here is a brief update from Jay, director of the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana, developer of the PZP vaccine. Thanks so much, Jay!<br />
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<i>The work of the Science and Conservation Center (SCC) is
focused on the non-lethal control of wildlife populations, through fertility
control, with particular emphasis on horses. To that end the SCC produces the vaccine and trains people
to use it properly. Certain wild
horse populations are being managed through fertility control for the National
Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, wild
horse sanctuaries, preserves, and various Native American tribes.</i></div>
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<i>Use of the fertility control vaccine PZP for wild horses has
increased slowly over the past 25 years, but not as fast as it might have,
largely because of the social, cultural, economic and political forces that
oppose this approach. Often who
uses the vaccine and who doesn’t depends on the progressiveness of thinking
among local wild horse managers, and less on policies. This places much of the work for moving
this form of management outside the purview of science.</i></div>
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<i>The SCC also manages some urban deer populations, many zoo
animals, free-roaming African elephants and bison with the contraceptive
vaccine and it is interesting that this world-wide effort had its birth on the
marshes of Assateague Island National Seashore so many years ago. </i></div>
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<i>The SCC also engages in some research activities. One project is the testing of a
recombinant form of the vaccine (rZP) as an effective booster inoculation. If rZP works, it will expand the
ability to treat many more animals.
Production of the native PZP at the SCC is a time consuming,
labor-intensive endeavor and if the rZP works, the SCC would only have to
produce primer doses (the initial dose) and that would increase dramatically
the number of animals that could be treated. Other research includes species’ differences in the response
of the PZP vaccine. For example, some recent research shows that it is much
more effective in species of the goat and sheep families than in other mammals.</i></div>
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<i>But, wild horses will remain the primary focus of work at
the SCC. </i><br />
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For more, here's a video interview with Jay (it's worth sitting through the commercial, I think. If any tech-savvy reader knows how to cut that from the clip, please let me know!):</div>
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<br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-34165530265203231392012-12-03T10:39:00.000-08:002012-12-03T10:42:38.965-08:00Wild Horses Update!I can't believe it's been a month already since publication day! The best thing about that, I guess, was the day the box arrived from Houghton Mifflin, and there they were, real books! It's so satisfying to see an idea finally become real. But since then, lots of very cool things have happened. Here are a few:<br />
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<i>Wild Horse Scientists</i> has received starred reviews from esteemed professional journals <i>Kirkus Reviews, Booklist</i>, and <i>School Library Journal. The Horn Book </i>will also be publishing a lovely review in their next issue, <i>and </i>The National Science Teachers Association named Wild Horse Scientists to their "Outstanding Science Trade Books published in 2012 for Students K-12!"<br />
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Also, I did my first two book signings, both of them at a local tack shop (called A Bit More Tack) belonging to the very lovely Abby Little. The books sold out quickly and Abby had to reorder. Yay! Since I think this may have been the first time she's hosted a book signing amid the riding helmets and saddle pads and other horsey items in her shop, no one really knew what to expect. It was great fun meeting people and talking about how the book came to be. As much as I treasure professional kudos in the form of great reviews and "Best Of" lists, hearing from real readers how much they're enjoying the book—a science book, among horse people!—has been really wonderful. And everyone is wowed by the more than 100 color photos in the book. Even though credit for those goes to my talented photographers, I feel as if I practically willed every one of them onto the page! Well, it seemed that way at the time, as deadlines loomed. Here's a pic from the book signing:<br />
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Most of the reader reviews I've gotten so far have been from adults, and I'm delighted that they find the story interesting and even suspenseful in places. I really wanted it to be a book for everyone who loves horses, science, and the natural environment, in whatever order those interests exist! But I'm especially looking forward to hearing from some young readers, too. I'd welcome comments to this space any time!<br />
