A Gift That's Kept on Giving

Earlier this year, my sister gave me a subscription to Spirituality & Health magazine. It has turned out to be a blessing. Coming out only every two months, this thin magazine has between its covers articles from Thomas Moore who wrote Care of the Soul, suggestions on how to open yourself up to the spiritual moments in your life, ways to live healthier, goals for a better life, all of that and more. The latest edition just arrived and among the titles are an article on How to Die Laughing and another on how to relieve stress. I'm going to focus on the relieving stress.

The very short quarter page article is entitled, "Feeling Stressed? Peek at These Wildlife Webcams". I've looked at web cams before. Some of them are very interesting. We have several in San Antonio that can be accessed via the web. One notable one here in town gives you a view across the center of downtown. The city's webcams however, don't show wildlife. They often show haze. Animals are so much more fun.

The webcams listed in the article totaled nine. Not all of them worked. Here are the ones that did work.

Pete's Pond is from the National Geographic website. When I accessed it there was lots of green, bird and animal sounds. From the shaking of the camera, I suspect an animal was rubbing up against it. Shortly I saw some kind of deer arrive to drink.

The Outer Bay Cam was the next one that would work. I saw lots of fish swimming in water that was tinted pinkish purple by the light. Some of them were sharks. Sharks swim in a beautiful lazy manner until they need to move fast. It can be mesmerizing.

The Tiger Cub Cam at the National Zoo is full of information on the tigers. Although the tigers weren't active when I visited the website they will be at other times. There are plenty of other animal cams there also.

The Sandhill Crane cam is temporarily offline but will be up again early next year thanks to National Geographic.

The Wolf Cam at Bays Mountain Park in Kingsport,TN is pretty. I didn't see any wolves when I visited but there are probably select watching times.

The Peregrin Falcon Cam at the Standard & Poor Building in Manhattan was offline. They promise to be back online next spring. I've been to that cam when it was online. Yes you can see real falcons.

For a generally fun time and lots of animals at almost anytime of day I recommend Pete's Pond. If there is technology in the classroom I eventually teach in I'll take my students on a safari to Africa and let them write about what they see. Mixing science and geography with writing. Yes!