Holy Moley!

I have mentioned here before that our canine companions are pretty capable at pest management on the property. They catch an array of critters, both undersireable and benign - I wish they’d leave the possums alone, for example, but I wish they’d do a better job managing the rabbits. They even manage to catch moles from time to time, which is a little surprising but, as someone who does not delight in the pleasure of a turned ankle, a good thing.

It is possible to take a good thing too far, however.

Generally speaking, when I say that they manage critters, what I mean is that said critters sort of show up dead (or playing dead, in the case of the aforementioned possums), either near the back door or actually in a dog’s mouth. Usually we don’t have the opportunity to see the actual critter catching. And in the case of the moles, I’ve always just pictured Rosie or Calamity patiently waiting outside the mole hole for the subterranean interloper to peek his little gray head out and then BAM! No more mole.

Well, that’s what I’ve pictured until very recently.

Rosie has apparently decided that the one-at-a-time mole removal strategy is just too inefficient. She also seems to have forgotten that she is an Australian Shepherd, and is operating under the delusion that she is now some sort of unusually large, very fast terrier.

The clever and/or attentive among you might be saying to yourselves: They’ve got a couple of dogs. How does he know it’s Rosie?

And that’s a fine, appropriate, well considered question. You are very smart.

This is how:

And what does one do when one discovers such an excavation? I think one of the natural reactions might be to utter a few well selected four letter words at an elevated volume. I’m not beyond that, and I wouldn't swear that it absolutely hasn’t happened, but for the most part I’ve had the luxury to be rather circumspect about these events. I do not maintain my yard as an example of modern botanical manicuring, so Rosie isn’t disturbing a treasured flowerbed, for example. What’s more, I’m loathe to scold her for it.

The thing is, it’s just in these few spots - it’s not all over the yard. And I’ve watched her begin the process. It’s not random. Her ears perk up and she looks straight down at the ground, head moving back and forth as if she is following an unseen - yes, tunneling - critter a few inches below the surface. It’s somewhere in this process that she begins tearing at the earth.

And once she gets down to a given depth - about a foot or so - that’s when the snout goes in. I have not actually seen her come up with a mole, mind you (though I think I’d enjoy that), but when you look in the holes, they appear to open on a tunnel. I think she’s on to something.

I’ve filled the holes in multiple times at this point, but apparently they are still felt to be fertile mole-hunting grounds.

And, if she ever manages to fully extract this particular group of burrowers and is looking for more to do, perhaps we can hire her out to an excavation company. Of course, they’ll have to be okay with Rosie choosing the dig site, but otherwise...

Welcome to the Jungle

This has been an unusually good year for wildlife spotting on and around our little section of prairie. I shared pictures of my time with foxes and our new swallow neighbors earlier, but they certainly aren’t the only cohabitants in our area of late.

Yesterday’s dewy morning revealed the work of what may be a small army of funnel web spiders in the northwestern quarter.

Funnel Web Army

Don’t get any closer…

The webs are notable for their sudden appearance on a given morning - a dozen or more where there previously appeared to be none. The spiders themselves proved very shy and challenging to locate or capture.

And speaking of spiders, I had this fine, terrifying fellow for company whilst shucking corn by the grill:

Terrifying Spider

He puts on a fine show of being frightening, but only if you are very, very tiny...

Slightly less terrifying spider

And, as far as that goes, one of our screens appears to be a bit loose on one corner, provider a perfect, if unintentional habitat for this specimen:

It got this far - will it make it all the way in?

I asked LB to clean out between the window and the screen, but all I got was a "hell no" in response...

Earlier in the season, doing a bit of yard work (yes, with a machete - isn’t that how you do yard work?) I managed to pick up this little guy:

Inching along

I don’t know exactly how I picked it up - it must have been on something I was cutting down. It’s a pretty good trick to catch a machete blade while it’s swinging.

Just ahead of Independence Day this specimen decided to help us with hanging the laundry out to dry:

His name is Dennis…

He’s considerably smaller than his cousins who are plaguing me on the road.

One of the apparent benefits to not pursing a monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass is that the variation supports these tiny critters. Among them, we also get more than our fair share of butterflies and moths every year. We get everything from the little butter pats:

Butter Pat

...To the ubiquitous monarchs. And sometimes we get some additional splashes of color:

Black Swallowtail

Red-Spotted Purple Admiral

And sometimes we encounter butterflies and moths still in the process of becoming:

Spotted Apatelodes

My best guess on this one is that it’s the caterpillar form of the Spotted Apatelodes moth. If so, it definitely appears to live it up in its youth with that bright yellow.

The final entry in this little photo catalogue are the toads. We always have toads here, but the population seems to have exploded this year. It used to be kind of a pleasant surprise to encounter them. Now it seems to be unusual to walk in the yard and not see one. This is not a problem, mind you - I always enjoy the meeting.

Our current companions range from the camouflaged...

Darth Toader

...To the standouts:

Look at me!

The summer isn’t over yet, so I’m sure we’ll encounter more. When we first decided to move out to the Homestead I was looking forward to the solitude of separation from neighbors. I did not anticipate the additional benefit of being surrounded with such variety. I did not anticipate it, but I do appreciate it.

Kill the Wabbit…

A while back I wrote here about my excitement at seeing the return of rabbits to our little space of nature. I’d been surprised to find, when we moved out here, that both rabbits and squirrels seemed to be absent from our island of grass and trees in the agricultural sea of former prairie.

Back when I wrote that, I didn’t have a garden...

We’ve planted vegetable gardens here occasionally over our decade or so at the Homestead, the grandest effort being the straw bale garden that MLW designed and implemented a few years ago.

...In fact, looking back, the first sightings of rabbits on the periphery of the yard was later in the same summer as we put in that garden. Coincidence...?

