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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories
about the people, places and issues that make up
life in our state.
This week meet a man with a passion
for lots of pasta.
Discover a hotel of sorts for the
nocturnal crowd and get an up close look into
the hidden world of hibernation.
Stay with us for all this and more in
Wisconsin. Major funding for In Wisconsin is
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Alliance Energy offering energy
saving ideas on the web.
We begin this week with our continuing wherein
Wisconsin series of issue reports.
Last week we told you about a clinic in
Ashwabanan that's offering discounted medical care.
The clinic hopes to attract people who don't have
insurance and people with medical savings accounts or
MSAs. MSAs are a new type of medical coverage intended
in part to make patients more price conscious when
seeking medical care.
This week reporter Art Hackett
meets the owner of a small business near Green Bay who's
eyeing MSAs as a possible alternative to providing
employees with health insurance coverage.
Professional landscape management and
Howard has been in business for 15 years.
From the beginning co-owner,
Eldry Galdonson, says she felt a moral obligation to
provide her 20 employees with health insurance.
It's the right thing to do to
offer this health insurance to these people.
These people are college graduates, they
work hard.
Why should they be in an industry that you
know they just have no health insurance?
You go on your own.
When the business started, Zahn says insurance
per employee cost about $185 a month.
Now it's close to $1,000 a month.
We compete against other companies in this industry,
in the landscape industry, who don't offer health
insurance. So when we go out to do a bid, that price is
built into our price and we're competing against this company
who's not offering these things and so it gives us
a disadvantage.
So Zahn says the company started
offering her employees like Francis Nice, Dan Rushlow
and Carl Zeig a deal.
A $200 a month bonus if they
would drop their insurance.
This was accepted mostly by employees who could go on
their spouses' health plans.
I'm on my wife's policy.
She works for a large employer that still offers,
I wouldn't say it reads the most price but it's
it's better than what we were getting here.
The coverage isn't very good.
It's not the answer but it's it's I
guess it's the most affordable for us.
But this says the effect of shifting the
burden of health care to another company.
It's not fair that the other employers have
to pay in a perfect world.
I guess we each have our own insurance but they consider
us families so for one employer to pick up that
the best we can do I guess.
Zahn says insurance costs are still putting her
firm at a competitive disadvantage.
She's now considering going to a very
high deductible policy and giving employees a thousand
dollars a year in cash to fund a medical savings
account. That money could pay for out of pocket expenses.
Carl Zeig thinks that might bring down the cost of
care. The doctors will bring your the cost down as long
as your pain cash for the for the routine visits.
I would like to have a plan
just like the Congress have because they have a very
good medical plan and us taxpayers are paying for
it and why can't we get a program just like it.
Morely and ethically yes there
should be socialized medicine.
There should be universal health care.
Everybody should be entitled to the same
health care.
But that's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen today.
What works today of where I am
today where my bottom line is to keep my business
going and to do the best I can for my employees right
now. This is the answer.
For more on the topic of health care coverage this
campaign season tune in to here and now on Friday night
at 7th.
Here and now we'll feature a reality check of
campaign ads by US Senate candidates Russ Fine
Gold and Tim Michaels that discuss health care.
You can also find more information
about the candidates on Wisconsin vote dot or G.
We travel now a little farther
north last winter in the NICOLAY National Forest
researchers took on 180 pounds of slumbering black bear.
It's never a good idea to disturb a hibernating bear
but in this case the bear may be the better for losing
a bit of shut eye.
Producer Joanne Garrett says the
point of disturbing its sleep was to gather information
that can help wildlife experts understand and
protect black bears.
February Forest County and a search is underway deep
in the woods they find it.
That's not the mother.
The mother.
Veterinary Crescats of two rivers.
Relays the news to the research
crew. The object of their search their slumbering subject
180 pound female bear.
Den below a foot of snow has babies.
And how do you approach a 180 pound bear with babies?
Quietly. Keep that light right there.
Okay we got a good injection.
Good injection.
Mark the time.
In five minutes the slumbering bear is a sedated
bear and cats in the crew.
Co-researcher Dr.
Bob Howe of the University
of Wisconsin Green Bay Dr.
Amy Wolf and he Heinecote Aaron Wonderland
and veterinary student Nicole Wallachewski.
Dig in to grab as much information as they can
during the roughly hour long window of anesthesia.
First up check the change in the soundtrack.
The sure of his safety Aaron descends into the den.
She's right.
That's fine.
She'll you on.
