Growing up Wild: Wild Moments from a Heron Roper's Resume

By Bob Henke

There is a tremendous information gap between scientists working in the outdoor fields and the millions of others who share their interest in natural processes. The failure of naturalists to provide information to the public has allowed some amazing myths to develop. Far worse, however, this knowledge gap can bring about actual damage to the environment through laws and public policy initiatives based on erroneous information. Growing Up Wild bridges this gap, bringing the latest results of scientific research to the public in an irreverent, humorous style that would make the book worth reading for entertainment value alone. The author, who combines careers as a wildlife professional and newspaper columnist, provides an eclectic mix of topics from toads to turkeys in a style that, while always humorous, ranges from gonzo journalism to formal poetrysometimes in the same essay.

Many of the essays contained in the book began life as one of the authors weekly newspaper columns. These were supposed to focus on a single organism and give some interesting facts about it. That is, they were supposed to be typical nature pieces. The questions that came in, in response to the original columns, seemed to indicate that people were not even reading all the way through. So he changed the format to start out with some outrageous tale to pique the interest (and make people wonder how on earth this was going to segue to the real topic), move on to the main topic, then hook back to the anecdote at the end. The response was quite overwhelming. Since the material in this book has a mix of early and more recent columns, the reader can watch this style develop.

There is something for everyone in this collection of essays. Topics range from single-celled organisms to whales. In addition to recreational reading, this book provides excellent supplementary material for students. In spite of the humor and light tone, each essay provides an in-depth look into the lives of our wild neighbors, as well as making some pointed commentary on the culture and political processes that affect them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 17, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462833016

Bob Henke

Bob Henke was born in Port Chester, NY, learned to talk in South Carolina, and came to live in a small upstate New York farm community when he was four. His fascination with animals and their habitat was obvious as he began to spend every free moment in the woods and fields. After earning two degrees in Anthropology and spending some time as a college instructor, sportscar mechanic, archaeologist, and farmer, he returned to upstate New York and has spent 25 years as an environmental conservation professional. At the same time he began to write for outdoor publications, and is best known for his weekly newspaper column. Bob and his wife, Janice, live in the log home that they built, with an assortment of bird dogs and a couple cats.

Book preview

WILD MOMENTS FROM A HERON ROPER’S RESUME

GROWING UP WILD

Bob Henke

Copyright © by Bob Henke.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

FORWARD

CHAPTER ONE

Splendor in the Grass

It’s Snowing Birds

Pigamirs and Screaming Haystacks

Duck Snot and Grape Jelly

One Hump or Two A Camel Breeder’s Guide

… And a Caribou to You Too

Oomingmak or Iditamuskox

Arctic Owls

Goosed!

Gonzo Goose

Yucky Eels

Gator Bait

Deceit in Spider City

Getting Toaded

Super Mouse or How to Get Voled

The Great Heron Roping Caper or Henke Gets The Bird

CHAPTER TWO

Dogs Can’t Read

MY Dog Wouldn’t Do That!

Fishing Ethics?

How To Avoid Shooting Yourself In The Foot

Fido Versus Bambi

Walk Softly and Leave The Sticks Alone!

The Deer

CHAPTER THREE

It All Flows Downhill

Let’s Get the Flock Out of Here

Look Out! It’s Going To Irrupt

Who Do I Look Like Today?

Cold Bodies

Blacktop Jungle Rules

Grampa’s Eyes

CHAPTER FOUR

A Fishy Perception

Warm and Fuzzy

Horns or Not Horns

The Eyes Have It

Feathers

CHAPTER FIVE

Epiphytes and Other Intrepid Explorers

Splash

Cosmic Boo Boos

Delicate Body Spirit of a Monarch

Getting Moosed by a Maniac

Fit For A King

Tilting at Whales

Mice, God, Cauls, and Everything

Hornfish, Diving Dogs, and a Bag of Chickens

Traveling in George’s Time Machine

I got married and was amazed when, a blink later, I had been married for 10 percent of my existence. A few years ago, I had been married for over half my life. Seems like someday, if I live long enough, I will have been married for my whole life which suits me fine. This book is dedicated to my lifemate.

