The Importance of Direction

I think it is true that, for many of us, our lives often contain contradictions.  For myself, when I am leading a nature walk, either with children or adults, I am often complimented on my powers of observation, the ability to spot a scat among the leaf litter, or an acorn with the telltale hole of a curculio.   Yet, when I am on the open road, my ability to use my sense of observation to choose the correct way to go has historically been, sadly lacking.  For that matter, you might have amassed a tidy sum had you wagered on my accuracy when claiming we should go left instead of right at a particular juncture.  My family can ask me which way we should go, and then with great confidence chose the opposite way.

And so, this “skill” of mine came into play this past week when I was to get my daughter and husband from the airport in Portland ME to join us all for Christmas.  My daughter’s new home in ME is very close to Rt. 95, the only really substantial road this far north in Maine and so, the only turn I had to make, was onto 95 and then continue south for 2 ½ hours and exit at the airport.   Elementary.  And yet, for one delusional moment, I had it fixed in my mind that the town of Bangor was north of where we were, and I did know I had to go south. Clearly then, I shouldn’t head for Bangor, but rather, choose door #2 which led to Houlton, a town I had never heard of, but then I had only been here once before, so merrily I set out, convinced in my mind I was Portland bound.

And was the ride ever beautiful!  Within 10 miles I was into snow, freshly fallen snow, that had just missed Orono and I was singing God’s praises, for I miss the field of jewels snow can be.  As I drove on, it continued to get deeper, the trees like a scene from the Polar Express and I was just dazzled.  So dazzled I wanted to share it with friends, so, as there was no one else on the road, I decided it was a good time to catch up with everyone and share the beautiful scene around me.

Now here is a fascinating phenomenon.  It is amazing that once a “truth” is set in your mind, no amount of evidence to the contrary can penetrate.  For instance, I knew the airport was at Exit 46, yet I kept noticing that these exits I was passing had some pretty high numbers; 260, 296, etc..  Curious.  I knew I would always be in Maine so the numbers shouldn’t start again, but you never know, maybe southern Maine is on a different number system.  Fa la la la, just carry on, as delighted as a child in an illustrated wonderland.  Also of interest, no one was on the road, I mean NO one, a truck or two but otherwise I had it all to myself.  Ah, sad how the recession plays itself out, no money for gas, fewer cars I guess.  Hmmm and not a single town, well I do remember in the summer it seemed to be nothing but trees, so now it was nothing but snow covered trees.

Finally, I did come to an exit that had some rudimentary stores and Yeah! a Burger King.  My daughter called that she had landed and, as I had been driving for 2 hours now, I told her I should be there shortly.  But wait, when I went to get back on the road, being careful to go in the same direction and not make any mistakes, I was shocked to see that what I perceived to be the right ramp claimed to be going North to Canada!  What?  That can’t be right, so I turned around thinking I must have gotten mixed up, but THIS sign said south to Bangor.  Oh those silly Mainers, they put the wrong city on the sign, they must mean south to Portland.  I must make a note to call the Dept of Transportation to alert them of their error when I return.  Whoa, but as I head “south”, I see landmarks that I have just passed.  Are you kidding me? I have taken the wrong way and the exits have been miles apart.  Stink!  I need to get the airport; I can’t waste these miles going the wrong way!  Ah, but here is one of those “for official cars only” turn arounds.  Well, clearly I am the only one on the road so I shall risk it. 

Now I am heading in the right direction surely.  Odd that there haven’t been any signs counting down the mileage to Portland; again, must be an austerity budget, but you would think they would mention the airport is coming up.  Then a sign does appear- it says “Welcome to Canada”!  What? CANADA!  Finally, all the clues gather together in one shocking truth- I have been going North all along!  I made a mistake right out the starting gate and now I am in Canada!!!  Second big truth hits me; I don’t have a Passport with me! Stink and double stink!  I wheel around but now I am in a long line ready to go through the US customs line. Panic, laughter, incredulity, all hit at once as I sweat out my turn in line.  What if they don’t let me back in?!

The cars were going through extremely slowly, like a true grilling was taking place by the customs officer.  And now it is my turn, and I am off and babbling, telling the whole story,  “I was in Orono, I was headed for the Portland airport, I had no intention of going to Canada, and technically I wasn’t in Canada.”  “May I see your passport?”  I didn’t bring a passport!  “No passport?”  NO,  “ a license then?”  And here I am with a TX license, driving a TN car, registered to my son in law, so a completely different name.  A raised eyebrow- “And why, again, are you in Maine?”  For Christmas, to be with my daughter and I have a daughter waiting for me at the airport, how far is that from here?  “About 5 hrs!” Super Stink!