Don't sweat the on it.
And the extraction begins first out the babies.
Move that big one big boy.
All you doing.
Yeah. Unhappy babies.
Many babies.
Hi hello.
And that's for 80.
I love in a four cub den.
I have loving this.
Anymore we're going to stop it
for her her skull.
The Cubs are portable.
It takes a little more muscle to move mom.
Now you just do the airway and I can get her
out ready one two three.
And helping one two three.
This is a mother low.
And nearly everyone, including the TV crew
is pressed into service.
Cubs sitting while the researchers begin to work
on mom.
What follows is the knowledge grab.
The knowledge game for this black bear research project.
A cooperative venture
between the US Forest Service, the University of
Wisconsin Green Bay and Veterinarian Chris Katz.
Works. Okay.
Excellent. To reel in this data
they cast a wide net.
They garnered basic information.
Weight is one.
180. They go for the high tech.
You can do her temperature and pulse
ox in a mile.
In a research first.
You have pulse ox of 91.
Love in that.
They brought a portable EKG machine to test the
effectiveness and safety of different anesthetics
on these animals in a while.
I'm going to start running EKG strips.
They draw blood pressure off the net.
No, you keep it there.
And the samples will be sent to
nine different labs across the country and
tested for 21 different diseases.
Because bears are the big omnivores of
the forest, they may be particularly vulnerable
to environmental contaminants like lead,
panic or mercury.
Those tests will be added to the vast tally
taken on this animal.
And if we're going to do this research and if
we're going to lay this bear down and have
to disrupt this whole thing, we're going to get as
much information as we can this time.
We're not going to have five studies
that are going to go on for 25 years and disrupt
these bears all the time.
So we're going to get all of our blood data.
We're going to do our EKG data.
We're going to check the Schirmertier test.
We're going to put the good equipment, get good data
and do it once and do it right.
Good equipment like these GPS colors.
Another high tech advance.
It takes a reading every two hours and
leaves an electronic trail of the bears movements.
Cats believes and hopes the study will show
that unknown to us black bears and people cross
paths quite often.
And as a bear researcher
of many years standing, he believes that
intersection need not be a fearful one.
Bears know how to live in the forest as people
that have problems sometimes when they move
into places like this and they're not used to bears
and they always have to do a teach them about
bears and how you can live with bears.
And I think they'll be able to
coexist very easily.
His best advice to keep bears at bay,
don't invite them to dinner.
Keep your yard clean.
Bird feeders, they love bird feeders.
They love garbage.
They love dog food.
If you can keep those few things out of your yard and
keep your garage closed so that they can't get into your garage,
you're not going to have a bear.
And if they do arrive, disinvite them.
You know a bear comes into your yard because everybody
runs into house and hides and it's like, wow, this
is pretty easy.
Foods here, people run away.
It's great.
So he comes back because it's probably sweet
and the slices are thick.
So, but if when he shows up in the yard, you get out
there with some tennis balls and take the tennis hands,
smack them tennis balls in them, clang some pads and pans
together, chase them out of there.
You know, he's not going to come
back. He's going to go, wow, I'll find something
somewhere else.
The collar will track the rambling of this
mom and her family.
It's an infallible research
tool and one that costs thousands of dollars.
A tough price tag for this all volunteer project
with a shoestring budget.
It's all privately funded.
We don't get any money from the department of natural resources.
The project is paid for by people like Ali Delacoletti.
Yeah, well, donate money and in return get a
chance to visit one of the rare places on earth
and occupied Bear Den.
This is really a unique experience.
You can go to Rubar, you can go to Mazidland
or something, you can go there any year.
But coming out here and doing a Bear Den is really pretty
interesting and pretty unique.
I can't get it tight enough.
It's truly a place very few people go.
The Bear Human Intersection made possible through this project.
For Ali, it was money well spent.
I actually got the money through a well.
My mother passed away from cancer a couple years
ago and she's always been interested in wildlife and
I took some of the money that I got from her and
decided to donate.
I've always been interested in nature and stuff like that
and my mom has always been interested.
So this is just kind of an homage to her.
I actually brought tears in my eyes.
I mean, how many times am I going to get to
hold a little tiny bear cub?
I just kept thinking of my mom and kept thinking, "Oh,
I wish she could be here."
The cubs are returned.
The den is covered.
One final task remains.
The last thing we do is thank the Bear for letting us come in
and disrupt his winter sleep.
This is a Native American tradition of gifting of tobacco.
