Years ago, an owl living in Stanley Park began to attack a few joggers running along the trails. It would wait until they ran by then swoop down and latch onto their heads before flying off. The bird was quite particular about its targets, choosing mostly women, almost all of whom had pony tails. Experts decided the bird mistook that for a squirrel's tail. Probably, the owl soon learned to distinguish between the two and the attacks ended as suddenly as they began.
Switch now to Surrey and 77-year old Pearl Schweitzer, who has got a problem even worse than that faced by the joggers. Unlike them, she cannot run away from her attacker. The Bird 
I have done a couple of wildlife stories in Squamish over the past couple of years and both involved very good news. The first was two years ago when massive numbers of herring arrived to lay eggs in the estruary, after largely ignoring the area for decades. Much of the credit for the revival was due to the Squamish Riverkeepers, who had worked with industry to wrap creosote soaked pilings in non-toxic fabric so the eggs laid on the pilings could survive. 
Owing to the hockey play-offs, our stories have to be a little shorter than normal, as our news show is only half an hour long rather than the usual ninety minutes. That's why for this story I was unable to put in a key point about my main character. 
Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to make a number of stories about Andrew Trites' efforts to bring a blue whale skeleton to UBC's new Beaty Biodiversity Museum. As a marine mammal expert, Trites usually focusses on the mystery of why the Stellar Sea Lion's numbers are dropping on the west coast. But anyone who has visited the Biodiversity Centre at UBC can see all manner of remarkable whale, seal and sea lion skeletons suspended in the most strangely lifelike poses. Now he and his colleagues have succeeded in bringing this amazing acquisition to the now completed Museum. It has been a journey that has taken this unfortunate whale - apparently the victim of a collission with an ocean freighter more than 20 years ago - from coast to coast. 
Full disclosure time now. I have an interest in this story. The miracle of honey production has fascinated me ever since I was a kid on the prairies. Manitoba creamed clover honey sent me into the most wondrous sugar high. As a teenager, I once spent months poring over a bee catalogue imagining myself as an apiarist (that's fancy for beekeeper). But I lived in the city, everybody knew you could not raise bees in the city. 
We city folk have a strange ambivalence towards wildlife. We like most wild animals so long as they do not view us as dinner (bears and cougars), want to spray us (skunks), live in our attics (racoons and squirrels), bite our kids (coyotes) or poop on us (most any bird). This list of caveats means many people do not like wild animals at all, if they happen to invade our urban environment. But this happens rather regularly and somehow we manage to co-exist with many of the animals I just mentioned. 
We've all heard about how a dog year is equal to seven human years. They just age faster than us, they die sooner than us. People who love dogs keep replacing them one after the other, sometimes giving the new one the same name as the old one. But what happens when an old dog just keeps getting older? Well, that's the focus of this story. And I should mention - that I wrote the story on a Wednesday and it ran on TV on a Thursday. Why is that important? Because - in the strange coincidence department (see next story) - Otto the World's Oldest Dog - died on the same day we showed this story on TV. (We only learned of it on the Friday) 
Most people like wildlife. Nobody wants a bear or cougar to attack them, but the idea of bears or cougars wandering about in the wilderness is usually a pleasing thought. We like to live in harmony with our fellow creatures. We often travel long distances to see them. 
