Jim Anderson

Sometimes I get calls from folks all in a dither: “Oh, Jim. There's a huge spider in a web above the horse's stall… and there's another behind the barn door… and my son just came in and told me there's another one near the porch light… are they dangerous?”
The answer is a flat, “no.” For there, in the flesh, so to speak, in all her egg-laden glory – is our dear old friend from E.B. White's beautiful classic, Charlotte, of Charlotte's Web. And to make you feel even better, I don't believe Charlotte could bite you even if she wanted to. However, if you're a fly, she'll wrap you up in her silken cloak of death and you're toast.

This may be the year of the scorpion. They seem to be popping up everywhere around Central Oregon – bedrooms, kitchens, garages, backyards, woodpiles and gardens. The concerned mother who found one in her children's bedroom and brought it to me to identify is typical of how most people react when they encounter scorpions and spiders: innate fear that it will harm them or their family.

A couple of weeks back, my good friend (and geologist) Al Waibel gave me a call.
“Hey, Jim, how about joining a few friends and me Wednesday? We’re going out to Newberry Monument and then Derrick Cave.” Would I?
If these people were friends of Al’s, they were already friends of mine – we all just didn’t know it. So, at the assigned time and place, we all met, shook hands and carpooled off to Newberry Monument, south of Bend.

If you’ve driven the freeways between Brainerd, Minn., and Spokane, Wash., you will recall seeing the “World’s Biggest Turkey,” the “World’s Biggest Cow,” “World’s Biggest T-Rex Skull” and other “Biggest” this-and-that.

A lot of kids, when suddenly confronted by a snake, freak out. My oldest son, Dean, from the moment he could crawl wasn’t that way – he’d go after it. His younger brother, Ross, is that way, and so are my other four, for that matter.
Dean, however, was always one jump ahead of everyone else. Not only did he have the ability to make instant decisions as a child, but his curiosity and reflexes have benefited him as an adult – today, he is an F-16 Viper pilot and is presently on a year-long tour of duty as a peace-keeper in Afghanistan.

Welcome to the world of insects! If you're ever bored or think life is the pits, grab up an old sheet, place it under the nearest bush, tree or flower patch, take a stick and gently beat the plants and see what drops out. I’ll give you two-dollars-to-a-donut there will be things flying and hopping around on the sheet you have never seen before, most of them a wonderful mystery.
If no one will give you an old sheet, buy a stout butterfly net and go “sweep-netting” in the grasses and tall plants in your backyard. When you stop, you’ll find the net teeming with animals of wonderful variety, and like the creepy-crawlers on the sheet, you probably won’t know many of them.

The photo above that Dick Tipton shot of the Osprey getting hammered by a Western Kingbird is the epitome of what lengths small birds go to in order to protect their home and family from larger birds, whether the threat is real or not.
There is no way anyone could convince the energetic kingbird that the osprey means no harm. To a small bird with an open nest – such as kingbirds use – larger birds mean trouble as they carry off nestlings and eat them.

Let's face it. Man, in his continual struggle to make a living, stay healthy and put a little money in the bank has a hard time of it, and those who decide to make a living as farmers sometimes have it even tougher. They often have to put all their eggs into one basket (pun intended), or put another way, create a monoculture, like raising fields of alfalfa hay and nothing else but weeds, for example.
In mid summer, the efforts of all the water, fertilizer and changing pipes at the crack-of-dawn and general TLC to raise a crop of alfalfa are beautifully obvious. However, trouble is brewing because things farmers don't like are attracted to his alfalfa. But not to fear, help is near.

That devil-may-care brown (black, really) bear is still hanging around Sisters, and, unless it keeps a lower profile, no good is going to come out of it. It showed up about three weeks back, poking its nose into people's backyards looking for handouts and driving the local dogs nuts. By its size and behavior, it appears to be a yearling, which in human terms makes it a teenager, and teenagers, (speaking from my time in that category) can get themselves in trouble without even trying.
The greatest fear for both the safety of man and beast is that some misinformed, well-meaning person in or around Sisters will start feeding it (as is done all too frequently with mule deer), either on purpose or unintentionally. The best thing that can happen to any bear in town is to get out of Dodge as quickly as possible.