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Another friend passed along a great article from the current (November 12, 2012) issue of <i>High Country News, </i>which calls itself a magazine "for people who care about the West." The cover story is called "Nowhere to Run" (by Dave Philipps), and it's about the gathering crisis of wild horse population control in the American West. Although my book focuses primarily on the wild horses of Assateague Island, Maryland, the quest to find a humane and effective method to limit wild horse numbers and thus ensure their survival actually had its beginning in the West. This article is<br />
an excellent roundup (no pun intended) of the very difficult and contentious issues involved in sorting out the past, present, and future of wild mustangs. Jay Kirkpatrick, whose work to develop and test the wild horse contraceptive PZP is the story at the heart of my book, is quoted in the article, along with other voices on all sides of the issue. And there are some stunning photos, too. The magazine is by subscription only, so I can't link to the article here, but it's well worth looking for if you're interested in the plight of America's mustangs.<br />
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Here's a <a href="http://springcreekwild.wordpress.com/">link</a> that will take you to further information and photos about these horses. It's the blog of T.J. Holmes, who is also featured in the <i>High Country News</i> article. Holmes calls herself the "horse paparazzi," since she's been somewhat obsessed, for years, with the mustangs of the BLM's Spring Basin Wild Horse Management Area in southwestern Colorado. She's spent hours observing and photographing the horses in this one dusty corner of America, but that's not all. She's also one of a small army of volunteers—all of them expert observers and advocates of wild mustangs—who have been trained by Jay Kirkpatrick to safely and effectively carry out the labor-intensive darting of wild mares with PZP. Volunteers are ordinary citizens who travel to Kirkpatrick's lab in Billings, Montana for an intensive 3-day PZP training course. Now these volunteers account for about 16 percent of PZP applications among the Western herds—and the effort still falls short of the need.<br />
<br />
But slowly, and not always surely, wild horse contraception is becoming accepted as the best available solution to the problem of wild horse overpopulation. For an inside look at the wild horses of the perhaps aptly named Disappointment Valley, check out Holmes' blog. And here's a shot of a couple of mustangs from Colorado's Little Book Cliffs wild horse range. These guys, with their bright pinto coloring, look quite a bit like many of the wild horses of Assateague Island. But controlling their population numbers is a more daunting task than the well-established contraceptive program that keeps the Assateague Island herd in check. Their future is precarious.<br />
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-55336674830460350252012-11-06T07:58:00.001-08:002012-11-06T07:58:49.242-08:00Wild Horse Scientists is published!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_V-wLTtx4KR3gBASW4FOLFbNQ6vC9sD3OTpfzKg6O6X4-BVOPnDFo7DYFiMpp6-RiGJBsECmH_rDypGGUpJ-ufRZBEFDj8mrpl7poms0RJ_LlN8TVpYivlesPiMqIxQDmDHplKJqK4rdb/s1600/chestnutbranches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_V-wLTtx4KR3gBASW4FOLFbNQ6vC9sD3OTpfzKg6O6X4-BVOPnDFo7DYFiMpp6-RiGJBsECmH_rDypGGUpJ-ufRZBEFDj8mrpl7poms0RJ_LlN8TVpYivlesPiMqIxQDmDHplKJqK4rdb/s320/chestnutbranches.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Today is a big day! For one thing, we're electing a President here in America (if you haven't yet voted and you're registered, please make sure to get to the polls today!). And for another thing, today is publication day for <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>! I'm thrilled that this story is finally going out into the world, and hope you'll check it out. For more on my book and the wonderful Scientists in the Field series from Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, click <a href="http://www.sciencemeetsadventure.com/">here</a>!KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-59049383149778949752012-10-28T19:16:00.001-07:002012-10-28T19:17:31.028-07:00Witches and Goblins, Wild Horses and Climate Change<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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About this time last year we lay in the dark, listening to
the violent cracking of still-leafy tree branches outside our windows. A
weirdly out-of-season snow-and-ice storm was turning Halloween into a broken,
droopy winter wonderland. This year, it looks as if folks around here will have
to bring their pumpkins and outdoor goblins inside, for fear they might become
flying missiles when the hurricane dubbed “Frankenstorm” (a.k.a. Sandy) makes
landfall somewhere along the New Jersey coast late tomorrow night. Already the
outer bands of this gigantic storm that can’t quite decide if it’s a tropical
cyclone or a winter nor’easter—because apparently it’s setting up to be <i>both</i>—have been buffeting the outer banks
of North Carolina and moving in on Virginia and points north. </div>
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As I always do, I think of the wild creatures with no
