colorado Archives - Jim and Stephanie Kroepfl

Please, Get My Name Right By Stephanie Kroepfl

Posted on April 26, 2017July 12, 2019 by Jim Kroepfl

I had an idea for an article, but truthfully, I half-assumed there wouldn’t be enough interesting things to write about. I mean, it’s a little deer. Big deal. I may never have been so wrong. These creatures showed up in my consciousness when we were passing the biggest hill of the unfinished golf course, just beyond the I-40 and I-34 intersection toward Grand Lake. There had to be fifty antelope catching some rays. Did you catch my error? I’ve been calling these animals antelope since I moved to Colorado. But antelope live in Africa; pronghorns live in North America. If you’ve made the same mistake, you’re not alone. Even the RMNP calls them “pronghorn antelope,” but since there’s only been one confirmed sighting in the Park—ever—we can give them a break.

African antelope resemble deer, although they’re in the bovine family, whereas pronghorns are seriously unique. To start, their DNA more closely matches a giraffe than any other animal, even though they didn’t migrate from Africa eons ago. Experts believe pronghorns are the only large mammal alive today that originated in North America, and then these homebodies stayed here for another nineteen million years. They’re also the sole living species of Antilocapridae. Today, they live mainly in the U.S.’s Great Plains, with the largest number in Wyoming.

Depending on whether you more value sprinters or long-distance runners, they are debatably the fastest land animal on earth, clocking in at sixty mph. A cheetah is as fast, but they can only maintain that speed for short bursts, whereas a pronghorn can Forest Gump it for miles. “Wild Earth” contributor Tom Butler calls them a true ecological anachronism because they have no predator alive today that can match their speed (except for good ol’ boys in a pickup truck).

Even the growth on their noggin is a head-scratcher. It’s officially classified as a horn, although it’s forked, but the outer sheath is shed each year, which is more like an antler. The tips of their horn/antler curl backwards and its surface’s texture resembles glued-down, thick, black hair. Unlike most animals, the females also have little horns. At the front of their headgear is a small notch, or prong, that points forward. Hence their name.

Their communication style is also different. If they sense danger, they release a musky scent and raise the white hair on their rump, like my dog when she senses a fox. Pronghorns have exceptional eyesight and can notice movement from three miles away. But when that amazing trait is coupled with their extreme curiosity, it can get them in trouble big time. A sure way to bait them, for either photography or hunting, is to tie a brightly colored scarf to something above the grasses. They will compliantly come over to check out what it is.

Final cool pronghorn fact: they don’t need to drink! If water is unavailable, they are able to extract enough from the plants they consume. I now lower my head in shame for ever thinking these literally one-of-a-kind creatures are merely ordinary.

This article orginally appeared in The Boardwalk newspaper, Grand Lake, Colorado.

Lone Wolf by Stephanie Kroepfl

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Jim Kroepfl

At one of the many silent auctions we hold in Grand Lake for worthy causes, my husband won a T-shirt. I’ve studied this shirt’s graphic a lot because it’s (1) beautiful and (2) ridiculously incorrect. The bottom portion of the graphic proudly proclaims “Colorado” and at the top is an imposing, snow-capped mountain. In the center are four animals: a bull elk (check), bull moose (check), grizzly bear (?) and howling wolf (?). Was the artist purposing messing with tourists, or did s/he not think it important to, maybe, spend three minutes doing research on this new fangled thing called the Internet? Although there are grizzlies in Wyoming, the last confirmed sighting in Colorado was in 1979. Although there are wolves in Wyoming (what do you say we avoid camping there?), in Colorado wolves are an extirpated species, meaning they no longer exist here but still exist in the wild elsewhere. Wolves were purposely eradicated from our state and last seen in the 1940s. But . . . (“Everybody I know has a big butt”—juvenile, but it’s one of my favorite Pee Wee Herman lines) since then there have been TWO confirmed wolves in Colorado.

