A Northwoods Almanac for 3/15-28, 2019
March – The Trickster
Native Americans often refer to the coyote as “the trickster” for its ability
to teach through ways that aren’t straightforward, often using trickery to deliver its message. One Native American resource says this: “Don’t be fooled by the coyote’s way: . . . there’s a hidden wisdom for you to reap. Be aware of the roundabout ways of the coyote totem and its teachings.”
I suspect – well, I know – we could apply the “trickster” label to the month of March as well. I can’t think of any other month that plays more with the weather, often tricking us into thinking spring is coming only to then hammer us with snow and cold. It’s an emotional roller coaster, a yo-yo like journey through the days leading to the real-deal of spring.
At the same time, I think there’s some wisdom, some teachings we’re meant to absorb through all this capriciousness. Hal Borland in his book Sundial of the Seasonssays this about March:“There is a succession in the days, now, that quickens the human heart. Whether they are gusty days or days of calm, chill days or days of deepening warmth, they have the air of change. No twodays are alike . . . But the very indecision is itself the mark of change . . . Growth is there in the earth, at the grass roots, at the twig ends. The green world is waiting, already in the making where the mysterious chemistry of sap andchlorophyll has its origins. And the heart responds, already sensing the seedling, the new shoot,the Summer's dappled shade.”
Spring is indeed in the air. Red-winged blackbirds and American robins almost always appear in Manitowish around spring equinox, even if the snow is deep and the wind biting. Eagles are busy rebuilding nests, ready to lay eggs usually by the end of the month. Male ravens are displaying to females; bowing and spreading their wings and tail, making gurgling or choking sounds, and snapping their bill. In flight, they dive and roll, makinghalf-rolls onto their back, but occasionally making full rolls and even double rolls.
Mammals, too, are mating, from squirrels to muskrats to otters to bobcats.
So, March, the changeling, lives to propel change. It speculates and gambles every day with creating new life, veers, vacillates, fakes us out, but inexorably shifts the world into new life. And it’s all there to see if we look for what it offers.
We humans usually don’t like change, but March swirls it all around us. Perhaps the lesson every year is to accept it as a symbol of all life, which ultimately is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and often beyond our comprehension.
Porcupine Wins Again
On a recent ski outing, Rainy, my sister-in-law’s young Australian shepherd, decided to try her first taste of porcupine. We heard a yelp ahead of us, and she came running back around a corner, mouth and chest full of quills, in pain, and with complete confusion and fear in her eyes. I held her tight and Mary started pulling the quills as fast as she could. Rainy yelped with each one extruded, and with the worst embedded ones, literally screamed. Our Australian shepherd, Zoe, who was also along, “helped out” by empathetically joining in the choir, crying, too, with every quill removed.
Forty or so quills later, and with some we just couldn’t reach under her right shoulder, we knew we had to get her to a vet. So, holding her right foreleg out to her side, she limped on three legs over a mile back to the parking lot, lagging behind us even when we were skiing as slowly as we could.
After finally reaching the car, we had her to the vet in Minocqua forty-five minutes later, where she was sedated and the rest of the quills were removed.
It was traumatic, as we know it’s been for so many others whose dogs failed to transfer the essential DNA trait of “Porcupine = BAD”.
Over all the years we’ve had dogs, three others also attempted a porcupine snack and found it not only wanting, since they got none at all, but also shocking.
Porcupine quills are exquisite little daggers. Each quill is adorned with between 700 and 800 barbs along the 4 millimeters or so nearest its tipfor instant burrowing into the victim’s body. The quills, stiff, thick and hollow with a spongy interior,number in the tens of thousands and cover every inch of a porkie’s body, with the exception of its face, belly, and the undersides of its limbs and tail. Excellent swimmers, the air-filled quills help keep porcupines afloat, and also, I suspect, provide excellent insulating winter warmth.
Porcupines aren’t looking for a fight with dogs or anyone else, and go to some lengths to deter an attack. If an attacker approaches, a porcupine hunkers down with its head away from the danger,erects its quills, and then broadcasts a unique and very pungent warning odor from a patch of skin called the rosette on its lower back. If a predator has ever encountered a porcupine before, the odor is intended to trigger a retreat (I hope Rainy reads this). And since smells constitute a rich language for most mammals, one would think dogs would read the signs.
The quills also contain a fluorescent material that brightens the quills at night when the most predators are afoot, adding an additional warning sign.
These evolutionary adaptations help ensure a safe infancy and relatively long life for the adult. One radio-tagged female in New York’s Catskills, for example, lived for twenty-one years.
Fishers are the primary predator of porcupines in our area, but quills have been found embedded in coyotes, cougars, bobcats, foxes, lynxes, bears, wolves and even great horned owls. These predators kill a porcupine by biting its unprotected face or by somehow flipping it over to expose the vulnerable belly.
A study of a porcupine population in the Great Basin desert of Nevada reported what happened when a single mountain lion started preying on porcupines. In a 3-year period, the population plummeted from 82 porcupines to just 5. Apparently, instead of avoiding the quills, mountain lions eat the porcupines whole (can you imagine?), and accept the consequences. Mountain lions autopsied in Oregon routinely showed quill tips embedded in their gums.
Rainy is doing fine now, but we wonder what her next encounter with a porkie will engender – fear (please!) or an attempt at revenge.
Sightings
Debbie and Randy Augustinak in Land O’ Lakes have three pairs of pine grosbeaks at their feeders.
This is worth noting because pine grosbeaks continue to be a rare sighting this winter. We had three females/juveniles visit our crabapple trees on 3/2, but they only stayed a short while, and then were off to a better restaurant. A few days later we found the remains of a bird, likely a mourning dove, near one of our feeders. So, we clearly have a predator somewhere in the vicinity which may be limiting our songbird visitors. I get it. I, too, tend not to eat at places where I’m worrying something will eat me.
Cherie Smith sent a photo on 3/8 of a saw-whet owl sunning itself in her Lake Tomahawk backyard. She noted, “And were the chickadees and nuthatches harassing him! I’m hoping he was just taking advantage of the sun’s warmth and not sick or starving because of this terrible snow depth.”
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| photo by Cherie Smith |
Kay Rhyner sent a photo of an all-white gray squirrel in her Hazelhurst area backyard. That gives her the trifecta for color variations in gray squirrels – she has black, gray, and now white.
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| photo by Kay Rhyner |
Howard P forwarded a photo of a gray jay that has been frequenting his yard in Minocqua. These days, gray jays are very hard to come by in our area. They seem to be retreating further north where the winters are more consistently very cold, a necessity given how they store food in the fall for eating throughout the winter.
Finally, Bev Engstrom in Rhinelander won an international award for her photo of a female cardinal – a very well-deserved congratulations to Bev!
Website!
Mary came across a website that provides the latest sightings, along with pictures, of birds seen at hotspots around the country – check it out! https://www.waxwingeco.com/index.php
Celestial Events
The BIG upcoming celestial event is, of course, spring or vernal equinox on 3/20. The day seldom has anything to do with the arrival of spring in the Northwoods, but it does signify the shift from 6 months of longer nights than days to now 6 months of longer days than nights, and that’s very, very welcome indeed! The sun will rise in the due east today and be directly above the equator.
March 20thalso marks the full moon – the sap/crust on snow/crow moon. Woody Hagge notes in his 46 years of keeping ice data on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst that this is the earliest date for ice-off he has ever recorded, occurring in 2012.
Somehow I doubt we’ll equal that record this spring.
On 3/26, look before dawn for Jupiter about two degrees below the waning gibbous moon.
Thought for the Week
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” – Soren Kierkegaard
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