Sep 10, 2006 by Naomi.

The moon, lopsided as it was four days past full, dazzled me with its brightness as it rose above the treetops. I enjoyed the cooling air, as I often do, enfolding the scents and sounds of the night. The stridulate of crickets is an interesting chirr made all the more fascinating because of how it is made by amorous males. It seems crickets use the sharp edge at the base of one front wing as a scraper along a file-like ridge on the bottom side of the other front wing. An organic version of the washboard used in hillbilly bands. Their wings lay flat along their body so the scraping requires some contortions, I think. Maybe I don’t understand because I have no wings on which to practice.

Though I listen to cricket noises with some fondness I do not wish to imitate their song. Adult Field Crickets - Gryllus spp. - range in size up to one and one quarter inches long and usually are shiny black with “jumping” hind legs. Most chirp and may sing both day and night. I hear them but not with the fourth segment in my front leg as they do. Weird? No, simply an adaption on a head with no space for ears.

Each female lays between 150 to 400 eggs in the fall which hatch as wingless nymphs in the spring. Nymphs molt (shed skin as they grow) eight to nine times and reach adulthood in about 90 days. Good explanation as to why I don’t hear them until late summer when they sing to attract mates. I found no evidence of males stridulating until they reach maturity. Maybe the young develop baby chirps but sex is off limits, thank you.

Crickets are omnivores and scavengers feeding on organic materials, as well as decaying plant material, fungi, and seedling plants. Crickets break down plant material, renewing soil minerals. They are also an important source of food for other animals. I’ve heard of chocolate covered crickets. Some people go to great lengths to get a chocolate fix.

I am content, actually soothed, with the serenade of happy crickets. And in my young life I thought they were only stroking fiddles for the moon.

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Sep 10, 2006 by Naomi.

A beneficial insect, the praying mantis, is 3 to 4 inches in length and you may find larger ones. Ryanne found a five inch green one in the wet habitat of the west coast last week. The common one found in the west is most likely the Carolina Mantid, in taxonomy - Stagmomantis carolina. As all insects it has six legs on its thorax, a segment most odd in the mantis, not a simple segment as found in grasshoppers or cockroaches, to which it is closely related. But its oddity and temperament make it an adorable pet.

The body is tannish-brown or pea green color. The two front legs are larger than the other four and are serrated and spiny, modified to close like a pocket knife. These mantids are carnivorous and eat other insects. Often one will eat another of its own species. Prey is held securely between the forelegs in a raptor-like grasp while being consumed by a vicious mouth in a triangular shaped head — another striking feature.

Last week I found an egg cluster about an inch and a half long glued to my cedar fence where I live in the Columbia Basin. I found others on boards and posts in years past. Overwintering occurs as eggs in this cluster that hardened from the frothy, gummy substance laid by the female perhaps two weeks ago (late August). Tiny nymphs will emerge from the egg mass early next summer.

The praying mantis is the only predator which feeds at night on moths and the only predator swift enough to catch mosquitoes and flies. They are named for the “prayer-like” stance of the front legs. The name mantis derives from the Greek word for prophet or fortune teller. The insect does look innocent and thoughtful as it waits patiently for food to fly within its grasp.

I found a 2-inch tan mantis while moving sand from under my new backyard gate. It looked most unhappy in that dust and began to walk up the side of my house to what it expected to be safety. I had more digging to do so I decided to move it into a more friendly habitat. When I tried to capture it, the wings opened as if it would fly away. They were the lovely filament like dragonfly and grasshopper wings, but the light tan color of its own body. It actually appeared disoriented and I was able to move it into the moist leaves of my garden. I shall keep a lookout for it. Perhaps it fed over the next few nights and is off doing whatever is in its nature to do. I hope it does not lay an egg mass on the house because that surface will be refreshed with new paint next week.

Woe unto all insects that have lived in safety on my outside walls for lo so many years, beneficial or not.

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Sep 9, 2006 by Naomi.

The moderator in the meeting I attended today was very animated, excited, and exclaimed, “I’m crazy as a bedbug.” Upon questioning her, she admitted at never known such an animal and had no idea where the expression came from. Well I grew up before DDT was released after WWII (that’s the great war to end all wars, so the rhetoric declared) and I never met a crazy bedbug. Each was intent on sucking blood and reproducing, both of which could deserve to be labeled crazy. They do not imbed their heads in your skin, when they fill with blood they simpl let go and hide.

