BoxTurtle Morning

I've found two so far this year: box turtle nests, freshly made, and immediately dug out, usually by skunks, opossums, or raccoons. Even crows will dig them out. The pliant shells, like bits of white plastic, scattered. You would walk right over it, and wouldn't think a thing of it, unless you live in a place where there's never any litter, and you stopped to investigate. With every year that goes by, finding these licked-clean eggshells breaks my heart more. Between predators and deaths on our dratted roads criscrossing their home ranges, box turtles cannot catch a break. 

So from mid-June through early July, which is egg-laying season for box turtles, I pace the mown paths that hold the perimeter of my meadow and bisect its center, looking for fresh nests, trying to find them before the predators do. Aided by their sense of smell, mammalian predators are much better at this than I am. Fishy-smelling protein awaits just an inch below the surface.

So on the morning of June 28, 2022, when I found THIS in the path, I was beside myself. I'd never seen such an obvious nest, the loose, crumbly excavation tailings to the left, and the mud freshly globbed on 

complete with adorable clawprints from the egg producer herself, as she carefully tamped down her excavation. Can't you picture her doing it??

And on the upper path, on the same morning, another nest!! 

Little footprint, like a tiny elephant foot with claws...

Here are the tailings she dug out.

On finding two turtle nests in the same morning, the direction of my day took a wild-mouse turn.

Off I did tread, to the garage. There, my predator-baffling accoutrements awaited on their designated shelving. Raccoon baffles, house sparrow traps, turtle nest cages, all gathered together in the Great Garage Cleanout of 2020. There are things you must have on hand for just such emergencies.

I grabbled what I needed

called mah best fren Curtis, and headed back out to the meadow as the sun rose higher in the sky.

I pounded stakes into the ground to secure the cages over the nests

then trudged back to the house for heavy insurance.

I knew the stakes wouldn't be enough to stop raccoons, so I went back up the meadow to fetch cinder blocks with which to weigh the cages down.

Here, I'm caught on my trail cam with a 63-pound pack full of concrete. From this experience, I know without question that I am not built for hiking the Appalachian Trail. Because I would certainly have at least 60 pounds of gear, food and water, and though I am strong, I know I'm not strong enough to haul all that I need.

Just to live in the country is more than enough.

When I got to the first nest with the 63-pound pack on, I had to drop to a sit and roll on my back like an upended turtle to get it off! Lord have mercy. Glad the trailcam didn't witness that!

I weighted each cage, careful to keep the nests exposed to the sun.

Curtis snoopervised. I think he worries about me more as we both get older. :)

Box turtles choose their nest sites carefully, assessing the soil and sun exposure and who knows what all else in their choice. They need sun to heat the eggs, and they prefer my wide mown trails to thick meadow. On the trails, they have a prayer of getting through the vegetation to be able to dig an egg chamber. But there, they're also much more exposed to predation. So I help where I can. I was over the moon to protect two nests this year. Predators 2, turtles...?  I won't know if the eggs made it until probably October, or maybe even next spring, for the eggs incubate for three months, and the babies sometimes hatch and overwinter in the nest. It's a long, long waiting game to find out. 

In case you're wondering, the cage grate is large enough (1 1/4" square) to let the babies out without a problem. That is absolutely vital! You can't cage a nest and then confine the babies when they eventually hatch! Nor can you monitor it closely enough to prevent their expiring inside the cage before you get there.

I took a cooldown walk to the orchard, which is largely too shady for turtle nesting, and found a female Io moth resting on one of my beloved milkweed plants.

She looks like a dead leaf, until you gently tease a wing aside, and she startle-flashes you with giant eyes! (naturalist parlor trick-- you're welcome)

At orchard's end, the butterfly weed I mow around and prop up with sticks was in full bloom.

The indigo buntings I'd been monitoring had finally fledged on Day 10. Hooray!!

As I walked up to check the patio crack for Fak, the copperhead,

I found this.  

I'd scratched our initials and our anniversary (9-11-93) into the concrete.

I forgot I'd ever done it. 

And now here we are

 and aren't,

 and I found two turtle nests in the same morning.

It was a good day in the country.

E. B. White

 

Spring on the Old Farm

April 10--the day in 1994 my Dear Old Dad, or DOD for short, finally got free of his lymphoma-wracked earthly body and took off to fly with the hawks (and hurl a few down at me). Every year, I try to do something life-affirming on that day, something that he'd enjoy. Often it's potting up the bonsais, or planting the peas, turning some rows in the garden, or poking around an old farmstead. How about that last one? Let's go to the Becker farm!

It's not every day you see falcate orangetips mating. These jittery little bugs are among my favorite first butterflies of spring, right in there with the (increasingly scarce) mourning cloak and much more common spring azure. I thrill to the incandescent satsuma orange of their wingtips, and will them to settle, which they virtually never do.

But this trio was preoccupied and let me get close with my little phone camera. Out of focus, but it gives you that orange flash. Two males are trying to mate with the same female.

She's not having it, though, and wants to hang with just one.

Male left, female right (larger abdomen).

