The Predator Paradox by John Shivik

Author:John Shivik
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807084977
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services

CHAPTER 7

OF SPIKED DOUGHNUTS AND TURBO-CHARGED FLAGGING

Testing Aversive Stimuli

Kari Signor wasn’t much taller than the plastic bins that she bolted to a tree and filled with doughnuts. Her Carhartts were smeared with icing and spilled latte, their cargo pockets filled with D batteries. She measured out the pastries she had sweet-talked from the Moab grocer then mixed in a precise amount of the active compound, thiabendazole (TBZ). The swirl of SpongeBob SquarePants birthday cake lost its chance to hold seven candles for its intended audience, but it was going to make a black bear very happy, at least for a while.1

Kari’s technician, Dustin Ranglack, stepped lightly over a polygon of barbed wire that surrounded the barrel of cake and doughnuts. The barbs were clever catchers of bear hair for genetic analysis. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, neat, and impeccably wholesome native Utahan contrasted in countenance and demeanor with his wild-haired graduate student boss. He moved from barb to barb, removing hairs and putting them into small sample envelopes, labeling each with its date and location then filing it for its trip to the lab. Firing up a lighter, he waved a flame beneath each barb, destroying any remnant DNA that could corrupt future samples. The hair collection done, Dustin unbolted the motion-activated camera from its aspen. A quick insertion of a data card and a few button presses and they had the data. He checked the batteries and returned the camera to its mount, making certain it was properly aimed at the trash bin.

Kari, filling the plastic can with cake and TBZ, was trying to instill something called conditioned taste aversion, or CTA, in the bears. TBZ, a readily available veterinary compound normally used as a deworming medicine, was considered tasteless and easily hidden in foodstuffs. Kari wasn’t worried about parasitic worms in the bear population, but she was interested in one of the compound’s particular side effects: it caused roll-on-the-ground nausea in animals that consumed enough of it.

Kari garnished the recipe by spraying a solution of camphor oil onto the mix of cakes and doughnuts. The camphor, presumably odiferous and foreign to a bear in the woods, was to be a unique signal, a smell unlike anything they had detected before. If she could get CTA to work, the smell of camphor would cause illness. Then the normally innocuous chemical would be transformed into an effective repellent. Using such a repellent could keep conditioned bears out of campgrounds, cars, and cabins from Yosemite to the Adirondacks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.