WHAT IT blog photo 62 Bruce Penn..JPGWHAT IT IS

Cricket and Sapphire chose beautiful Cape Breton Island to vacation away a couple of weeks in late June.  They biked part of the Cabot Trail, visited a couple of Provincial Parks and hiked some random forested areas near Lake Bras d’Or.

One morning they were walking through a red pine plantation when they came across a group of young women from Dalhousie University. The students were in a very excited state because they had just had a fascinating conversation with a young handsome private investigator who was very interested in their work at the plantation, particularly their discovery of the herbicide 2,4,5T in the local rabbit population.


Bookings for Miles Hobbson’s speaking engagements were robust, the crowds at the venues overflowed out the door and standing ovations kept Hobbson late into the night. All of this this pleased him to no end, but he also knew the time for talk couldn’t go on forever.

Hobbson had a place for quiet reflection, a place where he’d ask the difficult questions and more often than not find the difficult answers. Should he run for political office? Should he grow his grassroots movement and mentor other like-minded individuals to expand the cause? While sunning himself on a rockface, Hobbson saw a small creature swinging from one tree branch to another. Jumping to his feet, Hobbson determined the creature was indeed a teddy bear and began following it until he came upon a family of beavers gathering aspen branches at a small pond.

He admired the busy beavers as they gathered branches, slid into a fast-moving stream and rode swiftly over a waterfall to their beaver house. “B E A V E R  F A L L S…I’ll run for mayor.”








blog photo 54 the rabbit.jpgWHAT IT IS

A fluffle of rabbits found near Hunters Mountain, Cape Breton Nova Scotia have been found to have extremely high levels of the herbicide 2,4,5 T. Students from Dalhousie University stumbled across the bunnies while doing forest inventory work near the community. The odd demeanor and disheveled appearance of the rabbits, prompted the students to delve deeper into what was causing this situation. This discovery has raised alarm bells because the chemical in question was banned from use in 1985.

The Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests asked Monsanto to investigate because they were contracted by the department in the 1980’s and 90’s to do herbicide work all over Cape Breton. A third- party investigator, Cinder Willoughby, has also been brought in.


On Sunday mornings Margaret Brookside often takes the short drive from Beaver Falls to Ellwood City to check out the activity around the stone trestle that has morphed into a mini tourist attraction by folks from around the county and beyond. If she gets there early enough the crowds are usually thin and she gets an unobstructed view of the goings on.

On her last visit a rabbit emerged carrying two oak leaves in it’s mouth. When Margaret went to look at the leaves, leaf miners had carved 46.1300N on one leaf and 81.7211W on the other. It was a few days later when Margaret discovered the numbers were more or less the latitude and longitude of Willis Mountain, Ontario Canada.