Insect Pests

Insects are necessary for plant life to exist. From symbiotic relationships that benefit both plant and insect, to pollinating efforts, insects have their place. But on the other hand, that doesn’t mean we have to like them.

In fact, I really dislike them. At one time I had no feelings one way or the other. But in recent years, with spiders, ants, ticks and a host of other creepy-crawly critters gnawing on my poor old hide, I have had it.

And yes, I know that spiders are arachnids, a separate category. But for purposes of this conversation, I’m lumping them all into one, homogenous group: insects.

For the last five years, I have gotten tick bites in March. That used to be the month when glorious spring arrived and with the warm, southern breezes, also came a feeling of freedom. And that freedom was borne of knowing that it would be another month or more before the first biting insects showed up.

But no more. These disease-carrying deer tick are fully active in March. And each tick bite presents not just the problem of Lyme disease, the bites themselves take a long time to go away…as in years. I’m still scratching a tick bite on my thigh that I got in March, 2010.

Spiders live in my house (they come in on firewood) and they purposely and with malice aforethought, attack me in my sleep. I have slapped myself awake, only to find a squashed spider in bed with me. Yekkk!

Wasps and hornets build their nests in the eaves of my cottage, in the barn and in my woodshed. Every year, one of these aggressive beasts nails me. And every year, I become more intolerant of bee stings. My physiology has changed and now I become swollen and experience shortness of breath. Benadryl has become a household staple.

So with all of this, now I see that “winter moths” are descending upon Maine en mass. Who ever heard of “winter moths?” I certainly didn’t. On the other hand, I never thought much about ticks, either, not until perhaps 10 years ago.

I know this post sounds sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it has a serious tone. Insects such as emerald ash borer and wooly adelgid are already a serious threat to our forests. And now winter moths are here to destroy the trees (hardwoods and fruit trees) that emerald ash borers and wooly adelgids can’t be bothered destroying.

Again, I write in a semi-humorous vein, but there is nothing funny about this. My thoughts now are, “what’s next?” Would it come as much of a surprise to learn that still another as-of-yet unknown insect pest has invaded the Pine Tree State?

As for me, I can’t see much hope for stopping any of this, a pessimistic, but honest point of view.  

Last-Minute Chores Keep Tom Hopping

Winter sometimes comes in with a bang. Some years, the first major snowfall stays on the ground until the spring thaw, meaning that anything left on the ground outdoors remains out-of-bounds until spring. Knowledge that this may happen at any time serves as a great inducement to get yard work done, tools and machinery safely stored and also, to get every stick of firewood under cover for future use.

I recall the year that a major blizzard hit us on Thanksgiving Day and the snow lasted throughout the season. My boat wasn’t covered and much of my wood was still in a pile outside, waiting to get stored in the woodshed. That was a lesson for me, one that I haven’t yet forgotten.

So these last few days, beginning on Thanksgiving, were devoted to doing my last-minute tidying-up chores. The boat has now gotten its wooden frame installed and a cover over the frame. Gas was drained from the water separator on the fuel line and the gas container stored in the barn, where it will soon get funneled into another container and put in the gas tank of my car.

Because of ethanol, that nasty additive to modern gasoline, many of us must take extensive measures to protect our 2-cycle engines from danger. Ethanol rots gas lines and hoses, among other things. And while fuel stabilizer helps, it does not completely solve the problem.

Fortunately, 93-octane fuel mixture does the trick and this is available from many hardware and building supply stores. I bought a can and followed the instructions, which dictated draining the old (yeah, right…five-week old gas. But it wouldn’t last through the winter) gas and filling the tank with this 93-octane stuff. The final thing requires running the motor so that the new, snazzy fuel stays in the lines all winter.

By the way, the guy who sold me the 93-octane stuff tells me that we can expect gasoline, even gasoline with fuel stabilizer added, to last no more than six weeks. This seems like a terrible waste and it may even pose environmental problems, since the “old” gas must be disposed of in one way or another.

Getting back to my labors, I used the chainsaw to cut a bunch of limbs to firewood length, so I’m sure that the high-power fuel has thoroughly circulated. After that, the saw and also, my garden tiller, were stored in the barn.

But I wasn’t done yet. The house needed banking, which I did. Now, bitter winds will have a hard time sneaking inside and freezing my water pipes.

Finally, a pile of cut-up firewood needed splitting. Rather than haul the splitter out of storage, I chose to use a maul and wedges. After several hours of hard labor, the wood was split and stacked in the woodshed.

Now, with all this done, the time has come to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labors. My freezer brims with frozen vegetables, both wild and cultivated. And my shelves bulge with canned veggies, including dandelions from my lawn and goosetongue from the seashore. And here and there throughout my little cottage sit winter squash, properly seasoned and waiting for me to prepare them as needed throughout the winter.