There were hundreds in the house we moved into which had been abandoned for years. (I was ten and possibly had faulty multiplication skills.) We moved in sometime in early spring while temperatures were freezing. Our Round Oak wood stove heated the walls and condensed the air. WOW did that bring bedbugs out of the lathe and plaster walls in that old house!

Bed bugs, Cimex lectularius, are not reptiles, needing exterior heat to move them as snakes or turtles do, but they multiply more rapidly. Sheets and clothing and bodies had to be washed often. Kerosene was what Mother used to drive them out of the old metal bed springs. She was meticulous and managed to delete most, but kerosene was not lethal. Good hygiene and pesticides cleared them from our house but they are making a comeback in the USA.

Bed bugs have been around forever, since before humans I suppose, and are mentioned in medieval European texts and in classical Greek writings back to the time of Aristotle. Adult bed bugs are about 1/4 inch long and reddish brown, with oval, flattened bodies. Bed bugs do not fly, but can move quickly over floors, walls, ceilings and other surfaces on their 8 legs. Female bed bugs lay up to five eggs a day and 500 during a lifetime. The eggs are tiny, whitish, and hard to see without magnification (individual eggs are about the size of a dust spec).

Above all, bed bugs are not crazy. They are an animal whose niche only requires some warm blood. With human and pet populations in perpetual explosion, they are likely to stick around for another long, long time.

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Sep 8, 2006 by Naomi.

Where do earthworms go when soil dries to powder? I thought they just died but I found I was wrong because today when I dug into dry soil so recently wet, there were earthworms — lively large long earthworms. With my first deep shovel thrust I made one worm into two. That also is mysterious. A compost man loved to tell school kids that there were no boy or girl earthworms. Each is both. Is that erotic or what?

These segmented worms are interesting animals. They belong to the Class Oligochaet, which means “few bristles” and refers to the few setae on each body segment — four to each segment. Research shows these can be detected as a roughness if the animal is stroked from tail to head. That is contrary to proper stroking of furry mammals, mind you, your cat prefers strokes from head to tail. People probably aren’t that fussy, but then they aren’t all that furry either.

Earthworm bristles aren’t like those on my hair brush but I will “stroke” one more closely the next time we meet, if I can detect the head from the tail. They don’t have lungs, but instead breathe through the skin. The outermost layers of an earthworm are thin and they excrete mucous onto the skin to keep it moist. It is also wet by body fluid which is excreted through dorsal pores located along the back mid-line in the grooves between the segments. Now isn’t that precious?

So I know they need moisture and are restricted to burrowing in damp soil. They retreat deep underground during hot, dry weather. So with some clever googling I found out where on earth my earthworms went when they were gone. Someday I’ll tell you about their gross digestion process while they blissfully burrow in my damp soil.

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Sep 7, 2006 by Naomi.

I have friends - and some are even family - who find it relaxing to get behind their automobile steering wheel and drive. Others find no such pleasure. On a five hour trip which I undertake frequently, there are many diversions that make for quick and happy passage of time. When traffic is light and I can observe the landscape as I drive by, I look at the barns and fields and reflect on the peaceful lives they represent. Well, perhaps. From my perspective farm life is peaceful.

I learned from college roomnates that is not always the case. In the women’s college my acquaintences could not wait to marry and get off the farm. And back in 1946 there were more woman who came from farms than there are in the present time. I did not understand their determination to move elsewhere. I still wonder if I would believe it if I lived a farm life now.

My childhood on isolated farms was tranquil and I only remember security and pleasure. I had parents who made it so and siblings who added interest when time permitted. There was fur trapping, sleigh rides, ice skating, and sliding down hill in winter (Think ice cold below zero for five months). Spring required digging trenches to guide melting ice away from driveways and buildings. Come to think of it, the mud gathered on boots was a pain; it added pounds of weight to each foot.

Summer brought winds that were such fun. As the poem goes, “Who has seen the wind” didn’t faze me. I did not have to see it to know could blow me down. And across the fields fragrant with scents of grasses and flowers it was pleasant even when it was so strong I could walk against it only with greatest effort. The storm clouds would send us for bathing suits so we could run in the warm rain - the best shower I had until indoor piping became a reality.

But back to enjoying the act of driving. When traffic gets heavy, passing cars exude noise that indicates how their drivers amuse themselves. I can understand listening to news or talk shows and maybe I would if I had a good radio and a quieter car and better hearing. Until then I am content to imagine happy folks, especially kids, going about their lives on those widely spaced acres we still call farms.

