April 1995
the monthly newsletter for people who live, work or play on the Upper Mississippi River
Waking from the Big Sleep By Pamela Eyden
Frogs and toads along the Mississippi River
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follow two basic strategies to survive the winter: some hibernate and others freeze. But no matter how they spend winter, they all come roaring out of it about this time of year. When they wake up, their priorities are clear - first sex, then food. Chorus frogs, wood frogs, treefrogs and spring peepers, all of which live along the Mississippi, freeze nearly solid in the winter. Last fall they crawled into shallow depressions in the ground, curled up under a blanket of leaves and let the cold take over. Their hearts stopped beating. Their blood stopped moving. All liquid outside their cells froze. If you come across them in the winter, you might mistake them for rocks. Bill Schmid almost did. A University of Minnesota ecologist, Schmid went out looking for snails at the Elm Creek Park Reserve, just two miles from the Mississippi River near Champlin, Minn., and found semi-frozen frogs instead. He brought them back to his lab, warmed
If you come across them in the winter, you might mistake them for rocks. them slowly and they started singing. His discovery was first reported in the journal Science in 1982. Since then, researchers have tracked some of the physiological and biochemical details of how frogs freeze. Some frogs are equipped with a mechanism that pumps their cells full of glucose in the fall, as part of a "fight or
(Big Sleep continued on page 2)
Vol. 3, No. 4
$2
Hubie and the Hawk By Lee Hendrix
At the beginning of a season on the Upper Mississippi a few years ago, we had orders to tow the tug Black Hawk with us up to Genoa, Wisconsin. The old Hawk was a comical appendage to us and our fifteen barge loads of coal, appearing much like a baby piglet nuzzling up to a mother sow. The only crew member on the Black Hawk was a swarthy-faced Badger named Hubie. He did not say too much and kept to himself, except to come over on the Ruth D. Jones with us for his meals. On these occasions, he would dive into his food with the gusto of a man who had given a fair day's work. By the time we reached Cassville, Hubie had the Hawk looking better than she probably had since they first dropped her in the water at Greenville. The only times that he would noticeably cease his labors of cleaning, souging, scraping and painting were when we would pass slowly by a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign on the river's bank. Then his hat would come off, revealing a reddish, balding head. He would mop his brow and longingly eye the tavern as if it
(Hubie continued on page 4)