News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
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"Jim, there's something getting into my kitchen, and I can't figure out what, or who it is - and I can't catch it!" Brent McGregor exclaimed when he and Kara Mickaelson were over for Christmas Eve supper recently. Then he added, "Got any ideas...?" We went through the usual list of possibilities, naming the Number One suspect of the night, our resident bushy-tailed woodrat (AKA, packrat). But we both agreed that it should have been caught in one of the several traps Brent had set out - baited with delicious peanut butter. "I... Full story
"This poor young deer is sick," Brent McGregor reported in November. "We have a neighbor that feeds deer and will not listen to people when they say feeding deer does more harm than good. I don't remember seeing scenes like this 25 years ago, before the neighborhood was settled with folks that feed (deer)." Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists have pleaded again and again: "Please, stop feeding deer!" But not enough people will do as the agency asks, or even take... Full story
Last week my wife, Sue, and I conducted our segment of the annual Oregon Eagle Foundation's Mid-winter Eagle Count. The route begins in Sisters, goes out Wilt Road to Lake Billy Chinook, over to Culver and Redmond and back through Fryrear and home. It took Sue and I, running it in our old Toyota 4Runner, a total of 128 miles to cover it all. Aside from the three bald eagles (one juvenile and two adults) drooling over the geese at the Pine Meadow Ranch in Sisters, we almost... Full story
Well-fed and healthy students are successful students. The Sisters School District (SSD) is taking nutrition and health programs seriously - so seriously that they have hired Audrey Tehan (SHS graduate of 2007) to get the new U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Food Projects Grant Farm-to-School program going in the SSD. Tehan explained "Farm-to-School turned into Seed-to-Table when the SSD and Sisters Science Club (SSC) got their heads together, collaborating with the... Full story
Birders catalogued the avian population of Sisters Country on Sunday, December 15. Eighty-two eager participants drove a total of 2,413 miles to find and identify 69 species of birds, with a total of 11,706 individuals. The count was part of the 114th Annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC), which kicked off on December 14. The CBC is the longest-running citizen science survey in the world, providing critical data on population trends. Tens of thousands of participants know... Full story
"What a grand time, such lovely music, and isn't that Irene something..." was the word at the end of the annual Christmas concert put on by the Sisters High Desert Chorale at Sisters Community Church last Friday and Sunday. One of the pieces the chorale spent a lot of time perfecting was the "Thirty Second Fa La La," by Donald Moore. Each time chorale director Irene Liden took them through it, she speeded it up a notch; after all, the singers had 30 seconds to get it done.... Full story
If there is one member of our native waterfowl community that drives land-managers out of their minds it's Canada geese. Golf course and city park managers look at Canada geese with a jaundiced eye. Black Butte Ranch golf course managers have done everything legally imaginable to prevent Canada geese from staying too long on the greens, even putting out fake eggs for the females to hatch. And Bend Parks and Recreation chased them with dogs and trucked them out of town. Geese a... Full story
Last Wednesday, Sisters Elementary School (SES) was in an uproar most of the day with scientists from every walk of life mixing in with the students. Einstein Day was underway. There were worms - real live compost worms, albeit tiny ones - in Mrs. Holden's third- and fourth-grade classroom in the morning. Then in the afternoon the worms were sent to Mrs. Stengel's room for the first- and second-graders to study. While one group of third- and fourth-graders were learning the... Full story
Last Thursday evening, 175 people - several of whom were students from Sisters schools - were in attendance at The Belfry when Dr. Tim Deboodt, staff chair person of extension faculty, range and livestock at the OSU Crook County Extension Service, presented a lecture on the presence of Western juniper in this part of Central Oregon. At the beginning of his talk, Dr. Deboodt told the audience that the only geographic location Western juniper can be found is in Central Oregon.... Full story
OSU grad student Andrew Marschel recently led a tour of three of his study sites on the Sisters District. Marschel, in the course of his research project on both the Deschutes and Ochoco forests, has cored (bored into) over 3,600 trees in the 72 study plots he has established, a key tool in helping to understand the impacts of a century of widespread logging, grazing, and fire exclusion - elements that have left the region's forests overcrowded and out of balance. "They will... Full story
Gary Hickman, who lives out in the back-of-beyond near Fryrear Butte, wondered what was hanging in his juniper tree about a football field away from his living-room window. "The story is basically this," Gary said when he called me. "A couple of days ago my wife, Vikki, said to me when I got home from work, 'I noticed a kid's parachute toy up in a tree down by the pond. It's probably from one of the kids that were out here when you had that summer party for your work team.'... Full story
What would our wintering robins do without Western juniper? All day long they're out feeding on juniper berries (cones actually), guzzling water to help digest the berries and leaving the remains on tops of cars, sidewalks and other flat surfaces. What would the juniper hairstreak butterfly do without the tree that bears its name? How about the ferruginous hawk, other raptors and even golden eagles who build nests in the very top in which they raise their young ... and the... Full story
