Ben's Nature Blog

  Today our class is using our last day to visit the Fort Worth zoo. Going to the zoo used to be something I absolutely loved when I was little. Our class field trips to the Minnesota or Como zoo were always my favorite, and whenever my family went to Omaha to visit our relatives, I would beg my parents to take us to the Omaha zoo. Now that I’m here, I am realizing that I don’t think I have been to the zoo in like 10 years (other than frog camp which didn’t really count). It has been so long since I’ve seen some of the world’s more exotic animals with my own eyes, and I had forgotten the sort of awe it can induce. Right now, I am sitting by the Bonobo enclosure writing this. I think these may be the most human-like animals I have encountered. Just as I was walking up and reading their placard, they all stormed out of the interior to gather the fruits left scattered around by the zoo’s staff. They walked around their enclosure on two feet gathering the fruits in their hands, and whe...

  I consider this to be my best photo from the semester. It was taken on March 6th while on a walk. My favorite thing about this photo is how it happened. I have never gotten to close to a deer before realizing it. I was no more than 30 feet from these two when I saw them and stopped in my tracks. I slowly pulled my phone from my pocket and took pictures. We then sat there, examining each other, neither I nor them moving a muscle for what felt like a full minute before they turned and ran off. It was a unique moment.

 

  Today I was walking on the Trinity River near the University Park Village area when a shape in the river caught my eye. At first I thought it was maybe an otter or turtle. I saw the creature's small dark head poking above the water, creating a mini wake behind it as it proceeded down the river’s edge. I walked along the path to get closer, now maybe twenty feet away, when I realized it was in fact a snake. I could now see the rest of its body slowly slithering just beneath the surface of the water. It was probably about five feet long and thicker than I would have expected. I’m no expert, but after some research I think it was probably a water moccasin snake. Naturally my eyes followed the snake's path down the river to see if it was going anywhere in particular. About fifty feet down the bank I saw two mallard ducks, and now I was really interested. It seemed like there was no way that this snake would be able to take on a whole duck, but sure enough it continued to get clos...

  In class this week we went through a handful of poems and tried to break them down as a group into “TCU speak” with the goal of understanding the language and the meaning behind it. My favorite poem that we examined was The Peace of Wild Things written by Wendell Berry.  The poem begins by detailing the narrator waking in the middle of the night, tortured by the worries of the world: “in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be”. The narrator then goes to what seems to be a lake or stream to shake off this anxiety, and feels at peace as they are surrounded by the nature around them: For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. I found the message in this poem especially interesting. I believe Berry is commenting on how we so often get tied up in the stresses of modern life that may not really be important when we take a step back. Perhaps he is also suggesting that the peace we search for through our day to day tasks in the modern world can already be...

A few weeks ago over spring break, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in central Georgia. Before this trip I had rarely ever visited this part of the country, and was amazed by the beauty of the lakes and pine forests. During this weekend, I decided to go on a nice walk that weaved in and out of the woods along a golf course. The walk began with a pine-lined path through the woods. While I’m sure this path would feel mundane to a native Georgian, it felt fairly foreign to me. The pine trees reached nearly a hundred feet into the sky overhead and the ground seemed to be blanketed in a layer of rust as the pine needles created an almost slippery layer of cushion underfoot. A mile or so in, I could hear the trickle of stream that had dug its way through the forest and into the golf course. As the thick woods gave way to the expanse of a fairway, I could finally see hundreds of yards in front of me. While the zoysia grass wasn’t native to Georgia its pale green created a beautiful co...

  Throughout the course of March and April, our class has been hard at work clearing certain species from areas within the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. On our first day of volunteering this species was the bamboo that was creeping into the woods from a nearby neighborhood. In every class since then, we have been cutting back Chinese privet from an area right by the bison enclosure. These efforts have opened my eyes to how real world conservation efforts often differ from what you might expect, and how the problems that threaten our natural areas are not always the most visible. When walking or driving by these areas, it would be easy to see nothing but green growth and assume the natural environment was thriving, but what is harder to see is the invasive species that can spread like wildfire and choke out indigenous species. Now when I am driving though just about anywhere in Fort Worth, I see this Chinese privet growing and can recognize it for the nuisance and danger to t...