ability to board up windows and buy electric generators. It looks as if this
time, the worst will pass to the north of Assateague Island, and the horses there
will survive this storm as they have so many others. I’ll be thinking of them,
and all the animals and people impacted by this historic weather event.</div>
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It does make me wonder, though. Is this crazy weather we’ve
been having in recent years a
harbinger of global climate change? And how might man-made climate change
affect both humans and the animals who share our planet in the future? So I was
glad to find a study, published late last year, that addresses that very
question. An international group of scientists collaborated in an effort to
answer a nagging question: What caused the mysterious disappearance of many
large mammals in North America some 10,000 years ago? Was it climate change, or
human activity? (You can read a lot more about these mysterious extinctions in <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i> soon. November 6!)</div>
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Using genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to
figure out what happened to Ice-Age mammals including the wild horse, these
scientists concluded that the answer to the question, humans vs. climate
change, is. . . <i>both</i>. </div>
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You can read more about the study <a href="http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2011-news/Shapiro10-2011">here.</a><span id="goog_510849670"></span><span id="goog_510849671"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a> Bottom line? The
researchers concluded that there was likely no <i>single</i> cause for extinctions of the six large herbivores
studied—the wooly rhinoceros, wooly mammoth, reindeer, bison, musk ox, and wild
horse. Instead, says the study, “the relative impacts of climate change and
human encroachment on species extinctions really depend on which species we’re
looking at.” </div>
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During the entire Pleistocene Epoch, which lasted from about
2 million to 12,000 years ago, North America experienced many climatic ups and
downs, and these mammals that had evolved during colder periods did suffer population
losses during the warm intervals. But they always managed to find places where
the climate was just right for them and survive, even in reduced numbers. When
cooling came again, their numbers rebounded. But then, after the peak of the
last ice age around 20,000 years ago, something changed. </div>
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What was that something?</div>
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Humans. </div>
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Our ancestors moved into the same places where the large Ice
Age mammals had once thrived; they developed agricuture and hunting, and in so
doing changed the landscape so dramatically that these animals were cut off
from what they needed to survive. It’s an ancient drama being replayed today in
passionate controversies over the place of wild horses in the remaining open
lands of our American West.</div>
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One faction says that horses are not native to North
America, but rather are an exotic, invasive species that can claim no natural
rights to protection, while other voices argue just as forcefully that the
horse evolved here in North America and nowhere else on earth. To them, wild
horses have a right to exist on the lands where they evolved. Well, this and
other studies lend compelling, scientific support to the second argument. Both
fossil evidence and sophisticated genetic analysis support the claim that
native horses driven from North America by climate change and human
encroachment 10,000 years ago are biologically identical to the so-called “feral”
horses we call wild today. </div>
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Says Beth Shapiro, biology professor at Penn State
University and one of the study’s authors, “There are many more humans today,
and we have changed and are continuing to change the planet in even more
important ways.” What will be the
fate of populations threatened by climate change and habitat alteration
happening in our time? Maybe this truly awesome storm—the Halloween
Frankenstorm of 2012— will prompt more of us to ponder this question. </div>
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<!--EndFragment-->KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-13347265040757534952012-10-15T07:24:00.001-07:002012-10-17T09:33:39.107-07:00Taking Time<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Exactly three weeks from tomorrow, <i>Wild Horse
Scientists</i> will finally go out into the world! I’m very excited; this book has
been a long time in the making, as I’ll explain below. But first, another bit of good
news: <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>
has received a starred review from the venerable Kirkus Reviews! One of my
favorite lines from the review (you can find the full text <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kay-frydenborg/wild-horse-scientists/" target="_blank">here</a>):</div>