"Single-use disposable plastic " is not a good subject to get started on with Rima Givot, Sisters High School (SHS) science teacher. She knows from current research how plastic cups, plastic straws, plastic bags, waste-bin liners and such are clogging Earth's oceans. Givot decided to provide her students a first-hand look at the single-use plastic overdose in the community. She sent them dumpster-diving for three days in a row in the school's trash, and requested they report... Full story
Last Monday was a bittersweet moment for Tracy Leonhardy and Judy Neidzwicje at Bob and Gayle Baker's Rim Rock Ranch. Four mule deer bucks and one doe were trucked from Tracy and Judy's rehab facility in Bend, Wildside Rehabilitation, to the the Rim Rock Ranch in Mike and Sue Floydd's horse trailer for the start of the deers' next great adventure. All five deer came to Wildside in big trouble, having been separated from their mothers by accident and picked up by well-meaning... Full story
All during the months of November and December, Kimry Jelen's equestrian art will be on display in the Sisters Library. If ever there was a labor of love, this is it. When Kimry was 5 years old the urge to put horse images on paper hit her, and she picked up one of her grandmother's sable art brushes and got right into it. The problem was, she was bent on destroying the brush, jabbing and mashing it into the paint. Grandma didn't go into a tizzy and shout, "Lay that brush... Full story
Logs, rocks, and woody debris jammed into the creekbed are a carefully engineered part of a big plan to bring sockeye salmon back to spawn at Suttle Lake. And, while the engineers didn't actually plan it, they also provided perfect perches for bald eagles when they come to feed on the sockeye. Native gamefish species in Lake Creek, a tributary to the Metolius River beginning at the outlet of Suttle Lake, include: sensitive redband trout, threatened bull trout, spring Chinook... Full story
A few years back, before my neighbor's dog came over and killed all my chickens, I got up one morning to greet them good day, as I did every sunrise, and there wasn't a peep from the pen. "Uh-oh," I said to myself. When there's no talking in the hen house, something's wrong. I started talking to the girls, letting them know I was approaching, but still nothing but utter silence. When I opened the door not a chicken was in sight. "Oh, no!" I said, with considerably more... Full story
Sisters High School combines science, English and physical education in its Interdisciplinary Environmental Expeditions (IEE) class - a class that demonstrates that a lot of learning can be done outside the traditional classroom. Last Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, science teacher Glenn Herron took his IEE class of juniors to meet with the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council's Kolleen Yake and Kelly Beck at the old Leithauser irrigation dam site. The dam was removed recently as... Full story
I ask you, Dear Reader, have you ever given a thought to what it would be like to save a baby bat's life? I mean a real baby, eyes still closed and wet with placental fluids. What to feed it - or how to feed it? Yeah, me too. I'd have thrown in the towel. But not Jane Stevens. I can see her that day back in the '80s when she was given that challenge. She just smiled, scratched her head, smiled again and said, "I'll have to think about this for a bit." Now, these was the days... Full story
In the event you missed the Sisters Science Club's Seed to Table Fall Harvest Dinner last week, not to worry - you'll have the opportunity to hear the father of the Seed to Table program, Paul Hudak, on Thursday evening, October 24 at The Belfry. Hudak began the Seed to Table project in Muse Schools in Los Angeles County, California. He has since worked on organic farms in Finland, Belgium, France and Italy. In 2008, Hudak founded the Terra Nova Community Farm program in... Full story
The idea of wildlife rehabilitation has been with us for many years in Central Oregon. This old writer rehabbed bobcats, turkey vultures, raptors and other wildlife decades ago; Jane and Bill Stevens conducted their operation in Bend for 40 years; and Jane kept her hand in it when she moved into Sisters Country 20 or so years back. Gary Landers rehabilitates raptors, from eagles to vultures to the smallest falcon we have in this area, the American kestrel. Elise Wolf is doing... Full story
Every once in a while, Gary Landers, owner and operator of Wild Wings Raptor Rehab, has a raptor come to his facility that really gets him excited. In this case it's a rare peregrine falcon, so busted up from tangling with a PGE main transmission line carrying around 30,000 volts of electricity, Landers thought it might not make it. Sometimes the raptor that makes contact with electricity is held fast to the charge and is killed immediately. Other times, a bird will make... Full story
Last Monday, around 1 p.m. in the Camp Sherman home of retired OSU professor Frank Conte, a death and a birth took place. Witnessed by, and with the help of attorney David E. Atkin of the Center for Nonprofit Law, the Metolius Limnological Club (MLC) was dissolved, but from the ashes rose the MBAAF, aka Metolius Basin Aquatic Alliance. According to Conte, "It is a group of volunteers dedicated to sustaining the health and nutritional values of the lakes and its tributaries... Full story
If there are any questions about the changes of water usage in Sisters Country, all one has to do is look at Whychus Creek, the Metolius River - and now Suttle Lake. Where irrigation and recreation were once the only interests in water, now projects favoring fish are everywhere. The latest of these projects is the modification of Suttle Lake dam, where starts Lake Creek on its journey to the sea. Nate Dachtler, fishery biologist on the Sisters District, with the help of Paul... Full story
There's a similarity between a pigeon who came to visit John and Michele Sanders' home at Pine Meadow Village and the famous 1942 movie, "The Man who Came to Dinner," with Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan and Monty Wooley. In the movie, acerbic critic Monty Wooley, AKA Sheridan Whiteside, slips on the front steps of a provincial Ohio businessman's home and breaks his hip, then he and his entourage take over the house and won't leave. In the Sanders' situation, on August 5, a lone... Full story
