Thanks to her new Fulbright scholarship, UW-Stout associate professor Candice Maier will teach her feminism-informed approach to family therapy at an Istanbul university next Spring.
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The National DIY Skatepark in Milwaukee's Walker's Point neighborhood started out as an illegal project in the midst of COVID-19. Now, it's a nonprofit with city backing.
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An ongoing strike in a southern Wisconsin city dubbed by some the “Cheese Capital of the USA” has made one dairy production facility the locus for a complex labor dispute amid a sweeping federal crackdown on immigrants.
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“It’s amazing to play Brahms on an instrument that was among the first to ever perform the concerto,” said Rachel Barton Pine. “It not only does everything I could possibly imagine, but it even suggests things to me that I would have never thought of.”
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"It’s definitely a garden that is doing the magic that we wanted it to do," Heather Smith, owner of Tranquil Acres, told WPR.
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Skyway Drive-In Theatre in Fish Creek is one of only a few drive-in movie theaters left in Wisconsin. The owners try to capture the nostalgia of a bygone era.
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WPR's "BETA" chatted with Joe Boyd about his massive undertaking of listening, conducting interviews and studying music from Budapest to Johannesburg.
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Nick Lowe talked with "BETA" about his newest album and his musical quirks ahead of a performance with Los Straitjackets in Milwaukee.
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The Milwaukee Brewers have won 12 games in a row for the first time since 2018, triggering a special burger giveaway from the restaurant chain George Webb.
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Irish music sessions regularly pop up in pubs and restaurants across Wisconsin. These are generally informal gatherings, where tin whistlers, fiddlers and accordionists play traditional Irish tunes.
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Chris Mehring joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share what he’s done to keep his streak going and how he’s fueled by his passion for minor league baseball.
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Percy Brown stands outside the church where he grew up, Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
For more than two decades, Percy Brown has worked as an educator, his core priority striving to address gaps in achievement between Black and white students.
There’s no single cause for those gaps, Brown says. Poor teaching methods are one factor, in his view. He points to changes in how reading is taught, for example, that have been shown to improve reading proficiency among white and Black students alike.
But, he contends, that’s only part of the answer. A legacy of discrimination through the generations demands more careful attention to making sure every student is fully welcome at the schoolhouse door and gets the opportunity to learn and thrive, he says, in the classroom and out.
Brown pursued that goal as the director of equity and student achievement in the Middleton School District, west of Madison, and more recently as a trainer and consultant on diversity and equity in education as well as a speaker on other education-related topics.
Biases about Black students’ inherent academic abilities persist, Brown contends — influencing not only white teachers but Black students as well.
“We’ve dealt with racial inferiority being placed on us and embedded in the psyche of all of America for a very, very long time,” Brown says. “And while we might have egalitarian beliefs, those stereotypes and biases are still there.”
Concern about that legacy drove Brown to write “Strength Through Generations” — a combination memoir, thumbnail sketch of Black history and call to action.
The book has more than one audience, Brown says.
One audience is fellow educators — “to reach teachers, to help them be more culturally responsive in the classroom,” Brown says.
“I also wrote it for high school students that are African-American, so that they can learn more about their history, with the hope that that inspires them,” he says. “To know thyself is so key to what you’ll be able to do in life.”
The book comes at a time when organized programs to address racial diversity, promote equity to overcome centuries of discrimination and subjugation, and promote inclusion of the broad range of people into national life and institutions are under fierce attack.
Starting on his first day in office President Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in federal government and education while also condemning inclusive policies in the private sector.
Brown has critiqued some of the ways DEI has been carried out. When he read an audit of Universities of Wisconsin DEI programs conducted by the Legislative Audit Bureau on behalf of the Legislature, he was struck that there seemed to be no consistent definition throughout the system for DEI.
But he also considers the anti-DEI wave a backlash to the protests in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. “That woke up the world,” Brown says. “There was a coming together, and it wasn’t even politicized like that.”
Right-wing influencers began attacking critical race theory — a complex, academic concept — and subsequently DEI, he observes, deploying “the anti-woke rhetoric to really scare people.”