At any rate, we hadn’t done a vegetable garden since then, but we decided to do one this spring. In our uncertain times we didn’t want to incur the expense of the straw bales, so we modified the garden plot to just use the soil underneath. This mostly involved pulling up some partially buried landscaping fabric (a hateful activity which has definitely affected the likelihood that I’ll ever use it again) and renting a rototiller. We are in prime farm country, so one can anticipate that the soil is going to be pretty good for vegetables, and this same area, more or less, also held my grandmother’s garden years ago.

We sprouted seeds indoors and then planted them - a variety of items including pole beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, rutabagas, zuchinni and yellow sauash, and a variety of types of tomatoes. I enjoy much about this process - the planting, the weeding, and watching the garden grow are as much fun as the actual anticipation of the harvest for me.

When it started I did not make the connection to what was going on. Specifically, I noted that one of the pole beans seemed to have broken off. It had not been in great shape when it went into the garden, so I figured it just hadn’t made it, and set it aside in my head.

Then the one next to it was gone.

This proceeded, each trip to the garden finding less and less of what was planted still remaining - no lettuce, no spinach, and now one single, sad green onion...

I think MLW actually first suggested that it might be the rabbits. I don’t think I’d made the connection, in part because I hadn’t seen them anywhere near the garden. And, after all, the garden is right there in dog territory, so they wouldn’t dare, would they?

I say I hadn’t made the connection "in part", because the other part might just be that I’m kinda dumb. I already know they will venture into dog territory, even without a garden in there. And, after all, what else did I think was happening? I clearly wasn’t shaving with Occam’s Razor that week.

So where does that leave us? Like this:

Of course, it’s a little hard to see what isn’t there, without context, so let me offer some:

The zuchinni and yellow squash are doing great - I suspect the hairy composition of their stalks is somehow unpalatable to the leporid louts invading our space. And somehow, some of the rutabagas have made it through. There are a handful of tomatoes that have survived, but most of them are later transplants offered up by some friends, and I suspect that their larger size at the time of planting may have reduced the risk of predation.

But spinach? Slaughtered. Carrots? Killed. Peas? Pulverized. Beans? Butchered. Lettuce? Left this mortal coil. Beets? Uh... well, you get the point.

I did have this section of the garden blocked off to keep the dogs out, worried they would walk on the sprouts. In retrospect, that was almost certainly a mistake. The space between the climbing wires is too small for our dogs to walk through, but for rabbits...? What I appeared to have offered, instead, was a rabbit smorgasbord in a canine-free safe zone.

I am quite honestly now wondering if the absence of rabbits from our property was more than just happenstance. My grandparents were children of the depression, and their gardening was more than just a hobby. Grandma Marie even picked dandelions for salad (the yard offers an abundant supply), and I’m certain that was even more true for prior generations at the homestead. Our ancestors did not have the same perspective towards maintaining a natural balance of critters - I can easily picture ancestors engaging in an active rabbit extermination program to protect their gardens.

...I do love roasted rabbit, and they’ve become pretty comfortable around here... But I am not going to do that - mass scale lepooridicide is off the table. However, it’s clear that if we are going to continue to grow vegetables going forward I will probably need to put a rabbit-proof fence around our garden. This is the sort of chore that I don’t love because, while I understand how to do it intellectually, my technical skills are... lacking. No matter how hard I try the fence will almost certainly look like crap when I’m done. But our garden looks like crap now, so...

New Tenants

The view out the back stairwell window is almost always my first glance at the out of doors every morning. It changes with the weather and seasons, of course, but you’d expect that it would otherwise be a fairly static view. I would think that too, but it often surprises me.

At the corners of the house we have these little ledges. They are an architectural element that has been there since the very beginning:

And my Uncle, I believe, made efforts to preserve or reflect those elements despite the re-siding of the house over time - what was once wood is now reflected as metal, but still present.

These residential plots out here in the agricultural territory of the prairie are, as I’ve mentioned before, little islands of wooded area. As such, birds of the tree nesting variety (as opposed to the ground-nesting avians out on the prairie itself) tend to congregate heavily around the house. Spring mornings from mid-May until the earliest days of summer are a riot of jumbled birdsong. Even with the curtains pulled tight against the morning light there is no confusion as to whether the sun has risen.

I can readily verify that we have now reached the point of the year where that is happening before 5:30 AM... ugh...

At any rate, it’s clear that even though we have an abundance of trees, there simply isn’t enough room at the inn for all comers, and it’s inevitable each year that some poor robin or sparrow will try his hand at building a nest on one of those ledges. They are master builders, each and every one, but even mastery can’t defeat physics - the lightweight material atop a smooth surface inevitably succumbs to the spring winds.

Given this history, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see a nest under construction on the ledge just out that back stairwell window the other morning. And, when I saw it, it was with the thought that it would be only a short while before the avian architect saw the error of his ways. "Poor chap", I thought, "must be a young whipper-snapper on his first nest building foray, not yet experienced in the trials and travails of trying to nest on our old house".

But then as I watched the master builder came in to do some work and I got lucky enough to capture his image:

Seeing the type of bird I looked closer at the nest. Swallows, in addition to being the aeronautical acrobats of the prairie, build their nests not to nestle in, but to stick. And that does appear to be what is going on here.

The swallows have always been here - or at least as long as I can remember. Our resident population appears to mostly nest in our Old Gray Mare of a decaying barn. I don’t believe that I’ve see any try to nest at the house in the time that we’ve been here. Perhaps the returning population has grown to the point where they need more room than the barn can offer, or perhaps the progressive decrepitude of that structure has caused some of them to look for a nicer neighborhood. Perhaps it’s a combination of both situations.

In any case, we appear to have new tenants for the season here in the homestead.

Roadside Vulpines

Sometimes you just get lucky.

I was on a variation of a very common countryside riding route, a few miles from home, and on the way out I caught a glimpse of a fox in the tall grass of the ditch. It was the briefest of sightings, both because I was moving and because it ducked for cover as I approached. I considered myself fortunate for having been granted the viewing at all, and continued pedaling.