FORWARD

I am not sure how I wound up writing. Surely, no one associated with my youth could have predicted it. I cannot imagine the frustration of teachers, trapped by unfortunate circumstance into trying to drive any appreciation for the rules of grammar, the works of literary masters, or even rudimentary accuracy in spelling, into my frivolous mind. Perhaps this book will in some way help assuage their despair.

If the writing grew in spite of their frustration, it may have grown because of mine. I have always loved observing and trying to understand the world. As a child, I could be entertained for hours watching a spider create its web. As a by-product of this love of observation, I carry around a huge portfolio of pictures in my head. A favorite, for example, is a dark buck mink, crossing a trail, looking back over his shoulder at the pair of redwing blackbirds harrying him. I can still see the shine of his eye, the brilliant flash of the birds’ wing patches in the sun, all set against the muted brown of the cattails. Images like this haunt me, yet I found out early on that I am no artist.

These trapped images and ideas did not bother me much until I met my lifemate. All at once the need to share everything became important and this need increased exponentially when we had children. If I could not draw the pictures, I found I could at least describe them. Here, luck stepped in, for my partner in life turned out to not only love many of the same things I did, but was also an excellent speller. I have always said I had no respect for people who could spell things only one way; it exhibited no creativity—but editors do not embrace this witticism. In addition to stimulating my curiosity and adding insight to my observations, Janice could also fix my spelling. In everything from my Thesis to a resume, she was able to make me appear much smarter than I really am. It goes much beyond that, however, for I am completely convinced that I never would have produced anything like the material you are about to read had it not been for the presence of the most intelligent, insightful, sensitive, and brave person I have ever met—Janice Stott Henke.

Many of the pieces included in this book are based on columns I wrote for the Post-Star, our local daily newspaper. I had actually begun writing snatches of things for the children. My father died when I was very young and my remembrance of him consists of only a few fuzzy images. I was afraid of this happening to my children so I wanted to leave them some tangible things that might help them recall something of my essence. As it turned out, I did not manage to do myself in, in spite of some absurd testosterone-addled stunts, so when the Post-Star was looking for an outdoor writer, I had some ready-made material. The format of my column changed a great deal over the years. I found that when I played it straight, doing nice predictable nature essays, people were not reading the whole thing. Once, frustrated and in the grip of a ferocious writer’s block, I used the characteristic trick of just writing whatever came to mind. The theory is that this begins the process of writing and the author can then just let the momentum flow into serious work. I poured out some bizarre tale of my childhood, flowed it into the nature topic I was working on, and, finding myself smack up against the deadline, just sent the thing in that way.

The next week I received 41 letters telling me how much people enjoyed the humor … and also commenting on the serious material. And, when I tried returning to my old ways, just as many people complained, so my style was set. This book contains many of the early columns as well as some unpublished essays, so the reader can watch the style change.

I had fun with these; hope you do too.

CHAPTER ONE

A

Bit of a Bestiary

My columns were supposed to deal with particular species. Each was supposed to take one beast, bug, or plant and give some interesting facts about it. Sometimes I was actually able to keep my frivolous mind on matters at hand and concentrate on a single thing. The next few essays do that … sort of.

Splendor in the Grass

The rain beat on the windshield and a gibbous moon seemed to cling precariously to its perch as black storm clouds slashed across its face. Even the headlights seemed unable to push very far into the Stygian dark that cloaked this night. It was a time for hearth and home and I was glad to be there as I pulled into the driveway. I was just starting to let myself slip into that feeling of relief and safety that any animal feels in the sanctuary of its den when I was suddenly jolted back into full Battle Stations as the headlights flashed across a shambling creature in the side yard. Hunched over, it skulked slowly along, intent upon its own predatory purposes. Every few moments it would freeze and an appendage would shoot out of the amorphous mass to clutch at something on the muddy ground. The creature seemed oblivious to the rain sheeting off its back as it scrabbled about in the mud. Suddenly it paused, sensing I was there. The beast raised up to its full height of four feet, 11 inches, fixed me with a hostile glare, and bellowed, Turn off those stupid headlights. You’re scaring the worms!!