While they're engrossed, I get to appreciate the checkered border of those lovely fairy wings. 

Like a race flag! No wonder they never sit still unless en flagrante delicto.

And the delicately marbled undersides! Who knew? Wow, what a treat. Thank you for making more FAOT's.

Falcate orangetips, or FAOT's as I write in my notes, using a shorthand adapted from bird bander lingo, use the early cresses and rockets (mustards) as their broodplants. You'll see them flying low and bouncily along meadow borders and roadsides. 

The other one out early around here is the cabbage white. I snuck up on this one, hoping it would be a West Virginia white, but the dark patch on the wingtip and little dots on the forewing say cabbage.

This cabbage white is feeding on deadnettle, a creeping Eurasian plant that turns fallow bean and cornfields into a haze of purple this time of year. It's a lovely phenomenon from a bad weed. Its major virtue is that, like all mints, it's pretty easy to pull up.

It was a dreary gray day in what seems like an endless string of them, but I knew that would make the forsythia positively sing, so I decided to head up to the Becker farm to see that.

We passed the Toothless Lady. You may remember the white woman's slip that somehow got caught on a nail after a windstorm. I had plans to get it down and try it on. Alas.

When it finally slipped down low enough that I was able to reach it with a long stick, it was so thoroughly tangled around several nails that I had little hope of getting it. I tried, but it was anchored there for the ages. 

The wind has torn and tattered it until it's no more than a bunch of bandages, hardly fit to wrap a mummy. There will be no ghost slip selfies from me!

I still find it beautiful, and enjoy photographing it in changing light.

I could be wrong, but that warm russet color in the wood might indicate that The Toothless Lady was built of Osage orange. I have it on good authority that her attendant, a small toolshed to the south, is built of that wood. And the protected parts of it are that same beautiful orange color. For that alone, she should be an historic treasure. Not too many Osage oranges around that are big enough to saw into lumber any more. That, and the fact that I love her so. I hereby propose Historic Treasure status for many tumbledown buildings and trees on my routes. Things Zick Loves. Thou Shalt Not Cut or Destroy.

Out the back of the same barn, there is a trail of old clothes stringing down the poison ivy vines. This puzzled me momentarily, until by scanning carefully with binoculars I figured out that they issue from a squirrel's nest at the eave.  That squirrel's been busy, raiding the boxes I would love to look through, but will never be able to reach, thanks to the barn's utterly rotted floors. I am imagining the vintage clothing, chewed through by mice, sorted by squirrels, and crapped upon by 'coons.

Their colors remind me of the Buddhist prayer flags that fly in the Himalayas, starting out red, yellow, blue and white, then fading to gentle pastels.

Whipple Prayer Flags. Squirrel prayers.

The Toothless Lady continues to delight me in all the oddest and best ways. I fervently hope I am not around when she's finally torn down.  There would be rending of garments and tearing of hair.

We forged on to the farmstead.

I'm not sure what colors Chet can see, but he sure gave the big forsythia a long look. I was interested to see that the farm's caretakers, while letting the house slowly deliquesce in a squirrelly mess, decided to trim the drooping wands off the bottom of one of the forsythias this winter. Chet used to crawl under the cave they made to cool down on hot summer days. Sometimes I'd throw a cup of cool well water over his back before he flopped down. 

I walked a circle around the farmhouse, looking for flowers growing unseen. It was too early for the wild red columbine someone transplanted there years ago, but I did find a bit of hawk down caught on a grass tip and blowing in the crazy April wind. 

A little calling card from DOD. I'd bet it was redtail down, being sparkly white like that.

Then I went to see the pheasant-eye narcissus that are growing a little down over the hill. A telephone pole always spoils my composition, but I shoot anyway.

Spirea, or bridal wreath, was just going crazy in the hedge.

Chet went out into the lawn to graze like a miniature Angus x Hereford. Standing there like a cow.

Spirea makes a rather loose, messy hedge, but oh! is it beautiful in spring.

And back of the house, an old peach was blooming as it fell. Here's to blooming as you fall.

On our way home, we stopped to examine a sofa someone had left on the corner. Why would you do this? Hoping someone will like it well enough to lug it home with them? Not wanting to pay dump fees? 

I'll be curious to see if it's still there, three days later (I don't get out much).
Update: Someone hauled it away! Amazeballs.

We stopped to greet the new cattle at the Harris farm. This mama looked at me like I was dropped from Venus. That's how I knew she'd never lived here. That, and I didn't recognize her.  She has a very nice angel on her chest.

Her fat little girlcalf (look at that potchy brisket! That quadruple calf-chin!) looks as much like a sheep as any calf I've ever seen. Slitty eyes. So, so fat. Mama must make good milk. I'll be anxious to see the regular crowd come back from their winter quarters. I miss them. I heard a rumor that Bully will be sold, or perhaps already has. I hope it's not true. I'd miss his marcelled hair and his white-ringed ears, and the way he would oooof at me when I came up to the fence, then let me touch his always-wet pebbled leather nose. I'm still hoping to see him this spring.

Bully, July 2015

And of course I'm anxious to see Spotify and see if her new calf has The Triangle. They always make my day. 