And we put a small bit of tobacco in the center
that represents our bear.
And we make a circle of tobacco around that, representing
the knowledge that we currently have of bears.
And we have some spots outside.
The circle and that's where we're hoping this bear will
take us to one of those points of knowledge beyond the circle.
Dr. Katz obviously has a passion for black bears.
While the man in our next story has a passion
for a much smaller and nocturnal creature, the bat.
Kent Bortreding is something of a bathouse architect and
producer Liz Kurner found his wooden welcome math
on display at Yellowstone State Park in Lafayette County.
Campers at Yellowstone Lake State Park in Lafayette
County don't worry much about mosquitoes.
That's because the park has a large population of bats.
Bats made right at home by Kent Bortreding and his wife Jane.
Bats are just so interesting, so fascinating.
Bortreding put up bat houses here in 1995.
He visits weekly to document every detail of
their use, what size, shape and temperature bats prefer.
Bortreding is experimenting with nine different bathouse
designs. Since 1995, he's installed 32 houses at the park.
He estimates there are 4,000 bats who call his houses home.
He says he put up the houses because bats are in serious
decline all across America.
A decline caused by humans.
It's just a loss of habitat.
Bats used to use trees almost to 100%.
And then as man tore the trees down, why they moved into
buildings and now especially in this area, there's so
many old farm buildings and that being tore down.
And of all bats enemies, man is their worst enemy.
They're one of the most endangered lamb
mammal in North America.
In fact, according to bat conservation international,
there are 40 species of bats living in North America.
Of that population, more than 50% are in severe decline
or listed as endangered.
Around the world, bats play a key role in the life cycle of
plants. For instance, in the southwestern United States, bats
pollinate the Sewaro cactus.
In tropical rainforests, fruiting bats spread seeds
through their droppings.
They're responsible for up to 98% of the
rainforests, the rainforests.
There are many more direct benefits to humans
resulting from bat research.
There may soon be an anti-coagulant made from
vampire bat saliva used on human heart patients.
Even bat droppings or guano benefit humans.
The bacteria growing on the guano in caves has been
used among other things to detoxify waste, produce
gas-a-hal and antibiotics.
They can delay their aging process.
The space agencies study them for about 15
years now, of how they can delay that aging process.
The bats have the ability to defer the pathology,
the travel radiation.
Radiation is a real big problem in space, and it also would
be useful in nuclear accidents.
And a lot of people don't know that.
For campers, the benefit provided by bats is closer
to hold.
According to bat conservation international,
each little brown bat living in these houses can
eat 1200 insects an hour.
Bats have the ability to eat very fast.
They can eat one and a half times a week easily.
That's like a person eating 300 hamburgers, 500 pizzas.
And bats go on the fly.
Bortriding is full of bat facts.
His fascination with bats has fueled his extensive
efforts in bat house research, research that's led to a
national reputation as an expert on bat house designs.
I study the bat houses a lot when it's hot, because that's
usually when they all abandon it, it's when it gets too
hot and the different designs.
And it varies from a half inch at the top to an inch
and a quarter at the bottom.
He is always experimenting with different kinds of bat
houses. As you tour around the park and are looking at bat
houses, you'll see different shapes, different sizes,
made of different material.
Anything and everything he can think of, he tries to make
a bat house of it, and then he documents whether it works
or not.
He's a great guy.
It's a very good location because it has almost 10 to
12 hours of sun exposure and it's near water.
It's important to be within a half
mile to a quarter of a mile from water for bats to drink.
The trees are far enough away too.
You want to stay about 25 feet or 30 feet away from trees,
but you want to be near some of you can because the bugs will
congregate in the bats of feed, what they call the tree canopy.
And when bats first come out, they like to go amongst
the trees.
It's just inherited instinct in case
there's hawks or owls around.
Because hawks and owls, they can almost time what time the bats
are going to start coming out.
Bortriding began his bat experiments because he likes
to build the houses.
He offers advice for would-be carpenters.
If I use plywood, I like to use AC, the best
fur plywood I can buy.
And then just make sure your cock is real good.
And I use screws in the back and put
cock on your screws too because they'll keep the moisture
from falling on the screws in.
I like to use some older wood like on the side pieces in this.
It has some old wood smell.
And I like to use a latex primer and a good latex
paint. But don't use a Kills primer KILZ.
It has some kind of odor and bats don't
seem to like that odor.
And definitely paint them.
A lot of places say you don't have
to paint them because as that wood dries out, the moisture
dries out, it'll cool a box.