Six years earlier, however, in Middleton, “I was able to collaborate and get support from people on the right side of the aisle to try to make things better for historically disenfranchised students,” Brown says. “It wasn’t a boogie man.”
The book’s publication is especially timely, he believes.
“There’s a lot going on that I would say is just anti-‘We the people’ — unless you’re talking about ‘We the People’ in its original intent for this nation to be a nation for white people — and then nobody else,” Brown says.
Brown’s book weaves the stories of his grandfather’s involvement in the civil rights struggles in rural, segregated Mississippi and the lives of his father, aunts and uncles growing up there together with a primer on Black history.
“As a Black male educator with a background in social studies, I know that America’s schools focus heavily on teaching slavery, but this does not address the more significant curricular issue when it comes to the history of Black people,” Brown writes in the book’s introduction. “There’s no mention of ancient African civilizations, such as the Kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, Benin, Kemet, Nubia, Axum and Ethiopia.”
By teaching “a more comprehensive history of Black people,” he writes, educators can appropriately build self-esteem of Black children and also “change the perception of those who are not Black.”
Brown’s father, Percy Sr., and his father’s siblings integrated their local high school in Mississippi in 1965 after the district was forced to admit Black students. Ku Klux Klan members burned a cross at their home and fired gunshots. “The intimidation was real, as real as could be,” Percy Sr. told his son in an interview included in the book.
His father moved north from Mississippi to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1975. Percy Brown Jr. grew up in Madison, and his book reflects on the racial divisions then and now in the state’s capital city despite its progressive image.
When it came time to go to college, Brown attended Delta State University in Mississippi near where his father grew up.
A bout of spring cleaning helped trigger Brown’s idea to write the book. He turned up a paper he had written as an undergraduate in 1997 “about the need to incorporate Black history into the curriculum to help build the self-esteem of Black children,” he recalls. The paper concluded with his declaration that one day he would write a book about Black history to help meet that need.
Not long after finding the paper, he traveled to Egypt in 2023 to learn about the African roots of one of the world’s oldest civilizations — roots that Brown says have long been unappreciated.
“Going to Egypt — that was transformational for me, and in a lot of ways I think I felt more closely connected to the human family,” Brown says.
The final push for the book came from the CEO at a publishing firm that specializes in producing books by entrepreneurs.
While his book focuses on Black experience, Brown says that in his consulting work he sees parallel experiences in places where the population is all white or nearly so.
Conducting a student assembly (about being safe online) in Door County, he got a firsthand look at the way schools there are also under-resourced. “My empathy for them up there is no different than the empathy that I have for the Black kids here in the community,” Brown says.
He worries about polarization and what he calls the tribalism that divides the public.
“The things that we have in common, that’s how you start to build those authentic relationships,” Brown says. “That’s how you start to build community, right? And it’s about our collective shared stories — not shutting down one story.”
On any given night in north-central Wisconsin, if the skies are clear and the timing is right, chances are good that Jim Head and the Northwoods Explorers of Space and Astronomy are out with telescopes pointed skyward.
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A group of residents want a judge to require a Portage County farm to conduct more protective groundwater monitoring, saying a settlement reached between the farm and state regulators weakened oversight.
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the Von Ruden farm sits on a hill overlooking Vernon County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
State Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Rep. Jenna Jacobson joined Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden on his Vernon County farm Thursday to criticize the economic and agricultural policies of President Donald Trump as bad for Wisconsin’s small and medium farms.
The event at the farm in Westby came as Wisconsin Republicans have ignored or disputed the cumulative effect on farmers of tariffs on foreign imports, cuts to programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an immigration policy that has scared away some farm laborers who are afraid to show up to work.
“The tariffs coming out of Washington D.C. are hurting our farmers across Wisconsin and across the country, and you don’t have to just take this from me,” Pfaff said. “All you have to do is look at the economic indicators, those troubling signs that are coming across from Washington, D.C. Job growth is stagnating, prices are rising, and the agriculture sector is taking a hit. Sadly, my Republican colleagues in Madison seem to be turning a blind eye to all of these concerns.”
Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), whom Jacobson is challenging in next year’s midterm elections, recently said that “farmers aren’t concerned” about the potential damage of Trump’s policies. At a telephone town hall earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said that through actions such as raising the estate tax exemption for farms and the establishment of trade agreements with countries around the world, Wisconsin farmers will be able to benefit from “free markets.”
But Von Ruden told the Wisconsin Examiner he doesn’t see how Wisconsin’s farmers can benefit when the federal government is cutting programs that directly help them find markets for their products while tariffs only make it harder to export. Trump and Republicans have made massive cuts to USDA programs that help schools and food banks buy food from local farmers. The recently enacted Republican reconciliation law makes large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which low-income residents have been able to use to buy food from producers at local farmer’s markets.
“That’s hundreds of millions of dollars that farmers are going to lose because the government’s not going to be purchasing [food] to take care of the most needy people in this country,” Von Ruden said. “The other thing is, because we’ve allowed so many loopholes in the USDA, fewer people are getting bigger dollars from the government or insurance subsidies and things like that. So that’s taking money away from the small producers, because we don’t have the capabilities to hire an attorney to make sure that we get that $5 or $6 million check from Uncle Sam. Our members and myself, I would much rather get my income from the marketplace versus depending on a government check.”
Von Ruden’s kids are the fourth generation to work on his family farm. He said that with Trump’s tariffs, his costs are going up. Canadian fertilizer is more expensive. The John Deere tractor he uses will soon be unaffordable.
“We need to make sure that we’re growing agriculture, not decreasing it. Looking at how tariffs are going to affect this farm, we’re going to see the trickle down effect from that in the commodity markets,” Von Ruden said. That trickle down effect is the biggest concern for farmers, he added.
“The president has said that he’s going to make sure that farmers are taken care of,” Von Ruden said. “Tariffs aren’t going to do that. So let’s stop all the rhetoric.”
Jacobson pointed to a number of proposals in the Wisconsin Legislature meant to help farmers respond to Trump’s trade wars that Republicans have blocked.
“Wisconsin Republicans had three chances to support our farmers, and three times they voted no,” she said. “Howard Marklein and Republicans in both chambers have failed to support our family farmers, failed to invest in our agricultural industry and made it harder for those in need to buy food. This is completely unacceptable.”
The driftless region of western Wisconsin is set to become a major target for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections as the effects of Trump administration and Republican policies hit the purple swing region. In addition to Jacobson’s challenge of Marklein, Democrats are targeting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s 3rd Congressional District seat.
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The toxic plant that killed Socrates thousands of years ago is becoming more prevalent in the Midwest.
Poison hemlock is an invasive biennial plant that has tall, smooth stems with fern-like leaves and clustered small white flowers. It can grow up to eight feet tall.
Meaghan Anderson, an Iowa State University Extension and Outreach field agronomist, said the plant is becoming more widespread due to several factors.
Those factors include unintentional movement of seeds from one place to another by floods, mowing equipment and animals. Hikers inadvertently transport seeds on their shoes or clothing.
Changing ecology could also be contributing to spread. For example, Anderson said tree loss in parts of eastern Iowa from the 2020 derecho made room for the plant. Cedar Rapids estimates it lost about 65% of the overall tree canopy that existed before the derecho flattened trees with hurricane-force winds.
“The loss of so many trees and opening of canopies has likely allowed for many weedy species to gain a foothold in areas they were not in the past,” Anderson said.
Since the plant was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1800s, hemlock has made its way into every state, except Hawaii.
Scott Marsh, an agricultural weeds and seed specialist with the Kansas Department of Agriculture, said though the plant is widespread across the country, it’s generally more common in central parts of the United States. He said it is slightly less abundant in the southeast and northeast parts of the country.
Mark Leoschke, a botanist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Bureau, said poison hemlock likes moist soils and benefits from “disturbed areas,” like roadside ditches, flood plains, and creeks or rivers, where running water can carry seeds downstream.
