Prairie Chicken Re-route and Video 
A few days ago a friend posted this video of Prairie Chickens doing their mating dance on Facebook and it reminded me of a story that I had shared online a few years ago.
So tonight I will reshare the story and the video.
My wife Sally is writing a blog tonight on the Central Wisconsin Prairie Chicken festival, which you should go over and read, after reading and commenting on my little blog.
Speaking to her about this got me thinking about a few events from over thirty years ago when I was an underclassman at UWSP.
I started out not sure if I was going to major in Forestry or Wildlife, leaning a little towards Wildlife since that seemed a little more exciting.
In one of my first wildlife classes we spent hours observing things like ducks and later Prairie Chickens mating.
We would sit there for hours that seemed like days observing their rituals, and take careful notes on how many times we observed them head bob, turn around, flash their tail feathers, and of course copulate.
Then we went back to campus and wrote the driest scientific paper ever on the results of our observations, (Commonly known to most freshman wildlifers as the Duck F&^% Paper)
As boring as this seemed, I did a little more research after this into what your average Wildlife Biologist did for a living and found out that this was pretty typical, and that most of the wildlife that they work with, they seldom actually see, so they are actually doing research on how many droppings they count and other such stuff.
And to make it worse, I also found that most people with this degree never actually get a paying job in their field, as an example two friends of mine that I ran into later are working in water treatment plants where they get to work with a different type of droppings.
Well after this I decided to get off the fence and pursue Forestry with a passion, and found that trees can be very interesting. Even though they seldom move, at least you can find them when you want to, which is not something you can count on with any wildlife.
A few years later I walked out of UWSP with a BS degree in Forestry Administration, a BS in Communications - PR, and a Minor in Wildlife Management.
This is a very good combination; I still get to manage wildlife by managing their habitat, and as most of us in the real estate industry know, habitat or where we live can be very important.
photo & video credit
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_Prairie-Chickens_in_the_Flint_Hills_(7469130742).jpg
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=yNqCzYYh3Hs
http://www.prairiechickenfestival.org/
