No snow, no snow.

I thought the big story was no snow, but now as I sit here I can see the snow piling up on the bushes outside my window.  It is fitting that I am writing about no snow while it snows, because I seem to be slightly behind in everything (except paying my bills – I always pay bills on time).  A bigger story is 14 female porcupines captured, collared and on air in Sandhill.  This is an impressive number, for two weeks worth of work with no snow.  The credit goes not to me, but to the graduate student pursing his research on (roughly) the effect of climate change on winter adapted and non-winter adapted species.  (I’m probably in the ball park  about that, although  sometimes I don’t listen to details very well)   But the biggest story is catching  Culver, an old grey lady with a long jaw and a take-no-shit attitude.  It was pointed out to me that she is approximately the same age as most of the high school students in the program, being at least 17 years old.   I believe this is her last year with us, as she is five pounds lighter than this time last year, and last year was a lot tougher winter than this one has been.  I toyed with the idea of keeping her inside a warm building and feeding her apples for the remainder of her life, but I understand my idea of comfort is probably different than hers.  Besides, when you reach inside an occupied porcupine tree den (do NOT do this at home, by the way) you can feel the toasty warm air.  Home is where you hang your hat, or drop your poop if you’re a porcupine.   Culver was fascinating when we brought her in.  Like most old ladies, she’s seen it all before, and does not suffer fools.  As I placed my face next to the trap to ogle her, she looked me straight in the eye, no flinching, no backing up.  After measuring and poking and probing her, I returned her to her trap and gave her an apple.  Most porcupines assume a nonchalant attitude  toward the juicy apple three inches away from their hungry faces, “no, no, I couldn’t” or “dude, I don’t need your stupid apple, you just probed me!” or the like.  Culver reached for the apple and took it from me before I knew what was happening.   She was  smacking her lips like a Japanese businessman before I could drop the tarp and give her some privacy.  This reminded me of something, and I looked up the old lady and found a previous post about her, as well as a lovely picture from two years ago, when she was a mere 15.  She has always been sassy; the picture shows her giving me the hairy eyeball after I let her out of the den.   Rage against the dying of the light, lady.  Rage!

Culver, 2010, facing her kidnapper

Culver today

VIP

Yesterday  we had a Very Important Person visiting Sandhill, and so we had to spruce the place up a bit.  I believe every one of  us showered before work, although I can’t prove that.  This VIP was from the Other Camp, and so half of us were trying to win him over, while the other half were holding back expletives.  I baked cookies for the ordeal (you can tell which half I’m in) having learned a little something from my Mother-in-Law about the power of sweets.  We even had lunch delivered.  And not pizza.  It was pretty fancy for the Sandhill Crew of misfit toys.  I presented my story (rather well, I must say) and then they were off for a tour of the property.  When they returned, and hour or two later, I was told that they had seen one of those critters (pointing to Carter, the taxidermied porcupine).  In fact, it had been crossing the road, and so they had to wait for it to pass by.   All these important people, waiting for a rodent.  This I love.   That was a Very Important Porcupine.

Things to do with a laundry basket

On Sundays, I hope to do a few things: go for a jog with my dog, sit and knit, read and drink coffee.  However last Sunday, my cursed hyper-sensitive porcupine radar was alerted as I sat and stripped off my running shoes on the front porch; a small, round creature was leisurely crossing the driveway 150 yards away between me and the cranberry marsh.  Unmistakable mix of carefree and focused – a porcupine.  The dog.  She knew something was up, she’s got hyper-sensitive Britt radar.  I ushered her into the house.

And then, like the superhero I am, I sprung into action. I grabbed a laundry basket, of course.

When catching the second largest North American rodent with a laundry basket, it is important to remember that having some sort of lid is a smart idea.  Otherwise, you’ll find yourself chasing an upside-down laundry basket around the woods, quills poking out the grids. Now I know, but instead I had to sit on the laundry basket while pulling dead tree branches from under the carpet of red pine needles, and piling them on top of the laundry basket to hold it still long enough for me to run back to the house and grab a lid from a storage bin and some bungee cords.

If you ever need to catch a porcupine and all you have is a laundry basket and a mismatched bin lid and some bungee cords, do not fear.  Simply slide the bin lid under the laundry basket containing the porcupine, and carefully, watching for quills and the sharp little porcupine claws, turn the basket right-side-up.  Then criss-cross the bungee cords making sure they are firmly attached at all ends.