“It just benefits from periodic disturbance, and it is the way it can grow and maintain itself,” Leoschke said.
Anderson said the plant also favors areas along fences and margins between fields and woodlands.
Generally, the plant isn’t a threat to lawns and residential yards, Leoschke said, because lawns are typically mowed regularly, which keeps the plant from maturing.
Poison hemlock — which is known by its scientific name conium maculatum and is native to Europe and Western Asia — starts growing in the springtime and is a dangerous plant.
“The most serious risk with poison hemlock is ingesting it,” Anderson said. “The plant is highly toxic and could be fatal to humans and livestock if consumed.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, every part of the plant — from its stem to its leaves, as well as the fruit and root — is poisonous.
The leaves are especially potent in the spring, up to the time the plant flowers.
The toxic compounds found in the plant can cause respiratory failure and disrupt the body’s nervous and cardiovascular systems.
Anderson said it is possible for the toxins in poison hemlock to be absorbed through the skin, too.
“Some of the population could also experience dermatitis from coming in contact with the plant, so covering your skin and wearing eye protection when removing the plant is important,” she said.
Poison hemlock can also be fatal if consumed by livestock.
According to USDA, cattle that eat between 300 and 500 grams or sheep that ingest between 100 and 500 grams of hemlock – less than a can of beans – can be poisoned. Though animals tend to stay away from poison hemlock, they may eat it if other forage is scarce or if it gets into hay. Animals that ingest it can die from respiratory paralysis in two to three hours.
Jean Wiedenheft, director of land stewardship for the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said no one should eat anything from the wild unless they know exactly what they are ingesting.
The carrot family of plants, including poison hemlock, can be particularly treacherous. Water hemlock, a relative of the poison hemlock native to the U.S., is also toxic. Giant hogweed, another member of the carrot family, can grow up to 15 feet tall with leaves that span two to three feet. Marsh said that if humans get sap from the plant on their skin and then go into the sun, it can cause third-degree burns. Wild carrot, another invasive also known as Queen Anne’s Lace, is generally considered safe or mildly toxic.
Poison hemlock is a biennial plant, which means it takes two years to complete its life cycle.
Removal strategies vary depending on where in the life cycle the plants are, where the plants are located, how abundant they are, what time of year it is and the ability of the person trying to manage the plant.
For example, Anderson said flowering plants generally need to be cut out and disposed of as trash. However, Anderson said that using herbicides on the hemlock when the plant is growing close to the ground in its first year is often more efficient and more effective in eradicating the plant.
In some situations, mowing can be an effective option to manage isolated infestations of poison hemlock as well, she said.
“Since (they’re) a biennial species, if we remove plants prior to producing seed, we can eliminate the possibility of new plants or increasing populations of these plants,” Anderson said. “Any location with poison hemlock will need to be monitored for several years.”
Successful hemlock management comes back to prevention.
“We often talk about the species this time of year because the white flowers atop the tall stems are very obvious on the landscape, but the species exists for the rest of the year as a relatively unassuming rosette of leaves on the ground that people don’t think of until they see the flowers, when it is too late for most effective management strategies,” Anderson said. “Every time a plant is allowed to produce seed, it adds to the soil seed bank and creates more future management challenges.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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‘Highly toxic’ hemlock widespread in Midwest — and spreading is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Completed in 1940, the three-story, six-wing Sheboygan Asylum hasn't treated patients for more than two decades. Originally the Sheboygan County hospital, the facility cared for people living with mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse disorders. Now, the Fox Valley Ghost Hunters offers tours of its abandoned halls.
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A researcher surveys wild rice on the Pine River. (Wisconsin SEA Grant)
Through executive orders and the Republican reconciliation bill signed into law in July, the administration of President Donald Trump has cancelled or proposed the cancellation of about $75 million in grants and loans meant for climate-focused projects in Wisconsin, according to data collected by the environmental policy group Atlas Public Policy.
