Beautiful Lights

This is Why I love Canada.

The northern lights in Yellowknife are so beautiful, I had to post these. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves. Yellowknife is the best location in the world for viewing the aurora borealis. As the nights grow longer, the green, red and mauve lights of aurora borealis, or northern lights, are absolutely brilliant in their dance across the sky. See Discover North. Britsh Columbia has some beauties as well. There are some great websites out there to see pictures like these. Aurora's Northern Lights. I also noticed a contest at Nordlys - Northern Lights.
What causes them?
Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second.
But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth's two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole. For more great info go to Nordlys - Northern Lights.

Moose

The man in the picture is Jacques Leroux who lives up near Escourt Station and has always had work horses; first for actual work then for show at Maine's' many summer fairs.. Three springs ago, he noticed a female moose coming to the pasture and helping herself to the hay and what grain the work horses didn't pick up off the ground. Jacques said he could get within 10 feet of the moose before it would turn and move off. Two springs ago, the moose foaled(?) at the edge of the work horse pasture and upon getting to it's feet had not only the mother in attendance but the four horses. The young moose grew up around the horses and each afternoon when Mr. Leroux took the teams for their daily exercise the yearling moose would trail along the entire route next to the rear horse. At some point, the yearling got so accustomed to Mr. Leroux that, after he had brushed each horse after a workout, he started brushing down the moose. The moose tolerated this quite well so Mr. Leroux started draping harness parts over the yearling to see how he would take to these objects. The moose was soon harness broken and now came the question of what could you do with a harness broke moose. As you may or may not know, a great deal of Maine is being bought up by folks "from away" and some of them understand principles of forest management. Well the folks buying small parcels of land up in the area of the Allagash have it on their mind that they don't want big skidders and processors and forwarders on their small wood lots. Enter Mr. Leroux with his team of horses. Every morning when Mr. Leroux loaded the teams into the horse trailer to go otf to the days job, the yearling moose got quite riled up and one day loaded himself right into the trailer with the horses. At the job site, Jacques unloaded the horses and as the moose stayed right with them, he would take the Clydesdales and his brother Gaston would take the Belgians and off into the woods they would go with the moose trailing behind. They would put the harness on the moose in case they encountered someone who they could kid with the explanation that the moose was a spare in case something happened to one of the horses. The work required them to skid cut libed and topped stems to the landing where the stems could be loaded onto a truck for the pulp mill. more at..... Click Here.

Moose logging is not far fetched, as you see from this example.

Albert Vaillancourt of Chelmsford, Ontario, rescued both moose as calves; one from a black bear and the other had become entangled in a neighbor's fence. He trained the moose to pull a sulky and a sleigh. He toured with his moose team all over Canada. (source: Aroostook Republican, Feb. 22, 1978) The team of moose were an attraction at the Caribou Winter Carnival and Aroostook Sportsman's Show February 19-21, 1942.

Ben Moore's Moose In A Harness

Photographer: H.C. Barley in Skagway, Alaska. From the Donald Gestner Collection.

The complete caption reads Gertrude In Buggy. More...

I love how some people think they can pet the pretty moose.

Run???!!!!

This is the widget that I am entering into the fuelmyblog widget competition. You can enter this contest to at fuelmyblog. You can also see all the details there, along with all of the other great widgets in the design a widget. You will also see other competitions that are going on such as the view from my window competition.