I had more or less forgotten that sighting by the I’d hit the middle point of the ride and began to swing back for the return trip. But as I approached the same section of road from the other direction I was greeted by a much less shy furry friend:

At first he just peeked his head out of the tall grass, and I assumed it would be similar to the prior encounter. But he was still for long enough to suggest I could get a picture, so I checked my rear view mirrors to make sure I was safe from behind, and then pulled up the phone to take this picture.

I thought that would be it, but I waited, keeping a watch behind me, because he continued to stand there. And then he moved out into the road and towards me!

But that was apparently close enough, and he bolted away:

And again, I thought it was done, and prepared to move on. But I was wrong - not only did he not take off and hide, but there was another there as well.

Litter mates, I assume, and likely not far from the den. Mama must have been away hunting or they surely would have been scolded back in. I was both thankful that she did not do so, but also concerned about the frolicking close to - and in - the road. But it afforded a marvelous opportunity, for as long as I stayed still and quiet, they continued to largely disregard me.

They stayed, playing at the side of the road until I decided it was time to move on. It was the rare perfect confluence of events. I am no expert in vulpine age determination (nor do I play such an expert on TV), but I assume these were juveniles, which would account for the relative lack of concern at my presence. They must have been denned up in the ditch, likely near where they were playing. And the road was blissfully clear of any motor vehicle traffic for the entire time I was there. This last part was a special gift, because while this was a country road, and not even a major country thoroughfare, I honestly cannot remember a ride on it before where I did not encounter at least one car or truck.

It was a gift of life in the country.

Delayed Mowing

This year, like last, we decided to delay mowing for the first part of the season to allow for additional flower time for the variety of plants growing in our two acres or so of yard. Of course, in this case, flower time is specific to Dandelions, Violets, and (gasp) Creeping Charlie, among others. This is a practice that bee folks advocate for, as it allows for additional nectar gathering opportunity for our fine, buzzing friends.

One gets an opportunity to see it at work while traipsing thru the tall grass. Bumblebees, in particular, are easy to detect as they go by, both by the erratic flight pattern and what seems to be the sound of a tiny B-52 bomber sailing past your ear.

It lends itself to an interesting - to me at least - visual presentation of the yard:

It’s interesting, at least in part, because it only looks this way for a short time. We (LB) mowed it yesterday afternoon - trying to get it done ahead of the threatened rain for today - and it will stay mowed more or less for the rest of the season, so it won’t look this way again till next year.

I do occasionally give thought to leaving it - perhaps mowing a portion of it in the front yard and around the house and leaving the rest. But you only have to do this once to realize why we mow. I mean, nowadays I suspect most of us now because _what will the neighbors think?_if we don’t. The reality is that there are practical purposes to it. The simplest one is that a yard like ours, where there are abundant Maple trees and a few hated Chinese Mulberry interlopers, would soon become a small forest. Volunteer trees sprout all over the yard, and mowing keeps them at bay.

The other thing you realize during that first mowing is that tallish grass - even the 6-8" high stuff in my yard - is excellent coverage for rodents of all sorts. We are not, as a rule, in the business of trying to support rodent propagation in this household.

Thus, after a decent interval, down it must come. But we’ll probably do it again next year.

Return Visitor?

Last year, around this time, we had an unusual visitor. Back then I’d seen him at least once before, but had not been in a position to take pictures. Then MLW and I happened across him while we were in the car together, and she was able to snap some pictures of him.

Now, a year later, give or take a couple of weeks, he’s back!

Full disclosure - I have no idea whether this eagle is the same one as before, nor do I know it’s gender identity. But the pictures here are taken approximately a mile and a half from the location we saw the eagle last year. That’s a mile and a half as the crow - or eagle - flies.

Being able to catch him on camera this time was just sort of dumb luck. I was in the car coming back towards home, but the road was empty and I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. I first saw him standing in the field, and did get a couple of shots of that, but oddly enough, a brown and white bird doesn’t stand out well in contrast against a field full of dirt and snow...

As with last year, this was a brief encounter. As I mentioned, when I first saw him he was standing in the field. I was probably 50 yards away from him, but clearly that was too close - my presence agitated him and he decided to go.

Last year we didn’t see the eagle again much after the February sighting. It could be that it had moved on - that it was passing through our area on the way to somewhere else. Or it could be that I just didn’t get lucky again. Still, two years in a row, around the same time of the season, suggests that the first event wasn’t just a fluke. I’m hoping we start to see them more routinely.

These shots were all taken with an iPhone XS Max

Baling the Dogs Out

One of the things we have always done is to be sure that our dogs have areas to go that provide shelter during the chillier weather outside. Typically this has been areas in the outbuildings - we have an old barn, a machine shed, and a garage. This past summer, though, to recover space in the garage I removed the dog shelter that had been inside (it was, notably, their least favorite option).

Something we had noticed, however, is that they would often choose to den up under our back porch. It’s a covered area, and provides pretty reasonable shelter from the prevailing west wind, as well as blocking wind from the north. It is, however, open to the south, with a latticework "wall" that is something less than impermeable.

I’d originally considered getting something like pressure treated plywood to replace the latticework wall, but the area is small and finding a way to attach that would involve crawling under the porch. And I don’t think we’d want it to be a year-round solution, which would mean crawling back under the porch in the spring. So then it occurred to me that I could probably find someone in the area who would sell me some straw bales. We’d bought some a couple of years ago for MLW’s straw bale garden, so even though there’s less livestock raising in the area than there used to be, it’s still something that’s available.

I put up a post on the Mendota discussion group and got an answer literally within the day, and was able to secure a dozen bales the day following. We don’t have a truck, of course, so that meant hauling out my trailer and our little Honda Fit and going to pick them up.

I am both surprised and pleased that the farmer did not mock me for my tiny car and trailer. And it performed admirably, particularly given that neither of them were really designed for the type of hauling I was engaging in. And it only took me 3 or 4 (or maybe 5) tries to back the trailer up into position when I got back to the house... (I’m not proud).

That was last Monday, and I knew that I wouldn # 't be able to get to the project itself till this weekend, so I parked the trailer and let it sit. However, Rosie wasn’t willing to wait, and had apparently already determined that the bales were for her...

