As I arrived at the top, I saw the object of the birds’ and coyote’s interest. It was the separated hind leg of a deer hooked up in a barbed wire fence. Much of the meat on the leg had been eaten. There were many fresh tracks around the leg and a drag trail behind it.

When I was a boy living in a suburb of Los Angeles, my friends and I would often take a trip on our bicycles to a local flood-control reservoir. The reservoir rarely had any significant water in it, just a small, meandering, tree-lined creek that ran intermittently. However, there usually were small ponds and pools where we could catch crawdads (crayfish), frogs and salamanders. Sometimes I would bring these animals home, and I had the good fortune to have parents who allowed me to keep them for a while, as long as I looked after them.

It seems when faced with overwhelming amounts of information, people tend to pick and choose their sources and ignore much information that might be relevant to the decisions they make.

I lost a friend recently. Actually, "lost" is not the right term. It is a euphemism for the fact that this friend died. However, to be truthful, she wasn't lost as much as we "put her down"—another euphemism for something we don't like to contemplate or talk about. You see, my friend was our family's Malamute-cross husky, Magic, who lived to the ripe old age of 15 or more years.

The news article appeared on one of my e-mail newsgathering services, and I read it with interest as I do all bear stories. However, this one was especially disturbing because Treadwell and Huguenard had been killed and partially eaten by one or more grizzly bears in their camp on the Alaska peninsula.

I regret having to write this column. You see, I live near Wabamun Lake—not close enough to be directly affected by the recent environmental disaster that occurred there, but close enough to feel the pain of the lake.

Crossing lake ice can be nerve racking if you let your imagination get the best of you — even when you're crossing a lake with ice ten or more feet in thickness. That's what I was doing many years ago on the Boothia Peninsula in the Canadian High Arctic. My Inuk assistant, David Nanook, and I were following fresh caribou tracks across the lake.

My huskies seldom bark. When they do it is for a good reason. Now the big, black-and-white male was sitting on his haunches, barking at an aspen tree branch that hung down into the dog pen.