Site Discussions

Years ago, at our house in central NH, we buried our 60-lb. dog in the front meadow. I put her 2 feet deep - the wet soil prevented going deeper - and covered her over.  A week later, there were three turkey vultures sitting in the big red oak at the edge of the meadow. In 10 years, I had never seen turkey vultures anywhere near us. I assumed that the smell of the decomposing dog drew them in.

Upon cleaning out my freezer I found a small tangerine sized bit of suet. I put it in a small mesh bag and hung it on a tree outside the kitchen window. Within 4 hours it was visited (and pretty well demolished) by a male and female Hairy Woodpecker and a Nuthatch. It had to be olfactory detection. With clumps of snow everywhere the little white mesh bag was pretty well camouflaged.

I have them in the walls above the garage and it’s obvious how they got in. I don’t want to kill them with snap traps but if I am able to relocate them with live traps wouldn’t they succumb to the elements? We are having the worst winter in 25 years.

Tania, thank you for writing about this lichen. I am just becoming an Interpretive Ranger on Mt. Bachelor, OR and found this story very interesting and easy to read. We have them on Mt. Bachelor too.

I live in a densely forested area, with a large family of crows.  I have started mimicking their “crow talk” while going on walks through the forest.  They get quite excited & curious & will circle around me & land in the tree tops.  They seem to be trying to see me and will keep chattering away.  I would love to know what we are conversing about :)

I have lived across the state of NY for my whole life, 60 now; hunted, fished, hiked, cut firewood, camped, etc., the American Beech has always been one of my favorites for many reasons. The damage and loss of this species or any for that matter is difficult to experience.

I have had this question come up for me and I would like you guys to answer this:

Many animals designed for night vision have only rod cells in their retinas, and lack cone cells entirely. Why would this arrangement improve the animal’s ability to see in near darkness? What disadvantages would such an arrangement have for seeing in daylight?

Hi
Nice article, however MD’s did not get to northern NE until the mid 1900’s.  Did our feeding them tend to keep the males here all winter? What other food could they get?

It seems this disease comes in waves.  When I started as a forester in 1971 there was in increasing wave of the disease, and then things seemed to quiet down for awhile.

When doing a salvage harvest of diseased beech trees it was very difficult to accurately estimate the amount of damage to a tree.  My solution was to just tally the tree volume and let the loggers estimate the usable volume.

I must mention “The Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, 2006. The idea of “nature-deficit disorder”- and its obvious cure - is steadily gaining credibility among professionals of all stripes.  One of my daughters said she and her siblings “were raised like little wolves.” I don’t know if that referred more to venison in their diet or playing outdoors until their boots were filled with snow. They grew into admirable adults with strong environmental ethics.

Thanks for a fun read that made me smile. I needed that. No longer do I feel alone.

I love it. You are so right. Thank you.

I think this is the crux of the matter:

(Dave wrote) “In the same way that most chainsaw accidents happen when you lose your fear of it, not when you first pick up the saw, many of the elements in the story – from the bad shooting to the not bringing a good compass – happen after you’ve had enough success to think you’re too good for any of this.”

Yes, yes, and yes.

One of the most alarming moments I had in my life was when living in metro Connecticut and working as an office temp in a mega insurance company. In snowy weather, I bundled up in my parka and boots, trudged out to the car (which wore 4 snow tires), dug it out, warmed it up, slipped and slewed 20 backroad miles to work, and parked in an underground garage, then hiked into the building protected. Woo-hoo! Luxury! My boss, meanwhile, walked directly from her home into her garage, hit the automatic opener for her garage door and backed out (on 4 “all season” tires), had a slippy, slushy ride to work on the highway, parked in the same underground garage, and entered the building in her sidewalk flats, whining about the weather and dissing me for arriving a few minutes late. The gulf between our realities was so profound I couldn’t speak. Now, 30+ years later, I live on a dirt road in backcountry Vermont, and this gulf between realities is even wider.

Wholly agree with the author’s sentiment. The ‘news’ is big business, and some will use fear to sell it. As consumers, we should challenge the self-proclaimed experts. Alternately, one might find entertainment in watching the reporter get swept off the sea wall just after they instruct their audience to ‘shelter in place’.

Hear, hear—to listen to the TV weather people, just opening your door is to risk instantly flash freezing into a solid mass. As someone once said, “There’s no bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.” We frequently see kids come out of their houses in the worst winter weather wearing T-shirts and shorts to scurry to the school bus. What were their parents thinking—are they capable of thinking?

As usual, another great editorial.  Thanks for urging folk to get their kids outside more, even when it’s cold.

Nice images of your own family outings.

Childless, adoptive grandfather of two,
Hubey

While I agree that we shouldn’t avoid the cold (I’m starting to feel stir crazy myself), by warning parents of babies and other individuals not to go out into the deep cold, we’re avoiding mishaps that could have been avoided if people knew how to properly dress for the cold. The family from Yellowstone probably had accumulated the correct gloves, boots, underclothes, etc. to wear in the cold because they have winters like that every year. This is unusual for us along the eastern seaboard as we often have milder winters than the Midwest. How often do we see boys standing out waiting for the bus in the cold with nothing more than jeans and a long sleeved shirt or t-shirt?

Can I get an “Amen” Brother Mance? It is the consensus trance! I bare my teeth too. Bucking cold temps sweating while shoveling paths to chicken coop and woodshed and sugar house, hauling firewood to burn fossilized sunshine of homegrown backyard cord wood all feel like tiny acts of defiance.

Sometimes in January, a grim existential conversation raises its ugly head - we love living here but what’s our exit strategy? What’s the end game when we reach our seventies and eighties? Florida would break my will to live. Better to drop dead in a snowbank and stare at the moon and smile?

I first saw this disease in the late 1950’s when it suddenly decimated old growth pure Beech stands near our remote Adirondack cabin. They were mostly all gone in few years. A very few resistant ones survive which gives me hope. I have noted that as one moves northeast into the Canadian Maritime provinces, the effects become increasingly severe, with few if any mature survivors, but many little ones. A tremendous loss to the forest. I have seen many Black Bears in their branch “nests” eating nuts in the tops of big Beeches.