Yes folks, where she is laying is approximately five feet off the ground. I didn’t see her get up there, so it’s possible that she went and got a stepladder to climb it, but I suspect not - I mean, how could she have done that and put it away without getting back down?. She actually does this any place that gives her elevated surfaces to climb on - it’s a wonder to see her chasing mice in the shed, for example.

(Yes - the dogs chase and catch mice. They actually have a higher apparent success rate than any of the cats we’ve had, inside or out, past or present. And we know this because they frequently leave them as gifts on the back step...)

The hardest part about getting everything set up was preparing the area under the porch. And this was the hard part mostly because it’s a tiny little area to crawl around in. But that’s easier if you have an LB. And really, isn’t this why you have children in the first place?

I trimmed back the latticework a bit to make for a larger opening within the space that we’d want to put the bales, and then sent my offspring in to even out the ground underneath a bit and then break up and spread out one bale for bedding.

For parts of this, as well, Rosie wanted to help:

As best they could, LB packed wedges of straw into any openings that would allow wind passage as well as across the ground. I helpfully supervised and offered direction during all of this, of course. I was honestly surprised that it took only one bale to cover the space - I thought it would need at least two.

Once the inside work was done it was really just a matter of setting up the bales along the outside of the porch.

This was reminiscent both of playing with blocks, albeit on a much larger scale, and of building forts in haylofts back in the day. This latter part is a declining skill set, I am quite sure, just given the diminishing populations in rural areas and the general loss of the practice of keeping straw and hay on hand. Even back then, much of the straw we were using was already decades old, left behind in old barns that were already on their way to becoming derilects.

While we were stacking up the bales Calamity demonstrated to us that she already understood what the straw was for. I watched as she walked up to one of the bales, rapidly dug some of the straw loose off of the side of it, and then laid on the little pile she had just created. And then she looked up at me as if to say "See? That’s how it’s done!" We’d known that they were doing this because, back when we put in the straw bale garden we had a couple of extra bales that we set aside by the garage, and they slowly diminished into piles, upon which you would routinely find both dogs happily perched. However, I’d never seen her in action until now.

Ultimately it came together pretty nicely. It should offer a well-insulated refuge for the dogs while they are outside (we do bring them in at night and/or when it’s very cold, but they generally prefer to be outside year round - our occasional attempts to keep them inside just result in very antsy and unhappy dogs). It should also offer a bit of home insulation from the occasional south wind. And, of course, once it was all put together what did the dogs want to do with this well insulated shelter? Of course, they wanted to climb up on top...

Tiny Mushrooms

I am periodically surprised that, despite rolling towards the end of my fourth decade, I still encounter things I’ve never see before.

Beside our garage is a very large old maple tree, trunk covered with moss by virtue of its own shade.

As I was passing by and looking at it I noticed a cicada (I think) carapace.

This is not something new to me, but still interesting to find - a small echo of prior activity left static. But as I was looking at it I noticed something else, just below, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

Seeing them there on the tree adjusted my focus to their smaller scale, and I started to look across more of the trunk - those two by the cicada shell were not alone:

And as I was scanning I came across this little batch of ladybugs, which help to give a bit of scale to these tiny fungi:

This is a little thing, of course, both figuratively and literally. But it illustrates the value in taking a moment to just slow down and look around from time to time. This is something I sometimes struggle with myself, and it’s helpful to be reminded.

Spiders Am Our Friends

As the saying goes, you are never more than... some number of feet from a spider. I’ve heard multiple versions of this saying, and the distance ranges from three feet to a few yards. Out here at the Homestead this is certainly true, regardless of which version you want to pick.

This has occasionally led to some tension between LB and myself, since my child, in their youth, announced in no uncertain terms their hatred of our constant eight-legged companions. This has, in the past, resulted in multiple situations in which a child who would, at different points in their life, fly through the air on uneven bars or stand toe to toe with opponents throwing punches and kicks or engage in public speaking (which many people would determine the most frightening on the list), had to nonetheless be rescued from an eight-legged interloper that was smaller than a dime.

In these occasions I would always come in with a tissue or paper towel and gently relocate said arachnid to a more palatable location. When I would do this, I would always say "spiders am our friends".

In a broad sense they are. Aside from the rare octolegged critter that can provide actual harm to humans, their cohabitation with us is largely beneficial. Their food source largely consists of the very insects we don’t want around us, and any dude that wants to collaborate with me on the removal of houseflies and earwigs (ugh!) is decidedly on my team.

To be fair, in their later years LB has indicated they are no longer afraid of spiders. They didn’t say they like them, but that’s improvement regardless.

150-ish year-old structures seem to offer more than their fair share of places for these insect carnivores to ply their trade. We have more than our fair share of the traditional daddy long legs hanging around in the basement (the actual spider, not the harvestman, tho we have those too). We have others around and about tho, and very occasionally I find one or two that is in a position to catch a good shot of them.

Out in the old barn last fall I was able to catch this fine specimen. I’m not a spider expert by any means, but a little time on the Insect Identification website suggests that this is an Orb Weaver.

The other shot I got a little earlier this fall. I pulled a dog crate out of the basement to relocate it, and this lovely lady had made her home there:

She appears to be an American House Spider. We see these pretty regularly, particularly in the basement. Usually they are not interested in posing for pictures (and being in the floor joists is not a great location for photography). I didn’t object to her presence there, but the crate was needed in another location. Probably the most challenging part was removing her and the web (with her eggs) without (hopefully) damaging any of it too much.

I have not shared these pictures with my child, nor mentioned the location of these fine multi-gammed fellows. Their announcement of diminished fear aside, I doubt they’d find any of this as interesting or as pleasant as I do...

Little Green Bugs

Here on the midwestern prairie we have an abundance of many things, insects among them. Some, like bees, are beneficial, some are bothersome (who has any real use for biting flies?) or worse (West Nile anyone? - thanks, mosquitos). And some are just... there.