Then I get an idea.  I had just eaten at Burger King, you could still smell the French fries in my bag and surely in the middle of all these woods there wasn’t another Burger King nearby in Canada.  So I told him he could smell my bag, I just ate, “You know the place, just 10 miles from here in the US. Honest, I am not a terrorist, I am just someone with a terrible sense of direction!”  In the spirit of Christmas, and mercy he finally let me through, thank you God.  Clearly I had given him his “tale of the day”. 

As it would turn out, I also gave my daughter the tale of the day.  Not terribly thrilled to know she had to spend another 5 hours in the airport, yet, when I finally arrived I was greeted by the applause of everyone at the airport lounge that had heard about the ditsy Mom who went to Canada! Her new friends included one very handsome Marine so, I think the long hours weren’t pure torture.

So, do you see God’s hand in this? For I surely do.  First of all, it was GORGEOUS, and I miss snow and the New England landscape and God gave me hours to revel in it.  Secondly, I usually have an amusing tale to tell in my Christmas letter and this year I really didn’t, yet here he was, handing me one on a silver platter, right before Christmas.  And thirdly, what better way to start off a new year of blogging than with a long drawn out tale such as this.  So thank you God, you indeed work in mysterious but wonderful ways.

And so a new year begins.  May we find ourselves sharing good times and new discoveries as we continue to explore the Glory and the Humor all around us!  Happy New Year everyone!

Discovering what makes Santa's suit so Red

Incredibly, I may have the secret to the vibrant red of Santa’s suit right outside my front door.   I had been noticing that the thornless Prickly Pear cactus that grows next to the front porch is not only a delicacy to the deer who eat it to nubbins each fall, but also home to a tiny little scale insect called Dactylopius coccus.  The green pads that sprung from the stumps of eaten cactus in the spring gradually developed a white looking fungus all over them.  However, what I thought was a fungus, turned out to be the white webbing of this little scale insect.  Trying to wipe it off one day I was startled to see streaks of red, like blood as soon as I wiped it.  Yikes, a bleeding cactus, what else will Texas have?!

Ah, but what I was seeing was something called carmine, a crimson dye, a toxin really that is produced by the female scale insects to protect themselves from being eaten by predators.  And the white looking fungus part was the webbing they use to cover themselves to keep them from frying in the heat.   What I didn’t know, but would learn later, is that these insects and their vibrant red color were the secret ingredient to the red, red robes of the Aztecs, they put the red in Redcoats, the Red of the Royal Canadian Mounties and who knows, maybe the red of Santa’s suit himself!

It goes by the name “cochineal” and this little insect and its color which was painstakingly extracted was, get this, the number two export from Mexico after silver in the 1600’s!  The Spanish admired the Aztecs scarlet robes and start exporting it as far away as India.  Row upon row of Prickly Pear cactus playing host to the moisture sucking insects and then delicately scraped and boiled then dried to 30% of their original size so they can store without rotting.  From that comes the  powder that would give you a red that would keep on giving, not run in the rain and just dazzle the socks off anyone who saw it.  Isn’t that amazing!  Who knew?

But it is never wise to put all your insects into one basket for the bottom fell out of the cochineal industry in the 1800’s when artificial dyes, which were ever so much simpler to produce, took their place. After all, it took 70,000 insects to make 1 pound of dye. Yet, it must have been sad for those who had invested everything in the ruby-producing insects.

 

But, guess what, they’re back!  Remember awhile back, red dye # 40, was found to be carcinogenic?  Being from the Cape, I had heard that cranberries were being used to produce a safer red color.  It turns out not only cranberries were put to the task but our little scale insect got pressed (no pun intended) back into service.  Insects once again were being raised and exported from Peru and Mexico to be used in food coloring and cosmetics.  And, even at Starbucks, in their Strawberry Frappachinos!   And the way I know that is from an article complaining that outraged Vegans and Vegetarians had not been properly warned that they were consuming insect life along with their caffeine treat.  Poor Starbucks, they were trying to do the natural and healthy thing but found, of course, that you can’t please all the people all the time.

