It’s spring!  All those beautiful spring flowers are poking up through the earth to quench our worries that winter would never end.  You probably have an image that instantly popped into your head.  Does it include those blue-purple flowers that carpet Carleton’s campus each April?

April in Minnesota brings an entire set of new sounds—the rumbling of the first thunderstorms of the year, the whir of a passing Frisbee, the chorus of birds celebrating the end of a long winter. But there is a particular spring sound that many Carls fail to notice, or at least to recognize: that of Carleton’s frogs and toads.

Wolves and Cougars and Bears, oh my! What an interesting first week for the Student Naturalists! Last Saturday we took a trip to the Wildlife Science Center. There Peggy Callahan (Carleton class of 1984), the founder and executive director, introduced us to the animals which the center houses, which include grey wolves, red wolves, and Mexican grey wolves, coyotes, foxes, black bears, and cougars.

People, trimesters, dragonflies, and blue jays fly by quickly at Carleton.  This place runs at a brisk pace, and many students don’t take time to befriend the dragonflies and the blue jays.  They are missing out.  But the good news is that we all still have time to savor one the best things that Carleton has to offer—the Arb.

Death and Decay

When it comes to fauna in the Arboretum, we usually pay most attention to the bigger, brighter, or at least interesting sounding residents. While grazing deer, cacophonous frogs and flittering birds of all varieties are integral parts of our experience of the Arb none of them can help solve crimes.

The Arb that we know and appreciate as joggers, skiers, wildlife watchers, or recreationalists of another sort is changing. Natural succession and helpful management by Arb staff will greatly alter the appearance of the landscapes that we have become familiar with. Don’t worry though, by the end of spring term, the Arb will look basically the same as it did before the snow. But what will the Arb look like in 50 years? 100 years?

The month of February, along with bringing fresh coats of snow, midwinter break, and Valentine’s Day, also brings about Carleton’s Green Wars here on campus. While the month-long Green Wars encourages students to become more aware of their energy consumption and waste production and to incorporate sustainability into their lives, sustainability is a concept that reaches far beyond the confines of dorm walls. Here at Carleton, the Arboretum also takes measures to become more sustainable.

This past Tuesday Carleton College observed Groundhog’s Day, February 2^nd, with little fanfare.  There were no panel discussions on the role that groundhogs play in the globalizing biosphere, no chapel services for groundhogs and their families, and no Sayles dances hosted by the rodent community.  We didn’t even have a groundhog-themed meal in the dining halls.  As a big supporter of groundhogs and all that they do, I was disappointed.

Winter in Minnesota is an unpredictable thing—one week at Carleton you need a parka, hat, scarf, and mittens just to avoid frostbite while walking to class, and the next week you’re getting rained on and you contemplate busting out a pair of shorts. Weather, without a doubt, is big part of life on Carleton campus, dictating whether we’re playing frisbee or broomball, eating a picnic lunch on the Bald Spot or staying in the dorms, huddled next to our radiators.

Many students going into the Arboretum consider it something of a place apart; a place where the human hustle-and-bustle of campus fades into the distance. It is easy to consider the Arb the preserve of plants and animals and forget the very large human presence there.

As the cold air and snow set in, most birds leave for warmer climes. Even though this weather may make you feel like hibernating, there are plenty of birds to be seen, some of which are visitors from even colder and snowier places than Carleton!

Milkweed!

If you’ve been out in the arb lately you probably experienced the nostalgic feeling of seeing soft white seeds floating across your path.  No, they’re not oversized dandelions but instead one of a group of prairie plants will the common name of milkweed.  There are more than 2,000 species of milkweed in the world but only three of them are common to the arboretum: common, butterfly weed, and whorled.