Also, it is important to remember not to drive your little truck directly into the swampy portion of the logging road in order to get as close as possible.  Lucky for me, I knew my husband was busy on the marsh, so i was able to retrieve his truck and transfer the laundry-basket-with-porcupine from my swamp-stuck truck into his four-wheel drive truck, and now the story ends happily.  I relocated the porcupine (I’d decided it was a ‘he’ at this point, for no real reason) to an undisclosed spot where I set him free  from his laundry basket prison, and he waddled off to explore his new home.

The Uncollaring of Clarabelle

Sometime in the last few years I’ve discovered that having low expectations can be very rewarding.  People have told me that this is merely pessimism or a bad attitude, but strategically used, this philosophy can result in happy, happy outcomes.  This is especially useful in my work life, a situation where more often than not, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.  If i set the bar very, very low, I am far more likely to exceed expectations, which is a sort of success, right?   So it was with these thoughts in my head that I sleepily made my way out to the tree trap I’d set for Clarabelle the night before.  I fully expected it to be empty, but there was Clarabelle -  not sleepy at all.  Porcupines are easy to catch, it’s true, yet I’m always a little surprised when I find one in a trap I’ve set.  I loaded her up into the sled and made my way through the pickers and ferns and small aspen shoots back down the long cabin road and out to the Trumpeter Trail where I’d parked the car.  I was so sure my trap wouldn’t work that I’d parked quite far away to enjoy a walk in the woods. 

A year ago, our collared porcupine had gone too long in her collar, and as she gained weight, the collar had grown into her neck.  In order to remove the collar, they had had to sedate her, and bathe the wound.  I did not have the luxury of drugs this time around, so I was bound and determined to catch the current porcupine and remove her collar before it was too far gone. 

The process of removing a porky collar without drugs and by oneself seems to be this: Coax the porky into an open-ended, cone-shaped wire trap.  thread rebar across the opening to keep the animal in.  Use pliers to grip the antennae.  Pull the antenna through the trap wires until a gap between collar and neck appears.  Insert a flexible wire in shape of a hook under collar in order to keep space between neck and collar.  Start sawing through the nylon collar with a scalpel.  This sounds reasonably linear, but the problem is  variables such as quills, a living wild animal, and flop sweat. 

My first attempt nearly resulted in escape by Clarabelle.  i had not secured her in the trap, and she did a sort of backwards tummy-down limbo underneath the rebar at the back of the trap, her little marbled footpads facing up.  I started over.  My next attempt was better, no escape, antenna gripped, wire loop inserted, sawing begun…and then the squeaking began. Porcupines, when in defense mode, chatter their teeth. When they are truly alarmed or hurt (or mating), they squeak, just like a squeak toy.  It is a pathetic sound from an otherwise silent animal, and that’s when the flop sweat began (me, not her).  I kept sawing away with a scalpel otherwise meant for dissection, until the blade went dull, and i realized the spot on the collar I’d chosen was a combination of woven nylon wrapped around a thick piece of metal wire.  I was trying to cut through wire with a tiny knife!  Luckily, back in the day they must have done a lot of dissecting at Sandhill, because there were more dissection kits, all containing a small scalpel.  I found a new spot on the collar, pulled quills out of my gloves, hardened myself to the squeaks and kept sawing with a new blade.  I went through two scalpels, two exacto knives, a hunting knife (too big), a kitchen knife (also too big), a pair of scissors, and another scalpel before I triumphantly cut through the last of the nylon threads.  It was an anti-climactic moment, though, as Clarabelle simply started to squeak louder, making me wonder if I had waited too long, if the collar and neck had grown together?  I scooted Clarabelle into a roomier recovery cage, covered her with a tarp, and made myself some tea.

In the end, it all worked out.  After an hour or so,  I checked on Clarabelle only to find the collar pulled free from her neck.  She wouldn’t eat the apples I left for her, but she seemed  recovered from the traumatic wrestling match we’d just had.  I loaded her back into the truck, took her to her tree, weighed her (13 pounds), and painted her tail blue so we could i.d. her this winter.  Then I released her, and left her to regain both her privacy and her dignity.  I returned to the skills center to what looked like a crime scene, minus any blood.  Sharp instruments lay everywhere.  The cone trap, looking like a medieval instrument of torture, was strewn with hair, nylon and quills.  Multiple sets  of gloves sat on the table alongside a clipboard and a notebook.  Quills and fur and feces lay about the floor.  a muddy tarp, bits of grass and straw.   It did indeed look like a mad scientist’s laboratory.   

be free!