Think about it. Creating strife makes for great page turners in novels and those are needed for successful best sellers. But I save those for creative writing. For safe and pleasant driving I cling to a serene polyanna attitude and leave the gothic farm scenes to painters.

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Sep 6, 2006 by Naomi.

There is no end to the subjects that scurry through my mind when I first waken and stretch, deciding whether to get out of bed or linger. My sister sang an old army ditty where the private hated to get up in the morning, hated to get out of bed when the first bugle sounded. In the final line the private vowed to shoot the bugler and spend the rest of his life in bed.

While that sounds delicious for a moment it does not suit me. I bounce out of bed and here in Bellingham, as the sun rises, I am out on the park trail to pump up my heart rate. The path along Whatcom Creek Greenway is on the ridge of a steep bank which also helps me visualize a scene in my novel set in Jamaica where the heroine is bucked off her horse in a violent storm and tumbles down a steep incline.

I do not have a park trail near my back door at home. My favorite trail is fifteen miles away in McNary National Wildlife Refuge next to the Corps of Engineer’s Hood Park on the Snake River.

So I bounce out of bed and do stretching exercises at the kitchen counter while my oatmeal cooks. And on the living room floor while my toast roasts. Then I do what ever needs doing. I leave my car on the far corner of the parking lot forcing a walk to the store entry and back.

And all the while thoughts keep scurrying through my mind and I keep on moving. This old stone doesn’t have a chance to stop and gather moss.

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Sep 5, 2006 by Naomi.

Berry picking stains my fingers and reminds me of spinners on the lookout for dyes to color their wool. Reddish blue of blackberries would have been a favorite, a color that was permanent and would remain true with repeated washing. But then there was a time when we were not so obsessed with washing clothes and colors lasted longer because they had time to set in the fabric. However laundry is a whole different subject.

Summer was the season for berries that yielded reds, blues and purples for coloring wool, cotton and linens which were spun and woven for clothing. There were flowers for blues, yellows and reds. Undoubtedly every bark, leaf, flower, and fruit available to women were boiled and tested for color fastness and used as time permitted wherever they were harvested or traded.

Colors discovered in plants of the West Indies by Spanish and English marauders created brilliant uniforms that lent pride and identity to fighting men centuries past. With laboratory discoveries nature gave way to chemistry and the color spectrum expanded to include subtle tones and hues that make clothing and home furnishings a joy to own. Or a nightmare to match when the need arises. But colors are delightful and I am very happy to enjoy them all around.

So what if I have to bleach my fingers after eating blackberries? A bigger joy comes with knowing I can choose purple colored materials and skip the work it takes to make them.

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Sep 4, 2006 by Naomi.

Walking or driving or riding, I observe objects that pass on the street. In early September there are flocks of birds everywhere, my favorite urban wildlife. How the many birds fly and swirl around without crashing into each other is amazing. Researchers surmise birds flock up as a safety measure. A predator can only take one bird at a time (no shotgun scatter as applied by humans) so the chances of my being chosen for food is less when I am one flying among many.

An interesting fact discovered was that the young of a species migrated in flocks before the adults. Now that really puzzled researchers. The discovery put an end to the theory that older birds led their offspring to the chosen wintering areas. And because juvenile birds had all new feathers they were ultimately prepared to undertake the migrating flight as soon as some biological clock struck the magic hour.

You see ma and pa must have new feathers for flying as well. New feathers grow in during a process called molting. A new feather pushes up through the follicle and dislodges the old one. The slightest break in the feather seriously impairs the ability to fly any distance, let alone the long flights of migration.

Maybe it doesn’t matter to you and me. But I would like to see birds return in the spring. And just so you know, males of most songbird species come in the first flocks to claim their territory. Some even build nests for the females. The species where birds mate for life fly north in flocks but the pairs stop off in their historic nesting areas. So kids learn some things whether they want to or not? Interesting.

Not something we absolutely need to know but should we wonder if the precocious trait of human juveniles was set in evolution long past?

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Sep 3, 2006 by Naomi.

Imagination can be full of wonder. A princess and a castle among the clouds is easily envisioned. As I headed toward a well-kept path in the park at daybreak I tried to imagine how the first humans greeted the day. Would I uncurl from the tree branch and stretch lazily? Or would I step to a cave opening and breathe deeply of the crisp 58 F morning air? According to studies by psychologists, anthropologists and biologists, the human mind builds scenarios upon guidelines it has come by through experience and intuition.

