{"id":10501,"date":"2011-12-19T11:38:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T11:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/12\/19\/reindeer-bear-cougar-close-enc\/"},"modified":"2011-12-19T11:38:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T11:38:49","slug":"reindeer-bear-cougar-close-enc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/19\/reindeer-bear-cougar-close-enc\/","title":{"rendered":"Reindeer, Bear, Cougar Close Encounters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has come to my attention that there are people in the US who think Reindeer are fictional animals. That make sense because they are associated in may people&#8217;s minds [SPOILER ALERT] with a fictional character known as &#8230;.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n&#8230;Santa Claus.  Others may know that Caribou exist but think that Reindeer are fictional.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that Reindeer and Caribou are different words for the same beast, which lives in a circum-Arctic distribution in colder climates.  As I <a href=\"http:\/\/10000birds.com\/why-robin-red-breast.htm\">mention here <\/a>tangentially, and in relation to birds, Caribou is one of those species that has head gear (in this case, antler) on both males and females, and possibly for <a href=\"http:\/\/10000birds.com\/why-robin-red-breast.htm\">interesting evolutionary reasons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, apparently Santa lost two of his reindeer on the highway in Texas recently and caused quite a stir:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"284\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2fcUZTpS-5Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At least these Reindeer did not come to the same morbid end as <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.cbslocal.com\/2011\/12\/18\/police-kill-bear-near-downtown-st-paul\/\">this bear in Saint Paul<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; police received at least two calls about bear sightings in the Dayton&#8217;s Bluff neighborhood just before 7:30 p.m. Saturday. He says officers shot the bear just before 8 p.m. Animal control officers took the bear&#8217;s body away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which brings us now to this photograph taken by my sister and brother-in-law <em>in their backyard<\/em> just the other day:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/472\/files\/2012\/04\/i-0c45eb5d3263ae800a8b93f17d308e0e-cougar.jpg?w=604\" alt=\"i-0c45eb5d3263ae800a8b93f17d308e0e-cougar.jpg\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That is not your average kitty cat!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has come to my attention that there are people in the US who think Reindeer are fictional animals. That make sense because they are associated in may people&#8217;s minds [SPOILER ALERT] with a fictional character known as &#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-2Jn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}