Porcupine Parts

We all know about porcupine quills, but what about this creature’s other parts?  Like humans, there’s a lot more to porcupines than first meets the eye.

Their lovely coat for example…  Due to the odd quill embedded with the fur, bristles and hair, it doesn’t necessarily invite petting, but certainly appears quite thick and warm.  Porcupines don’t hibernate, so this heavy coat would make our cold winters more tolerable.

Look at those shiny black claws.  They’d come in handy for climbing and digging up roots.  And see that soft underbelly?  This is the tender, vulnerable part of porcupines that predators such as coyotes and fishers try to expose by flipping them over.  No wonder they keep it hidden.

A quick whack of a porcupine’s tail will embed quills into an unwary predator.  The quills are barbed and a likely death sentence to an animal that gets a mouthful of them and becomes unable to eat.  Yikes!

Though its orange teeth may leave something to be desired by the whitestrips crowd, this is a winning smile if ever there was one.  Like the beaver, a porcupine’s ever-growing rodent teeth are kept sharp and short by constant chewing on trees.

Who knew there was so much more to porcupines than just their quills?  This porcupine was more than generous with its willingness to pose before 6 am, especially while doing chin-ups for its early morning exercise routine.  Oops!  Since porcupines are nocturnal, better make that a late night exercise routine.

For more on porcupines, see:
Bark Nibblers
Porcupines in Apple Trees
Porcupines Along the Salt Marsh Trail

Lost Beards of the Forest

Light grayish green lichens known as Old Man’s Beard hang from the trees in the forests.  Sometimes blown onto the ground on windy days, to the touch, these lichens are usually soft but sometimes stiff in dry weather.   A few are streaked with brown.

Old Man’s Beard is frequently found in clean, moist environments such as boggy woods.  Though it prefers to cling to coniferous trees in old growth forests, it also hangs from the younger birches in my backyard.  Sensitive to air pollution, it’s often found with other types of lichens, such as the foliose lichens shown below.

  

Canada’s native people harvested Old Man’s Beard long ago and added it to their diet.  It can be steamed or dried and pummeled into a powder.   A strong antibiotic, it was also used to prevent infection and gangrene from setting into external wounds.   A thousand years ago, Old Man’s Beard was already being used as a medicine to treat lung cancer.  It’s still used today as a treatment for tuberculosis in China as it contains usnic acid.

La barbe de nain illustration by Elisabeth Ivanovsky

The antibiotic properties of Old Man’s Beard make it an effective treatment for fish infections in ponds and aquariums.  Yellow warblers seek forests where the Beard is present as they consider it an indispensable construction material in building their nests. 

A french fairy tale, LA BARBE DE NAIN by Marcelle Vérité, explains that the beards once belonged to elves.  Long ago, it was customary for these kind, cheerful creatures to arrange bundles of deadwood on the forest floor as a gift for mankind.   But when men greedily began to cut down live trees, the elves hastily fled to remote mountain peaks, snagging their beards on branches in the process.  The lost beards can be found in forests to this day.

Considering the wonderful medicinal properties of these beards, their elvish origins are no surprise to me.

Dear Earth: You Had Me at Hello

Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over – one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood. Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first.
~  Rainer Maria Rilke

The Earth doesn’t care about age or wrinkles.  What’s a decade or two when you’re a billion years old and a few cracks when you’re scarred regularly by earthquakes? 

And what does the Earth care about how often the floor is swept? It considers last autumn’s litter simply next year’s humus.

And so what does the Earth value?  Could the persistence of grass be a clue?

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
~ Kahlil Gibran

New life amid the forest debris

Where man finds dissatisfaction, the Earth finds promise and the potential for renewal. Fallen trees and fallen leaves are all cherished for what they can offer now, not just the strength and beauty they possessed in days gone by.

Male woodpecker clinging to the underside of a fallen birch tree

Spring is in the air and it’s Earth Day.   Get outdoors and let yourself fall in love.

Spring Morning

Where am I going? I don’t quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow –
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow –
Anywhere, anywhere. I don’t know.

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You’d lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You’d say to the wind when it took you away:
“That’s where I wanted to go today!”

Where am I going? I don’t quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow –
Anywhere, anywhere. I don’t know.

~  Excerpted from A. A. Milne’s poem ‘Spring Morning’

Arnold Schwartzenegger read this poem as he put his class down for a nap in the movie Kindergarden Cop.  Putting children down for a nap is seldom easy, but these words are so soothing, they might even put an adult to rest… especially if they were read by Arnold’s strong yet gentle voice.

