Pubs, Beer And Deer

You say the long winter nights can be boring, with little interesting on TV — try a sip of Science on TAP!

- Jamie Howell

Thursday night rolls around again. You could certainly settle onto the couch for another dose of Thursday Night Football with your bowl of excess calories to wash down with a couple bottles of the same. OR …

You could go learn something.

What has anyone ever learned from Thursday Night Football anyway, besides perhaps the fact that the Seahawks have recently resorted to relying on luck to win football games?

What if I told you, you could still enjoy a relaxing Thursday evening beverage, but come out smarter on the other end?

There appears to be a minor trend emerging wherein local brewpubs are opening their barstools for more intellectual endeavors.

Last month, I reported on Leavenworth’s hilarious yet informative liquored up Tipsy Talks. This month, I thought I’d try something slightly (just slightly) more sober.

“Science on TAP!,” a series presented by the non-profit Wenatchee River Institute (WRI), brings experts in the natural sciences to drinking establishments near you.

On a recent Thursday evening, I joined a small gathering of lifelong learners at the Badger Mountain Brewing Company in Wenatchee to learn about deer over a beer.

The evening’s featured speaker, Von Pope, Senior Wildlife Biologist for the Chelan County PUD, had been coaxed away from his observation points and data sets for the evening by the fine folks at WRI in order to share with us just how tricky life can be for the gentle mule deer of Chelan County.

Our resident population of doe-eyed quadrupeds, Von explained, face more hurdles than Edwin Moses at the ’84 Olympics.