Why All The Water?

I watched a TV news item on how the levels of Lake Meade and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River, are at dangerously low levels due to an eight year drought. If it gets any lower on Powell, it may not be able to run the turbines that produce so much power for the western states. The largest lake in Nebraska, Lake Mconaughy on the North Platte River near Ogallala, suffers the same condition. The areas where it originates in Wyoming have seen considerably less rain than normal and the lake is only 40% full. It's a sad situation.

Harlan County Lake in Alma, Nebraska, though, is higher than it has been in more than twenty years. It is filled by the Republican River, which flows (naturally) through Republican Valley and meets the dam built in 1954 by the Army Corps of Engineers at Republican City (population 199).

I took this picture while fishing on the river yesterday (no fish, no joy). The Republican River is certainly not the Colorado, but it is a nice local waterway. It is as narrow as 20 feet and as wide as 200 feet, and at its deepest is probably 6-8 feet. It is carrying more water right now than most locals have seen in many, many years. One fella was telling me that less than five years ago during the summer, the river was dry - Not a drop of water in it.

Why we have all the water is not clear to me yet, but between last year and this year additional rain on the river course has taken Harlan County Lake to dramatically higher levels. It's a delight to the local businesses because the word is out and we can expect lots of tourist money to be spent in the area this coming summer. While other lakes are shrinking, Harlan County Lake is growing in size. Currently the lake is about nine miles long and at its widest point is about two miles wide. It's a big lake.

If you have Google Earth on your computer, ask it to take you to Alma, Nebraska. You will see the lake and your first reaction may not be positive. That is because the pictures of the lake have not been updated in four to five years. What you will see is how low the lake was at that time. It was low, really low. If you look at the picture on Google Earth, you can see a road on the left that leaves Alma and crosses the river. That road is highway 183 and it's really a long bridge over the the river and over a large dry area where the lake used to be. Today, the lake is back and extends well to the left of the bridge.

That part of the lake is now a large, shallow estuary and has attracted some wildlife I did not expect to see here. How in the world did pelicans find their way to Nebraska? How did all the seagulls get here? They are here in significant numbers, so it's not just a wayward bird or so that got lost. I want to fish that estuary area because it looks like prime territory for catfish and largemouth bass, but it takes a boat to get there and I have yet to acquire one.

The gulls and pelicans give the boat fishermen a road map to where the fish are. Out on the deepest pars of the lake, large schools of baitfish (shad) are continually on the move. The birds follow the schools and grab what they can near the surface. That tips off the boats filled with anglers to head that way. Where the bait fish are, so are the bass, walleye, wipers, white bass and other fish.

What it boils down to is that whatever Mother Nature is doing to the Republican River is fine with me and most of the other people in the area. It will probably also help our relations with Kansas which continually files lawsuits demanding we quit using so much water from the river. Just as California, Arizona and Nevada fight over water rights to the Colorado River, so do Nebraska and Kansas wage litigation war over the Republican. Ah, Well.

Computer Crash.

When I crash a computer, I don't mess around. I am finally up and running again after a week of no joy. For any tech types reading this, I finally gave up trying to fix the computer. I re-partitioned, re-formatted and re-installed everything. I thank my stars that I have learned to back-up my computer at the end of every month. It could have been worse, but it was still a monumental pain in the @*$!. Ultimately, all went well, except during the process of reloading programs I ran into some "slight" problems and wound up cursing Microsoft in general and Bill Gates in particular and finally subscribed them both to several interesting new hells of my own creation.

In Alma, Nebraska, of course, spring has sprung. From snow flurries at the first of the month, we are now seeing greenery everywhere. Fishing is good, walking is good, life is good, and today it is eighty degrees.

I saw a big difference last night between rural Nebraska and Los Angeles. Alma High School had its annual junior/senior prom. My granddaughter, a junior, dropped by in her gown and brought her date along, a young man named Adam. Since facilities are limited, a formal dinner was held at the auditorium downtown and the dance was held in the Alma High School gymnasium later. Lots of adults gather downtown to see what kind of vehicles bring the kids to the dinner. Now, in California, we all know that the kids rent limos these days. There was just one stretch limo here, an SUV that seemed to have fifty kids in it (probably only about twelve), but aside from that the methods of arrival could only have happened in a farming community. How about big John Deere tractors cleaned and polished beyond belief, with even the tires gleaming a glossy black. I liked the big, big crew cab pickup truck that must have been polished for three days to get that kind of a gleam and the tractor cab from an eighteen wheeler that could only have been cleaned and polished by a team of workers. I think I saw everything except a riding lawn mower used to transport the various and gorgeous young ladies to the dinner. I hope the kids remember it as a special evening.

To satisfy my never ending curiosity, I attended an auction at the cattle sale barn last Tuesday. It was, indeed, an education. The local ranchers bring cattle to the sale barn in Alma once a week and every Tuesday, they are auctioned off. Most of the animals for sale were cows, as opposed to bulls, and were brought individually into an indoor pen about thirty feet square with entrance and exit gates controlled by two men. I immediately noticed that on every side of the pen was a protective barrier like we see in bull-fighting rings for the matadors to seek safety behind. I soon found out why. The cows were brought in one at a time and the auctioneer began his rapid fire routine. As each animal enters the pen, it steps on a part of the floor that is really a scale covered with dirt. The weight then pops up on a large LED display for all to see. The lowest I saw was about 900 pounds and heaviest was just over 1700. Sale prices ran from slightly less than fifty dollars per hundred weight to almost seventy dollars.