I had forgotten the strange transformation that comes over my gentle wife if she happens to be struck by a warm Spring raindrop after dark. April showers might bring May flowers but they also make Janice regress into some sort of feral creature, stalking avidly through the soggy fields and lawns in pursuit of the wily nightcrawler.

A short while later she returned to the house, muddy to the wrist and soaked, to display her catch—a coffee can full of large glistening worms. They are called many things in different parts of the country; Crawlers, Night Crawlers, Night Walkers, Jimbos, but wherever you are you can usually find some kid selling them for about buck a dozen if you just ask for Fish Worms. Inflation has really taken its toll on the fishing industry; I used to get a standard rate of a penny apiece. While most of us are familiar with the Common Earthworm from its use as fishing bait or as a disgusting, formaldehyde preserved biology class dissection project, there is actually quite a bit more to this interesting and useful little animal.

The nightcrawler is a soft-bodied animal that appears to be composed of a pile of rings or segments. This type of creature is called an Annelid. Other members of the family are marine worms and the various species of intestinal parasites such as round worms that plague our pets and most wild animals. Our brown nightcrawler, found throughout North America, does not grow much larger than a foot in length, with the average being around 6 inches. One Louisiana worm farm had an old-timer they called Hector who could stretch out to 16 inches on a good day, but that size is unheard of in temperate climates. Australia, on the other hand, has been known to harbor specimens up to seven FEET long. Personally, I am not interested in the sort of fish you might catch with that bait!

The earthworm does not have lungs, and depends on oxygen that can be absorbed through its moist skin. They are, therefore, limited to moist soils. If the skin dries out and shrinks, the breathing pores are closed, and the animal suffocates. The first ring of the body houses the mouth parts, but each one after that, clear to the tail, has eight bristles, called setae, which can be extended or retracted to allow the worm to push its way through the soil. Any nightcrawler picker or robin knows that the way to catch them is to grab and hold on. After a short while their grip on the sides of the burrow loosens as the muscles extending the setae tire, and the worm will slip unharmed from its burrow with a slight scritching sound.

The nightcrawler burrows through the ground by ingesting the dirt, pulverizing it in a gizzard similar to that of birds, and digesting any organic material. In order to keep from simply refilling their burrows behind them, the excrement must be voided outside. This is the main purpose of the worms’ nocturnal forays above the ground. There are sensitive photoreceptors near the snout, and when the nightcrawler perceives that it is dark out, it extends itself full length out of the burrow. The tail is moved slightly to the right or left (individual worms seem to have a particular preference) and a pile of excrement called a casting is voided.

We depend far more than you might realize on this process to open and aerate the soil and bring minerals to the surface for use by plants. The average nightcrawler may create up to a half a mile of burrow, up to 5 feet deep during its lifetime and an acre of land may harbor many thousands of them. One of the problems with modern chemical farming and our weed-free, chemically nourished suburban lawns is that it kills the worms, and after a decade or so, soil compaction cuts productivity dramatically. This drives the farmer or homeowner to increased fertilizer/pesticide use until some researchers say that the typical golf course could be called a hazardous waste site. Whole industries have developed to keep our lawns green; something that the nightcrawlers would have done all by themselves, if left alone.

One other thing the worms do when they are above ground is mate. Every worm has both male and female organs, contained in the tawny ring that separates the dark brown head end from the paler tail portion. In case you care, this is always found at about the 32nd segment, no matter what size the worm happens to be. The worms crawl alongside each other and secrete a mucus from this ring, which forms a slime band around both. You might think of it as a wedding ring, although then again, given its gooky consistency, you might not. They deposit both sperm and egg cells into this mucus ring. As they retreat to their burrows with the coming dawn, their crawling action agitates the mucus cocoon and fertilizes the eggs. The young earthworms hatch in a few days, make their first meal of the cocoon, and burrow down into the soil. Often, after mating, the nightcrawler will use its mouth to roll up a leaf or blade of grass, which it pulls behind itself into the burrow. Apparently they need a more nourishing meal to rejuvenate themselves after the night’s amorous activities. They are most vulnerable during mating and I used to try to make myself leave them alone. At a penny apiece, the easy money was tempting.