At least from a human perspective, some bugs are ubiquitous but harmless in a way that just allows them to disappear into the scenery. Or they do until they don’t any more.

This time of year out here we start to get a showing of these little green bugs that I’m sure I must have seen before and just not noticed. But when I started riding my recumbent trike around the countryside I became much more aware of them because they like to mooch rides:

I’ve been riding around the countryside for over a decade, but I only noticed these guys the past couple of years. The noticing seems to accompany the transition to the recumbent trike, and I suspect it’s lower profile riding position is simply bringing me down to a level that makes me a more likely landing spot. In the late summer, depending upon the ride, I can pick up anywhere from one to a half-dozen of these guys across the course of the trip and, once they’ve hopped on they seem content to stay for the entire ride. Or so it appears - I don’t want to seem bug-normative - maybe it’s multiple different little green bugs switching on and off during the ride.

It’s a small event, but like so many things, once you become aware of something you start to see them everywhere. Start considering buying a particular type of car you’ve never really thought about before? Bam - they are now on every highway and in every parking lot you frequent.

And so it is with these little green guys, in particular in the patch of false sunflowers and goldenrod out by our barn.

I love this area of the yard in late summer. The false sunflowers are an amazing plant in and of themselves - you see them in ditches and off the side of the highway, but you can’t fully appreciate how unbelievably tall they are until you stand right beside them. It’s then that I realize just how initially intimidating the prairie must have been to early settlers - thick swaths of grasses and flowers standing taller than a man.

I’ll wander out there at different times of day to watch the bees moving back and forth between flowers, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of a Preying Mantis. But as I’ve been picking up my cycling companions the past couple of years I came to realize that they are here in abundance as well:

Using the tool at insectidentification.org suggests that these little guys are Pale Green Weevils.

I say "suggests", because much of the online information on the Pale Green Weevil is limited. I suspect that this is because they are small, and fall into that category I described before: just... there.

They feed on the leaves of some species of trees, but apparently don’t do any real damage - they don’t lace the leaves the way a Japanese Beetle will, for example - and, thus, aren’t of any great concern.

I am also using the word "suggests", because the information I’m finding indicates that they are actively feeding in early summer, and I’m seeing them in late August and early September, rolling towards the end of the season. And I’m finding them on false sunflowers and myself, neither of which are mentioned in the habitat and feeding choices of these little dudes. It’s entirely possible that they are something else.

In any case, they are here, keeping me company on the country roadsides as I trundle around. They don’t add much to the conversation, but they aren’t heavy either, so I’m fine to have them along for the ride.

Playing Possum

Some times, when I get up in the wee hours of the morning I find that the dogs have secured some form of treasure. Often these are small treasures in the form of mice and voles. In the springtime the dogs take their toll on the fledglings as well.

And once a year or so this scenario occurs:

Of course, I went for the artistic soft focus there (yeah - that’s the ticket...), so if it’s unclear, that large white furry blob is a possum. I also really enjoy the long, furtive look the dogs seem to be sharing.

Possums are the type of critter that, until one has the experience, may seem far less prevalent than they really are. I mean sure, you see them as victims of the road from time to time, but they are still pretty rare, right?

And with that, what about that whole "playing possum" thing? That’s probably a myth, don’t you think? No animal would really just lay there to get knocked about, would it? Wouldn't that just get them killed more quickly?

But the thing is, it’s all true. We see them regularly out here, plying their trade in the dark of night. And we see them often enough that I’ve developed a system for helping them out when they venture into the wrong territory.

That system involves a shovel and some leg work.

Fear not - I’m neither hitting them nor burying them with the shovel. Rather, a shovel is a handy way to pick them up but keep them at a safe distance (safe for both of us, I think). And this fella was big enough that I got out the snow shovel:

I used a second shovel - a spade - to gently slide it into the snow shovel, and then carried it out beyond the dog fence, into a somewhat secluded part of the ditch.

The end result is the same - go back and look at that same spot just a little while later and...

...The Opossum is now No-possum.

(I’ll pause here for laughter and applause...)

Either they are really good actors, or perhaps my dogs are just naive, but it seems to work for them every time. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a time when I’ve used this system and not come back to find the possum has scoffered off.

Now, all that said, their commitment to the role is not always as solid as one might hope. This particular adventurer reflexively curled up a bit as I slid him on the the shovel. It was subtle, and the dogs didn’t seem to notice, but it definitely happened. And I had one candidate a couple of years ago who we found laying on the front steps. He tolerated all of the investigation and attention of the dogs, but being lifted into the air on the shovel was clearly a bridge too far, and he suddenly got up and tried to run away. I’d been uncertain about its status - living or no - right up until that point.

As I understand it, these rather fearsome looking creatures are harmless at worst, and can be considered beneficial in that they will eat insects and rodents (and to that I say "more power to the possum"). So unlike some of the other critters in our midst, their presence is welcome. At least to me.

The dogs seem to feel otherwise, but until they choose to express their opinion at a more reasonable time of day (I mean, this was really early) I just don’t want to hear it.

Prairie Yard...

This past Sunday I mowed my lawn for the first time of the season.

Now I realize there will be a subset of you out there who, upon realizing that last Sunday was the middle of May, will pronounce me a monster.

Fine. You’re right. While I desperately love that we have a substantial yard, I do not aspire to the tightly manicured green-striped lawn of suburbia. In fact, that’s part of the reason I do not live in suburbia. But beyond that, there is a school of thought that says that it’s better for bees - which are struggling - if we give some time to let the lawn grow.

Of course, that presumes that you are also letting things that flower grow in your yard as well.

Which we do. Trigger alert here for those for whom a yard means an extended stretch of Kentucky bluegrass and nothing else...

The other benefit to letting the yard grow is the view. It’s not strictly a prairie - the grass and flowers certainly aren’t that high - but you do get a crop of at least the ubiquitous dandelions and violets to pose for pictures before the lawn gets sheared.

But there are limits. I waited long enough that Rosie seemed to be a little perplexed at what I was up to...

