Self Medication, Monarch Style

I already know that monarchs are pretty awesome creatures, migrating for thousands of miles to the same tiny area of forest their ancestors visited, like tiny orange and black GPS systems. Now they appear to have some pretty strong built-in medicial cred as well. Recent research led by Jaap de Roode, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, has produced...

In the middle of 130 million butterflies

There’s really no words that can describe what it’s like. If there were words, they would be incomprehensibly stuttered through tears brought on by the sheer amazing, reverent beauty of the experience. My first experience as an ecotourist took me to the mountains of the Mexican state of Michoacan in mid-February 2011. My sister Anne and I joined group of almost...

Sid visits Lifetown

December was an exciting month at Lifetown. We had visits from Fitzi and Ronnie, our once-resident ferrets, with their new owner and her daughter. They galloped around the room in a joyful frenzy, and my dog Winston, was ecstatic to see and sniff them again. He was also overly excited by a different visitor, Sid the Bearded Dragon. Sid’s owner brought him in for a few...