Fallen Oak
Two days ago, while sitting at our computers writing, Rebecca and I heard a sharp retort — almost like a gunshot — issue from our woods. We paused in our typing. A moment later, we heard another one. We looked across at each other. What now?
Then it was if thirty guns started firing all at once, for a loud crashing emerged from our woods, and we knew immediately what we were hearing.
One of our huge oaks had fallen.
Now, our trees aren’t exactly ancient, but one is large enough in girth that two people can’t touch when they try to wrap their arms around it. We hiked down into the woods and soon found the fall. It wasn’t a tree that had fallen over, but rather a huge half of an oak that had long been splitting down its middle. The weaker half had fallen away, crashing to the ground. Standing before it, we could still hear pops and cracks as the weight settled. We heard these sounds even into the night, as the wood adjusted to the new strains.
It can be sad to see a fall like this. Luckily, our oak still lives, and has just lost some significant limbs. But under that massive branch are healthy trees, bent forever under the impossible weight, and it’s sad to see them shattered and broken when a moment before they were reaching for the sky.
Of course, these falls also bring other changes to the forest. Now there is an opening in the canopy where before there was only shade. A small maple tree has suddenly learned that it has been growing in a very opportune position — light streams down on its leaves, and it is free to grow into the wide opening left by the oak’s collapse. Our woods-camp, just ten paces from the fallen oak limb, now has a clear view to the starry sky. And plants that favor sun over shade will find, for a year or two at least, that there is an abundance of sunshine.
Rebecca and I will enjoy the fallen oak as well. It’s a climbing-gym now, where we can pretend to be squirrels and test our balance and agility without fear of falling too far. It will provide a graceful arch over our favorite walking-path up to the woods-camp, and in the winter it will be beautiful, the dark bark coated with snow.
A mighty crash, and the woods is given a new song. How lovely destruction can be.
Snake Rescue!
We’ve seen lots of dead snakes on the road this year, but not a single live one. So it was quite exciting yesterday to come across a long, unscathed fox snake (Elaphe vulpina vulpina). It was evening, and she was stretched out at full length, capturing the last of the day’s heat that remained in the asphalt. This is often the death of these beautiful animals as they depend on external sources for their body heat and will quite readily use the road for such needs. 
Swerving around her, we jumped out and Kenton captured her by the tail. She was quite strong, and deciding that she wasn’t ready to leave, tried a few strikes and rattled her tail in Kenton’s hand. (Fox snakes are often mistaken for rattlesnakes and killed — partly because their patterns and coloration bear some small resemblance to a rattlesnake’s, but also because they’ll often attempt to scare away a threat by vibrating their tail. If it vibrates against dry leaves, it can sound almost like a rattlesnake. While a good defense against predators, it means that humans often kill them, mistaking them for a venomous snake). Then, quite to Kenton’s surprise, she musked. (“I didn’t know they musked!”, he exclaimed.) It smelled like an extra-potent version of a garter snake’s smelly defense, but it was a brownish substance instead of the white that characterizes a garter snake’s. 
She was deposited on the side of the road, where she soon sped away into the grass. The rest of our trip was spent exclaiming how beautiful she was, and laughing at how close she had come to latching on to Kenton’s hand or leg. It looks like she’s been around awhile to get that big, and we’re wishing her many more adventures and hopefully many more years of life.
Swerving around her, we jumped out and Kenton captured her by the tail. She was quite strong, and deciding that she wasn’t ready to leave, tried a few strikes and rattled her tail in Kenton’s hand. (Fox snakes are often mistaken for rattlesnakes and killed — partly because their patterns and coloration bear some small resemblance to a rattlesnake’s, but also because they’ll often attempt to scare away a threat by vibrating their tail. If it vibrates against dry leaves, it can sound almost like a rattlesnake. While a good defense against predators, it means that humans often kill them, mistaking them for a venomous snake). Then, quite to Kenton’s surprise, she musked. (“I didn’t know they musked!”, he exclaimed.) It smelled like an extra-potent version of a garter snake’s smelly defense, but it was a brownish substance instead of the white that characterizes a garter snake’s. She was deposited on the side of the road, where she soon sped away into the grass. The rest of our trip was spent exclaiming how beautiful she was, and laughing at how close she had come to latching on to Kenton’s hand or leg. It looks like she’s been around awhile to get that big, and we’re wishing her many more adventures and hopefully many more years of life.Movie Review — The Fox and the Child
We rarely watch movies, but something about this one drew us in, and a few nights ago we sat down to watch ‘Le renard et l’enfant’, a French film by filmmaker Luc Jacquet, best known for ‘March of the Penguins’. We really weren’t sure what to expect, but in moments we were enchanted with the single human actor, who plays a young girl with an obvious love of nature.
Her encounter with a fox opens up an exploration of the natural world, and the film takes you on a journey into a land that seems like a fairy tale when you’re sitting in front of the television screen. For all of us who regularly venture out into natural places, however, we’ll recognize an accessible and very real world that she’s discovering — a world of beauty, excitement, wonder, and occasional danger.
Taking us along on her journey, we get to feel the impact of humankind on a rather pristine natural environment. Most significantly, the film shows how our human minds can shape the natural world around us, turning beauty into fear, and fear into beauty. And in the end, the film delivers a poignant message about the nature of love.
This is a movie Rebecca and I might actually purchase, not only for its story, but for the incredible footage of foxes and the natural world. It took our breath away again and again. It is a great family film, but if you’re a grown-up you have to watch the movie with an open heart, because it isn’t necessarily geared for an adult audience. Personally, we found ourselves enchanted from start to finish.
Falling Star Alert — Perseids!
