Bill Stouffer: Not a cat guy.

​State senator Bill Stouffer fancies himself a rugged S.O.B.

In campaign photos, the central Missouri Republican likes to pose in western wear with farm equipment in the background. He boasts in his online biography of being a gun-rights advocate and the "first transportation chair to have driven the state's roads in a car, tractor, and a semi." And there's nothing an Alpha male like Stouffer enjoys better than keeping lesser species in their place, be they homosexuals, welfare recipients, abused puppies or -- now -- mountain lions.
More >>

swbg-conservationfund.org

Virginia Busch during her days with Busch Gardens and SeaWorld.

​It seems there are two types of folks in the Busch family. The colorful ones whose dalliances, excesses and questionable behavior (Gussie and August IV come to mind) capture headlines. And everyone else.

Virginia Busch falls squarely in the latter category. So obscure is this member of St. Louis' first family that we here at Daily RFT had to Google her name when we heard she'd just been tapped to serve as the executive director of the Endangered Wolf Center in west St. Louis County.

Turns out that "Ginny," as the 32-year-old is also known, is the daughter of former Anheuser-Busch chairman August Busch III and Virginia Lee Wiley (who also goes by "Ginny") and the half-sister of the infamous August Busch IV. She is also exactly what the Endangered Wolf Center was looking for, says Rachel Broom, the organization's director of development.
More >>

via NOAA.gov

January weather, I am disappoint.

​The National Weather Service predicts a high temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit today, which would set a new record high for January 30 in St. Louis (the current record is 67 degrees, set in 1884.)

This is complete bullshit.

All weekend long, people were gushing about the beautiful weather while they walked dogs, played Frisbee in the park and washed cars. All of those assholes can go screw, because January in St. Louis is supposed to be cold and nasty -- and that's just how I like it, because I am cold and nasty.
More >>

WGN this morning aired a segment on subliminal messages in weather reports. The image below was allegedly used to illustrate an ice storm that hit the Midwest a year or two ago.
 
​Groused a reader today at Chicagoist, which also linked to the image, "As usual, all the best [weather] is south of Chicago."

Mo. Dept. of Conservation

​Thought: University of Missouri should really change its mascot from the tigers to the mountain lions.

In the past 14 months there have been 17 confirmed sightings of the big cats in Missouri, with this week's run-in with a mountain lion the most convincing confirmation yet.

It happened Wednesday when a trapper in southeastern Missouri went to check on a cage he left in the Mark Twain National Forest about 130 miles south of St. Louis. Wayne Henson usually finds bobcats, raccoons and coyotes in his trap. In place of those animals this week was a 122 pound cougar.
More >>

​If you thought last year seemed a bit hotter than normal, guess what? You were right!

According to the National Weather Service, last year's average temperature of 58.7 degrees was tied for fourth as the warmest year on record. The summer months of June, July and August were also the fourth-warmest on record (dating to 1874), with an average temperature of 81.9 degrees. In 2011 St. Louis had 15 days with high temperatures equaling or exceeding 100 degrees.

Other fun facts from the National Weather Service's report:
More >>

In case you don't get out of bed by 11 a.m., here's what it looked like.

​It's official. December 27 is the fist snowfall of the 2011-2012 winter. St. Louis picked up about an inch of extremely wet, white-stuff overnight.

It won't last long.

Temperatures are expected to reach the mid-40s today under partly sunny skies and get even warmer later in the week. No more snow is predicted for the next 10 days, according to the RFT's "Doppler radar," ie. weather.com. 

A drawing shows a keel boat tossed by waves from the tremor. Despite the magnitude of the earthquakes, few people died because the population in the area was so sparse at the time.

​Seismologists don't know for sure the magnitude of the earthquake that rocked Missouri at around 2:15 a.m. December 16.

Some believe the quake would have registered around 7.7 had anyone back then had a seismograph handy. Others say the tremor was the equivalent of 32 megatons of dynamite or roughly 2,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Nearly all scientists agree, though, that the earthquake was one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) to strike America since European settlement.

And that first tremor (strong enough to jostle people out of bed as far away as New York City) was just the beginning. Five hours later the first aftershock, an estimated 7.0 magnitude quake, sent more shock waves across the nation. Another quake, estimated at 7.5 on the Richter scale, struck on January 23, 1812. A final aftershock on February 7 (estimated to be the same magnitude of the original earthquake) destroyed the town of New Madrid and knocked down homes in St. Louis.
More >>

Saint Louis Zoo

The Missouri hellbender. It's a hell-bender, all right.

​Some call them snot otters, others old lasagna sides, grampus and devil dogs, but we prefer the colloquial term hellbender. If you're going to name a salamander, you might as well make it sound way more badass than it is.

Hellbenders live in Missouri's rivers. Or, rather, they used to live in Missouri's rivers. But the pollution started getting to them.

"Capillaries near the surface of the hellbender's skin absorb oxygen directly from the water -- as well as hormones, heavy metals and pesticides,"
explained Jeff Ettling, Saint Louis Zoo's curator of herpetology and aquatics.

All that shit killed off most of the hellbenders. Only 600 remain alive in the wild, making them a lock for the endangered species list. Since hellbenders are generally considered a bellwether of the general health and cleanliness of our waterways, the Zoo and the Missouri Department of Conservation decided it would be in the best interest of Missouri's humans to bring back the hellbender.

And so they did. Sort of. Over the past two weeks, 63 baby hellbenders have hatched at the zoo's Ron Goellner Center for Hellbender Conservation. They are the first hellbenders ever spawned in captivity. And zoo officials promise there are 120 fertilized eggs left to go! But it will be several years before they can go back into the wild.

More >>

Missouri Department of Conservation

Is this majestic creature a male or female? And, more important, can it get down and rap?

​The Missouri Department of Conservation is super-dope these days. First there's the bidness with the gender-bending deer, which is totally down with the brave new world of ambiguous sexuality. And then there's the winter rap, yo! Or should we say, doe!

The MDC gets minor props for the first line of its press release about the deer by referencing "Lola" by the Kinks -- about gender-bending, yes, but an older song and not obscure enough to please the hipsters and, dude, it ain't no rap. But the deer -- the deer...

During this fall's near-record deer shootout, hunters came across five female deer with antlers. If you've ever seen Bambi, you will know this is not normal. One of the deer was a full ten-pointer, another a nine-pointer. That's some serious antler-age. The MCD consulted its deer specialist, who has three possible theories:

More >>