And you thought you had it bad when your mom said, "No cookies until after dinner"...at least your mother didn't devour her young! According to Brian Aucone, vice president for animal care at the Denver Zoo, a wide variety of animals have been documented killing and occasionally cannibalizing their children. "Animals don't tend to be as loving to their offspring as we think," says Aucone, noting that we humans often transpose our own emotions onto animals. "These mothers may appear to be cute and cuddly one day, and then they'll turn around and eat their young the next."

So here, just in time for Mother's Day, are many reasons to remember just how good we have it. No kidding!

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- Little, dead and hungry: Midget Zombie Takeover comes to the Oriental tonight
- Ten spots that give Colfax its culture and character
- Anthony Jeselnik celebrates baby-death, bulimia and domestic violence at DU

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venturethere.com

C.R. Johnson in a hospital bed before he passed away in 2010.

Three times now, I've received a phone call that I never anticipated I'd get even once in my life. Two times, the call was from a friend who delivered the news; one time it was my mother. Though all three were different voices, each had a similar, haunting pitch and carried the same devastating message: Someone I knew had died while skiing, something I'd grown up doing.

See also:
- Photos: Joe Philpott's avalanche death may have accidentally been caused by dog
- Caleb Moore dies after X-Games crash in Aspen, first casualty in event's history
- Garrett Spencer, record-setting 19th Colorado ski area death, being laid to rest

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"Small Winged Life."

Like pine beetles, Boulder artist Jill Powers does some of her best work in bark. Her mixed media fiber sculptures and installations draw on exotic natural materials, from seed pods to a tough inner bark called Kozo that happens to be "sustainably grown" -- and that's good news, since Powers's new exhibition, opening tonight in Longmont, deals with how insects and plants are falling out of sync as ecosystems are impacted by climate change.

See also:
- Why Colorado's forests are bugging out with beetles
- Meet the beetles: How Colorado's forests are bugging out

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Photo by The Pikes Peak Guy

Twelve years ago, Shaun Daggett was at a job interview in Colorado Springs, and although he declined the position, the company told him to think about it for a while -- a suggestion that ended up changing his life.

With time to kill before his plane took off, Daggett decided to take a drive up to the small town of Woodland Park, roughly twenty miles northwest of Colorado Springs.

See also:
- Sermon on the mount: The Pikes Peak Guy took a picture of this landmark every day for a year
- Photos: Ten best Colorado hikes
- Uphill Battle

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Jennifer Goodland photos

While shooting in Lamar in April, Jennifer Goodland got caught in a storm that caused five tornadoes.

Jennifer Goodland teaches Colorado history at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and she truly loves this state. On an unpaid sabbatical from teaching, since April she's been trekking across Colorado with the goal of photographing every town in this state. After photographing close to 400 places, she's about halfway done with the actual pictures -- but her project is really just beginning.

She'll be sharing the photographs, and the stories behind them, at a show that opens tomorrow, and she says she's eager for ""people to come out to the photography show whether or not they want to buy something. I just want to talk to people about where they live, to be honest. For me, more than anything, this is sort of my love letter to the state. This is what I feel I can do even with my disability. I feel I can get people to take pride in where they come from. Even if they think they come from 'nowhere special,' what I tell my students is 'everywhere is somewhere special.' "

Goodland's gallery will be open starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 11, at Leela European Cafe. Keep reading to learn more about Goodland, and to see a sneak preview of some of her photos.

See also:
- Despite a tragic summer, Colorado is still the real sunshine state
- 50 reasons Colorado is the best state
- Five things to do at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
- How Denver native Matthew Batt turned a Salt Lake City crackhouse into his home

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Dave Gardner's latest documentary, Growthbusters, could be described as the whole-hog opposite to the messages of either of our 2012 presidential candidates: slow down the economy, encourage population reduction, and stop buying shit you don't need. So it's a good thing Gardner isn't running for office. As we saw in Jimmy Carter's 1979 "Malaise Speech," the public doesn't enjoy being lectured about their over-consumptive lifestyle.

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Architect of the Capitol

2011 Capitol Christmas Tree

Every year the "people's tree" takes center stage at the various Christmas festivities in Washington, D.C., and this year that tree will be a Colorado native from the White River National Forest. Colorado was selected out of 155 national forests. A celebration starts tonight in Lakewood, with help from Rolling Stone's keyboardist and award-winning tree farmer, Chuck Leavell.

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Instagram user erinbeatty16

Instagram is the latest, and obviously the hippest, photo-sharing app; it allows anyone with a smartphone to play amateur photographer, transforming regular old snapshots into filtered, fogged and color-tinted works of art at the touch of a finger.

Search "Denver" on Statigram, one of the app's web-based viewing platforms, and sift through a variety of local tags like denverartmuseum, denvernuggets and denverairport. This week, we're taking a walk on the wild side and exploring the Denver Zoo through the lens of Instagram users. Page down if you can't get enough of cute animals and even cuter kids.

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Update: Two corrections have been made: Tropic Thunder is now the only June 18 film, and viewers can vote on which film they'd like to see on July 16.

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It's finally here.

The 2012 Film On the Rocks summer line-up at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was announced this evening, and many movies that made the cut were picked for the people, by the people. Though carefully curated by the Denver Film Center -- and led by FOTR Program Director Britta Erickson -- if the inclusion of a film like The Notebook rubs watchers the wrong way, look no further than the audience itself:

"It wasn't just because this seems to be the year of Ryan Gosling," says Karla Rodriguez, Audience Development and Social Media Manager for FOTR. "It's because The Notebook has been one of our top five most-requested films consistently since it came out. From crowd surveys to Facebook polls, this is what the people want."

Read more about tonight's announcement and see the full schedule below.

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High Plains Snow Goose Festival, Lamar.

The lesser snow goose is an undependable fellow: Cruising the Western Central Flyway during migration, it makes one of its stopovers at John Martin Reservoir near Lamar. But, hey, some days the pickings might look better at Horse Creek Reservoir outside of Las Animas. And sometimes, when the weather gets cold, the birds just hightail it down south.

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