Natural World

The new world of electronic communication we live in is nothing short of spectacular. There isn’t anything you can ask that you cannot become enlightened about by asking Google. But beware, some of the so-called “knowledge” that comes back to our monitors should be taken with a grain of salt. And that includes information about nature, too.
It’s the same with the gobbly-goop that comes to us via email. The political stuff fills my monitor more than I like, but the people who send it are sincere in their point of view, and feel I should be as well. Many of the people who send these political messages are good friends, so I glance at the stuff (to be polite) and then usually dump them in the world of “delete” – especially those that claim my big toe will grow to the size of a watermelon, or my first-born son will develop a mysterious rash on the end of his nose if I don’t send it on, or back to the sender.
But what really knocks me out is the gross misinformation that leaps on my MacBook monitor; it often elicits laughter or groaning, depending on how much damage the junk does.
The first one that comes to mind is the nonsense that hit the Internet about three years ago regarding Mars coming so close to the earth that it was going to appear, “as large as the full-moon.” That was a corker! Unfortunately, gullible computer geeks keep circulating it – I got it again just last week, in fact. The people who submit this goofy stuff – and forward it to everyone they know – mean well, but to save time and sanity, it should have gone into the “delete” or “junk” file when it first appeared.

It isn’t every day that someone with the credentials for caring about our good Earth comes to town. But last Saturday afternoon, Dr. Jane Goodall, primatologist and planet Earth activist, wowed more than a thousand people – including several hundred parents with their young children – who came to hear her talk at the Hooker Creek Events Center at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond. And as is her way, she had everyone greet her in chimpanzee grunts and hoots.
It was a sell-out audience that not just came to hear Dr. Goodall speak, but to show their steadfast appreciation and support for all she has done for those beautiful mammals that share so much of our DNA, chimpanzees in particular. One teacher brought along her entire class to hear Dr. Goodall, and it wasn’t even a school day.
This wonderful program would not have been possible without the dedicated and active group of volunteers from Chimps, Inc. of Tumalo. They all greeted the audience with big smiles, positive assistance that helped to make Dr. Goodall's presentation the overwhelming success that it was.

My wonderful and curious neighbor, Chuck Stahn, who has a magnificent greenhouse and garden, delivered a magnificent bug (pictured above) to Sue and I the other day in a cranberry juice jug. Chuck was gassing up his car at a lighted Madras gas station when suddenly a woman in the next bay let out a scream while pointing to a very large “bug” on the gas station pavement.
“Whoa!” Chuck exclaimed, and with a chuckle, added, “I’ll bet it ran out of gas,” and scooped it up, not realizing what was going to happen next. Before he could get it into a container, he discovered (painfully) that it had its sharp, hypodermic-like mouthpart shoved into his finger. He let out a yell, disconnected the beast, and then – using marvelous self control – put it in the juice jug without killing it.

You have to be swift to catch sight of a swift zooming by in pursuit of a moth, mosquito, beetle, gnat or other small flying insect. And, if it happens to be a Vaux’s Swift (pronounced vox, or vawx, your choice), you have to be even swifter. They’re smaller than the other swifts we have zipping about Central Oregon.
If you go on a birding excursion to Fort Rock between May and July you’ll see hundreds of white-throated swifts swooping around the steep walls of the old mud volcano, pursuing flying insects, many of which are mosquitoes. If you’re keeping a life list of birds, a visit to the coast may have a sighting of the black swift, a rare visitor to Oregon. Like all the swifts, they too look like a flying cigar with crescent-shaped wings. While most swifts, such as the black and white-throated, have a well-defined tail, Vaux’s Swift’s body looks exactly like a cigar.
The neat part of all this swift business is that the residents of Bend don’t have to travel anywhere to see Vaux's Swifts, throughout most of September they put on an air show everyone can enjoy right in town. Just before dark (about 7 p.m.), what looks like a wisp of smoke appears in the darkening sky heading for the little craft shop, Christmas Presence, on Harriman between Hill and Franklin. As the “smoke” gets closer, individual dots can be made out, zooming about each other, and in a few seconds you will be able to make them out, 30 to 100 Vaux's Swifts. Then, with astonishing accuracy, they all go spiraling down into the tall, brick chimney on the roof of the craft shop.

