Big Sean the Brush-Wolf

I was headed for the car, which was loaded up with packages, a bit before noon on May 16. My destination: the Lower Salem post office. I was already pushing it for time, but I knew I could make it before the place shut down at noon sharp. I raked the meadow with my eyes, the way I always do, and picked up a distant anomaly.

First look.  Oh, that's something good out there in the meadow. That's a canid.

Grabbed my car binoculars to confirm. Coy-wolf, brush wolf, eastern coyote, hybrid canid. Take your pick. Big male. Catching and eating small things. Jackpot!

I happened to have my Canon 7D with me because going anywhere in May without it is just stupid.
There is so much to see and photograph in May. Every time the animal dropped his head, I ran closer.
Looking at these shots, I'm pretty confident he was picking off freshly-emerged periodical cicadas as they clung to the grass blades. Brood V is coming out of the ground in Ohio after its 17-year sleep!! if the rain and cold ever subside. The first few have started coming out. Bracing myself. It's gonna be huge.

 And thus I kicked off my personal Brood V Project: to photograph as many creatures as possible, exploiting the abundant food these cicadas provide. So far, coy-wolf is the first, and a new one for me. Cardinal: #2.  The way my biology professor friend Dave McShaffrey puts it, "This is like Halley's Comet coming around for astronomers. Brood V is an entomologist's Halley's Comet." Exactly. I don't pretend to be an entomologist, but I had a blast documenting species eating cicadas in the summer of 1999, when I didn't even have a proper camera. This time: look out.

Finally I got close enough to the preoccupied coy-wolf to get his attention. I'm sure he smelled me before he saw me. He suddenly picked his head up. Imagine being able to smell a reasonably fresh human down the length of a football field.

He raised his head higher when he saw me.

There was that moment when he said, "Oh, crap. Now what?"

 He looked away in annoyance and confusion. How could I have let that woman creep up so close to me? What an idiot I am. Having so much fun eating these delicious big bugs I completely overlooked the fact that there's a house up there. And primates pop out of it during the daytime. Duh, Wile E.

Gonna mosey on.

I marveled at the heft and beauty of this animal. There is coyote in him, yes, but there's a lot of something else, too, something big, dark, strong. Eastern wolf, Canis rufus. We didn't quite manage to exterminate them. Left just enough of them in a Canadian refuge to mingle their genes with those of western coyotes and produce something larger, stronger, brainier and more adaptable than any canid we've ever seen. Evolution, afoot.

Evolution happens, right before our eyes. It's always and still happening, whether we acknowledge the process or not.  No Deus ex machina required.

The pattern of his coat, the fine white bib and the red flammulation. The fine stippling of his dark fur, tan, red and black; the thick ruff and long legs. The shorter, deeper muzzle; the robust dentition; the bigger feet. This creature is genetically set to take down much larger prey than cicadas. Groundhogs. Deer. Feral cats, to name a few. Welcome, coy-wolf! Eat hearty! We are serving all your favorites today. 

I was grateful to be so close, thankful to have caught him on my camera. What a gift. How do I know he's a guy? Too big and bulky to be a gal. I can't really see his bits in any of my photos, but there's enough to suggest his sex in his build. Though a radiotagged female coy-wolf in Massachusetts tipped the scales at 60 pounds, twice the bulk of a western coyote.

 "Coyote" just doesn't fit. I like "brush wolf." Might start using that.  And "Coy-wolf" is a lingual stumble. It has no music to it.

He glared at me. Thanks for wrecking my hunting, woman.

His ears, set backward in disappointment.

With a last stink-eye at me, he simply melted into the unmown half of the meadow.

I saw him enter it, but never saw him exit. There's an open path on the far side of the tall vegetation he's going into that he'd have to cross to gain the woods. I never saw him cross it, and repeated scans of the unmown half with my binoculars showed he'd simply disappeared. What he actually did, I'm almost sure, was come toward me until he was behind a small rise, then dart behind that into the woods. 

I love the gotohell look on his face. He's not afraid of me. He just knows he has to curtail his current, enjoyable activity (eating tender, freshly emerged cicadas) and beat it out of here. Because that's how the world works. He's the king of his little pack; his basso profundo howl makes shivers run up and down my spine, but he's outta here, because the two-legged pale creature cannot be trusted. Might be packing heat.