Now it is the season of the deer eating these moisture-laden pads down to nothing again, which turns my husband about the same red as the cochineal.  It also makes me wonder if I should turn a sharper eye to the copious amount of deer scat in the front yard, might they be as red as the cranberries I miss?  Perhaps, and if Santa needs a touch up job on his suit, he is welcome to help himself to what is left by my porch.

 Ironically, I find I am writing this on St. Nicholas day, so Happy St. Nicholas day and Merry Christmas to you all!  I am thrilled to be heading to my daughters in Maine for Christmas so lets hope if another blog comes it will be from a winter wonderland.

The Constancy of Butterflies

I am going on my 11^th month in Texas, well technically I did skip a month when I went to ME this summer, but for the months I have been here I can say one constant thing has been the company of butterflies.   I was shocked to find them skittering over the ground when I arrived in January.

 Dainty Sulphurs, all along a rocky path that seemed to have little in the way of food items, but there they were.  They are said to feed on dogweeds and sneezeweeds and, in that I have no idea what those plants look like, they may very well be along my daily path around the neighborhood.  They are in the Aster family so maybe some teeny tiny starry flower is right by my feet and I don’t see it.  These tiny butterflies seem to be here year round with an ebb and flow that perhaps represents a time when they are in their pupa phase.  I read somewhere that they zip through metamorphosis, which seems believable in that they are only about 1” wide.  How long can it take to grow to that size?

Spring featured Acacia trees full of Red Admiral butterflies, ones that would congregate in great numbers on plates of overripe bananas.  I felt I had landed in a tropical rain forest with them flitting everywhere.   The omnipresent Pipevine Swallowtail followed them in the summer, and again as often as I had looked up the pipevine plant I still couldn’t find it in my lawn.

 Try to tell that to the females that were forever bending their abdomen over some random leaf in the grass apparently laying eggs.  The spiky red caterpillars followed and adult swallowtails were a daily sight through summer and into fall so I guess they knew what they were doing.   

In late summer, an explosion of Blue Mist flowers around the gazebo drew in throngs of Queen butterflies, a bright orange butterfly with a black border.  Smaller and in a different family that the milkweed-loving Monarch, they still seem to lead a lot of people into thinking they are seeing Monarchs.  In my yard there were far more Queens than Monarchs but when the Monarchs did show up they seemed to love these flowers too.  So from early morning to dusk butterflies in a blue mist stupor could entertain you.  Drinking, then taking a lap or two, then coming back to dive in again. There must have been 20 at a time at the height of it and some are still floating about, now trying to eek a living out of the few flowers that remain.

Then came an “almost killing frost”.   The day after, as I was doing a hike with some 5^th graders we kept coming across the still forms of swallowtails that hadn‘t been swallowed, yummy abdomen still intact so, no “crime scene” here, just the sad luck of not finding cover on a chilly night.  So I thought 11 months would be the amount of time butterflies would be present in my little stretch of Texas.

When this morning, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but brand new Red Admirals fresh from the pupa to here!  So the flitting game continues, the bananas are out again and an afternoon walk showed all the hardies that had survived this first round of cold.  Fritillaries, Clouded Sulphurs even the really large one called, inventively, the Large Orange Sulphur, which is completely yellow by the way, and a few Monarchs were all spotted on this day when the temps reached 60 again.  Long live the Lepidoptera!  Maybe there never will be a month in Texas without them winging past. 

And that is something I should be thankful for don’t you think?  With Thanksgiving on the horizon then, lets say “Thank you God for the constancy of butterflies in my little corner of the world.”  May there be a constancy of beauty in your world too, in one form or the other. 

Greek Austerity Program for Birds

This is killing me.  I am a feeder of birds.  As long as I can remember I loved filling feeders, spreading out seed, making sure suet was in place in the winter.  I have always thought my Italian heritage led to this, “manga”, wild creatures” trait.  On the Cape, a chipmunk need only turn its glance my way and I would be refilling his whelk shell full of seeds.  The snows of winter had me re-scattering seed every time the old seed got covered up.

Here in Texas I continued the tradition, tube feeders, platform feeders, and hummingbird feeders.  I think I wrote about how the voracious white wing doves were going to triple the seed bill by showing up in droves and eating round the clock.  I had to stop scattering seed on the ground to slow the rate of seed disappearance and now I do have fewer doves. 