Federal Fallout
As federal funding and systems dwindle, states are left to decide how and whether to make up the difference. Read the latest
The cancelled projects include money for the state’s Department of Military Affairs to make infrastructure more resilient to climate change and a grant for the Milwaukee-based water quality non-profit Reflo, Inc. to help children in the city learn about sustainability and the environment.
Since taking office in January, Trump and congressional Republicans have attacked federal government efforts to address climate change by slashing programs and withholding money. Many of the projects that have lost money in Wisconsin were aimed at marginalized communities such as Native American tribes and Milwaukee’s Black residents — putting them in Trump’s crosshairs because of his aversion to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the administration of President Joe Biden targeted billions of dollars to help communities undertake projects meant to help transition to renewable sources of energy, restore local waterways and make homes more energy efficient.
Under Trump, that money has been clawed back as Republicans have become even more hostile to efforts to address climate change. For example, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents much of northern Wisconsin and is considering running for governor next year, has spent a significant amount of time fighting the construction of solar energy in the state.
“The loss of this funding represents a profound missed opportunity for Wisconsin, especially for its most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” says Jaclyn Lea, an associate at Atlas Public Policy. “These canceled projects would have supported investments in communities building energy efficiency, workforce development, and climate resilience. The impact of these cancellations will be felt across the state, slowing progress on critical environmental and resilience efforts.”
Among the projects that have lost their funding is a grant program under the Inflation Reduction Act to help the city of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office work with non-profit organizations to help residents of the city’s predominately Black north side and predominately Latino south side connect with programs to make their homes more energy efficient.
About $200,000 of the $1 million grant would have supported energy audits of 250 homes in the two neighborhoods. Many of the aging homes in the city have problems with old electrical systems, causing energy bills to rise for some of the city’s poorest residents and posing a fire risk. The program would have also helped connect residents with programs to weatherize their homes and remediate lead contamination.
Erick Shambarger, Milwaukee’s director of environmental sustainability, says the program would have helped the city’s lowest income residents — who are at the greatest risk of environmental harms — lower their energy costs while helping the city as a whole cut emissions.
It was rolled back as part of the tax- and spending-cut mega-bill that congressional Republicans passed this summer and Trump signed into law on July 4.
“We also have to do a better job of maintaining and improving our existing housing stock,” Shambarger says. “And this was one tool that we had to try to do that, and it got pulled away. And then now you look at all of the other things that the big, ugly bill did in terms of eliminating tax credits for energy efficiency and all of the rest. And so this isn’t just one [decision], there’s a real pullback at the feds to support low- to moderate-income households.”
He adds that the grant program project highlighted the ways it would help minority communities because that’s what the Biden administration was looking for, but he doesn’t think the program should be controversial.
“At the end of the day, we are trying to help the people that need the help the most, help them save on their energy bills and help them get their families stabilized, and create better environments for kids, and better environmental conditions for kids to have a better chance in life,” he says.
Shambarger says that political instability is one of the greatest obstacles to addressing climate change. The instability caused by the Trump administration taking back money the federal government had already promised to deliver makes it more difficult for industries and businesses relying on more predictable government action, he adds.
“It is just very, very frustrating just to not have the consistency of policy that we need to address the climate crisis,” he says. “It should be frustrating for every American, including our contractors, who have to plan for the future, who have to hire workers with skill sets, and all of that takes time to set up training programs for new industries. It takes time to build partnerships for the financing for all of this.”
Shambarger is particularly frustrated by the federal government canceling contracts in midstream.
“It’s one thing to say ‘wind down this contract, and maybe you don’t get renewed, and you have time to adjust,’” he says, “but to just terminate stuff without notice, without looking into the particulars of what our program was achieving is really, really disruptive.”
The effects of climate change are here, Shambarger says. Wisconsin and the Midwest have faced days of poor air quality because of wildfires across Canada this summer. Floods have continued to get worse every year.
Meanwhile, lower-income working Americans are getting less help, “and that’s too bad, because this country, in order for it to really be great, we’ve got to make sure that we are providing really safe and affordable housing that is climate resilient,” he says.