This is one of the biggies, and tonight and tomorrow night are peak viewing times, the only ‘downer’ being the gibbous moon that will shed a little too much light on the subject. You can expect to see a lot of falling stars — perhaps up to one a minute — and in the early evening, when the moon is still not interfering, you have a good chance of seeing ‘Earthgrazers’ — meteors that approach from the direction of the horizon, leaving long, bright, colorful trails. They’re a real treat to see. Find a good north vantage for prior-to-midnight viewing. Enjoy!
Falling Star Alert — Delta Aquarids!
If you haven’t already, it’s time to go out and see the Delta Aquarids. They peak at the end of the month, but they’re active now — last evening we saw some great ones. You’re fine going out any time that the sky is clear, but if you’re serious about things, go out in the wee hours before dawn. The New Moon right now means that the sky is nice and dark.
Enjoy!
Almost Lost
A walk through familiar landscapes,
streams and gnarled trees,
rocks and damp moss.
Then an eldritch thing,
something from another world,
and we can only stare.
For a moment, the familiar landscape becomes strange –
the stream speaks a forgotten tongue,
ancient messages are scawled in the twisted bark,
the stones mark their age at a time of forgotten beasts,
and the moss is a forest where strange things crawl.
The moment passes, and we view this odd thing in context.
Something left for breeding by a creature we’ll never see.
Still strange, but small now, manageable.
We have our world back, which is a good thing.
That time we were almost lost.
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Ambassador Corn Snakes, Taraj and Katai
People often think we’re a little odd when they find out we have snakes as pets. And despite the fact that we both love snakes, it took us a while to make our decision. You see, snakes are one of those animals that don’t really domesticate. Sure, they get used to being handled, but snakes will readily re-adapt to the wild if they’re released into the right ecosystem. And it felt strange to us to consider keeping such ‘wild’ creatures as pets.
We finally decided that we’d go ahead and bring snakes into our lives, but that we’d hold ourselves to a condition. The snakes wouldn’t be pets so much as ambassadors. As soon as Taraj and Katai (who were brothers and came to us when they were the size of pencils) were grown to an impressive-enough length, we began taking them to schools, libraries, nature presentations, and community events, where they swiftly became stars. Corn snakes are so beautiful that few people can resist coming up to meet them, even if they’re afraid of snakes. For hundreds of people, Taraj and Katai have been the first snake they’ve touched, and by the end of the presentation, many people end up having their pictures taken with one of these two brothers draped around their necks!
During the summer, we bring all of our snakes out to bask in the sun and experience some quality outdoor time. While some of our other snakes are terrestrial, Taraj and Katai have arboreal tendencies, and love to climb.
It may be an unfair trade-off. They live lives of captivity, only getting to go outside once in a while. But they’ve made a difference for lots of people, and made a difference for lots of snakes, since many of the people leave the snake presentations with a new respect and curiosity for these wondrous creatures. We hope that Taraj and Katai get to touch many more people’s lives in the coming years!
Mystery Tree, Mystery Bird
We had a grand adventure yesterday, hiking to Glenwood Hills County Park with my Dad and Steph. Rebecca was dressed as a true gentlewoman adventurer.
We came across two mysteries. The one we solved, but the other is still eluding us. You can experience the mysteries yourself right here –
The first was this tree. Its rough bark was quite unlike any other tree’s bark we had ever seen. Any guesses as to what it is?
Stepping back, you can see more of the tree. But its nature still eluded us . . .
The mystery began to resolve itself when we looked up.
And a closer look confirmed it. Not what we had expected.
A birch tree! So old that its lower bark had split apart and become very un-birchlike in appearance and texture.
Then a deeper mystery confronted us. Flapping through the trees, a large bird — clearly a raptor — alighted in a branch. It was very difficult to get an angle for a photograph, so our pictures are very ‘Loch Ness Monster’, and we couldn’t get a shot that included the tail. None of us had ever seen a bird quite like this, and our guesses started flowing. It wasn’t until a dear friend of ours sent the pictures to a falconry expert that we received our startling answer to the mystery. Here are the pictures — What do you think it is?
My guess was completely wrong. Seeing those distinctive eye-stripes, I pounced on the only bird I remembered with those markings — the Peregrine Falcon — even though the habitat was all wrong. When we got home and consulted our Sibley Guide, the Prairie Falcon stood out as another possibility, although it wasn’t really in our range. The falconry expert, however, took one look at the pictures and informed us that this wasn’t a falcon at all, but most definitely a hawk. Without seeing the tail, the two possibilities were a Red-Tailed Hawk and a Red-Shouldered Hawk.
Puzzling over how the falconer could have been so sure it wasn’t a falcon, we carefully observed the photos, and decided that one could tell by the face — can you see how ‘long’ the bird’s face is in the above pictures? Then observethis photo from the Idaho Birding Trail website. The Prairie Falcon has a much ‘shorter’ face. From what we can tell, this seems to be the case across the hawk/falcon world.
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Wren Cuisine
We’ve been very happy to share Sweetwater with a nesting pair of House Wrens, who made their home in an old birdhouse near the marble slab we use as our outdoor dinner table. While eating or sitting, we get to watch the wrens hunt, bringing back a whole variety of cuisine for their youngsters. Here one of the parents peeks out before it goes off to hunt –
The parents come home with a delectable smorgasbord of delights. We imagined that this pale caterpillar tasted a bit like marshmallow –
Any thoughts as to what this bright green one must taste like?
Then came a surprise. One of the parents brought home not just one, but twoyummy-looking snails –
It is fascinating to us how quickly these predators are successful in their hunts. While large predators like wolves might spend days or even weeks trying to capture a single prey, these birds would come back with a kill in moments — often it would be less than 30 seconds between the arrival of each new prey animal. Even if both parents were hunting, this is pretty impressive. We were happy to see that our yard could provide such abundant food!
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