Of course, by this point, Calamity could also be in the picture - with her short little cattledog legs, I’m not sure she can see out over the standing grass.

And ultimately, as you are working your way through the taller portions you realize why people started cutting grass. In addition to the occasional opportunistic tree that tries to take root, there are also a small assortment of rodents that scurry away as the mower approaches. There are actual, practical purposes to this activity besides ensuring that your dog doesn’t get lost.

I think we’d reached that limit.

Snow Days

Our encounter with the Polar Vortex out here on the prairie the week before last offered some opportunities. Since it was preceded by significant snowfall, the combination of cold, wind, and snow made travel out of the home challenging at best, dangerous a worst. In some senses of the word, we were effectively trapped at home.

But another way to look at that is that we got the adult version of one of those things that kids long to hear in the short-day season: snow day!

Last Monday we had some continuation of the struggles with drifting and getting stuck that were chronicled here recently. In this case I ended up leaving a car at the end of the driveway because the volume of drifting in front of the garage was beyond the little vehicle’s capacity to clear, and dealing with it in the dark was competing poorly with the idea of sitting on the couch watching TV.

The following morning though, the snow offering up some time, and the day offering up sunlight and brilliant blue skies to combat the single digit temps and negative wind chillls, it offered a much more attractive option. I needed to get the car in the garage, and besides - I wasn’t likely to get any other exercise, so the snow and shovel could be my equivalent of the gym (isn’t that sort of how CrossFit works? I’m not sure - I may not have a compete understanding of that...).

So I pulled on some (several) layers, and the dogs and I went out to tackle the drift.

Now there are certainly animals that struggle in the snow and the cold - a Chihuahua would be miserable in weather like this (or, frankly, probably anything below 40°). But one does get some perspective when one sees this:

That is our Blue Heeler, Calamity Jane, rolling in the snow. Because, you know, the air isn’t cold enough on its own - she also wants the white stuff all over her.

And so, with her help, I gathered up my shovel and started throwing some flakes around.

Yup. That’s what we call snow shoveling around these parts: throwing flakes. Doesn’t everyone?

Anyone?

Anyone...?

Uh - anyway... I didn’t have the foresight to get a decent picture of the drift before I started, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say it was monumental. It took me a solid hour to clear a space in the driveway as wide as the garage door, which was my goal - wanted to be able to move both cars if needed. When I was done this is what it looked like:

And this is the pile of snow I created with my shoveling efforts.

Ok - technically a part of that pile - the part in the back - is from my cousin Glen clearing the entire driveway the day before, but the part in the front is mine.

...

Ok - if I’m being entirely honest, the top few inches or so of that second pile is mine. But that’s still a lot of snow, and I worked really hard. Shut up!

At any rate, it was clear, and I was able to go get the car and pull it in.

Feeling buoyed by my accomplishment, I walked down to the end of the driveway to see how much work that would be to clear. I mean, at this point I’m a snow moving monster - you saw the mountain I created (err - added to) above, right?

So when I got there what I found was this:

And as I stood and looked at this, leaning against the handle of my shovel, out there in the open wind coming off the field to the west, my hand - in the glove that I’d been wearing while shoveling for the past hour - began to freeze and hurt. And I thought "well, that’s probably enough shoveling for today".

And I went inside and had a cup of coffee. For three consecutive days.

Wascally...

Quite a while back we noticed that we had rabbits living on the outer edges of the yard.

This was a delightful change because, although we are in a considerably rural location, we have a limited variety of actual wildlife we encounter at the homestead proper. We have birds, of course, and certainly have had our issues with trash pandas and the smaller members of the rodent sect, but the more common, semi-benign outdoor companions like squirrels and rabbits have largely been absent. We know they are out here - I routinely see them on my rides through the countryside - but they hadn’t been on the property. This is why that initial rabbit sighting was such a treat.

We still see them periodically, and over the past several months I’ve seen them run across the front yard - this usually as I’m pulling out of the driveway. Across the front yard seems somewhat unusual, since that’s dog territory. Our earlier sightings of our leporid friends saw them on the outer edge of the property - outside of, or at least within a short running distance of, that line. But the front yard is solidly within the canine zone.

And then the other day I saw this in the snow:

It’s hard to tell from the initial shot, being directly overhead, but this track is within 10-15’ of the house.

This would not only be within canine territory, but a considerable distance from the boundary line. There are a couple of bushes nearby - lilac and mock orange - which could potentially provide some cover, but otherwise it’s a long run to escape from interested dogs.

And then, the other morning, I looked out the window at the back stairwell and saw this:

There are actually two rabbits there. The one is easy to discern because it is moving, the other is a gray lump to the left side of the screen at the beginning. This is on the opposite side of the house from the rabbit track, and again well within the dog fence. The dogs were actually inside at the time I took this - I believe I was on my way down to let them out - so that might be why they were so bold. But it seems pretty risky territory regardless.

This probably seems, to the average suburbanite, a pretty banal thing to be excited about. But as I noted, it’s been a long time in coming. These farm homes are little islands of horticultural variety in a sea of monoculture. If the "island" loses its variety of critters, it seems difficult to get them back.

Now - will I be as excited to see the rabbits if (when?) they, say, start digging in our garden? Possibly not. But that actually seems a pretty reasonable thing to have to deal with out here on the prairie, so excited or not, it just feels more right.

Cat and Mouse

So there I was, yesterday morning, having a private moment in the bathroom. Then I heard a sliding and a clacking of sharp little claws, and a quiet "thud" on the door.

A second later the mouse ran out from under the door.

Under these circumstances one has to make a decision. I was in a compromising position, of course, but the earliness of the hour virtually ensured that I was likely to be unobserved. And I had to think and act quickly. So I did what I think most would under the circumstances:

I opened the door.

The cat came skittering in through the doorway and immediately located the mouse, who (of course) immediately ran behind the decorative storage lockers we have in the bathroom.