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<i>Underlying these
particular stories are important concepts, lucidly conveyed: Scientists work
together to solve problems, solutions can be a long time coming and sometimes
approaches fail.</i> </div>
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This is so true, and the long gestation period that finally
gave birth to <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>
proves it can be as true of writing as it is of science. </div>
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I first started thinking seriously of writing a book about
the wild horses of Assateague Island in 1995, but the seeds of my interest go
back even further, to a horse-obsessed and book-loving childhood. You could
trace it to my reading of two beloved children’s novels by Marguerite Henry: <i>Misty of Chincoteague</i> and <i>Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West</i>. Both
are fictionalized versions of real events—the first involving the wild horses
of Assateague and their traditional swim and “pony penning,” and the second a
story based on the life and work of Velma Bronn Johnston, later known as Wild
Horse Annie, who almost single-handedly created the first real legislation
protecting wild horses in America.</div>
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But it wasn’t until I happened to read an article in the
July 23, 1995 issue of the <i>Baltimore Sun Magazine</i>
that I decided to research and write a book. </div>
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<br />
By this time, both Ron Keiper and
Jay Kirkpatrick, two of the scientists I write about in my book, had separately been
studying and working with these wild horses for more than 20 years, and Allison
Turner, National Park Service biological technician and wild horse specialist,
had already begun her work on the island, too.<br />
<br />
If you asked them today,
they’d tell you they never expected this wild horse project to continue for so many years
when they started. For biologist Jay Kirkpatrick, a problem he first tackled as a young researcher in 1971 has turned into a lifelong quest that still continues in 2012.</div>
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So back in 1998, after much enjoyable research that included a
visit to Assateague, Chincoteague, and the annual pony penning and auction, I
wrote a long proposal for a very different book, for an adult audience. It never
sold. But I kept on collecting articles, books, and photos in my “Chincoteague
pony” folder, not knowing if I’d ever use them. By 2009, when I started
thinking about another sort of book, Google had made it simple for me to locate
and approach both Dr. Keiper and Dr.Kirkpatrick. I was thrilled to meet them after
all those years. Better yet, they were both enthusiastic about working with me
on this project! Everything came together after that, when my wonderful editors
at Houghton Mifflin Books for Children said they shared our enthusiasm.</div>
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Nowadays everything seems to move so fast. A million
fascinating things vie for our attention every waking minute, and often we find
ourselves posting “status updates” from our phones to social media sites even
before the experience we’re posting about has finished happening.<br />
<br />
But it turns
out that some things just can’t be rushed. </div>
<!--EndFragment-->KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-78522630418815712022012-10-01T12:17:00.000-07:002012-10-01T13:01:40.269-07:00Finding Joy<i>Wild Horse Scientists</i> will be released five weeks from today! I'm very excited about this, and will soon have a bit of good news to share about the book. Keep watching this space! In the meantime, I came across an article about a study published a couple of years ago in the journal <i>Animal Behavior</i> that I wanted to share. The study suggested that some horses never forget the humans who have treated them well, even after a separation of months or years. This bond with humans is believed to be an extension of horse behavior in the wild—social relationships described in <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>, too. Wild horses maintain long-term bonds with members of their family group, but they also interact temporarily with members of other groups when forming herds.<br />
<br />
"Equid relationships," say the study's authors, "are long-lasting and, in some cases, lifelong." You can read more about it <a href="http://news.discovery.com/animals/horse-friends-memory-trainers.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Lifelong bonds. I've been thinking about this a lot today, because my heart is kind of breaking over the loss of one of those bonds in my own life.You may have seen his photo, along with his best friend, Finn, if you've visited my website, or my last blog post. Asa's the guy on the right. <br />