Global warming continues to heighten risks, from wildfire smoke in the Midwest air to floods and wildfires threatening cities, “and all of that threat is not going away,” Shambarger says. “We just appeal to all levels of government to recognize that there is something we can do about this … It’s a benefit to all Americans.”
Another project cancelled by the Trump administration is a $3 million grant meant to help researchers at the University of Wisconsin work with the Brothertown Indian Nation to restore wild rice habitat in the Lake Winnebago watershed and study the effects of that restoration on the lake’s water quality.
While the project would have helped the tribe connect with a plant that many of the state’s tribes view as sacred, it would also have served as a wetland restoration project on the drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of people in the Fox River valley. Wetland restoration is a major tool for improving water quality because wetlands can serve as a sort of filter to block potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrates from running off of farm fields and into the water system.
“There’s over 200,000 people that rely on Winnebago alone for drinking water, and we know the positive impact of having better health for that water,” Jessica Ryan, the tribe’s vice chair, says. “And the community has been trying to improve the water quality for a long period of time in that area. But there’s, there’s a long way to go yet. There’s tremendous negative impacts that have happened from prior generations. So we need to keep our foot on the gas.”
The grant was meant to fund five years of rice seeding and studying to see if the rice population can be increased and if that increase can improve the quality of water, both for drinking and for supporting populations of fish such as sturgeon and waterfowl such as geese and ducks. The grant was designed as a collaboration between indigenous and western methods of science and involved a number of the state’s tribes as well as local groups and farmers.
“We’d like to have the support of all of the state and the federal politicians to support us because we see the similarities in these interests,” Ryan says. “We see how it lifts up the entire community. Regardless of whether we’re American Indian or not, we have this common core value of looking after the land and the water.”
Those values are shared by local farmers and by the large tribal communities in the area — along with the Brothertown, the Oneida, the Stockbridge and the Menominee, she says.
The Brothertown Indian Nation began in 18th century New England as a community of Christian Native Americans. The tribe later moved west to Wisconsin to avoid the conflicts over land that pushed out most of the East Coast’s native populations. The tribe settled east of Lake Winnebago.
But in 1838 the federal government then tried to force the tribe out of Wisconsin and into Kansas. Looking for a way to prevent the government from taking their land, the tribe requested the allotment of their land and U.S. citizenship. Members believed that this would allow private ownership of their land and protect the tribe.
But unbeknownst to the members, this agreement terminated the federal government’s recognition of the tribe — ending its status as a sovereign nation. The tribe continues to work toward once again being recognized by the federal government. But Ryan says that the Trump administration’s cancellation of the Brothertown grant was especially painful because it was another promise to the tribe broken by the U.S. government.
“The federal government, in my opinion, has an opportunity to make it, to do the right thing, and they have chosen not to do the right thing,” she says. “They’ve chosen to do the opposite. And I don’t know what’s behind that decision making, right? Like, I don’t know if it’s a political decision, if it’s a racial decision, I don’t know what that is, but to us as the recipients who worked diligently, we’ve complied with all that’s been expected of us. We followed the rules, right? And the application process, it was a competitive process. We were selected. And to have the government again unilaterally go back on its word, it’s pretty devastating.”
Because the tribe isn’t recognized, it has very little resources. All of its budget comes from charitable support, grants and what the tribe can make selling crafts at its store. It can’t cover the work that was supposed to be covered by a $3 million grant. For now, the tribe has kept one person on its payroll to keep collecting data through the project and is hoping for volunteers to help with the additional work.
“We had so much good in mind that we were going to do with the funds that would benefit far more than just us,” Ryan says. “This was going to have a tremendous positive impact on the entire community within the watershed. It’s not just something that was going to look after our people or a small group of people. This was intended to have a statewide positive impact.”
The research the tribe wants to continue collecting “is something that can be used on a larger model for the entire region,” Ryan says. “This is a long-term ecological restoration effort, and we are three years into this project, and it’s a really critical, pivotal moment.”
A Wisconsin filmmaker is out with his debut novel, “Tick Town,” a throwback creature feature about a small town in the Northwoods that becomes the feeding ground for a band of giant mutant ticks.
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