{moszoomthumb imgid=741 itemid=74 style_m=2}Remember when people thought Tom Cruise was cool? When he slid across the floor in his tightie-whities early in his career, the public fell in love. The scene, featuring a 21-year-old Cruise lip-syncing “Old Time Rock and Roll” in 1983’s “Risky Business,” has achieved movie icon status, right there with Marylyn Monroe’s billowing dress and a tearful Donna Reed in Jimmie Stewart’s arms. 

But even with the string of hits that followed, including “Top Gun,” “A Few Good Men,” “Born on Fourth of July,” “Jerry Macguire” and the “Mission Impossible” series, Cruise’s popularity has gone belly up. Today, if you mention his name in polite company, people roll their eyes and dismiss the Hollywood star as a flipped-out cult member who is not even worth following in the tabloids.

Is there a coyote in your backyard? Chances are you do share space with these highly adaptable and smart wild relatives of your family dog. You may not have seen them around because coyotes mostly roam their territories at night, looking for food. They eat rabbits, groundhogs, mice, voles, deer, birdseed, unprotected garbage and vegetables from your compost pile. They may even dine on your free-roaming cat or small dog. 

It might un-nerve you to know that coyotes prowl your property as you sleep, but you should not consider them a threat. Rather, think of them as good neighbors. They are just like any other New Hampshire citizen who wants to get a place of his own, find true love and raise a nice family. But, for coyotes to achieve this bliss, they must be social and hook up with other coyotes in the area. And, like many people today, coyotes meet others by creating a MySpace page.
 

When you walk outside these days, the cooler air and colorful leaves clearly indicate change. You can feel excitement brewing in the forests and fields as animals begin to roam in search of food to fatten up for the upcoming winter challenges. This foraging behavior is not limited to the feathered and furred, though. It also applies to political animals as they grub across the Granite State, fattening up on public support in preparation for the challenging primary season.

Life is unfair enough without having cheaters in the game. Recent sports scandals involving doping and game-fixing has left fans wondering if they are the dopes for cheering on a bunch of crooks. It turns out that nature has its own share of scandalous cheaters who rig the game in their favor. Perhaps, by examining these wild cheaters, we can gain better insight on how to clean up professional sports.

Ecologists have termed nature’s cheaters “aggressive mimics.” These are creatures that disguise themselves as other animals to gain a deadly advantage. Put simply, they are real world examples of “wolves is sheep’s clothing.”

Britney Spears’ “Dateline NBC” interview on June 15 is evidence that she is under new management.

People have been doing a double take in their local supermarket recently because they’ve caught a glimpse of the past, something from a mental montage that includes Steve Austin in a jogging suit, Pinky Tuscadaro doing her finger snapping thing, and Fat Albert’s “Hey, Hey, Hey.” The kitschy pink can is familiar, yet, as is everything else today, it’s tweaked with a new twist. Tab is back, but it now is smaller, taller and thinner. (Or have you gotten bigger, shorter and fatter?) Groups like N.H. Fish and Game and N.H. Audubon hang their hats, in part, on the profession of environmental education. A noble cause, but not much bling. What might marketers do to help teach the public about nature?

The Rolling Stone’s “A Bigger Bang Tour” recently lived up to its name by attracting 1.2 million spectators in Rio De Janeiro. But why did these fans show up? Was it for the cutting edge music? No—most of the songs on the set list were pre-1970. Was it for the counter culture experience? No—the Stones are now completely mainstream. The reason all those people showed up was simply because they were amazed the Stones were still alive (at least most of them). People wanted to see for themselves the three guys—Jagger, Richards and Watts—rock and strut as they have for 40 years. The fact is that the Stones are members of a dwindling breed of ’60s rockers, famous because they have survived piles of drugs and heaps of promiscuous sex. In a similar way, endangered animals have gained notoriety as they battle the odds and teeter on the brink of oblivion.

In a recent Newsweek story about Granite State megastar Bode Miller, the author likened him to a modern-day Tarzan, because he grew up in the remote mountains of New Hampshire and cultivated his super-human powers far from mainstream culture. The article did not explore this hypothesis any further, but if Bode were like Tarzan, then one crucial element is missing: his foster parents. According to the story of Tarzan, a troupe of gorillas adopted the human infant and raised him to be King of the Jungle. So, what animal adopted Bode?

Providing food to help deer through the winter sounds like a good thing—a little corn and some apples might make a white-tail’s day, and you could bring some wildness back to suburbia. Bird feeding is nice, so deer feeding must be even nicer.

To your surprise, it doesn’t take long to get a small family of deer to eagerly take your offerings. Soon you begin to think bigger. You buy a bale of hay at the farm store and order Deer Chow online. You drop a salt lick in the bird bath, and now your group of three deer has expanded to a herd of 15. Before long you start thinking you are a modern day St. Francis of Assisi. Brace yourself, though—you are actually more like Sam Walton. Your backyard deer feeding station has become the equivalent of a wildlife Wal-Mart, and ultimately, both systems are equally ruinous for the user.

If you have been outside recently, surely you are aware that we are in the midst of hunting season. Shots regularly echo across the landscape, and pickup trucks are parked along the road aside every woodlot. If you stop a hunter this season and ask him or her why they hunt, your answer will likely be that it’s a cultural thing, or it’s a way to get back to nature, or it simply puts meat on the table. These are all reasons touted by the NRA and other pro-hunting organizations because they make hunting sound sort of philosophical and important (see: “Hunters are cool!” marquee outside South Berwick Rod & Gun Association). However, there’s a group of hunters who shoot animals for a quite different reason. They hunt for spite.

It appears the stars have aligned to make this a nutty fall. Not only have there been some really goofy news stories, but Nature herself has gotten into the act by serving up a bumper crop of nuts, particularly acorns. That’s good news for wildlife and people because living in a nutty world has some advantages.

This fall, the mouse is on the move. Not only are the little roguish rodents making their autumn invasions into our homes, but an uber-Mouse has recently invaded China. On Sept. 13, Mickey Mouse and his capitalist compadres set up shop in Hong Kong, making a home for their fifth giant theme park on the planet. Mickey Mouse, the Disney Corporation’s mascot, is the perfect leader for the expanding kingdom. Mice are nature’s premier niche-fillers, moving into every livable habitat on the planet. The world is their manifest destiny and your house is next on their list.

Dancing is a well-proven form of communication—just think of the volumes spoken by a Shakira video. Whether it’s the fight scene in "West Side Story" or the dying scene in "Swan Lake," dance is all about telling a story through movement. We humans think we’re pretty smart to come up with this unique form of expression, but once again we’ve been scooped by Mother Nature.