Milne, who became known for his stories  of Winnie the Pooh, wrote another poem ‘Puppy and I’ which has a similar theme.  In it he asked rabbits he had met on the road where they were going in their brown fur coats, which made me think of the hare I saw along the trail this morning. 

In trying so hard to figure out where we’re going, sometimes we miss the wonders of the world around us, where we are, right now.  Sometimes it’s just enough to go… outdoors.

Bobcat Tale

At first glance, this tawny feline looks like just another neighborhood pussycat visiting the yard.

Posing among the spring flowers it almost seems to smile for the camera.  But there’s something a little wilder than usual in its expression and the size of its cheek ruffs and paws.

The facial markings are a bit more pronounced than those of a domestic cat and then there are those black ear tufts and bobbed tail…

Ryan Shaw was surprised early one evening when he realized he had spotted a  bobcat (Felis rufus) in his yard.  Though his first thoughts raced to the whereabouts of his own housecat, he couldn’t help but be mesmerized by this wildcat’s awesome beauty.  He wondered if perhaps he was the one trespassing on the bobcat’s territory.

In January 2010 I spotted two bobcats in the backyard.  Besides this recent spotting on Green Bay Road, they’ve also been seen on Orion Drive.  They seem to be on the prowl throughout Cow Bay and it’s no wonder why.

Bobcats feed on snowshoe hares, squirrels, porcupines and ground birds which are all plentiful here.  They’re also comfortable climbing among the trees blown down in our backwoods by Hurricane Juan in 2003.

Bobcat litters of one to six kittens are born at this time of year.  Since they breed in the first year, it likely won’t be long before there are more of them in our neck of the woods.

If you see a large tawny cat in your yard, especially one with a bobbed tail, don’t approach it. They may look friendly, but wild animals are best admired from a safe distance.  

Photo credits:  Ryan Shaw

Spring Inventory

Canadian maple buds.  Check. 

Coltsfoot.  Check.

Mating-crazed junco obsessed with its reflection in my car’s mirror.  Check.

Chickadee and mourning dove calling from the treetops.  Check.  Check.

Creepy crawlies under the garden stones:  Millipede, earthworm, beetle, salamander.  Check.  Check.  Check.  Check.

Slug.  Check.

Red squirrel defending its territory.  Check.

Snowshoe hare on the lawn.  Check.

The first periwinkle of the season.  Check.

Hope rekindled.  Check.

 

 

Growing Up Outdoors: A Love Story

Giving your child immunity against loneliness may be as simple as fostering within them a kinship with the natural world.  A love of nature begun in childhood can last a lifetime. 

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.
~John Bulwer

Playing with doll furniture and worms on the back steps circa 1961

Some of my earliest memories are of playing with worms and doll furniture in my grandparents’ backyard.  I could never understand why the worms didn’t survive the baths I’d give them.  In the springtime, my younger sibings and I spent hours creating dams and controlled waterways with the water from melting snow that would stream in the lane next to our yard. After a long Canadian winter, seeing the sun sparkling on those streams of water gave me such a wonderful feeling. My mother and grandmother both scolded us for getting wet and muddy but it seemed like such a small price to pay for such happiness.

In the summer and fall, we went for picnics in the woods.  We’d enjoy tomato sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper under a big spruce tree while my mom moulded faces in the spruce gum that ran on the tree trunks.  The ‘devil faces’ would harden and we’d see them again the next time we picnicked there.  So began the magical enchantment that’s always been a part of my love for trees.

So much snow

Eventually my grandparents purchased the land where we picnicked most frequently.  Old firefighting hoses were made into swings that my grandfather suspended from the large branches of white pines.  My younger brothers would climb the trees but I was content to swing for hours, daydreaming and singing to myself. 

Climbing a white pine

In the summer we were out in the fields picking berries and flowers or catching grasshoppers and butterflies.  I learned how to drive a tractor in those fields when I was about ten years old, as did my sisters and brothers.  I also had my own little axe with which I was able to trim dead limbs off trees, an activity I still enjoy doing to this day. 

Growing up outdoors

In the winter we’d play in the snow, go sledding or skating at one of many outdoor rinks.  There was always something to do outdoors, either together or on our own. My siblings and I all brought our love for nature with us into adulthood.  Giving children the opportunity to be outdoors, as did my parents and grandparents, truly is a gift that lasts a lifetime. 

Thanks to Gerry at Torch Lake Views for suggesting a post about memories of growing up outdoors