No time to sleep
Unless you’ve been living on the moon, you know by now that Arkansas is one of 15 states that will experience a total eclipse of the sun come April 8.
Estimates on the number of people who will visit Arkansas for the event vary from 300,000 to a million (it’s like deer season!) and it will be interesting to see how our public safety agencies react to the phenomenon.
Will. It. Be. Chaos? Relatively speaking, probably a little chaos, but the rivers aren’t going to start flowing uphill. Mostly just some backed-up traffic and more activity at the airports.
Nevertheless, experts are interested to see how animals of the non-human kind will react when the moon starts making things dark around here. According to a story by our Josh Snyder in Monday’s paper, Steven Beaupre, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, says it’ll happen in one of four ways. Elk, dogs, mountain lions, and rescue elephants will either:
■ Engage in behavior typically limited to dawn or dusk
■ Exhibit anxiety
■ Go about their usual daily activity
■ Do something completely novel that they generally don’t do at all
This sounds like the average activity of the human species on the average day.
Just before 2 p.m. April 8, frogs and crickets may start calling, while roosters are likely to crow. (When do they stop?) More activity from mosquitoes, moths and certain reptiles may occur, likely around your ears. Deer may begin to move about and feed as they typically do at dusk. Raccoons or other nocturnal animals may also appear at lunch.
Cows may return to barns. Monkeys have been reported to show signs of agitation during eclipses, so if you’re at the zoo during the eclipse beware of flying . . . . You know, the stuff that monkeys make fly.
And by all means, if you’re in an area where Komodo dragons thrive, take cover. The normally sedentary beasts have been known to get “really active,” whatever that means, during these events.
Some pets may settle into bed while others may become anxious like their wild brethren. Soaring birds such as vultures may act weirdly, but this will be more about the resulting shift in airflow dynamics when heat from the sun is reduced.
It will all be interesting to see. The key to all of it, of course, is to look at or listen to Nature during the four-minute duration of the event.
Some of us can’t wait.