But then, about a month ago, maybe more, the dreaded house sparrows flew by, found not only food but also a wonderful hedge of jasmine and have decided they need look no further for the perfect home for their flock and their ever-growing progeny.  If you know about birds you know this is not good.  Immigrants who missed their familiar home birds here imported house sparrows, under the banner of “it seemed like a good idea at the time”, from England in the mid 1800’s.  Some claim they also were introduced into Central Park to help control canker worm but as they are predominantly seed feeders this doesn’t seem in retrospect like the brightest idea.   The birds became quite the rage and people throughout the country thought they too would like these robust sparrows. 

And so, over the ensuing years, they have multiplied exponentially, a species that can have 4-5 broods a year will do that, and as they are more aggressive than many of the other native song birds they are one of the reasons those species are declining.  I will spare you the details on just how aggressive they are, there may be children reading along, but it is the reason they are now the most abundant songbird on the continent.

Which is why I have taken the drastic step, a la Greece, of denying benefits.  I have cut my feeding down to one tube feeder of sunflower seeds and one tray on the porch.  At first they missed the millet but they seem now, of course, to be willing to eat the sunflower seed, which is more costly.  But I just can’t stop cold turkey for the Cardinals still make a showing, and when the mob of sparrows takes a break, the Chickadees and Titmice sneak in.  Scrub jays and Golden fronted woodpeckers make the sparrows scatter but the sweet little Least Goldfinch that was new to me in TX flits by, chickens out and leaves. And I even have a thistle feeder out for them if they would just spot it.

However, from what I read about House sparrows, getting rid of them is a pipedream.  Unless I am willing to take up arms and start shooting them, or buy some expensive trap and start catching and releasing them, which really only moves the problem elsewhere, I shall have to just lament my fate and try to find something interesting about this species. 

 For instance, I read that the male sparrows with the larger brown “bibs” seem to be more dominant.  That males with smaller “bibs” give way to the larger ones at feeders and that females won’t take being pushed around as easily by the smaller bibbed males either.  Interesting.  And how does one attain more dark feathers on the chest in the first place? Better nutrition?

Obviously, if any of you out there know of a nonviolent way to convince them to leave, please let me know.  I also know that when and if winter ever arrives, my resolve will break and I will just have to spread my feeders about the property to ensure everyone gets a chance to feed.   I have a feeling my Italian traits will trump this attempt at playing the Greek card.  And if I were a betting person I would put my money on the sparrows.

Traveling the "Snout Route"

I love the sound of that, a “Snout Route”, and last week, as I drove back from the Wildlife Rescue and Rehab facility, that is exactly what I was on, a road that was being shared, with hundreds, maybe thousands of “Snouts”, American snout butterflies  (Libytheana bachmanii) that clearly had all recently emerged from their pupas and were heading in the same southwesterly direction I was.  

Let me not claim credit for knowing a “snout” when I see one. For that matter, I had to find a straight part of this twisty road to hop out of the car and scoop one up, for sadly they weren’t all able to avoid the windshields that were coming at them.  It was a small butterfly about 1 ½” wide and with orange and white spots on its wings.  But the clincher for the ID is the Jimmy Durante size snout, or what entomologists would call its “labial palpi” that extends way out in front of it.  It turns out it is wonderfully camouflaged to look like a dead leaf when hanging upside down from a branch and the snout makes a perfect leaf stem.  I saw one do this in my own yard and would give it an Oscar for its portrayal of a leaf.

And why so many this late in the season?  Well of course, with my lack of real sense of the “seasons” here in Texas, Oct might as well be as good a time as any other.  Although it turns out that what sparks explosions of these small butterflies is a dry period, or drought followed by rain.  The larvae dine on the omnipresent Hackberry tree and yet they really only like new tender leaves.  Who wouldn’t like a tender leaf over a tough one anyways?  So, when rain comes and the leaves begin to put out new growth the females can lay their eggs and in 12-15 short days you have larva that have gone through their whole metamorphosis and are ready to go.  And often, hackberry trees that have been stripped of their leaves as many in my yard seem to be.

Now, I saw a lot of butterflies, but here is the staggering statistic on them. These few thousand, or who knows how many really, were nothing compared to the Snout Explosion of 1921.  Surely you have heard of it.  In late Sept of that year, 25 million snouts per minute passed over a 250-mile area from San Marcos to the Rio Grande, and that rate kept up for 18 days!!!  In the end, they estimated 6 billion butterflies had passed by!  Yikes!  And what led to that incredible number?  Another year of drought, but then the heaviest rain ever recorded fell, 36.4” in 18 hours and we can assume all the plants, including the hackberry trees went berserk putting out new leaves.  And incredibly, there were the snouts ready to “get at it” and commence multiplying. 