While aching muscles tell me that it was a good thing to finally get done with this preparing for winter, I also feel sort of let down. I ask myself, what’s next? Well, next can consist of anything. In addition to regular columns and feature articles for magazines, I have another book revision to work on.

And part of what’s next will probably include some serious music study, learning new fingering patterns on the Uilleann pipes and pennywhistle.

Certainly at night, what’s next will include stargazing with both telescope and image-stabilized binoculars. I’ve come to enjoy searching for star clusters, galaxies and nebulae.

Finally, what’s next will surely include some late-season partridge hunting and when ice finally becomes safe for foot travel, a bit of ice fishing.

In only a wink of an eye, the winter season will end and another hectic spring and summer will begin. But for now, it gives me great contentment to know that I have done everything in my power to prepare for winter and also, to know that the time has come for peace, contentment, rest and relaxation.

What's It?

This blog is the first of a new feature I plan on running every so often. I call it my “What’s It?” feature.

Readers who think they know the identity of the item or items shown in the accompanying photo may email me at tomgseymour@gmail.com or, if they wish, reply directly to the blogsite. The first person with the correct identification will get mentioned in my blog.

Good luck and have fun.

Tom

Tick Horror Show

Tick Horror Show

The following is the letter my friend Dan Ladd of Belfast recently sent me. I offer it here in its entirety, since not only is it full of information that everyone who goes outdoors ought to read, Dan is an excellent and entertaining writer. So here is a guest appearance from Dan Ladd:

“Here is a creepy story I should have sent on Halloween.
Walter Guinon and I hiked the southern section of the Georges Highland Path Saturday Oct 27. It was a fairly long section of 6.7 miles, but mostly flat along the Oyster River and through the Oyster River Bog. It does climb two hills, one near the beginning of the trail after Baker Woods just outside of Thomaston and one near the end of the hike which stops at Route 90 in Warren.

The Georges Highland path has 40 miles of hiking trails from Thomaston to Montville. They are not contiguous trails and are made up of  lands from about 50 private land owners who offered public access to their land. The Oyster River Bog has over 1200 acres held in conservation easements and was founded in 1977.

We packed a lunch, water, maps, socks, and a walking stick. We wore blaze orange because it was the first day of deer hunting season. We got a decent start at 10:30 and even carried matches and flashlights just in case we couldn’t finish before the 5:30 sunset. I felt that we were well prepared as we even spent a few hours scouting the trail at both ends and the parking situation.

 After a couple of hours on the trail we were packing our outer shirts and hiking in tee shirts as the temperature climbed to a very pleasant October day. We crossed a power line that was cut though the landscape straight as an arrow. It afforded us a clear view of the distant mountains and an opportunity to argue as to whether it was Dodge Mt or not and if it was northwest or north northwest. I had a compass in my pack but it mattered little and was more fun to debate than settle the point.

We hiked down through a beautiful oak grove and noted the lack of acorns and heard a pileated woodpecker. We talked about how far we had to go to reach Keene Brook which we would hike along for half a mile and once we crossed the brook we would be more than half way through the hike. We planned to eat our lunch as soon as we crossed the stream.

Shortly after we started along the stream bank we encountered thigh high grass. I looked at my legs and saw little dots moving up my pants. Walter was hiking in front of me and I saw his faded jeans speckled with climbing black dots. I didn’t need my glasses to tell that we were covered with ticks. We stopped and picked the ticks off our pants but we had miles to hike through this terrain and were nearly at the half way mark.

Fifteen minutes later we stopped and picked another dozen ticks off our clothes including our shirts. Walter said that we were fighting a losing battle. I could see the ticks land on my pants as the grass rubbed on my jeans when I walked through it. It was easy to flick them off but if they were not dislodged the first flick they were much harder to pick off as they dug in and held on.

We stopped on some high ground a little later and stripped our packs and shirts off. We did a thorough delousing but soon we were hiking in the tall grass once more. We stopped again and found ticks on our skin and one that had burrowed into Walters side. I could not dig it out with my fingers but Walter had a Swiss army knife which has tweezers in it. We crossed the foot bridge and didn’t stop for lunch as land was low. For the next half mile, we just pushed onward. We hiked into a timber cutting operation and the area was free of grass.

We stopped and picked ticks off and ate our lunch. Two hunters came down a woods road on an all-terrain vehicle with rifles slung on their shoulders. I was glad we were wearing blaze orange vests. They came over and asked if we had seen any moose or moose sign. We told them we had seen tracks. We also told them about the tick infestation but I don’t think they grasped the magnitude of it as they headed toward the bog. Ironically they were from Jay, Maine and had to come to hunt on the coast as that was their moose lottery hunting area. Walter said that they most likely passed more moose on the trip down than they would see here.

