Last Day of the Convention

After our bird walk we headed in for breakfast.  At each place setting was a plate, silverware, coffee cup, water glass, and an egg cup.  Call me inexperienced but I have never used an egg cup before. A platter held a dozen warm eggs.  I wasn't sure how to do this.  The people sitting near me weren't sure either. We tapped our spoon on the egg to crack the shell.  I tried to pick the shell off the upper part of the egg but that was impossible.  I took a butter knife and cut the egg in half.  I put the bottom half back in the egg cup and scooped out the top half with my spoon.  Wow, that was good.  I haven't had a soft boiled egg since I was a child.  We also had fresh baked buns, salami, swiss cheese slices, yogurt, cereal, raisins, and fresh fruit.  The food at this convention is truly outstanding.  My first class was on glacial geomorphology of the three biome intersection.  The name of the class is a mouthfull and it was a very entertaining class.  Taught by a professor from Bemidji state, the instructor was so passionate and so engaging that I felt like I could gladly go back to college again.  Where the prairie, the decidous forest, and the pine forest meet is interesting.  You can have some overlap.  Sometimes a pocket of prairie is found in the decidous forest (like Parkers Prairie).  But a praire is never found in a pine forest.  And why are the biomes arranged like they are and does it have anything to do with glaciers?  The short answer is yes but I really enjoyed learning about it.  My last class was on wolves.  A wolf expert from the DNR spoke.  He traps, tranquilizes and tracks wolves.  The newest tracking devices are interactive.  From a distance he can turn on a camera.  They're hoping to get video from inside a wolf den.  He spoke about the wolf hunt.  The legislature decreed there would be a wolf hunt.  The DNR wanted to take a wolf cencus before deciding on a hunt.  The wolf census, done every 5 years, was 3 years old when the wolf hunt happened.  But a law is a law so the wolf hunt happened. Now that Minnesotan's hunt wolf, the DNR will take a wolf census every year so they can manage the population responsibly.  I was surprised to see the wolf range extends as far south as the middle of Iowa.  A master  naturalist friend of mine swore she saw a wolf crossing a road in Ramsey on her way to work one morning.  I thought maybe she saw a dog/wolf hybrid pet but now I think she might have been right.  Most of the wolves taken have been first year males.  Like teenage boys they are reckless.  Some of these wolves might have been destined to be alpha males so we shall see how the hunt affects the wolf dynamics as the years go by.  The wolf class was over and we headed to lunch.  As we packed up to go, I was sad the conference was over.  Next year we will meet at Camp Friendship in Annandale. With four of us in the car on the way home, talking and sharing about what we had learned and discovered, the hours flew by without a single second of silence.  I had an excellent weekend.