Buffalo Chips and Penguin Poop

Back in 1803 our president, Thomas Jefferson, played by Nick Nolte, bought a whole bunch of land west of the Mississippi River from France, who had stolen it from, I don’t know, the Spanish or somebody, who had stolen it from the indigenous people who still lived there but were becoming increasingly annoyed by their landlords. We used to call them Indians, but they weren’t from India. They weren’t Americans, either, because they were there before there was an America. They just were. Still are, in some cases.

Anyway, that land deal seems to have started the great westward expansion. People who lived east of the Mississippi decided to head west and see if they could make it to California without dying from dysentery or dehydration or arrow perforation. Huge wagon trains gathered in St. Louis, blocking traffic and causing the McDonald’s to run out of McNuggets. From there the wagons headed west until they fell into canyons or washed away down rivers or something. The ones that survived made it to the Great Plains, which are definitely plains, but aren’t necessarily all that great, as far as I can tell.

Traveling across 800 miles of undulating grassland where there aren’t any trees was kind of a pain. They couldn’t haul firewood that far, so in order to cook their meals these hardy pioneers were forced to gather the dried excrement of the bison that roamed the plains. They typically hung a canvas sheet under their wagons, and picked up the patties during the day, tossing them in the sheet. At night they would get them out, light them on fire, and spend the evening gagging because of the horrible smell the chips made while burning. Don’t let anyone tell you the westward expansion was a picnic.

The ‘buffalo chips’ provided heat and fuel for cooking, and picking them up made the plains look a little nicer, I imagine. And I reflected on that concept the first time I went fishing with a guide on the bays out of Rockport, Texas. My guide, a fellow named Trey something, pointed out spots on the water surface that looked smoother than normal. He called those smooth spots ‘trout slicks.’ I asked what made them, and he said, ‘Well, the trout will find a school of shad and eat so many of them they throw up, and that makes the water smooth on top.’ I thought he was yanking my chain, but no. The guides look for trout slicks because that’s where you can catch trout.

The strangest thing is that, while disgusting and gross, the slicks actually smell like watermelon. Which is incongruent and baffling, and makes absolutely no sense. Fish stink when they’re fresh. When they start to decompose they smell even worse. But shad, once consumed, partially digested, and regurgitated by trout, smell nice. Honestly, I got nothing.

My point is that Things That Come Out Of Animals are often quite useful. Which brings us to penguin poop. Scientists at the University of Helsinki, who apparently have a lot of free time, have been studying penguin poop a lot lately. You’d think someone would tell them to stop, but no.

The thing is, they’ve been trying to track penguins in Antarctica, but you can’t see them from satellites, so they look for their poop. It’s bright pink. Really. Snow, as you’re aware if you’ve ever been dumb enough to travel north in winter, is white. Sometimes yellow, but that’s none of my business.

Anyway, scientists get hold of satellite photos of Antarctica and study the snow, and when they find pink patches, they measure them, and determine from the size of the pink patches how many penguins have been doing their business there. It’s a good way to do a penguin head count, but there’s more to it than that.

Penguin poop is full of ammonia, which reacts somehow with sulfuric gas from phytoplankton and forms fog. The fog then reflect sunlight and cools the earth below. So, as I understand it, Antarctica may only be cold because of the penguin poop. Or something. And if that’s true, all we need to do to solve global warming is start raising penguins everywhere. I’ll take a dozen.

Humans are infinitely resourceful people, and we’ve managed to make use of stuff that seems, at first glance, completely worthless. Now if someone will figure out a use for politicians we’ll have it made...

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and minister who walks pretty much like a penguin. Write to him at [email protected]