So paint them.
And I'll paint this black so I can
get a higher temperature gradient at the top.
For campers at the park, the show begins at dusk when the
bats swoop down from the houses like skydivers and free fall.
Infrared light makes it appear bright to the
camera, but not to the bats.
Batts feed about 10% of the time and they feed approximately
two hours.
And then they'll find a night boost to they
come back to the houses.
These are all nursery colonies here.
Young bats are called pups and they usually only
have one of these pups.
Then just before daylight they'll go out again for about
another hour.
And that's when you see the dawn swarm.
That's when the bats swarm their boxes when they come
back. They'll go up in the houses and come out again.
That takes these young how to swarm the boxes
and wear a hold, yes.
Kent Burtjarding not only knows a lot about bats, he
loves to share his knowledge.
He hopes that if people learn how beneficial bats
are, they might care enough to help them survive.
Now I do, I can see one.
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If it's true that everyone has a secret passion, then Peter
Robertson's is definitely pasta.
And it's not much of a secret.
Linguini, rotini, ravioli.
If it can be covered with sauce, Robertson makes it.
Reporter Andy Sout caught up with Madison's Prince
of Pasta for this story.
[Music]
Inside Peter Robertson's pasta shop on Madison's real estate,
Tortillini is gently folded.
Rotini is doing the twist and LaZania is carefully layered.
This is a Fella Chini die.
Remember those little playdough cranking where
the hair comes out the top of the same principle.
But the big project today is a favorite.
Yukon gold potato, Gorgonzola
stuffed red pepper ravioli.
The company is called RP's pasta after Peter
Robertson's initials reversed.
Because PR's pasta didn't sound quite right.
Not that he doesn't appreciate public relations.
After all, his rooftop fork is a neighborhood icon.
The fork is a motif.
It's been on the roof of the building
here for many, many years.
It may all seem a bit theatrical, but Robertson's
love of pasta came while working as a stage carpenter on a
dance company tour of Italy.
I was the American who would come walking in and always had
at least two pasta dishes with every meal, including the any
pasta and then the second plate.
I just love pasta and that stuck with me.
It stuck with him when he landed a job here at Electronic
Theater Controls in Middleton.
Pasta became his passionate hobby and when a local
restaurant owner tried it, he wanted a whole bunch.
I used the classic process, a little clamp down, you know,
atlas roller on the table.
So I went to his kitchen and I clamped it on the table.
He needed 80 pounds that week and I started rolling it out
and I got 20 pounds into it and I said, "I can't do this.
I need a real machine that will actually make pasta for you."
He found this one for $6,000.
Since his workplace had a forklift and 220 amp service,
he had it shipped there.
I would make pasta during lunch break just to practice.
Didn't people think that was sort of odd?
Oh yeah, everybody thought it was odd.
I thought it was odd.
It was kind of like, "What are you doing?"
That machine now decorates R.P.'s retail space,
since Robertson quit his job to realize his dream
of running a pasta shop.
I just kept on envisioning the other fresh pasta shops
that I had seen in Italy and they make it and they sell it.
They make it and they sell it.
Right there out of the storefront.
Is this crowded?
Yep. Okay.
There's something right there.
That's one of the best parts of this whole job.
Getting to see people.
The retail space doesn't really do much business,
so Robertson delivers his fresh pasta to the groceries.
And he also makes a lot of special orders for restaurants.
Like his favorite, Yukon Gold Potato and Gorgonzola that yoga.
I love it.
But we'll soon learn that love alone does not make a ravioli.
The jungle ravioli is probably the most temperamental
thing that we make.
Just because it's an awful lot of filling for a
smaller amount of pasta.
When I started a business, I enjoyed making pasta.
Everything needs a little adjustment.
What I didn't know was that my mechanical engineering
background was going to completely come into play
in fixing all the equipment.
I got a little bit temperamental and then it
got a little bit messy.
And once it gets messy and temperamental, you got to
go back to the beginning.
Clean it off, start again.
It's rearing, it's ugly head, just moment.
So how do you feel about owning your own business in time?
One of the things that I really learned in theater is that,
you know, the show must go on.
And that is true.
And the same is with running a business run.
And so it's on the show.
At last, the ravioli is ready for its close-up.
Just another workday for Peter Robertson, the
Empress Aryan with pasta.
A little tour of people and their passions in Wisconsin.
That's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you now to enjoy the full colors on a walk through
Nacita National Wildlife Refuge.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
We'll see you next week.
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