Casey Anderson

Spring is in the air. The snow’s melting, the grass is greening—and the bears are waking up. Hungry and guided by an incredible sense of smell, they’ll search for roots, rodents, and winter-killed carcasses. But they’ll also find garbage, bird feeders, pet food, and anything else we forget to secure. If you live in bear country, now’s the time to get ahead of the season. Add bear-proofing to your spring cleaning checklist. Lock up your attractants, secure your trash, and help keep bears wild—and out of trouble. Coexistence starts with us. #BearCountry #SpringCleaning #KeepBearsWild #Coexistence #BearAware

High in the Himalayas, at 15,000 feet, a silent game unfolds. The Eurasian lynx—ghostly, powerful, and patient—moves with quiet precision among wind-carved boulders and deep snowdrifts. It’s hunting the woolly hare, a master of disguise in its own right. Both predator and prey are sculpted by altitude and snow, evolved for survival where oxygen is thin and the cold is relentless. The lynx’s massive, fur-padded paws act like snowshoes, spreading its weight and allowing it to move almost silently atop the crust. Its thick coat, spotted for camouflage, blends perfectly with rock and snow. The woolly hare, in turn, has long hind legs for powerful bursts across tricky terrain and dense, seasonal fur that turns white in winter and gray in summer, helping it vanish into the background. Out here, it’s not just a hunt. It’s a test of who disappears better, who leaps faster, and who has adapted best to life on the roof of the world.

While most people in the Terai forests of southern Nepal tuck themselves away at night — knowing the jungle belongs to the leopards, tigers, and ghosts of the dark — we did the opposite. One night, instead of searching for the big predators, we turned our attention to the small ones. I fired up my ultrapilot light — a gift from my wife — and lit up the leaf-littered forest floor. Out of the tree bark and along the ground, the forest came alive. Three species of scorpions haunt these woods: Heterometrus spinifer, Heterometrus petersii, and Isometrus maculatus. Normally invisible, but under ultraviolet light, they blazed neon green, their exoskeletons reflecting the light like something pulled from a dream — or a nightmare. Why do scorpions glow? Scientists aren’t entirely sure, but their armor contains compounds that fluoresce under UV light. And when that beam hit the jungle floor, it wasn’t just scorpions — spider eyes gleamed, fungus lit up like embers, even minerals in rocks pulsed with hidden color. Out there, in the black of night, we witnessed a secret world few ever see — a place where the little predators rule and the forest breathes with its own eerie light. Would you risk it? Step into the night to see what really owns the darkness?