By Kate Crowley As soon as I saw the kookaburra, the song started playing in my head, “Kookaburra lives in the old gum tree, merry, merry old……” I don’t know how often I sang that song in school or at Campfire Girl gatherings, but I never could have imagined as a child that one day I’d see the real live bird in the wild. This kookaburra however was not sitting in a gum tree. It was perched on a wire alongside a road on the North Island of New Zealand. The kookaburra is a native of Australia and was introduced like so many others here. New Zealand, having been separated from Australia for millions of years had its own unique flora and fauna. But as soon as people arrived, the composition began to change. Native birds were killed off – the Moas (there were nine species) being the most famous. These birds were bigger than the ostrich (12ft) and had hair-like feathers and no vestigial wings. Its big size and unfamilarity with a predator as efficient as man brought it to exti
This is an amazing location that I did not know about until I went by on my boat. Sabula is truly an island city and the only one on the river. Across the river is Savanna, IL. Sabula is 1/4 miles wide and 1 mile long and connected by causeways to Iowa and Illinois. Legend has it that Isaac Dorman crossed the river on a log and decided to settle here. Must have been quite a log and a strange wind/current that day. Sabula was the site of a button factory - clam shell buttons. Strangely it was also the site of hog butchering. Originally the island was surrounded by marshland, but when Lock and Dam #13 was put in the pool flooded the marsh and made the town in to a water surrounded island. The Geneology Trails site says: Commercial fishing is engaged in to a considerable extent with about 120,000 pounds of rough fish - carp, buffalo and perch - and about 25,000 pounds of dressed catfish being shipped annually. The town was platted and recorded in Dubu
While Duluth was getting its 8 inch rain storm, the Northern Pine County area was getting 4. Duluth had devastating results and much worse than Pine County, but traveling by bike along hwy 61 today was a lesson in how disasters extend beyond the immediate storm. As the waters up north move south, they find a land saturated by the late May and Early June rains with rivers swollen by the 4 inch rain. Then the south flowing waters join the Kettle and the damage intensifies. Moose Lake in Carlton County is closed - the Moosehorn flooded on both ends of town and further north Barnum has its bridges flooded over so Moose Lake is essentially an island. The Moosehorn waters flowing south then build up the Kettle River and it meets its tributaries to make a dangerous and exciting scene. It is both awful and beautiful. The Kettle River swollen with the Moose Horn and other tributaries is the source of the water covering the town and when it meets other rivers - it i
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