Many, many of the cows were really hard to handle and entered the pen with one object in mind: To hurt someone, anyone, as soon as they could. The two men in the pen were well experienced and didn't hesitate to get behind the safety barriers when circumstances looked dangerous. It was explained to me later that the bad attitude of those cows was exactly why they were up for sale to the feed lots: The ranchers don't particularly want dangerous cows in their pastures. It's no fun, they say to drive out to the far reaches of the ranch to repair a fence or check out a calf born the night before and wind up running for your life as you try to work. The cattle brought to the sale barn normally go straight to the feed lots to fatten up and soon after appear as the Thursday beef special at your local market.

Nebraska, of course, is known for its corn production, but cattle ranching is a huge business in this state. It is not rare to go to lunch at a local eatery (Bugbee's in Alma, for instance) and watch some ranch workers walk in wearing beat up stetson hats, cowboy boots and spurs. A lot of them work all day on horseback, and taking off the spurs is just too much hassle when they go to lunch. My oldest daughter is dating a fella who owns a small ranch (fifty head of cattle normally) and is a member of the local cattlemen's association. They had their annual dinner a week ago at "The Station", a local upscale restaurant and bar, and she said she has never been served a steak that big in her life. She also says she ate it - all of it. I think it's state policy to deport all vegetarians to other parts of the country. Beef is where its at in Nebraska.

A source of concern for cattle ranchers is the "globalization" of the meat packing plants. Swift and Co., a grand old name in meat packing, was purchased last year by a company from Brazil. That company is now looking at buying the next two largest meat packers in the U.S., which has all kinds of negative implications for the small ranchers. They fear the "chickenization" of the beef industry. Just as chickens are now produced primarily under direct contract to the meat processors for various fast food franchises, some can see that before long most ranches might produce their cattle on contracts from packing plants, and the thought does not set well with them. Only time will tell.

All I can say is , "Wow"!

Some friends took me to the Rowe Wildlife Sanctuary on the Platte River to see the Sandhill Cranes. I was literally astonished at what I saw.

First off, my friends' daughter, Keanna, is an employee of the sanctuary and often appears on local TV to promote the work there. She, of course, gave us the guided tour and even arranged to have us participate in a catered dinner with the staff.

We were there for the evening "show" when the cranes return to the Platte to rest for the night after having spent the day foraging in the fields for food. These cranes are heading north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia to nest and raise the next crop of young Sandhills (For whatever reason, newly hatched cranes are called "colts"). They stop at the Platte for about a month to "refuel" and gain strength for the rest of their journey, increasing their body weight by about 18%, according to Keanna. It is the sheer numbers of these cranes, though, that absolutely boggled my mind.


On a fifty mile stretch of the Platte there are currently 400,000 Sandhill Cranes. We were told that is approximately 80% of all the cranes in the world. They leave the Platte at daylight each day to forage in the fields and return at dusk to the safety of the river. During the day, the cranes search the fields for leftover corn from the harvest. I have read that they are doing the farmers a favor by eating that corn: If left to sprout, the seeds produce inferior and unwanted corn. The cranes also pick through the available "cow pies" looking for undigested goodies. That's not my idea of a great meal, but if it works for the cranes, so be it.

Using 50X binoculars in the fading light, I was looking down the river at an area about the size of four or five football fields packed with cranes. I asked Keanna how many she thought were in that area and she said, "Oh, about 40,000". We are not talking little canaries or sparrows here, folks, these are pretty big birds. They stand almost three feet tall and weigh about 9 pounds on the average. Holey Moley (As Captain Marvel used to say), that's a lot of big birds in one small area.

They are easily spooked, and for those in the prepared "blinds", no flash photography is permitted. Noise is kept to a minimum. Keanna told us she regularly relieves people in the blinds of cellophane packages of munchies. The noise of opening the package will send the cranes flying. In the photo above, something has frightened the birds and they are taking to the safety of the skies.

The prohibition of flash photography means that pictures will normally be taken with 35mm film rated at 800 ASA or higher. Except for costly high end products, most digital cameras cannot compensate for the low light of dusk and dawn when the cranes are most at rest. using 800 ASA film out here means a trip to Kearney (60 miles) to a professional camera store, as you won't normally find it at Wal-Mart or Target.

With its shallow waters and hundreds of islets, the Platte is an ideal haven for waterfowl. Predators, particularly coyotes, find it very difficult to sneak up on them when wading through water is involved. Wile E. Coyote would get no meals here, even with the help of products from the Acme people.

Counting cranes, geese, ducks and all other types of migrating waterfowl, authorities estimate that 14 to 16 million birds pass through the migration skyway in mid-America each year. For more than a month I could see flocks overhead every day winging their way north. In the fall, I expect I'll see them heading south.

The Sandhills Cranes generally winter in southern New Mexico and southwestern Texas in marshes and estuaries. Life is not necessarily secure there, however, as those states allow hunters to take the cranes as allowable game. Nebraska is the only state in the union that forbids the hunting of cranes, and that is remarkable considering that this is a big, big hunting state, so much so that some people claim that the opening of deer season should be a religious holiday.

I intend to be at the sanctuary each spring and fall for this spectacular show of mother nature at work. In the spring the month is March. Keanna told us that by mid April all the cranes will be gone and the Platte River will lazily wind its way toward the Missouri without the companionship of nearly half a million spectacular birds.

What a sight. What a place this is.