Earth Changes
In another, a large mountain lion crept along a creek, searching for a way across without getting wet.
Then there was the phantom creature that snuck right behind the wildlife biologist and his camera, then disappeared - but only for a moment. In another episode, a bear, the Holy Grail of "critter cams," hovered over a salmon pool on a remote creek, then out-quicked the camera.
A "critter cam," also known as a "trail cam," can unveil the wildlife secrets of forests, streams and lakes. These are movement-activated cameras strapped to trees, or fixed video cameras positioned at strategic locations on land and underwater. They are like having hidden eye-witnesses in the wilderness.

Map of Australia locating Brisbane, where flash floods killed one person and forced evacuations days after the city was hit by a violent storm, according to officials.
The 85-year-old died when she was trapped in her car as it was swept away by floodwaters east of the Queensland state capital, police said. Her elderly husband was recovering in hospital.
More than 1,000 calls were made to emergency services in Brisbane and surrounding areas on the east coast, which were pounded by up to 25 centimetres (nearly 10 inches) of rain over seven hours overnight.
Thousands of homes were plunged into darkness and families were evacuated from houses threatened by a landslip workers had been trying to stabilise after Sunday's storm, said state Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."
FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.
Tennessee is likely to be hardest hit, according to the study that sought to gauge the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in order to guide the government's response.
The extreme cold air pouring out of the high Arctic is trailing a weak clipper system that moved into the mid-Atlantic region Thursday. The cold air is spreading across much of the country east of the Rockies, but the core of the cold will be in the Midwest and the Northeast.
Temperatures into the weekend will be as much as 20 degrees below normal, while strong winds will create RealFeel® temperatures that will feel even colder.
The Midwest Regional News story reports that a weak Alberta Clipper moving into the Upper Midwest today will spread the next wave of arctic air into the East by this weekend, while sparking the next round of lake-effect snow to the lee of the Great Lakes.
Today, residents in the East woke to sub-freezing temperatures across the region. According to the East Regional News story, lows early this morning plummeted into the 20s across a good portion of the eastern third of the nation.
The frigid readings this morning not only set a record for the date, but it marked the earliest ever that the temperature has fallen below 20 degrees in Charlotte.
Forecasters say we will moderate slightly over the next two days, but another shot of cold air is headed for the region late Thursday into the weekend.
The unofficial low this morning at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport was 18 degrees. That broke the mark of 20 degrees for the date, set in 1951. Before today, the earliest sub-20 reading in Charlotte was on Nov. 20, 1951.

Sierra Nevada, Europe's most southerly resort, had its earliest opening for 20 years at the weekend when more than 7000 skiers took to the slopes of Europe's most southerly resort.
The resort, one of Europe's highest, had planned to open this weekend but decided to open early following heavy snowfall. This led to a snow depth of 20 - 50cms (8 - 20 inches) of freshly fallen powder.
Skiinfo.com reports that about 100 ski areas around the planet are now operational (the last southern hemisphere resort, Mt Ruapehu in New Zealand, winds up its 2008 record-snow season this weekend).
New openings in Europe this weekend (November 14 - 16) include Hemsedal in Norway, Obergurgl in Austria, Laax and Lenzerheide in Switzerland.
"Hemsedal has between 20-30 cm nature snow above the tree line and the snow conditions in the high mountain are excellent", said a resort spokesman. Half of the world's open ski areas at present are in Scandinavia where competition focus in on Levi in Finland this weekend for World Cup racing.
Because snow is already falling, Europe, the US and Canada are experiencing colder weather than the seasonal norm. That means two things for Britain's 1.3 million ski enthusiasts: the prospect of early trips to the slopes, and the promise of a longer season.
Troupe members follow their leader to a food site even though some get denied a meal, a new study of wild baboons finds.
On a scientific level, the study exposes a flaw in some theoretical models of group behaviour, which conclude that, given equal information, social animals make democratic decisions.
More practically, the research might hold some relevance to modern politics. Baboons showed the blindest devotion to leaders with whom they formed a social bond, a baboon they could believe in.

In baboon society, individuals reinforce 'friendships' through grooming one another.
"We've still got this evident bias for why we choose certain leaders," says Andrew King, a behavioural ecologist at the Zoological Society of London who led the study. "It might help us understand why we have certain biological biases to picking certain leaders."