by Roland D. Hallee

It’s simply amazing what you come across in the woods of Maine. While preparing to open camp for the season, my wife and I were helping friends do some raking and leaf pickup, when the wife showed me something that she had raked up. It looked kind of odd. OK, something else I had never seen in the 34 years my wife and I have been there.

It was round, like an orb, a little smaller than a tennis ball. Brown in color, with black bristles all over the exterior. At one end was a hole with what appeared to be dried mud inside.

That evening, I perused through the myriad of books I own and found nothing that really resembled it. The closest I came was that of a milkweed stock, but still didn’t look the same. So, I turned to my contact at the Maine Depart­ment of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, in Augusta. His initial thought was a gall, but he would confer with his botanist colleagues.

Basically, a gall is a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants or animals. They are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to benign tumors or warts on animals. They are caused by various parasites, from fungi and bacteria, to insects and mites. They are highly organized structures and because of this the cause of the gall can often be determined without the actual agent being identified. In human pathology, a gall is a raised sore on the skin, usually caused by chafing or rubbing.

In the end, what we had found was not a gall.

Several emails later, my contact replied following some consultations with the botanists, and were wondering if it might be a Chestnut gall. This would only be possible if we had a mature Chestnut tree on the premises. There are none that we are aware.

Then, another state botanist concluded there are no trees in Maine with galls that have multiple spines from the same attachment point and therefore he speculated that it was most likely a cactus house plant that was thrown away in the yard some time ago.

He concluded the orb was possibly that of the Aylostera vulpina plant, a cactus that is native to Bolivia and Argentina, but very popular as house potted plants. In the wilds of South America, they grow at altitudes of 3,400 – 3,900 feet. I was not able to find a common name for them.

The plant is easy to grow and recommended for beginners. They prefer a gritty, porous soil mix with a pH slightly on the acidic side. Full sun to light shade. The root system is rot prone so watering should be monitored closely. It’s recommended to let the pot dry out before adding water. It is winter hardy and will sustain temperatures below freezing. They require a winter rest period.

This species of cactus will occupy a small flower pot confortably and remain a manageable sized house plant. The flower is bright red with scarlet petal tips and white stigma.

They are subject to mealy-bug attacks and to fungus and rot brought on by overwatering and high humidity.

It appears that in cultivation they grow larger and cluster more vigorously than in the wild.

The site where the pod was found has had a high turnover rate in the past 6 – 10 years so could very conceivably have been a potted house plant. The area had not been raked in quite some time.

I guess, for the time anyway, we have solved another “mystery” at camp.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

In golf, finish the following phrase: “You drive for show, but putt for…”

by Roland D. Hallee

I will start this column by saying I know we don’t have any of these around here, but on a recent vacation to the Outer Banks, of North Carolina, I saw several of them.

A group of us rented a house on the beach in Nags Head, North Carolina, for a week of relaxation. Every morning, it became ritual to awake before sunrise, walk out to a gazebo near the beach and watch the rising sun. To our surprise, and delight, we experienced an unexpected daily show by dolphins, in the distance.

Now, let’s make this clear as we delve into the world of this intelligent creature. Dolphins are not fish, they are mammals.

A dolphin is an aquatic mammal. There are 40 extant species named as dolphins.

Though not quite as flexible as seals, some dolphins can briefly travel at speeds of 18 mph or leap about 30 ft. Dolphins use their conical teeth to capture fast-moving prey. They have well-developed hearing which is adapted for both air and water. It is so well developed that some can survive even if they are blind. Some species are well adapted for diving to great depths. They have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin to keep warm in the cold water.

Dolphins are widespread. Most species prefer the warm waters of the tropic zones, but some, such as the right whale dolphin, prefer colder climates. Dolphins feed largely on fish and squid, but a few, such as the orca, feed on large mammals such as seals. Male dolphins typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them. Dolphins produce a variety of vocalizations, usually in the form of clicks and whistles.

A dolphin ear has specific adaptations to the marine environment. In humans, the middle ear works as an impedance equalizer between the outside air’s low impedance and the cochlear fluid’s high impedance. In dolphins, and other marine mammals, there is no great difference between the outer and inner environments. Instead of sound passing through the outer ear to the middle ear, dolphins receive sound through the throat, from which it passes through a low-impedance fat-filled cavity to the inner ear.

A dolphin eye is relatively small for its size, yet they do retain a good degree of eyesight. As well as this, the eyes of a dolphin are placed on the sides of its head, so their vision consists of two fields, rather than a binocular view like humans have. When dolphins surface, their lens and cornea correct the nearsightedness that results from the water’s refraction of light.

The olfactory lobes and nerve are absent in dolphins, suggesting they have no sense of smell.

Dolphins are not thought to have a good sense of taste, as their taste buds are atrophied or missing altogether. Some have preferences for different kinds of fish, indicating some ability to taste.

Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions, greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks.

Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Research in this field has suggested that dolphins possess self-awareness. The most widely used test for self-awareness in animals is the mirror test in which a mirror is introduced to an animal, and the animal is then marked with a temporary dye. If the animal then goes to the mirror in order to view the mark, it has exhibited strong evidence of self-awareness.