What did I care, I had exceeded my expectations, and Clarabelle was free.

Gloom

room with a gloomy view

Gloomier than than the darkest day in winter is a day like this; the fiery orange explosion of maple trees has become a slippery groundcover, rain is dripping with apathy, all the critters are hunkered down out of sight, and all that remains of autumn’s splendor is the tough old rust colored leaves that just won’t fall.  It is neither warm, nor cold, but tepid; it is neither Christmas nor the 4th of July.  It is the morning after, a party dress on New Year’s Day, a hangover.  It is very, very hard to motivate. 

Right now I am trying to motivate myself to go find Clarabelle and remove her collar.  The task seems daunting, even though I’ve left a sled and trap and chickenwire out near her last tree.  I’d really just like to reason with her, explain that I’m simply going to take her collar off, and have her offer up her little neck so I can slice through the nylon collar.   This works about as well as reasoning with my niece that she should cultivate some table manners.  Teenagers and wild animals, as I’ve said before, have a lot in common. 

Here I go, into the woods.

The ticks’ last stand

I was highly inefficient in the field today, while attempting to trap Clarabelle.  I should know by now, but can you blame an English major for learning wildlife biology slowly?  There are so many distractions, and so much nature imitating art out there, I have a hard time focusing on the practical stuff.  It is nice to just sit in a sunny spot and think about poetry, or admire the shape of flight of a small songbird, to soak it in. 

This one is simple, though: don’t sit on tick nests.  I don’t even know if they have nests, but I sat down on the ground to fiddle with my radio antenna and soon got the creepy-crawlies.  Tiny ticks all over my right pant leg, and my right arm.  They return with the Indian Summer.  Just when we’re enjoying the warm weather and last burst of sunlight, the nasty bits from summer return too; ticks and mosquitos. 

I eventually found Clarabelle, but it was too late to set up the intricate tree trap; I had to have the boss’s truck back to him.  Clarabelle has moved to the very northernmost tip of the island she’s on.  I think she must have a nice view of the cranes.  To get there I’ll either have to put on waders and float the sled with the trap, etc. through the marsh, or drag the sled through the shoulder-high alder and aspen.  And once I get the trap set, there isn’t much reason for Clarabelle to descend, seeing as how the weather is balmy and she’s got all she needs to eat on the same branch.  Maybe I’ll wait until next week.

The cranes were causing a ruckus out on the marsh.  One broke the morning peace with a jarring garooo-ah-ah-ah (Peterson’s guide to birds)  and then the rest set in, a group of 15 or so.   I scared up a flock of mallards while scoping the Gallagher marsh for a good crane viewing site.  Then I scared up a single male wood duck – I got quite close, in fact, while sliding down the edge of the dike to find a comfy observation seat.  He seemed tired, because he didn’t get up and fly immediately.  He noted  me, then moved on, but not very far away.  They are magnificent, and they look  unreal, rather  like something out of a Victorian storybook.  Besides the dashing colors, they have decorative and elegant lines, as though they have themselves groomed by a professional.  I bet they smell bad just like all wild things when you get up close. 

I’m enjoying this warm spell, but this afternoon I sent e-mails of inquiry to local snowshoe companies requesting information about discounts for educational purposes.  I got excited, as the good stuff is soon coming…

It would suck to be a cow.

My high school sat right next to a dairy farm, thus the nickname “Cow Pie High.”  There are certain phrases from high school that have blended with throwaway lines from popular movies of the time (I’m thinking of the ultimately quotable movie of my time, Caddyshack).   Once, upon entering school with some friends during a winter snow storm, my friend John turned and looked behind us at the snow blown pasture and said in serious contemplation  ”It would suck to be a cow.”   That phrase caused giggles for the rest of the day, but I cannot count how many times that phrase has gone through my head in the decades since I heard it spoken.  Indeed, it would suck to be a cow.  Or a deer.  Or a rabbit, etc. etc. etc. 