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I write about horses and other animals because I love them, and I've never loved any animal more than Asa, a ridgeless Rhodesian Ridgeback who joined our family 12 years ago this summer, when he was a wrinkly puppy with long ears, no bigger than the Jack Russell terrier who was then the other dog in the house. Asa grew quickly to over 100 pounds, but he never lost his puppy sweetness. He was beautiful and gentle and loved everyone, but what I will always remember the most about him is that he was a very happy dog. He could be silly, such as this time when he decided to fit his very big body into his "brother's" very small bed:</div>
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Or he could be quiet and comforting, happy just to stretch his big body out next to me on the couch and lay his broad, soft head on my lap. And even as he got older and developed some physical issues that made it harder for him to run and prance as he'd always done, he never let it bother him much. He was still a happy dog. Until the very end, when he suddenly became very sick, he loved every day of his life, no matter what. He found joy in the simple, doggy things he did, which is the most important attribute, to me, of the scientists I wrote about in <i>Wild Horse Scientists. </i>They, too, love what they do, so that even hard work must seem, at least some of the time, like play. Because I wish that for everyone, including myself, today I dedicate this page to the memory of Asa. I'm so very sad that he's not lying here on the ottoman in my office where he belongs, but I found a quote, attributed to both Dr. Seuss and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I don't know to whom the words belong for sure. But this is what I will tell myself when I think of my lovely, happy dog: </div>
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<i>Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.</i></div>
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Asa</div>
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June 17, 2000—September 30, 2012 </div>
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-57589476246045233442012-08-20T12:18:00.001-07:002012-08-23T16:51:52.054-07:00Elephants Evolving<br />
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I’m drawn to large, inscrutable animals, which may explain
Asa and Finn, my two Rhodesian ridgeback pals who, together, outweigh me by
close to a hundred pounds. It must also account for my lifelong passion for
horses. It’s not just their size, grace, and power, but that alien intelligence
lurking in their large eyes and huge, faintly prehistoric-looking heads that I can't resist. Still, for sheer size, intelligence, and prehistoric inscrutability (if not grace),
it’s hard to beat the elephant. I’ve never ridden one, but I do admire them.
Having grown up in Sarasota, Florida when it was a circus town, I saw them from
time to time. My first horseback riding lessons took place just across the road
from the Ringling Brothers circus winter quarters, and resident members of the elephant menagerie sometimes observed these lessons with apparent interest from their large pen. Wonder
what they were thinking? The memory of those big, wise, wrinkly faces has stayed with me
ever since, so I guess it was inevitable that eventually I'd write about them. My novel-in-progress features, among other characters, an actual Ringling elephant named Dolly, whose sad story I read about long after I'd left home. Working title: <i>The Elephant
Graveyard</i>.</div>
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“My” elephant graveyard refers to an actual place that
reportedly existed on the grounds of the winter quarters (which left
Sarasota decades ago), but stories about other, wilder and more exotic elephant
graveyards in various places in the world have been around for quite some time. Most of these stories stem from popular legends of a special, secret
place where old and sick elephants, it's said, go to die. No one has ever found such a
place, which you can read about here, but the idea of an elephant graveyard
adds to the deep mystique of these large-brained, complex creatures.</div>
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Here are two stories about elephants that <i>are</i> true. First, elephants as a species, at least in some parts of the world, may be losing their tusks. It's a natural response to the violence of poachers who kill elephants for their valuable ivory. Being born without tusks is a
genetic variation or mutation (and a real handicap for the tuskless elephant) that was once rare, but is increasingly common as
elephants who <i>have</i> tusks are
illegally and cruelly slaughtered before they have a chance to reproduce. In
many places, poachers have decimated the elephant population. (More about this
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/180301.stm">here</a>.)</div>
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The second elephant story involves the opposite problem: too
<i>many</i> elephants. This is the same
dilemma faced by wild horses in America, but with one big difference: elephants
are huge! They’re the largest land mammals living on earth today. A wild
African elephant can weigh more than ten times what a wild horse weighs, so
they take up a lot more space, eat a lot more food, and trample any
vegetation that happens to be under their massive feet. In South Africa, a