There’s nothing, dear readers, that scares me half to death more than a pickup truck passing me at 70 mph with a dog sliding around in the back. Dogs being dogs, the poor animal thinks he’s having a great time, ears flapping in the wind, nose quivering at all the spectacular scents wafting by and all kinds of exciting things to look at – life couldn’t be more fun!
Then comes the sharp bend in the road or the passing lane, and things quickly go from fun and games to sheer terror. The poor animal starts sliding from one side of the pickup bed to the other as the driver swings out and around, and then back in front of me. I fear for the life of the animal, and feel sorry for the driver who either doesn’t understand the danger the dog is in, or worse yet, doesn’t care. Maybe he or she even thinks the dog is “having fun.”

Dan Kraus of Bend brought me the good news about a month ago. Dan’s a meteorologist and astronomer, who, like most people who deal with the stars and the weather, can’t help but be interested in other things that take place around him. He called with the message I love to hear: “Jim, there’s a swarm of bees in an apple tree next door.”
Central Oregon, and especially Bend, is a wonderful place for bee swarms to suddenly appear in spring. That’s because over the years, beekeepers like myself “lost” bees when they swarmed. Sometimes it was out of just plain bad beekeeping that we allowed a swarm to escape, while at other times we were doing other things and didn’t know our bees had swarmed. Offhand, I’d say there are at least 25 wild bee colonies within the Bend is city limits. They’re usually in hollow trees, but I’ve removed them from the walls of houses, water shut-off boxes, and there’s a huge one right in downtown Bend that produces strong swarms every spring.

Margaret Anderson (no relation, darn it) couldn't have picked a better title for her exquisite book about Jean Henri Fabre, the father of experimental entomology, than Children of Summer. And as far as I'm concerned, you couldn't pick a better book to introduce your children to insects – and entertain yourself – than Anderson's 95 pages of Fabre's observations.
From the chapter heading of “The Hermit of Serignan,” with Fabre's son, Paul's description of his famous father, all the way to “The Great Peacock Evening” – the final story in the book – the author and talented artist Marie LeGlatin Keis have teamed up to bring us a grand read.

Every year at about this time, rattlesnake hysteria breaks out all across the West. Just the other day one person was bitten by a rattlesnake in one of the national parks in California, now parks personnel are going out in the field wearing snake protection on their legs and footwear.
Last week, I received an alarming email from a resident of Squaw Creek Canyon Estates near Sisters all in a tizzy because one rattlesnake was found dead on the road near the development and another was seen on someone’s back deck. A cry went up to locate the dens where the snakes spend winter and move them somewhere else for fear they’ll cause harm to children and pets. Then a report came in from a young lady in the same area who reportedly saw three “small snakes” that she thought were rattlesnakes, adding fuel to the fire.

If there is one wild animal that is taken for granted, overlooked in the wildlife management business, completely misunderstood by state agencies and killed relentlessly, it is our poor old black-tailed jackrabbit.
Jackrabbits are actually “hares,” not “rabbits;” they’re in the genus lepus and are twice as large as our local rabbits, and hares have taller hind legs and longer ears. Cottontail rabbits were named for a puff of fur that adorns their tails, while, on the other hand, jackrabbits were named for their ears, which initially caused some people to refer to them as “jackass rabbits.” Mark Twain brought this name to fame in his book, Roughing It. “Jackass rabbit” was, however, just too awkward and the name was later shortened to jackrabbit.
There is also another difference. Rabbits that are in the genus sylvilagus make a nest in which the female gives birth to naked, helpless and blind baby rabbits, known as kits. Pregnant momma jackrabbits don’t bother to build a nest and appear to be very nonchalant about where they give birth, but when you study them for a while, you will see some very clever hare-thinking in what they do.

Of all the spiders that crawl, creep, fly and jump about in Central Oregon, black widows are the most feared. There are others that can kill you, some quicker than the black widow, like Australia's the funnel-web spider, but throughout the entire world, black widows (latrodectus mactans) get the most press, and they should.
It's the adult female black widows that cause all the problems for man and beast as they pack a very serious venom and are also scary lookin’: Black, with a shiny, bulbous abdomen, long legs with (or without) the red hourglass.Anyone who thinks he or she has been bitten by a black widow should stay calm and seek immediate medical care, especially children and old duffers, like me. Black widow venom is very powerful, but usually not fatal to humans if taken care of quickly. There is a variety of treatments available that will prevent the venom from causing permanent damage and a complete recovery usually takes only about five days.