This dumbly profound sentence ran through my head the other day, as I waited out a thunderstorm in my warm truck, listening to NPR and sipping coffee.  I was waiting in the truck because I could do so, and I didn’t really feel like braving the torrential downpour outside.  Besides, I had a large metal antennae to hold up to the sky, and even I know that isn’t a great idea in a thunderstorm (again, reference Caddyshack).  After the rain slowed down and the lightening stopped, I did get out of the truck with all of my equipment, and I tracked down Clarabelle, who had weathered the storm at the top of a black oak tree.  She seemed nonchalant about the whole business.   She’s used to holding on tighter when things get rough.   I was completely soacked from crashing through waist-high ferns, so i was in a hurry to get back to my warm office and change into some dry clothes.  Driving through a recently selective-cut logged area, I spotted a Cooper’s hawk on a branch of a lonely tree.  His tail was spread like a hand of cards, drying in the emerging sun.  He had also weathered the storm, but he looked annoyed!  I watched as he fluffed out the rest of his feathers, almost like a dog shaking water off his coat, hop-turned to face the other way, and slowly settled his feathers back into dignified order. 

I drove back to the office, where I found my own set of dry clothing, made a hot cup of coffee, and settled in for the afternoon, happy to be human.

Eric the Wolf

In my life and in this job I go along for numbers of days and weeks on end without much of note happening, and then all of a sudden, with no lead-up or fanfare, something really wild happens, and this was one of those times.  I went out with a wolf biologist to check a trap line (which I have done before) but this time – success!  In my screenplay there will be music to build tension and a sly camera angle when this happens, but in real life we were driving and talking about nothing when Ron stopped and said “here’s our first trap…and it looks like…” and then he opened the door and quickly and quietly moved toward the thrashing in the brush, neck snare in hand. 

Like the moment before a first kiss or the very first forkful of a delicious piece of pie, I didn’t want that moment to end, that moment before the wolf was revealed to me.   I have been in the area and working around wolves and people-who-work-with-wolves for so long without seeing a live, wild wolf, that the moment had grown in my imagination.  This long virginal reverie didn’t last long as Ron clearly needed some help with the pissed-off, barking-growling wolf pup with the metal trap clamped on his leg.  Boy, did he smell like a wild animal: acrid, musty, earthy, strong.  Just 45 or so pounds with nothing to spare, Ron held him pinned by his neck while I followed the chain of the trap to free the anchor.  Ron muzzled him, then stepped the trap open, all the while playing the alpha wolf, muttering and growling and barking out at the pup.  I pulled the jaws of the trap open and lifted his foot out.  Once handled, the pup was strangely still.  Ron took him by the scruff, “Where’s your Dad?  I wanted your dad!” he growled to him.   I held him under his belly back by his hips and together we  carried him to the tailgate of the truck.   I couldn’t stop looking at him, up and down, in his eyes.  I was asked to keep one hand firmly planted on his bony torso, and to act domineering (not my strongest skill) while Ron worked.  Because it was a pup (even if just barely), there was no need to drug him.  Just act in charge, with no hesitation.

I’ll say now that it went fairly smoothly, but at one point things did get a little strange.  Ron worked quickly drawing blood, inserting a PIT tag behind the neck, binding two legs together, measuring.  I scribbled numbers on the intake sheet, scrambling to keep up while absorbing the experience, all the while resting that one hand firmly deep in the fur of the animal.  The pups eyes moved back and forth, drool leaked from the muzzle, his stomach gurgled and he pooped.  Then, out there in the chilly forest, I heard rustling in the woods.  At first i thought it was just a squirrel, but it seemed bigger, and perhaps closer, and maybe on the ground. 

Then Ron said, off-handedly to the pup ”Oh, is that your brother?” 

I laughed, “Really?” 

Ron nodded absently, eyes on his work.  He was fitting the bulky radio collar to the pup, lining it with foam that would disintegrate as the pup grew, resulting in a snug-fitting collar.  He proceded to tell me stories of processing animals alone and looking up to see two (presumably) sibling pups standing not twenty feet from the truck, watching him.  The pack or the family unit will often hang around a trapped member, waiting on the sidelines to see what happens.  I heard more rustling, this time from both sides of the road.   There was a huge scat a few feet away, adult-sized.

I don’t have a great fear of wolves.  I am confident that they want as little to do with me  as possible.  However, standing over this wolf pup, restraining him, knowing that the alpha male was likely behind a tree watching, gave me a little chill, and really jump-started my over-active imagination.   All the Little Red Riding Hood and Wolf at Your Door stereotypes surfaced momentarily as I imagined a wolf the size of a pony lurking in the periphery, eyes red, fangs dripping….