successful elephant conservation program has led to an increase in the elephant
population from only 100 animals a century ago to more than 20,000 today, most
of them living within fenced preserves. Yikes! </div>
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But it turns out that science is providing one solution: the
same solution, in fact, that is keeping some populations of wild horses within
sustainable limits in America. PZP, the immune system-based contraceptive
developed in Montana by Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick and first tested on the wild horses of Assateague, Maryland, works just as well—even
better!—when given to female elephants. It’s safe, has no significant side
effects, and is close to 100 percent effective in preventing elephant pregnancies. One South African province is
leading the way into the future, expanding its use of PZP as a much kinder alternative to culling herds. You can read about that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-safrica-elephants-idUSBRE87E0FK20120815">here</a>. Very cool
story.</div>
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KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-10379410214642654282012-07-30T12:12:00.000-07:002012-07-31T15:39:37.279-07:00Pony Penning time!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There aren’t many traditions that continue for more than 87 years, and
even fewer whose popularity and longevity are the direct result of a modest
story published for children 65 years ago. I can only think of one: the annual
pony penning in Chincoteague, Virginia. Or, as a recent headline in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Baltimore Sun</i> put it, “the magical
‘Misty’ pony swim.”</div>
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This year, a crowd of some 40,000 was expected to view the approximately six-minute swim. It's always a mixed group, including lots of children but also many parents and grandparents, for whom being here is a lifelong dream come true. Whether the dream began with reading Marguerite Henry's 1947 Newbery Honor-winning book <i>Misty of Chincoteague</i>, or seeing the 1961 movie inspired by the book, Misty's fans travel as far as they must to stand in what is almost sure to be sweltering heat and clouds of biting insects. Beginning at daybreak, they gather to wait for the
chance to watch about 165 small horses cross the 75-yard-wide channel
between Chincoteague and the undeveloped Assateague Island, where the ponies
live. </div>
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The wild pony herd—they’re traditionally called “ponies” on
Chincoteague, though technically they’re small horses—is owned by the island’s
volunteer fire company, which provides “saltwater cowboys” on horses of their
own to round up the wild ponies on Assateague each July and drive them across
the channel to Chincoteague. There, after a short rest and many photo ops, the ponies are paraded through the small town of Chincoteague
to tree-shaded holding pens, where they’re kept for two days before the youngest animals
are auctioned off to the highest bidders. At the end of the festival, with less fanfare, the older
ponies quietly swim back to Assateague to live for another year. Money raised
by the annual auction supports the fire company and provides funds for new
equipment, but it’s more than that. The pony swim brings in so many visitors for
the 16-day festival that it fuels the town economy for the other 349 days of
the year, and the locals wait for it all year with as much eager anticipation as the tourists. You can read more about the creation of <i>Misty of Chincoteague</i> and the centuries-old roots of pony penning <a href="http://www.chincoteague.com/ponies.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.mistysheaven.com/historyofmisty.html">here</a>.</div>
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I didn’t go to the pony swim this year, but I did go once, with my daughter, who grew up riding ponies, and my husband, who spent those
same years mowing pastures and fixing fences. There are many things I love
about pony penning week, and some things I don’t. As a horse-crazy girl who never
outgrew that passion, and who also grew up near saltwater and sand on the coast
of Florida, I can’t help but love a tradition that puts wild beach-dwelling
horses at the center of it all. But what I love most about it is that the people come here, year after year, because of a book. </div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Misty of Chincoteague,</i> never out of print since 1947, was one of a whole
library of horse novels I read and reread as a child. And now, as a writer
drawn to both fiction and nonfiction stories, I kind of love the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Misty </i>is a little bit of both—a
fictionalized account of mostly real events, people, and animals, embellished
by the author's fertile imagination in a time before sharp distinctions between the genres were so strictly observed. It's a book that may seem a bit dated to today's readers, but it has stood the test of time.</div>
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What I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t</i> love
