The Outside Story

If the man in the film who explained, “Honey, I shrunk the kids,” turned his attention to you, and you ended up one centimeter tall and found yourself on the lawn, you would have your work…

Several decades ago, after long hours of work in the carrels of Dartmouth’s Baker Library, I would make time for a walk around the library’s illuminated clock tower to view the aerial…

Helpers are already at work in your garden and woods, though it’s unlikely you’ve noticed them. They are wasps, and they are busy killing insect pests. Most readers will remember their…

Ryan Smith, a wildlife technician with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, stood with his back to the mouth of the Mount Aeolus bat cave in Dorset, Vermont, in early April. Behind him,…

In both New Hampshire and Vermont, landowners and state officials are discussing the benefits of removing old dams and restoring rivers to their historical banks. Many of these dams are small,…

My thoughts turn to gardens, the earthy fragrance of moist woodland – and to slugs tucked under a rock. Few things disturb gardeners so much as slugs and the silvery ribbons of slime…

How much can a bird’s egg tell us about the bird that laid it and how it lives? As it turns out, it can tell us a lot about the generalities, but little about the details. For example, what…

Old fields pulse with activity. Butterflies flutter, crickets call, meadow voles scurry, and black-and-yellow garden spiders ambush from dew-spangled webs. Early June footsteps release the…

“Going, going, gone! Big Papi does it again with a walk-off home run for the Red Sox!” How many times have Sox fans heard this call after that tell-tale crack of bat on ball? Until…

The poet Ogden Nash put it succinctly: “God in His wisdom / Made the fly / And then forgot / To tell us why.” True, it’s blackfly season, which is perhaps not the best time of year to…

The fleeting interval between late-April and mid-May, after the snow has melted yet before the canopy of leaves overhead is fully deployed, is when many of our native woodland flowers, such as…

Horsetails and scouring rushes are among the commonest plants around, especially noticeable early in spring when the evergreen species among this group stand out against an otherwise mostly…

Here are some ways to get rid of dandelions: spraying 2,4-D (an herbicide, banned in several countries for its health risks, but not in the U.S.); pulling up by hand; mowing the flowers before…

To wildlife biologists, the benefits of maintaining healthy riparian buffers are self-evident. But to most people, these terms are obscure. Riparian comes from the Latin riparius, meaning…

Roadside carrion is a sure sign of spring, and when I saw a raccoon shuffling along the shoulder of the interstate highway in full daylight today, I wondered about its prospects for longevity.…

And now, a few words on a topic that might have slipped your mind: your septic system. Despite the temptation to treat your septic system as “out of sight, out of mind,” you need to pay…

In 1848, workers constructing the railroad line from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vermont, found the remains of a mastodon buried 11 feet deep in a Mount Holly bog. One tusk was nearly eight feet…

Veterinarians pay attention to it. So do animal trackers. If you own a pet, you are probably paying attention, too, because you have to clean it up. Yes, I’m talking about poop, scat, feces,…

Why did the animal cross the road? The yellow sign, familiar to many, proclaims “Moose Crossing.” But, we wonder, how can anyone predict that a moose would cross at this particular spot,…

It’s a warm evening, and the only signs of snow are the eroding piles beside the driveway. Down in the valley, there is a chorus erupting, and up on the hill in a pond, another is just…