Date: 12/08/2017

Number: 12

For many years we've planted dozens of tulip bulbs in many different locations in the fall. Usually we might get only one or two tulips per year that actually grow. We could never figure out why. We've planted bulbs in sunny areas, shaded areas, areas that tend to get more snow in the winter, areas that get cleared off earlier and still..... only two or three tulips would grow. We observed weather conditions, historic thaw dates, atmospheric temperatures, soil conditions and we couldn't figure out why we were not getting more tulip plants to grow until......we saw the red squirrels. We have an abundance of red squirrels in our area. We witnessed squirrels removing tulip bulbs in the fall after freeze-uo from our gardens that we had prepared. We wondered if mice would also be doing this. This year we decided to do something out of the ordinary. We found a sturdy container and planted our bulbs indoors. We tried to model the growing conditions that might normally be found when someone plants tulip bulbs and watered the soil. We've brought the container in and out of the school during freeze-up time. Today we're going to leave the container outdoors with a screen on top so squirrels can't get at it. The experiment continues!

Shageluk, AK

Latitude: 62.7 Longitude: -159.5

Observed by: Joyanne
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