And then Ron was done, and he removed the binding around the legs, the muzzle from his nose.  He lifted the pup by the skin on his neck and tailbone and set him roughly on the ground .

“Get on” and we watched as the wolf pup loped away, 10, 20, 30 feet down the logging road.  He paused, turned to look at us, then cut east into the brush, and was gone.   

And that was my first wolf.

The Story of a Badger

Clarabelle getting fat up high

I was able to sneak out of the office yesterday, and using our fashionably retro radio equipment, go on a search for Clarabelle.   The blue-box radio receivers are pathetic.  The lid kept slipping off its hinges, the box no longer beeps, but instead clicks (not to be confused with the click of the antennae cord loosening).    Nevertheless, many mosquito bites and one lost pair of sunglasses later, Clarabelle was spotted.  i feel that the foliage is at its very thickest right now, and I wonder if Clarabelle is at her thickest right now, as well.  I did some reading of studies on porcupine eating habits, and it turns out their winter diet is nearly counterproductive.  They must be living off of their summer and fall preserves right up to the brink of starvation. 

What was most interesting was the dead badger on the Gallagher dike.  The body was days old so there was no superficial way to

bad day at the office

determine cause of death.   Next to the body was an enormous poop!  Practicing some Sandhill CSI, I pieced together the following clues. 

1.  Two weeks ago I saw a badger scoot into a den in the woods near Clarabelle, just south of where the body was found.  

2.  A live badger was spotted waddling down the same dike over the weekend (Ray L.)

3. The body was at current location at least as early as Wednesday (Wayne H.)

4. Last winter, one wolf was photographed on the Gallagher just off the dike where the body was found.  Other wolf tracks were found in the area (Mark C.)

5. Contrary to some suppositions, the predator was not a t-rex, as t-rex went extinct many moons ago (Ray L.)

6. Despite the sightings of multiple Subarus and Prius in the area during daylight hours,  jacked-up Calvin-pissing-on-something trucks are often crepuscular and cannot be ruled out as possible cause-of-death, even in a refuge.  No Busch Light cans were found in the area.

So, car-kill and then scavenged by coyote or wolf?  Or…predated by coyote or wolf who were so full they pooped right next to the carcass?  I am tempted to retrieve the one intact leg of the badger for the claws.  A real CSI would be able to scrape the claws for signs of a struggle, thus determining that the badger was engaged in a fight during time of death, or not.  Unfortunately, we have no money tagged in the budget for DNA analysis, so…

I wear a size 7

*sigh* I guess I’ll never know for sure.  I will be keeping an eye out for a messed-up coyote in the area.

Here’s all I have to say about wolves

I heard a wolf howling two nights ago near my house.  I’m not sure I’ve heard a live, wild wolf howling before.  It was not eerie, as I’d expected, but instead it seemed at home, confident.  It shouldn’t be.  I’m new to the in-depth wolf discussion mostly because I never latched on to the romanticism of the wolf – I don’t own any of those airbrushed wolf-on-a-mountain-howling-at-the-moon t-shirts, for instance.  I’m pro-wolf, to be sure.  It is with hesitation that I agree with the science-based management plan which includes a hunting season.  I am not against hunting, but the people who would like to hunt wolves are to me abhorrent (and this is a gross and grand generalization, of course).  Folks who enjoy an open range for their cattle and livestock seem especially wrong-minded, however I do not make my living from cattle.  I’m pro-wolf the same way that I am pro-porcupine, pro-deer, pro-mammal/amphibian/reptile, etc. etc. etc.  Their behavior seems a lot more reasonable to me than the average person.  They eat what they eat because they need it, they eat enough to survive, they sleep and eat and poop and mate, pretty simple.   The human population should be so simple.  We’ve clearly got the mating thing down, but the idea that there is an obesity epidemic suggests that we are somewhat out of touch with our bodies.  And for this human population we’re killing wildlife?  It seems out of wack.  You don’t find obese wolves in the forest.

If there is a hunting season opened on wolves, it will be a dubious victory for wildlife managers.  The population will be controlled and human interaction minimized, but how difficult will it be to see a grinning redneck with a dead wolf coming up to register the beast? The anger, resentment, disgust of knowing your enemy has won the immediate battle.   Perhaps this tells me more about myself than anything.  Most biologists or managers are very able to detach themselves from the emotional part of the story of wolves and simply focus on the science.  Killing one will save 50, but I simply can’t stop myself from thinking “what about that one?”