The first was found dead from consuming poison in 2009 in Rio Blanco County, the northwest part of the state. And the second was found in (drumroll, please) our own Grand County; Kremmling, to be precise. A legal coyote hunter shot an animal near Wolford Mountain Reservoir on April 26, 2015, and after DNA testing, it was confirmed to be a gray wolf. BTW, the hunter was not charged since he obviously didn’t leap to the conclusion that he’d found a lone wolf that had traveled 1,000 miles from Montana’s Mill Creek pack.

So, will we soon be regularly hearing a wolf howl at the moon? Most gray wolves live in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin (for the geographically challenged, not near us) and Montana, Idaho and Wyoming (all less than 1,000 miles away). And, true, males who have been kicked out of their pack are known to wander for thousands of miles. But given the number of highways and guns between here and there, no one believes a large number of packs will naturally populate Colorado anytime in the near future. Also, in January 2016 the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted NOT to allow the reintroduction of wolves back into the state, at least for now. Due to the wolf’s wandering nature, I’m sure the debate is not over between cattle and sheep ranchers vs. those who believe wolves will re-establish a sustainable population of moose, elk and deer.

For a fascinating and insightful read about wolf behavior, and a guy who may be a little “off,” try “The Man Who Lives with Wolves” by Shaun Ellis and Penny Junor. True story—unlike the design by that slipshod T-shirt artist.

This article was originally published in The Boardwalk newspaper, Grand Lake,

Colorado.

My Cabin is NOT an All-Inclusive Resort by Stephanie Kroepfl

Posted on March 22, 2017March 23, 2017 by Jim Kroepfl

WARNING: Do not read this article if you’re eating. Seriously.

We’d just spend a lovely long weekend on the Front Range, and when we returned home we were greeted by, well, to be blunt, a heck of a lot of crap. The piles of little brown nuggets started at the entrance of our driveway and continued every few feet, leading to the front steps, and then moving on to below our deck. When we cautiously rounded the corner, there he was. A young bull moose, staring at us sheepishly. And then he refused to leave! He doggedly stood firmly rooted on the shoveled path we created for the dog, defiantly dropping even more shiny nuggets.

I don’t know if he invited friends over for a kegger while the parents were away, or if he somehow did it all himself, but there are twenty-five (that’s 25, veinticinco, XXV) piles of scat littered around the cabin. Honest, I counted. And then there’s the ridiculous amount of huge yellow blobs marring the once pristine snow. Now, you’re probably wondering how he managed to produce all this waste. I’m sorry, I just can’t make myself document my tale of woe about what happened to all the trees I’ve lovingly nurtured over the years. Stinkin’ moose!

While having the opportunity to get up close and personal to the poop we were shoveling up, I got curious about the consistency. It’s perfectly formed, like chocolate covered almonds or giant cappuccino-flavored jelly beans (I said it looks like, not tastes like candy). But your mind just has to wonder what happens inside a moose cavity to produce something that’s admittedly kind of pretty.

Moose, which is Algonquin for “twig eater,” have a similar digestive system as a cow. They are ruminants, meaning they’re mammals who are able to acquire nutrients from plants by fermenting it in one part of their four-chambered stomach. Chewing their cud for up to eight hours a day to break down my decimated aspens and evergreens is all part of the process.

In the summer, moose need to eat thirty to forty pounds of vegetation a day. I’ve cleaned up moose poop then, and it’s a very different consistency than what’s lying around my property now. That’s because in the summer, moose eat wet leafy foliage, which causes the nuggets to soften and glom together. The scat comes out looking like a cow patty, and many people confuse it with bear scat. (Old joke: how can you tell the difference? Bear scat smells like pepper spray and has a little bell in it.) Seriously, bears are omnivores and have simpler digestive systems. When examining their scat, you’ll find more undigested stuff like berries, leaves, hair, etc.

I don’t have to tell locals that Grand Lake winters are long. Our moose will lose up to 25% of their body weight since food isn’t as plentiful—unless a certain lucky youngster spends his spring break at Casa de Kroepfl. Funny, I don’t remember inviting him to stay.

This article was originally published in The Boardwalk newspaper, Grand Lake, Colorado.