Until we meet again....

With an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon, I headed toward the Greenway in hopes of finding just a few more insects to visit with before the winter arrives in earnest. There have been a few frosty mornings already this year, but certainly some hardy arthropods would still be out and about? 

Of course those common home invaders can often be spotted on sun-warmed south-facing surfaces very late in the year: stink bugs and lady beetles, boxelder bugs. Winter midges and crane flies can also be spotted on warm days in cold months, as can tiny springtails. 

On this warm day, with the temperature reaching over 70 degrees, very few insects made an appearance. Regular katydid-like chirps could be heard from the grass, but I was unable to triangulate to a source. Nearly-invisible swarms of midges swirled in sunbeams. I paused at the alfalfa bales, where a couple weeks previous dozens of grasshoppers could be seen hopping and clinging to the sides of the bales. No chitinous wanderers, just a little junco watching warily from atop a bale. 

Nevertheless, it was a lovely, peaceful outing as even other humans had made themselves scarce. With quiet all around, even the smallest noise landed heavily on alert ears, and a glance in the direction of the small tick revealed a blade of grass moving just a little out of sync with its neighbors. 

Who's there?

Well hello friend! I thought I had seen the last of the neighborhood orthopterans until next year, but there was a hardy long-legged soul in the dry grass. Are you finding enough to eat, friend? There are still some green grasses along the trail. How did you weather the hard freezes a few weeks ago? How many others are still hanging on with you here in mid-November?

No answer was forthcoming, and the grasshopper had other business to attend to, despite my eagerness to spend the afternoon getting my fill of six-legged wildlife while I still can. But what a momentary treat. 

If you build it, will they come? | Investing in a cleaner Iowa

If you notice litter around town, or take a gander at some drainage areas (like the Sycamore Greenway) in winter once the greenery dies back, you know litter is a problem. 

If you look closely, you know much of that litter is made up of beverage containers: beer cans, pop cans and bottles, water bottles, energy drink cans, sports drink bottles. And if you've followed this page for any length of time, you know that Iowa's Bottle Bill can be an incredibly effective mechanism to prevent exactly this type of litter...if only it would be strengthened and expanded. 

While we wait patiently for the legislature to get its act together, we limp along with the Bottle Bill we have. Fortunately, we have a great resource here on the south side of town that is making it even easier to return your deposit containers. 

The Can Shed celebrated the opening of a new location last week, and invited the public to see the facility. Beyond the cheerful murals celebrating closed-loop systems and depicting our fine city was a magical room filled with the most amazing Rube-Goldberg contraptions to process a jumbled mix of plastic and aluminum, from any number of distributors quickly and efficiently into compact bins of material ready to be shipped off for recycling. 

They have simplified the process: where once redeeming containers was a laborious practice of feeding individual cans or bottles into a machine one at a time, or else carefully saving enough containers of the same type to fill a large bag—you can now bring your bin full of mixed items, dump them in a receptacle, push a button, and the magic machine does it work to count, separate deposit items from non-deposit items, and separate the containers by material type within minutes. You get a ticket with the quantity redeemed, and trade it for cash.

  

(Sound down for these videos...they are NOISY!)

Another innovation is their Bottle Drop program. With the help of an app and individually QR-coded bags, you can drop your mixed containers off through a drop door and have the funds credited to your account. While offering maximum convenience, there are additional costs (you must purchase the bags at a cost of 10 for $2.10, and additional fees per bag and for the electronic fund transfers). 

Is this a paid ad for the Can Shed? No, this is all gratis. We need a better Bottle Bill, and to do that we need facilities like this to show how simple it can be to make it work for everyone. (Plus the equipment was super-fun to watch and everyone should be able to enjoy it.)

What can you do?

• Redeem your deposit cans and bottles! Even if you don't think the nickel is worth your time, every can or bottle that leaves the system is a nickel the bottle distributors get to keep. Iowa's redemption rate is abysmal compared to states with better bottle bills, in part because our lawmakers have not been invested in seeing it succeed. In addition, single-stream municipal recycling is far less efficient than the dedicated material recycling that comes with these redemptions.
• Spread the word! Share how important the Bottle Bill is to keeping our state beautiful. 
• Tell your state legislators in Des Moines that we need a better Bottle Bill: it needs to be expanded to include water bottles, sports drinks, and other beverage containers, and the deposit needs to be increased to $.10 (it should be a quarter, if it had kept up with inflation since 1978, but let's compromise down to a dime).

Previous rants posts about Iowa's Bottle Bill and related topics:

"But we have curbside recycling!"

"Oh look, another bottle..."

There Is No "Away"

Winners and losers in the attention economy

Warning: existential navelgazing ahead. Proceed with caution.

Our magnificent, chaotic, messy,
interdependent world.

As I walked the length of our beautiful trail recently, my mind swirled with current events that have been dominating our news cycle. There, seeped in the buzzing-trilling-chirping of assorted amphibian, arthropod, and avian inhabitants, I walked. And I considered. 

I thought of how we passively direct our attention to the topics that politicians and media outlets think are most beneficial for them. How our attention economy converts that attention to power, such that those people and topics that dominate headlines and garner clicks reap rewards both tangible and intangible. How rarely I see the discussion in the public sphere involve this natural world that so many of us love so deeply.

When reported at all, it is under a category like "environment/climate change." They always seem to be paired, as if each on its own is insufficient, despite them encompassing literally everything that surrounds us.

 Environment? What a small and sterile word for the teeming life all around us. For the wondrous and complex world we inhabit, that provides everything we need to survive and asks nothing in return other than to be left alone. The diversity and abundance of the beings who share our small corner of the universe, the only other living things we know of in all of existence. 

Climate change? How narrow a thing to describe the very wellbeing of us as a species and the complex interconnectedness of everything. Our responsibility to steward the living world, and the multitudinous ways we are failing in that obligation. 

When I look at the headlines and accompanying photos, they are men and women in suits, in front of concrete or glass. Nary a blade of grass to be seen. Scarcely a glimpse of blue sky. Our actual world—the world we inhabit and the world that sustains our basic functions of life—is invisible. Why?

The woodpeckers, owls, and other residents, priced out of their
homes in the wooded area north of Birds in Flight.

Maybe the stories that people choose to focus on are the easy ones. They require no knowledge or understanding, but are particularly suited to strong opinions. They are "problems" that can be easily solved by dictat without any pesky investment or spending. Or the stories that are promoted are those that have the largest financial impact on the bank accounts of those steering the conversation. The living world is an invisible backdrop...something that supports and enables our very existence, but neglected nonetheless.

Our living world doesn't have big-money investors and shareholders to promote its interests. And yet...we are ALL shareholders in that world, and we can only thrive when it is allowed to thrive. Maybe we all need to step up and become lobbyists: attending candidate meetings and speaking or asking questions about what can be done to preserve and protect our natural heritage. Clicking on and sharing articles about topics related to nature and our environment. Exploring this amazing world and bringing it into the conversation until it is given attention proportional to its importance.

As a charismatic predator's life ends, others are quick to make
use of her legacy to further their own ends.