---

This is a scene, the type of which plays itself over and over again across time in our old house. The building is, functionally, a web of open passageways from the perspective of a rodent looking to come in from the winter cold. What looks to you and I like a solid wall made of wood and plaster or brick looks to mousy eyes like a piece of Swiss cheese. So, as the temperature drops, in they come.

Now, our issues with these tiny furry friends has lessened over the years with the help of commercial pest control. Still, the numbers never seem to drop to an absolute zero. And while this is somewhat to the dismay of the human inhabitants of our home, the feline crew seems to prefer the non-zero situation.

The tense and tenuous relationship between cat and mouse is a story as old as time - they say that the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats in part because they kept the rodents from overwhelming their grain stores and protected them from other pests. That relationship has persisted over time, and settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries have also valued feline companionship for the purposes of vermin maintenance.

Within our own home the rodent control team consists of two players - Malcolm and Inara. Malcolm is a largish gray cat with green eyes who would seem to be a Russian Blue but for two tiny bits of white - one on his chest and the other on his tail. He has a delightful, chirping meow. He’s a beefy, strong cat. You can feel the muscle when you pick him up. A natural athelete, he is able to gain the top of our refrigerator with a leap from ground.

Inara is a tortoiseshell with yellow eyes. She is noticeably smaller and more slight than Malcolm, skittish and shy with most members of the family. She has a squeaking meow that is sometimes hard to detect and never pleasant. She is rarely seen to leap, and instead must climb our tall cat tree with claws and effort.

And so of course, who would you expect to have come skittering in to that bathroom? The Adonis, the cat-equivalent of the football player, the track god?

It was Inara.

As is so frequently the case in my experience with cats over the years, it’s the lady who does all the work. Inara parks herself at key points in the home and sits patiently and listens, waiting for the thing she hears behind the wall to peek a whisker out in the open.

Ideally, once that whisker shows, we as the cat owners (owned?) would like to be able to say that the rodent invader is dispatched quickly and efficiently. Those of you with previous cat experience will know this is absolutely not the case. Rather, from the cat’s perspective the catching of the mouse is just the first step in what is about to become an event of extended rodential torture that would make the writers at the Geneva convention add another passage to the rule book if they were to see it.

Apparently the mouse must be made to feel that it has a chance to escape, over and over again, just to discover that there, once again, is a swiping paw to block the way. Periodically one can hear the plaintive squeaks for help that indicate the trial is not yet complete. And apparently there are moments when it has become clear that the current venue is no longer the correct one - that the dining room isn’t the right place any more, and the mouse must be moved to, say, the living room. And so the cat is seen carrying the mouse in that characteristic heads-up position. At these moments the mouse is still and quiet and you think "it’s all over".

Nope - I don’t know why they remain still in that position - if it were me, I’d like to think that I’d be like John McClane surrounded by thieves in Nakatomi Plaza doing everything I could to get free. But no, they hang, still, perhaps hoping that, if they are just quiet enough, the cat will forget they are there... in the cat’s mouth.

This is clear, of course, because once they get to the living room and drop their rodent captive, he starts to move again.

Although he is clearly not in charge of the mousing situation, Malcolm does attempt to cooperate. It would be wrong to describe them as team players - it’s more like rivals working coincidentally towards the same goal. And now might be the right time to mention that we know he can jump to the top of the refrigerator because we feed him up there. We have to because, if we do not, Inara eats all of this big, beautiful athelete’s food.

So you can imagine how well his attempts to participate work most of the time.

There was an event once, several months ago, where he finally got so frustrated that he reached over, picked up the mouse, and simply ate it. If you are picturing the kid who shoves the entire ice cream cone in his mouth so his older brother cannot take it you are right on track.

---

Yesterday morning, during our bathroom adventure, I was able to move the locker so that Inara could access her prize and scurry with it back out of the bathroom. I’d like to say that I know what happened next, but I had to leave, and so have only the memory of feline and mouse silhouettes against the light of the front hallway to finish that event for me. Sometimes we find the mice later, deposited in delightful locations, once they have lost their interest to the cats due to the no-longer-breathingness they have attained.

Our ancestors valued their feline companions for the perceived assistance in pest control, and understandably so. I’m not certain that, in our situation they truly make much of a difference. The mouse sightings dropped precipitously once we contracted with pest management services. For a while we had a batch of cats outdoors on duty, but honestly our dogs seem to catch more vermin than the cat crew ever did (and the dogs are merciless on that score). But it’s possible that our ancestors also delighted in the joy cats do seem to take in their assigned duties. Setting aside the ultimate outcome, watching a cat diligently at work with a mouse is a little like watching Norm Abrams put together a chair on New Yankee Workshop... in an era absent television and video games a mousing cat would likely be (and indeed, is) quite entertaining.

Mystery Nest

So this showed up in the yard the other day:

Bird nests showing up on the ground in our yard is not an uncommon occurrence. The wind out here is such we fairly routinely come across one or another on the ground. On very windy spring days it’s not uncommon to find multiple nests, and a little later in the season a bad storm can also result in multiple hatchlings finding their unfortunate end in the same fashion. It’s wonderful to be out in nature, but she does sometimes remind you that she’s often unkind.

Most of the nests we see, however, are the typical "cup" style - those that look like a little bowl that you’d keep something in (gee, like, I dunno - eggs maybe?). But this one is different. It’s larger than the others, and the hole that you see in it is the entrance. It’s composed primarily of grass, though there’s also a bit of synthetic stuffing (undoubtedly gleaned from one of the dog’s less-than-fortunate stuffed toys or beds).

Usually, when I find such things I will spend some time on the interwebs trying to sort out the details. In this case, I’d like to know what type of bird would have made this.

Unfortunately, an internet search on this topic thus far provides primarily information on what you need to know to identify a bird nest - e.g. shape, size, composition materials. I can find multiple sites that tell you those are the important, relevant pieces of information. And then none of them tell you anything about which birds go with which types of nest.

So today I live with a mystery. Anyone out there know what type of bird matches this nest?