Because my kids have polluted my steady musical diet of Americana with the songs that most move them, I've named this magnificent animal Big Sean. There are times when his hit song is the only thing I want to hear. Had it up to here with it all, OK with explicit rap? Enjoy. Heck of a bit of filmmaking and acting--Big Sean manages to convey hurt and a sweet vulnerability despite his profane braggadocio. I can hear my kids and their friends (I'm lookin' at you, Thunder Squad) laughing at my pin-headed critique, reading my stiff appraisal aloud even as I write.

Easily offended? I pray of you, don't click. And if you do, and get all huffy, scolding me is not your best choice. Like coy-wolves, like evolution, explicit material is going down all around us.

I never made it to the post office. That's OK. I had an audience with Big Sean, whom I adore.

 Who hates me. 

 I'm OK with that, too.  

Cedar Bog with Science Chimp

On our field trip to Cedar Bog outside Springfield, Ohio, most of us were kneeling and snapping away and oohing and aahing on the boardwalk

led by Jim McCormac, one of the finest naturalists I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

If you don't read his blog, Ohio Birds and Biodiversity, you must. He's a sparkly writer, good photographer, and best of all he knows what's interesting. He's always got a little wrinkle in the story, something I never knew. In short: Silverback Science Chimp.

There were some much rarer things yet at Cedar Bog's lovely visitor center. For one, I would really, really love to see a giant beaver. Alas, I would be seeing wooly mammoths, too, were that in the cards.


Here's a tooth. Imagine finding a tooth from a beaver the size of a black bear. The tooth was about 9" long. Eeeee-gad.

The cicadas were singing, and Jim taught us the difference between the Lyric Cicada's song (virtually no oscillation, just a steady buzzing trill) and the Lens Cicada (a gentle oscillation) and the Swamp Cicada (a heavy oscillation, all zizzy and snappy), and the Scissor-Grinder Cicada, the classic summer evening in-town species that goes ZWEOOO ZWEEEOO ZWEEOO.

Don't you love knowing that?
Again, no idea which one this is, but I was glad to spot him resting in a sumac. Speaking of spotting things, here's a young ruby-throated hummingbird hiding out in a tall umbellifer:


It was tending a patch of jewelweed. Always such a treat for me to see hummingbirds feeding from something other than red plastic.

A Snout butterfly, Libytheana bachmanii, only the second I've seen in Ohio. Jim says this is a "big invasion year" for this southern butterfly with the Jimmy Durante rostrum. They are very cute, if you can catch them sitting long enough. That's not actually a snout, but elongated labial palpae. I'm not sure what the snout does with its elephantine projection, but it is fond of fermenting fruit and nectar, so perhaps there's a food-gathering advantage. Or maybe it's a weevil with big dreams.


A net-winged beetle, Calopteron terminale. It was moving slowly about the leaf surfaces, raising its soft wing covers over its back in a semaphore display. I owe this ID to Eric Eaton and Kenn Kaufman's wonderful Kaufman Field Guide to the Insects of North America. Get it, and figger out the bugs in your world.


As I neared the end of my allotted time at Cedar Bog, Jim casually pointed out "that thing that looks like a human brain lying on the forest floor."

The Science Chimp was not fooled for an instant. This softball-sized object was the fruiting body of a skunk cabbage, from which the leaves had nearly melted away. She considered it for a moment, then asked aloud,

"And what would be the dispersal agent for the human brain fruit?"

To which, without missing a beat, my new friend Rich quipped,

"Zombies?"

Out of focus because I was laughing.

Rich and I bonded good, making jokes about prickly ash and such.

I love a plantsman. He works as a horticulturist by day, but clearly his avocation is Resident Stinkpot. We were trouble when combined.

Alas, all too soon it was time for me to bolt. I had an hour's drive to Columbus, where via the magic of cellaphones I was to connect for a torrid 20 minutes with my bestest Oklahoma buddy Timothy Ryan, he of the peerless photographic eye and the glorious blog From the Faraway, Nearby.

On my way I saw the most auspicious of automobiles, a Hot Rod Lincoln,
boding well for our quick reunion.


Is that not the baddest car you have ever seen? Nice color, too.

Tim was literally passing through Columbus on work, shepherding a platoon of mini Coopers from party to party. Tim has the most interesting life, which makes him great company. He is full of beans and ready for anything.

Seeing Timmers, however briefly (he had to leave within the hour) was the cherry on top of a perfect Zick weekend! We were both steamin' sweaty but we didn't care. My brutha from anotha mutha.


Why does he have to live in Oklahoma? Doesn't he know that he should move to Southern Ohio? I have amassed quite a list of people who should do that.