But something else was at work here; they do have a predator, a “checks and balances” thing that nature is so good at. There is a wasp, that lays its eggs in the pupa of the snout. However, this particular species of wasp just couldn’t hack the drought.  So when the rains came and the pupa came off the assembly line, as it were, their parasite was nowhere to be found and the end result was 6 billion butterflies!  Isn’t that wild!  And it has been repeated over the years for drought is surely not uncommon here and neither are the much needed rains that finally fall.  I do believe that that 1921 episode still holds some kind of Texas record, and indeed, even though I thought I was being inundated with butterflies swirling around the car, I guess that was nothing. 

And, one week later, I don’t see any, so they obviously were headed somewhere else.  If you live out west, perhaps they were headed to your neighborhood.  They do winter over as adults though, so perhaps our chances of seeing the skies darkened by mass migrations are waning.  There is always next year, and now you will know what you are seeing.  Of course, I am the new one here; you probably already DID know what you were seeing!  Either way, wishing you a trip along a “Snout Route” sometime in your future. 

Fall is Spring Again

I can’t say enough how the seasons in Texas throw me.  When my internal clock says leaves should be changing colors and falling off, and flowers other than asters and goldenrods should be coming to an end, Texas sends out a carpet of new flowers as though Spring has just returned to the land.

 Fields are full of the delicate flowers of Praire Broomweed, a shrubby herb plant from the aster family with those impossibly slender leaves of desert plants and covered with an array of small yellow flowers. Clearly it spreads quickly as fields are full of it, and of course many consider it a weed, but back in the day it was used as a poultice to cure eczema and skin rashes so I am sure some folks appreciated it-teenage Indians maybe. 

Often along the borders of these fields and filling a section of the prairie where our Nature center is located are huge areas of Maximilion Sunflowers that can be anywhere from 3-10’ tall.  I assumed they were called maximillion  because they had so many flowers on each stalk but they are actually named for a Prince Maximilion from Germany who led an expedition out west in the 1830’s.   Either way, they are towering plants that provide a feast for birds, bees and butterflies.  You may have them in your area too for I see they are found in many states throughout the country.  They spread by rhizomes so that must account for why they are found in such large colonies. 

In my own yard the native Black foot daisies and Zexmenia’s that had all taken a break during the heat of summer have come charging back tempting me to not cut the grass in that area and once again providing, perhaps, a haven for chiggers.  We had a few rains that accompanied the cooler weather and it is amazing what water does for a plant, water from above seeming so superior to water from my hose.  Then the Lantanas all bloomed again, and the roses that I had given up for dead resurged.  So fall is spring, or is it summer?  No, I suppose it is just fall, Texas style. And next year, perhaps it won’t come as such a surprise.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I think it has easily been 6 weeks since I made any entries into this blog and perhaps that demands an explanation.   It appears I had far TOO good a time on my trip back to the Northeast this summer; the Cape felt like I had never left, the friends were wonderful to see, my daughters home in Maine seemed lovely, I was delighted to be with my grandchildren and well, I guess just heading my car back west caused a little more sadness than I expected.

Maybe it was the triple digit temperatures I returned too, or the many mosquito bites that each could contain Equine Encephalitis but for what ever reason I seemed to slip each day back into a depression that I thought I had shaken the year before when just the thought of leaving the Cape had thrown me for a mental loop.  

It is frightening how we can turn our mind from a traditionally joyful spirit to one of much more doom and gloom and do that all by ourselves.  I was clearly my own worst enemy here. But now the temperatures are receding to the 80’s or so and although it seems nothing like fall, it is time for me to get on with it and try and recapture the joy that always led me in the past.  To that end I had better try opening my eyes again to what is around me and getting it down on paper.  Bear with me then, as this will be an exercise in, with God’s help, “restoring my soul”. 

The flora and fauna are changing here again, I do feel the statement is so true that “the more you know the more you know you don’t know”.  That is the reality I am living in in Texas.  The rhythm of the year is still foreign to me, what to expect of plant life and animal life in any given season is a mystery, but I should try to pay attention so with each year, my expectation of what is to come can delight as it did on the Cape. So please Lord, may the healing begin, and may your world around me be a source of “restoring my soul”.  Amen, for this is truly a prayer.