I can draw upon experience in the dear dead days beyond recall as the old song goes when I lived without electricity. There were lamps to light the kitchen after sundown to eat or read by and lanterns to find my way around in the barn to avoid spilling the milk I stole daily from patient cows. Outdoors there was moonlight and stars which could be amazingly bright and not a spark of artificial light cluttered the landscape.

But none of that prepares me to envision constant outdoor living to forage for food and insure safety. However, I find it difficult to believe that the first humans lived in the constant fear that limits today’s society. Early peoples would be alert to predators when moving beyond their beds and be cautious in venturing into unknown territory. Maybe the first explorer didn’t get over the first ridge in his or her yondering but long before Marco Polo and Daniel Boone explorers did succeed in populating the entire globe within the most recent thousands of years.

History records many discoveries, the latest being Kennewick man, a skeleton found in 1997, along the Columbia River in Washington State, carbon dated at 9,000 years before present. The fifty some year old man has a clovis projectile point embedded in his right hip bone - a point knapped in a style abandoned 500 years past. Living in the outdoors was still a challenge in North America.

By that time, Chinese and European peoples had long since denuded their lands of trees, created deserts, and crowded into limited spaces that invited plagues and epidemics periodically. Those are times I care not to imagine in any detail. Are we safe from reliving those scenarios?

There is the need to imagine a reasonable future. One of peace and creativity surely must be in the minds of Homo sapiens, minds which have made more discoveries in the past century than in a hundred generations before that. Imagination (and patient hard work) brought scientific advances into the twenty first century. We must keep our imaginations active and creative.

And for future survival, a vital ingredient must be compassion.

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Sep 2, 2006 by Naomi.

Nature and human interaction make for thoughtful mind wanderings. I put together a factual article because a bullfrog sat on the water’s edge at McNary National Wildlife Refuge when students came to learn about nature. It was one of the real animals children could observe as it sat patiently waiting for lunch to pass by. But for my blog I wanted a different spin.

Of all things an old song came to mind that pitted a bulldog on the bank against a bullfrog in the water. The song was the interactive type where high tenor voices sang: Oh the bulldog on the bank— and the low bass section would chime in with: and the bullfrog in the pool. This musical exercise was a joy to hear. Imagine a dialogue between the two unlikely conversants where the bulldog goes on to call the bullfrog a green old water fool. I will eventually remember what transpires in the song but for now I am interested in the less obvious difference between the two animals.

The green old water fool, Rana catesbeiana, is a voracious predator that migrated from east to west across the United States within the past few centuries thriving in stagnant waters eating any smaller animal that came its way. However the amphibian has been on earth in its present form since soon after the disappearance of the dinosaurs. I didn’t count the millions of generations it bred true.

The bullfrog is the largest true frog in North America with a life span of up to ten years. It can grow to 8 inches in length, affording it a leap of up to 3 feet. Because of these features bullfrogs may travel overland up to a mile, greatly expanding their range from the source where they were introduced. Adult bullfrogs have thickset bodies, large, exposed eardrums, and are green, tan, or dark brown above with dark spots. To add excitement, each female releases a jell based basketball sized mass of up to 20,000 very small eggs. That makes for more expansion than excitement except for the prey they eventually eat.

The superior bulldog on the bank is something else. In taxonomy it has no place of its own. It is one of many breeds with the wolf as sole ancester when domestication began about 135 thousand years ago. Canis familiaris refers to the domestic dog. The bulldog breed is descended from the ancient Asiatic mastiff, developed by the human species for human enjoyment during medieval times (1200s). The name bulldog refers not only to the robust look of a little bull, which this aggressive dog has, but also to the power with which this dog attacked bulls in arena combat before that practice was prohibited by law in the nineteenth century.

The international kennel clubs give arbitrary specifications a bulldog must have to be duly registered. I won’t begin to describe the jowls and body of the breed. Many varieties abound that resemble the breed but are tainted with a bit of canine adultery over the years. Humans decided on the features of the bulldog and when purchasing one, you are told of its physical inadequacies, so beware of an owner’s nightmare. A bulldog can become a veteranary’s dream because of its health.

And we pay no attention to the hardy bullfrog that merrily eats its way through our native species of frogs and molluscs.

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