The tick situation improved as we hiked toward Spit rock which would be five and a half miles into our trip. The trail was flatter and was bisected with many woods roads which were cut for the logging operation. We were still finding a few ticks on our pants but not like hiking on the edge of the bog or stream. My ankle had been bothering me as we hiked near the bank of the stream which was uneven but after the lunch break and a good self-massage I could pick up the pace.

We were deep into a discourse on the merits of early voting when we came upon spit rock. From here forward it would be downhill to the Oyster River and then slightly uphill to Walter’s truck parked on Route 90. We crossed a dry stream bed with a foot bridge and wondered if it could be the Oyster River. But shortly we crossed the Oyster River and it had a nice water flow and a new log bridge with a plank seat which we utilized. We reached Walter’s truck at 4:30 after walking though Johnson’s boat storage yard and commenting on some of the sail boat designs. Walter suggested we check for ticks. We found that he had two and I had none.

Walter drove us back to the starting point where my truck was parked and on the way my right triceps started itching. Once we arrived I could see in the truck mirror I had a tick digging into my arm. Walter scraped it off and I got my magnifying glass from my truck and we took a good look at the tick.

This was a deer tick (Ixodes Scapularis) the black leg tick, the only type according to the medical authorities that spreads Lyme’s disease. The other common tick is the brown dog tick which (according to medical authorizes) carries Lyme’s but does not transmit it. I have seen deer tick which look like brown dog ticks and visa versa. The only way I can tell the difference is with a magnifying glass and checking the size of the mouth parts. The deer tick has much longer mouth part than the dog tick and after a few comparisons it is easy to see the difference.

In addition to Lyme’s (spirochete bacteria) New Englanders better be on the watch for Anaplasmosis, a white blood cell parasite transmitted by ticks and Babesiosis, a red blood cell parasite known as Nantucket fever. There is also evidence that the lone star tick bite can cause an allergy to a sugar protein found in meats. This allergy can cause a sever reaction to beef, pork, chicken, and lamb. A hike in the grass can make you a vegetarian.
The next time I hike I will carry a can of bug spray with DEET, even in December. Walter found one more tick on him after he got home, well embedded. I inspected my clothing and pack when I returned and washed it all in hot water and dried it on high heat. One can only wonder what other change the warmer weather will bring to New England. I never worried about ticks until the late 1980s.  It was the same time the turkeys were introduced in Maine. I wonder if there is a connection between the two?”

Hurricane Sandy

Like a little child all prepped for a blizzard, I hunkered down Monday, prepared in every way for Hurricane Sandy. But despite some 15-mile-an-hour gusts of wind, nothing much happened until after sunset.

Then the wind picked up and gusts hit perhaps 30 m.p.h., not enough to cause concern. By bedtime, it blew in earnest, but still not yet enough to create alarm. And like the little child waiting for that big snowstorm that would cause school cancellation the next day, I harbored something akin to hopeful anticipation for hurricane winds and torrential rains.

Don’t get me wrong…I was hoping and praying that the worst of Sandy would bypass Mid-Coast Maine and my prayers were answered. But still, that feeling of unfilled expectation lingered. Just admitting this helps to get a certain feeling of guilt off my chest. And now I think I have a slight inkling of the thing that possesses extreme athletes to risk life and limb, that pushes race car drivers to the fullest measure and that causes people to do any number of otherwise irrational and probably stupid things.

Looking danger in the face and coming out the other side unscathed does something for the psyche. It probably even provokes beneficial chemical changes in our bodies. So when we go to bed thinking that the biggest storm in 200 years is about to swoop down upon us only to wake up to complete serenity, something in our innermost beings looks out at the world and says, simply, “humph.” 

At noontime Tuesday, the day after “Frankenstorm,” the sun broke through the overcast and shone upon my little cabin in Waldo, Maine. Dragonflies swooped about, darting here and there, picking some unidentified insects from the air. The rain from the previous night, what there was of it, had obviously benefited my Swiss chard, since it stood thick and green.

Meanwhile, I must now pour out all that water I had stored up in a dozen different containers. And the oil lamps will go back into storage, as will candles and lanterns.

Am I pleased and grateful that we were spared the big hit? Absolutely. But somewhere deep down, that little child begrudges having to get up and go to school.

A Scarcity Of Beech Nuts

This past season was a busy one for me and unfortunately, my travels precluded my making regular posts to this blog. But things have slowed down to a more manageable pace.