so much about pony penning is that it’s hard on young foals to be separated
from their mothers at such an early age, hard on the mares who will likely
become pregnant again soon after (if they aren't already), and disruptive to the many small, close-knit wild horse
bands that make up the herd. Still, the sale of most of each year’s new foals
does keep the overall number to within the 150-horse limit that it has been
determined the Virginia portion of Assateague island can support without undue
damage to the habitat. It’s a different approach from the way a related herd of
wild horses on the Maryland side of Assateague Island is managed, but pony penning is a way of life for the people of Chincoteague, and the saltwater cowboys of the Chincoteague volunteer fire company work hard to take care of the wild ponies they maintain.<br />
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(If you want to read about how National Park Service rangers and scientists manage the wild horses of Assateague Island, <i>Maryland—</i>once part of the same herd as their Virginia cousins—check out my book, <i>Wild Horse Scientists</i>, coming from Houghton Mifflin Books for Children this November 6!)</div>
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So what do you think? Did you ever read <i>Misty of Chincoteague</i>, and thrill to the irresistible legend of shipwrecked ponies swimming to safety on a nearby island, to live wild and free? Did you dream of having one of Misty's descendants in your own back yard? If you buy a wild pony and build it a barn in your back yard, does the pony stop being wild? </div>
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<br />KayFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694871158826076731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320758360577034745.post-28088511118180348112012-06-21T18:50:00.001-07:002012-08-01T05:07:45.387-07:00Wild Horses, Wild Weather<br />
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Here in the Mid-Atlantic, we’re in the grip of a sticky,
sweltering heat wave today. As the afternoon steamed on, the thermometer
outside my office window read 96 degrees, but with humid air sitting over
everything like a damp sponge, the heat index was well over 100. I had ridden
Remy early, but there was no beating the heat, even at 8 a.m. Both of us, I and
my wonderful horse, sweated and puffed and were happy to be done by 9. Then he
got a cold shower, some sweet hay, and a couple of horse cookies that he
enjoyed under his fan which, though it only blew hot air around, at least kept
the flies away. I got the air conditioner in my car, cranked up to full blast. </div>
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On Assateague Island, Maryland—some 200 miles to the south—I
imagine the wild horses made their way to the ocean and stood up to their
bellies in the surf during the hottest part of the day. Greenheads and other
biting flies would be out on a day like this, along with clouds of mosquitoes,
and this is one method these small feral horses have devised over hundreds of
years to survive extremes of summer in their unnatural home.</div>
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When I first thought of writing about the wild horses of
Assateague, it was their vulnerability and toughness that most impressed me. It
still is. By the time my book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Horse
Scientists</i>, is published on November 6 of this year by Houghton Mifflin
Books for Children, as part of the acclaimed “Scientists in the Field” series,
the Atlantic hurricane season of 2012 will be nearing an end. I hope it will
have been kind to humans and other animals alike. Now, when summer storms or
winter blizzards hit this part of the world, I always think of the island
horses who manage to survive whatever nature throws at them without any of the
comforts or protections my pampered domestic horse enjoys. The brilliant Diane Ackerman wrote
about this very thing last month in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times</i>; you can read her article <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/wild-ponies-and-wild-weather/?emc=eta1">here</a>.</div>
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This is my very first blog post ever, so I’m
going to be figuring out what I want to say at the same time that I’m saying
it. As publication date nears, I expect to post a bit more frequently, but for
now I just want to say, “welcome!” I hope you’ll come back often, and that
you’ll share your own thoughts and comments. In the meantime, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> just want to share a bit of good news:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Horse Scientists</i> has been chosen
by the Junior Library Guild, and will be featured in their fall 2012 catalog.
This is a huge honor, and what makes it even more exciting is that the JLG
picks the books it will showcase <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prior</i>
to the actual publication of those books. These last few months of waiting for
the book to become real are hard, but hearing that my book was selected makes that day seem just that little bit closer!</div>
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