The nightcrawler must be particularly alert for it is prey to innumerable predators. Worms have been found in the crops of 44 species of birds and make up over half the diet of some species such as robins and woodcocks. They are often consumed by snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, mice, and, particularly, moles. It has also been found that some animals, such as horses, cows, deer, and bison, consume large quantities of earthworms inadvertently during grazing in the Spring when the grasses are low. Eating worms gives these grazing mammals a necessary supplement of the mineral requirements the females need during gestation and lactation.

As protection, the worms have developed very sensitive sensors for both light and vibration. The feral nightcrawler-catching redhead in my side yard has to move very quietly, because the extended setae perceive the slightest vibration from a footstep, and the worm moves with lightening speed back into its burrow. The slight rasp as a worm is extracted from its burrow is often enough to send every other one within a six-foot radius, shooting underground. She must also be careful with the light. Every veteran worm picker knows that the dark head end senses even the softest flashlight beam although you can play a bit more fast and loose on the tail portion. Interestingly, the sound of rain drumming on the ground signals safety to them, and most mating takes place on rainy nights. People have found that setting up a rhythmic vibration on a stake driven into the ground, a process called thumping for worms, will bring them wriggling out of their burrows even in the daylight, ready for annelidic action. Sort of analogous to a boom box at Spring break, I would guess.

It’s Snowing Birds

The first snow of this year found me standing in the woods just at dawn. It was not an honest snow, just some stinging frozen pellets driven by a sharp wind. As I stood there the birds began to move with the rising sun. Chickadees, as usual, were the first. Later, flocks of geese and smaller birds began to toil their way south. It has always seemed like an unfair contest to pit the might of the seasons and the vast distances of the world against such a fragile life force as a small bird. Yet still the birds seem to prevail; taking the task moment by moment, defeating the miles a few feet at a time, their progress measured in wingbeats. The individual birds pay for the journey with their lives, very few living to see their second summer, but its species prevails against the elements by the hordes of young produced each summer.

In most cases the toll that migration takes is a series of small tragedies. An older bird succumbs to the relentless headwind, a sharp-shinned hawk picks off a straggler from the rear of the flock, or a wet snow leaves a tired bird unable to lift off and continue. These are, for the most part, unnoticed, as the efficiency of nature soon recycles them. Occasionally, however, there are tragedies on such a grand scale that it may lead one to wonder how the species can ever recover. In 1895, after the bluebirds and tree swallows had already set up nests, a great period of subarctic cold and freezing rain killed nearly all of them throughout most of New England. Later, in 1907, thousands of warblers were frozen in midflight by a sudden ice storm and dropped across Wisconsin in an incident the papers referred to as the Great Death. Still, no natural tragedy before or since has come close to that which befell a small bird called the Longspur.

Most people do not even notice the Longspur in this area. They nest near the Arctic Circle where the Eskimo call them Kowlegak. They are named for the elongated claw on their hind toe, although some other birds such as the more familiar snow bunting also share this trait. Longspurs are colored much like sparrows throughout much of the year, although they display black crowns and face markings in the breeding season. Around home, the Longspurs we see are usually individuals mingled with flocks of snow buntings and other northern birds that come to our area for the winter months. Without looking closely, one can simply classify them as another of the various plentiful but difficult to identify species of sparrows that we often lump together under the category of LBJs (little brown jobs) when they visit our bird feeders. During the summer breeding season they make use of the plentiful high-protein insects that abound in their northern breeding area and, in the colder months, they feed on weed seeds and such remaining fruits as might still cling to the trees as they move southward. They are a bird that lives on the edge of the weather, always dwelling in the fringe of the killing cold.

Although large concentrations of these birds are not found in the northeast, the Midwestern states host vast flocks throughout the winter months. On March 13, 1904, the northern breeding area was calling strongly to the Kowlegak and they answered, not knowing that millions of them would not survive the next few hours.

The longer days of Spring told the Longspur flocks it was time to move north and they responded en masse. Longspurs migrate at night and the late afternoon saw flock after flock take to wing until millions of pairs of small wings beat steadily northward into the dark. The high-pitched tyee! of the females was answered by the coarser chirr! of the males as they kept in touch with each other in the dark. Unbeknownst to the birds, nature was about to do them an immense cruelty; a huge snow storm was building on the Canadian border and sweeping