Besides the common milkweed, the swamp milkweed is also blooming now and it is attracting various insects and butterflies including the monarchs.
Monarch on Swamp Milkweed
Union Pacific’s historic steam locomotive, Big Boy No. 4014 after two years of restoration, traveled the rails through Wisconsin today as part of the celebration the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion.
Big Boy weighs 1.2 million pounds and has a water capacity of 24,000 gallons. Because of its great length of 132 feet, the frame of the Big Boy is “hinged,” or articulated, to allow it to negotiate curves.
Big Boy No. 4014
Watch Big Boy rolling by on the rails.
This young weasel was a bit camera shy as it explored the great outdoors. And the outdoors was where it belonged and not inside a house with its three other siblings that required a weasel wrangling event to get them back outside. The Short-tailed Weasel (also called Ermine) is brown during the summer with white feet and undersides and a black tip on the end of the tail. In the winter, they turn white except for the tip of the tail. Weasels are fierce predators eating mice, rabbits, birds and other things as a weasel eats about 30 percent of its weight each day.
Short-tailed Weasel