So here we are in late October and temperatures remain on the mild side. In fact, we here in Waldo, Maine, saw only two frosts so far this season. And wouldn’t you know it, these were severe freezes and although few in number, sufficed to kill most of my garden vegetables.

The hardy survivors, parsnips and Swiss chard, can stand up to most anything nature throws at them. Parsnips, I leave in the ground until spring. The prolonged freezing makes them much sweeter. Besides that, it’s reassuring to know that as soon as the ground thaws in my garden, I’ll have some delicious fresh vegetables.

The chard I just keep using, although eating chard every day does lead to me becoming rather tired of it. But it’s green and it’s fresh, two big points in its favor.

One of the things that took my time this past summer and fall involved taking photos of Maine’s nuts and berries for a new book I just completed. At the beginning of this project, it never occurred to me just how difficult it can be to find nuts and berries at just the right stage of ripeness for photographing. I soon learned that I had undertaken a daunting task.

For instance, since we have so few wild nut trees available, beech nuts were one of the biggies in my book. But despite me searching Knox, Waldo, Penobscot and Somerset Counties, I could not find one beechnut. My salvation came when on hands and knees on my own woodlot, I found an intact beech nut from last year, one that the squirrels and chipmunks had somehow missed.

Juneberries, or serviceberries, were another tough subject. What few I found had some kind of blight and were wrinkled like little prunes. I shot photos of the best of the best, but it was difficult to get a keeper shot.

And barberries, those thorny, often invasive shrubs with the little red, oblong berries that dangle from the branches, proved evasive. I finally recalled seeing some on the (wouldn’t you know it) opposite end of Sears Island. It took three trips to this location to finally find the berries in their red-ripe stage. It seems that barberries don’t ripen until quite late in the year.

By the way, the berries are useful in jellies. Wear gloves if you go to gather some, though, since the thorns are quite sharp.

But finally my picture-taking came to an end and I sent my photos in, along with the completed manuscript. The book probably won’t come out until some time next year at the earliest. I find that these bigger publishing houses have something like a governmental bureaucracy. They have the copy editor, the proofreader, the project editor, the assistant editor and the associate editor and every one has a shot at messing with a new manuscript. It’s tough dealing with these people, since most of them know little, if anything, about the topic at hand. In fact, I had to wrestle with someone who kept changing correct grammar to bad grammar. Even worse, one bright light changed botanical names from what I had, the correct usage, to outdated and otherwise wrong usage. Frustrating beyond belief, it was. 

Far better, it seems to me, to deal with a smaller publisher and work hand-in-hand with that person. That’s just a suggestion to any would-be book authors out there. Of course the topic has much to do with the difficulty of dealing with publishers. Guidebooks are terribly structured and the editors are professional nit-pickers. Books on other subjects are far easier to deal with. In fact, the biggest names in publishing are the easiest of all to work with, or so I'm told. The trouble there is getting them to go with your project in the first place.

But enough of my trials and tribulations with the publishing world. I’ll soon be posting blogs on what I hope will be an array of interesting topics. Until then, happy fall.

                                          Summer Nights

It’s that time of year when sultry, humid nights bring out a host of animal and insect species. Of these, Luna moths number among my very favorite critters.

These huge, pale-green moths with the “tails” have become increasingly scarce, mostly due, I’m told, to pesticides. So when a Luna moth does show up, it’s a very big deal…at last for me.

My friend Suzie Gowie has kindly sent me a photo of a Luna moth that visited she and her husband Art’s place in Bangor. That is the photo you see posted here. Thanks, Suzie.

Next, I mentioned this to someone recently and I don’t think they believed me. On these hot summer nights, you can actually hear corn grow. Remember, the stalks have striations and these help the thing vibrate as it literally shoots from the ground. Just put your ear next to a cornstalk on a good, warm night and listen for a gentle, squeaking sound. I’m somewhat hearing impaired and I can hear it, so I’m sure most everyone else can as well.

It’s time now for a bunch of wild plants and prominent among these are common cattails. Go now and collect the green spikes atop the plants. To test for ripeness, try and crumble the spike with a thumbnail. If it is too hard and resists, it isn’t quite ripe. But when you can easily make a dent and crumble it, it is at a peak of ripeness.

Pick as many of these as you want and boil them for perhaps 10 minutes. Season with butter, salt and pepper and eat like corn-on-the-cob. Delicious.

Meanwhile, back to nighttime doings, rural people hear the constant trilling of gray treefrogs. These lend a pleasant background accompaniment to the croaking of aquatic frogs and the distant howling of coyotes.

So enjoy these summer nights. This season won’t last long, so embrace it while it lasts.