Document text
53 °F Forecast | Road Cams Thursday, April 14, 2005 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Health Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley SHOP OUR VALLEY AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Classified Place an ad TOP JOBS EXTRA Ashland News NIE Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Moving here? eSouthernOregon CUSTOMER SERVICE FAQ's Advertise with us Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 14, 2005 Another case for the fish detective By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Rain smacks the window panes like the little fists of angry creditors pounding on my office door wanting that last sawbuck I keep hidden in the heel of my left wing tip for, well, let’s just say a real outdoor emergency. Just last week I got my only case of the year. A school of chinook salmon wanting to track down the rain and snow that came up missing this winter in the Rogue Basin. One day into the who-ran-off-with-the-runoff caper, it started raining. Then their check bounced. As a valley’s only private detective specializing in fish and wildlife cases, even I can’t sell the case for drought during a storm. "Damn salmon," I mutter into the whiskey. "Steelhead never welsh like that." Advertisement I tip my fedora back and spank a Pall Mall into the ashtray. Maybe this is it. Maybe it’s time to pull in the shingle. Stop riding this dead horse. Wake up and smell the wet waders. Since the Mini-Pet Mart started selling cigarettes on the cheap, there’s no walk-in business left in town for an animal gumshoe solving people’s critter conundrums. Just then, the Dell on the desk starts belching. "You’ve got mail," it says. It’s an e-mail, from a guy named Todd Y. This could be business. "My roommate said he saw an albino deer on the west side of I-5 around milepost 23 or 24," Todd writes. "He said it was pretty big, nice rack. He said there were several does with it. Have you seen this deer or heard from people who have?" What’s this? A white-looking blacktail? Ebony passing as ivory? Or is this the Edgar Winter of the Winter Range? This is better than a bull elk cowing around. Just one photo of an albino deer is worth a c-note from the Natural Inquirer, easy. The Fish Dick is on the case. I get on the horn. I scare up Steve Niemela, a wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s office near White City. I give him the 4-1-1. "We also got a call about an unusually colored deer down by Ashland Mine," Niemela says. "Cut the chatter," I say. "Gimme facts." Albinism, Niemela says, is the lack of melanin pigment that selects color in critters. "Other than that, I don’t know much about it, other than it’s not very efficient," Niemela says. Efficient? Like albinos get fewer migration miles to the gallon than conventional deer? No, Niemela says. Albino deer probably are less likely to live long enough to pass on their genes. "Something bright white is going to be more visible to predators," he says. So to a cougar, it’s "Albino deer — the other white meat." But that won’t pay the light bill. The black box burps again. Another e-mail. It’s Hunter126, a.k.a. Steve Nicovich, a real good snitch of mine in Eagle Point. Steve last fall fed me the bearded hen case, the female turkey with a male’s beard. I open the attachment. It’s a picture of a white deer standing in a field among some does. Bingo. He snapped the shot outside Talent while mushroom hunting. "This young blacktail didn’t have a black tail at all," he writes. "So Mr. Gumshoe, here’s your next case. :-)" Ooooh. Smiley-face e-mail people. They’re as bad as cat people, except without the dander. But evidence is evidence. I call Tom Thornton, the ODFW’s big-brain on big game in Salem. Thornton says his agency gets reports of albino deer in pockets throughout Western Oregon, but he has no idea how rare they are. Sometimes they’re not true albinos, but just "off-colored." Off-colored? Like telling pope jokes at the Vatican? No, he says. Deer with patches of white or gray in their hides. "It’s a recessive genetic trait," Thornton says. "Maybe you need a doctor or someone who’s studied these." Thornton’s right. When it comes to weird animals, there’s only one source. I call the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s national forensics laboratory in Ashland. I find mammologist Bonnie Yates, an animal encyclopedia dressed in a lab coat. She’s cracked more critter-capers for me than all my other snitches combined. She says albinism is caused by recessive genes that not only leave the hair white but also create genetic complications in their organs and damage eyesight. "It can happen in anything — hawks, rattlesnakes and hummingbirds," Yates says. "But it remains to be seen if it’s a true albino." Whattyamean, I say. That this is some sort of prank? Just some blacktail with a bad dye job? True albinos have pink eyes and noses, Yates says. Other, non-albino animals can have white fur but black noses and black eyes. I check the photo. Black eyes, all right. "That’s called a leucistic deer," Yates says. "They have fewer recessive genes in that complex (set of genes) that controls color." So, it’s not the blacktail version of Edgar Winter. It’s the ungulate equivalent of Michael Jackson. "It’s just a different genetic expression of color," she says. But there’s no green to be made with leucistic deer. Even though they could be just as rare as albinos, I bet nobody even knows they exist, let alone bother to pay for the info. "Everybody needs a new word," Yates says. "The word of the day is leucism. "Let’s hear it for leucism," she says. Case closed. I hang up. The drought is starting to seep through the window and puddle on the floor. I stick a bucket beneath the leak. When the bucket’s full, I’ll stick it in the freezer until the ice has that nice white hue to it. Then maybe I’ll sell it to those check-bouncing chinook. "Leucistic water," I’ll say. "Helps keep your bellies nice and white without blurring your vision." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback Student Loan Consolidation Conference Calls - $50/Month Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker, Trunk, Footlockers home equity loans helzberg Distance Education Diamonds Slippers Student Loans afsa teleconferencing Memory Foam Mattress w2 forms Tatoo Fasa Advertisement s