Day 339: I'd reached my tolerance for being pent up indoors, so on the excuse of blog photography and the possibility of mushrooms, I headed up the road at a slower-than-usual pace. I did not find 'shrooms of any sort, nor did I find the fireweed which would have given me a reason to discuss fire ecology as it relates to certain plants, and by the time I'd straggled back home again, I'd decided that staying indoors wasn't such a bad idea after all. Yeah, won't do that again any time soon. Much as I hate to admit that I'm in a "sensitive group," them's the facts. That said, we think of smoky air in terms of ourselves as humans, but the critter community is no better adapted to breathe it than we are, and among the birds, the beasts and the bugs there are also sensitive individuals. How do your pets cope with this? Do you have, as I do, a cat with a heart murmur? Do you have a dog whose age or obesity makes breathing more difficult than it would be for a healthy puppy? Nor are these populations the only ones to suffer. Smoke particulates can accumulate on leaves, blocking the stomata which allow plants to "breathe." Returning from my brief smoke-walk, my skin feels oily, my hair feels weighted, and if my breathing is somewhat more shallow and laboured at the moment, my lungs will clear themselves after a few hours indoors. The chickadees and nuthatches, the cattle in the pasture, the very trees around my home don't have much choice.
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