These are the rhythms of rural life, the growings up, the fallings down and the yearly coming around.
Happy Free Spirit Day, DOD.

Copperhead Catchin'--Who You Gonna Call?

We're having some crazy spring weather here. The night of April 9, there was a tornado warning, from a wall cloud with rotation spotted about 20 miles southwest of here. It passed without harm, but it sure got the sireens going, people headed to the bathrooms and basement. I actually bundled all my baby bird paintings for the new book down to a secure closet in the basement. That's 13 years of work that, on the brink of publishing it, I'm not anxious to reprise, and couldn't if I wanted to.

It rains and rains and rains, making us wish for a transcontinental water pipeline, so we could send some to our drought-stricken friends out West. Just not fair. 

 Bill and I were up for a couple of hours the night of the 8th, me sopping and wringing towels into a lobster pot as water poured in over the basement door stoop; he outside drowning, digging an emergency trench across the lawn to shunt water away from the door. It worked! It won't be much fun to mow over, but our music equipment and my paintings are safe and dry. I loved that little bit of ingenuity that actually worked, and saved the day. The whole basement would have flooded without that little trench.

Wish I could say the same about the foyer, where a badly-hung gutter is feeding water back into the sofit. Drip, drip, drip into a spaghetti pot. Gutter guy who hung it wrong is totally hiding from us. Grrr.

Everyone's affected by the deluge. Even the snakes. My artist neighbor Beth Nash called about an hour ago. 

"Do you still have your snake hook?" she asked, her voice quite a bit higher pitched than usual. I didn't even ask why. I knew.

"Yep. I'll be right over."

I grabbed the tongs and an empty garbage can with a clamp-down lid, jumped in the car and was over there in less than four minutes. With one stop to dump out the dead mouse in the can, pee-yeeww!

 I knew what it would be, but I never dreamt where it would be. 

This is right where you do NOT want a venomous snake. Over your head.

Yep. Beth was trying to close the door that leads from her studio to her greenhouse, and something was catching in it. Oh. OH! She said the head was hanging down right over her head!

Now Beth is no wussy. She's not afraid of copperheads. She just doesn't want them right in her studio. A little quirk of hers, I guess. Her studio's in the basement of their barn, and the copperheads just love the rather pourous stone foundation and the fact that it's heated. She's got some serious copperhead stories.

Like me, Beth respects all animal life, and she values the copperheads for the mouse control they offer. Just wishes they weren't venomous, and that they'd stay out of her work and living spaces. Hey, me, too.

It was no trick at all to gently work the tongs in that loop of snake sticking out and ease her down into the can. She was still a bit sluggish from the winter. An April copperhead is an early one, but it's Beth's second of the season. We usually don't see them until July at our house.

Probably a female, getting on to 3' long. The thing to do here was to relocate her. Since I was all suited up with my muckboots on and had her contained, I offered to find a spot for her. I kinda know the spots around here. I thought as I drove, and made up my mind. I turned down a very steep dirt road toward an abandoned house I thought might offer dry harbor for a frightened copperhead. 

Where nobody would go. 

At least nobody would go without expecting to see a copperhead there.

Cricks are up a bit, I noticed. 

Road was getting washed out in a hurry. By now it was pouring, another frog-drowner in full swing.

The display of ancient daffodils by the house I chose. I call this one Raggedy Ann, a shaggy double variety, but the ones at this homestead are a neat variant with sharp-pointed, longer leaves and a distinctly star-shaped flower. Raggedy Ann is the oldest daffodil around, the most likely to be found in really old abandoned farmsteads around here. I'm told she's the first daffodil the colonists brought from England.

I dumped the can out and was very glad I was wearing my high muck boots, because Mrs. Snake wasn't so thrilled at being dumped. She took a bead on me and struck.

Don't worry. I was holding the can lid in front of me because I figured she might strike. Inside of her mouth was white, almost like a cottonmouth. Science Chimp, always taking notes. She got gone in a hurry.  

I was very pleased that it was so dry under the old flooring. On my way down here, I had looked at and rejected a number of natural rock ledges for possible release because they were too wet. If she'd wanted to be wet, she wouldn't have climbed up above Beth's door.  Note the skull to the right.

Housecat, along with a bunch of its scattered, chewed up bones. Keep 'em inside, folks. Coy-wolves love 'em.

Copperhead Castle, from inside. It's a fixer-upper, but it's got charm. And hey! it's got copperheads and cat skulls.

I will confess to totally loving getting that call, relocating a nice snake to a reasonably suitable place, and helping out a wonderful neighbor who's helped us out a bunch. I made Beth pose for a commemorative shot. Country girls, doin' it for theyselfs.

I know who she reminds me of in this photo. My hero of heroes.

The shots in this post are not up to my usual standards, but you try photographing a copperhead over your head when you have enough adrenaline running through your veins to kill a cow. OK, now wrassle it gently down without hurting it.

Now go see Beth's incredible art. I own several of her recent paintings. You should too!

This one hangs on my bedroom wall. It spoke to me. I can't imagine why.

 bethnash.com