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The bell-ringing began at 7:30 by a festive looking President Maureen Merrill.
Four-way test was recited and soon to be memorized; Is it the truth?
Gazelle knowledge and Lion hunger combined to give us inspiration by Susan Cole. “With each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the slowest gazelle or starve. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a gazelle or a lion when you wake up in the morning, you’d better start running.” Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Jingle Bell Rock got the joint rocking.
Sue Nelson provided the photos while Tom Boylan provided the words.
Guests:
Mark LeJon, a financial advisor for Glenn Sugden, was a guest.
Brian Ling introduced Justin Wilcox and Jeff Harrison with the Refuse & Recycling team.
JB Leep introduced Dave Trabor the Ambassador of Lions.
President Maureen introduced Brandon Krueger Superintendent of Windsor Schools, and Lamar Johnson, Windsor High Principle.
Announcements:
Tom Boylan was recognized as the “Powerhouse” Scribe.
John LeCave busted a tendon and suggests he will be doing less yard work with friends. He is on the mend and our Club Foundation Chair.
Maureen shared that the board is open club members and invited us to drop in for the next meeting. Michel Juric, Renee Hyde and Brian Ling got a shout out because of their work at developing Corporate memberships. We have Windsor Unified School District and the Windsor Police Department as our corporate members.
Sue Nelson thanked us for invading her home for the holiday Christmas party. There are things that were left behind and were available for pick up at the meeting. If you left something behind at the holiday party and weren’t around to pick it up at the meeting, contact Sue. Tom Hassur got the nod of appreciation for bringing Sue Nelson the Salvation Army bucket that he made especially for her. The bucket is a reminder that you aren’t supposed to take the money home after ringing the bell. Bev Graham was recognized for her efforts to get the party together. It turned out that 54 people showed up for the party, and Bev added, “If you haven’t paid your $10 remember…” Is it the truth?
Dick Bishop Holiday Bell Ringers were stationed at Walmart, including Jim Ruppert, Craig Curreri, Tom Hassur and Art Diaz were the ones that collected the money and Bill Bolster managed to walk away with the bucket, in honor of Sue Nelson. More signups are needed for this weekend, or just drop by Walmart and look for the festive Rotarians.
Pegi Ball says this Thursday is the luncheon that shares the holidays with Windsor seniors living at Bell Manor. Heather Cullen and the Vinyl Revival choir will be on hand to entertain. All are welcome to take part or partake.
Night at the theater takes place on December 13th at the Left Edge Theater located at the LBC Center for the Arts. Plan to make a donation at the door and the money will go to the Windsor Rotary Community Foundation
We will be going dark for Christmas and New Years but we are scheduled to be here next week, December 17th to hear from Windsor Fire Chiefs’.
Joe Deacon is dealing with a bout of pneumonia, so consider sending him some support with a card or a phone call (707) 806-4299.
If you would like to have an easy way to find contact information for fellow club members, try loading the DACdb phone app, which will give you all club contacts right on your phone.
Program:
JB Leep introduced our speaker by first turning down the lights because the lions that David is going to release prefer to eat in the dark. David Traber is the lion ambassador with Audubon Canyon Ranch (ACR) Conservation in Action. Dave shared it was tricky to speak to Rotarians about the Lions… good pun.
The title of the speech is “Living with Lions,” but the conservancy works on the preservation of a variety of species, including Egrets. Dave let us know that the founder of ACR is Marty Griffin who had the vision to make the conservancy work.
Lions are located throughout Western North America and all of South America. Over the eons, the lion of the Americas have developed amazing survival skills that make them unique from African lions.
When it comes to raising lion cubs, the parent is extremely protective and unlike the common house cat, when a lion rolls around like a house cat, they are not being overly friendly, they are marking their ownership of the territory or another animal.
Here’s something else we didn’t know… a mountain lion can jump vertically 15 ft. No one volunteered to out jump like a lion because our ceiling is too low, but Jose Diego was willing to stand at the end of a long rope so that Dave could demonstrate the lion’s ability to jump 25 ft horizontally; too bad that Jose was only 20 ft away from a mountain lion looking to mark him.
John Hackenburg responded to a challenge by our speaker to try and outrun a lion, which John pointed out, “I only need to outrun you.”
We should care about the mountain lion for ecological reasons. An example of a broken ecology was made when Yellowstone Park attempted to eliminate coyotes due to their appetite for deer, but soon after coyotes were killed, the ecological balance changed. The deer began eating all the greenery and their waste was introduced in a much greater volume to the creeks and rivers within the park. This changed the nature of the park and within years the experts reintroduced the coyote and the parks ecology was quick to recover to its natural state.
Dave stressed the importance of keeping the wild in our region is to keep our ecology balanced. All of the wildlife keeps our environment healthy. We were introduced to the art of trapping lions with some interesting video that showed the trap in progress. Although the trap is located in the wild, when the cat is trapped the trap triggers a phone call to the monitoring party. That sends them on a journey to tag the lion and observe the health of the animal. The lion is also given a collar that is designed to fall off within a year to allow the lion to go back to its natural state, save the ear tag.
The art of lion tracking is much like a Google alert used for navigation. We were shown a map that gave the positioning of mountain lions in Sonoma County. The map also makes note of the male versus female lion activities. Lions like to eat deer and any area with deer is more likely to be home to lions. Interesting story to learn that Sonoma County lions like wineries; your scribe suggests the connection with wineries must be in the pairing offered with Venison.
In Sonoma County there approximately 55 thousand people per lion, which would suggest you should not go into the woods at night wearing a deer costume. Lions are smart to kill a deer and then leave the entrails to the vultures while burying the meat, so they can have several days of dining. We were also told they do like the taste of domestic cats. The expert shared that they know they like the domestic cat because of the number of cat collars found.
Mountain lions are known to travel great distances looking for love, however, in Sonoma County, we tend to think lions have traveled far when they show up in downtown Santa Rosa because they tend to wander in the creeks that lead to downtown.
Dave let us know that if we are moved by the information and the work his organization does, we can seek him out to offer assistance. If you happen to know of someone with a box grader for a small tractor, the ACR would love to offer a donation form from the 501c(3) organization.