Tiny Groves

This past weekend was Homecoming for Mendota - spirit week at the high school, the football game Friday night, the dance on Saturday. When I was growing up the Homecoming dance was always sort of semi-formal - you dressed up in something different than your other dance outfits - e.g. one might eschew parachute pants in favor of a Miami Vice jacket and dress pants - but it wasn’t a formal occasion. Formal wear was reserved for prom.

This has changed somewhat over the few years since my Homecoming days, and now the dance has taken on a more formal bent. This means fancy dress and pictures.

A popular spot for the pictures portion of the activity has been Mendota Lake Park, which offers large old trees to pose in front of, and bridges to pose upon. This has reached a point at which people are waiting in line for turns at specific spots to get their snaps taken.

Our family crew and their friends independently elected to avoid the crowd and have their pictures taken out here, at the Homestead.

This surprised me a bit - from my perspective our yard is nothing terribly special from a picturesque point of view. In fact, thinking about it from that perspective mostly makes me consider the efforts to tame encroaching nature and my relative failures in that respect. But when I asked LB and Malte about it, they pointed out that greenery and large old trees were key, and we have both in abundance. LB also casually pointed out that it would be great for pictures if the tree swing could be repaired, which put that on my mental list.

I realized, thinking about this, that they were absolutely correct. One of the beautiful things about the old farmhouses here in Illinois is the lots upon which they sit. Illinois was primarily prairie, of course, before European settlers came, with stands of trees in occasional groves that followed closely along the streams. The early settlers lived in those groves and, as they moved out to farm the prairie, efforts were made to make their homesteads mirror the preferred qualities of those groves - which is to say that they planted trees.

We continue to have some trees on the property that can be seen in pictures from decades ago. Consider this pic, which I believe is at least 50 years old:

There are a couple of trees in particular that can be seen there that can still be seen today:

They are still in this picture from 2009:

And they are still there today, though the one on the right has clearly seen better days:

Or consider these two old soldiers, fir trees that were originally part of a longer tree line:

These are tall trees - I have to stand way back from them to get the taller of the two entirely in the frame, which is why it is good of the dogs to help by providing scale.

The smaller of the two also helpfully offers up a branch for the aforementioned swing:

Of course we all know that trees live a long time. Still, an old tree is often a beautiful thing. These tiny groves dot the rural countryside here, but they are slowly diminishing. The upside is that I do see land where people are actively planting tree lines around their homes as windbreaks and/or installing the next generation’s tiny groves of deciduous trees. The irony to this is that I virtually always see that around the rate newer country homes.

Summer Visitors

There are a lot of little benefits to rural life in the midwest, kind one of them is the abundance of wildlife we get the opportunity to experience.

Yes - this may seem an odd statement - isn’t even the rural territory of Illinois largely tamed? It is true that we don’t have to fear wandering grizzly bears or marauding packs of wolves (though wolves aren’t really the danger that children’s stories would suggest), but we certainly do have a variety of other critters, including coyotes, foxes, and an array of marsupials and large rodentia, not to mention the f&%king raccoons...

But mid- to late summer here also offers an explosion in activity of the insect variety. Some of this is less than desirable, of course - it’s amazing how quickly after cracking open a beer the picnic bugs arrive, for example. But then there are the moths and butterflies.

Between the agriculture around us, and the array of things we allow to grow in and on the borders of the property, butterflies seem to find our little homestead a fine place to hang out.

I’ve discussed this tangentially before, but spying multiple examples of this little guy brought it to the forefront.

It’s a curious looking little fella, and when I see things like this I find, more often than not, I want to know what it is. When I was younger, of course, that would require a trip to the encyclopedia set and/or the library, all assuming that a) I would remember to look it up once the opportunity presented itself; and 2) that I would accurately remember the thing that I’d seen days (or possibly weeks) before well enough to match what I was seeking.

Of course, the naturalists of the 1800’s would simply have sketched themselves a drawing of the thing they’d seen in their notebooks. This makes me think, nowadays, how nice it must have been to have the time to sit there and sketch things into one’s notebook. It also makes me wonder what became of all of the naturalists out there who were poor artists. Were they shamed by their peers? Or did the Royal Society require them to be able to pass a drawing test before allowing them to join? "Why I’m sorry old chap, but if you cannot accurately render Tippy the Turtle, it strains the mind to consider what would occur if you attempted to represent a tortoise in the Galapagos..."

Instead of consulting with my tweedy colleagues in the smoke-filled gentleman’s chambers at the Royal Society or combing through their notebooks, I was able to look the little guy on the grill up on the North American Caterpillar Identification site (how cool is it that such a thing exists?).

A little scrolling there finds that it is the caterpillar guise of the White-Marked Tussock Moth. If that doesn’t sound like a familiar species it may be because, like a child star, the stand-out part of this critter’s existence is in its youth. For Orgyia leucostigma adult life is one of blending into the background like a desk worker wearing khakis and a polo. Adult males are gray and black in a fashion that suggests they are moths we’ve all seen time and time again, paying them no attention except perhaps to be irritated by them. The females get the real short end of the stick, however, as they don’t grow wings strong enough to fly - they live their lives in and around their cocoon.

They are a small part of the array around us, of course. Yet, they do help to remind how much there is to see here, even within our own little wild space.

The Little Things

There are little moments in life that can be close to perfect. This is one of them.

There are trade offs to rural living, to be sure - it takes time in the car to get to anything, and sometimes the weather makes getting anywhere impossible. But then it offers the opportunity to sit outside, in front of a fire, enjoying nothing but the sounds of nature, the company of good dogs, and a crackling fire.

The Coleman outdoor fireplace I’m sitting in front of was something we had when we lived in the city. On occasion we’d light it up and enjoy a bit of a fire. But while the crackling was still there, the sounds of crickets and tree frogs were eclipsed by the noise of cars driving by, neighbors arguing, and the general drone of mechanical equipment from houses that were, at best, 30 feet away.

Our old house, ultimately, is a huge project. I know, in these quiet moments, that we’ll likely never complete everything we’d like to accomplish here. But when it offers these moments I realize that’s really ok.