Dolphins are highly social animals, often living in pods of up to a dozen individuals, though pod sizes and structures vary greatly between species and locations. What we saw everyday was a pod of about a dozen dolphins.

Dolphins communicate using a variety of clicks, whistle-like sounds and other vocalizations. Dolphins also use nonverbal communication by means of touch and posturing.

Dolphins also display culture, something long believed to be unique to humans (and possibly other primate species). In May 2005, a discovery in Australia found Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins teaching their young to use tools.

Dolphins engage in acts of aggression towards each other. The older a male dolphin is, the more likely his body is to be covered with bite scars. Male dolphins can get into disputes over companions and females. Acts of aggression can become so intense that targeted dolphins sometimes go into exile after losing a fight.

Reports of cooperative human-dolphin fishing date back to the ancient Roman author and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder. Dolphins drive fish towards fishermen waiting along the shore and signal the men to cast their nets. The dolphins’ reward is the fish that escape the nets.

Dolphins have few marine enemies. Some species or specific populations have none, making them apex predators. For most of the smaller species of dolphins, only a few of the larger sharks, such as the bull shark, dusky shark, tiger shark and great white shark, are a potential risk, especially for calves. Some dolphin species are at risk of extinction, especially some river dolphin species such as the Amazon river dolphin, and the Ganges and Yangtze river dolphin, which are critically or seriously endangered. A 2006 survey found no individuals of the Yangtze river dolphin. The species now appears to be functionally extinct.

Pesticides, heavy metals, plastics, and other industrial and agricultural pollutants that do not disintegrate rapidly in the environment concentrate in predators such as dolphins. Injuries or deaths due to collisions with boats, especially their propellers, are also common.

In Greek myths, dolphins were seen invariably as helpers of mankind. Dolphins also seem to have been important to the Minoans, judging by artistic evidence from the ruined palace at Knossos. During the 2009 excavations of a major Mycenaean city at Iklaina, a striking fragment of a wall-paintings came to light, depicting a ship with three human figures and dolphins. Dolphins are common in Greek mythology, and many coins from ancient Greece have been found which feature a man, a boy or a deity riding on the back of a dolphin.

Although dolphins generally interact well with humans, some attacks have occurred, most of them resulting in small injuries. Fatal attacks from other species are less common, but there is a registered occurrence off the coast of Brazil in 1994, when a man died after being attacked by a bottlenose dolphin named Tião. Tião had suffered harassment by human visitors, including attempts to stick ice cream sticks down her blowhole.

A number of militaries have employed dolphins for various purposes from finding mines to rescuing lost or trapped humans. The military use of dolphins drew scrutiny during the Vietnam War, when rumors circulated that the United States Navy was training dolphins to kill Vietnamese divers. The United States Navy denies that at any point dolphins were trained for combat. Dolphins are still being trained by the United States Navy for other tasks as part of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. The Russian military is believed to have closed its marine mammal program in the early 1990s. In 2000 the press reported that dolphins trained to kill by the Soviet Navy had been sold to Iran.

In some parts of the world, such as Taiji, Japan and the Faroe Islands, dolphins are traditionally considered as food, and are killed in harpoon or drive hunts. Dolphin meat is consumed in a small number of countries worldwide, which include Japan and Peru (where it is referred to as chancho marino, or “sea pork”). While Japan may be the best-known and most controversial example, only a very small minority of the population has ever sampled it.

Dolphin meat is dense and such a dark shade of red as to appear black. There have been human health concerns associated with the consumption of dolphin meat in Japan after tests showed that dolphin meat contained high levels of mercury.

That’s what dolphins are all about in a nutshell. There is much more science and data gathered regarding those sea mammals.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers have met 109 times in the playoffs, which team has won the most games?

by Roland D. Hallee

What is more inspiring than seeing that first robin of the spring?

The American robin, Turdus migratorius, is a member of the thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, though the two species are not closely related, with the European robin belonging to the flycatcher family.

A migrator, the robins winter south of Canada from Florida to central Mexico and along the Pacific Coast. It is the state bird of Connecticut, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The American robin is active mostly during the day and assembles in large flocks at night. Its diet consists of invertebrates such as beetle grubs and caterpillars, fruits and berries. It is one of the earliest bird species to lay eggs, beginning to breed shortly after returning from its winter range. Its nest consists of long coarse grass, twigs, paper, and feathers, and is smeared with mud and often cushioned with grass or other soft materials. The robin is among the first birds to sing at dawn.

Predators include hawks, cats and larger snakes, but when feeding in flocks, it is able to be vigilant and watch other birds for reactions to predators. Brown-headed cowbirds lay eggs in robin nests, but robins usually reject the cowbird eggs.

Both sexes of the robins look alike, except the female tends to be duller than the male. However, some birds cannot be safely sexed on plumage alone. The juvenile is paler in color than the adult male and has dark spots on its breast, and whitish wing coverts. First-year birds are not easily distinguishable from adults, but they tend to be duller, and a small percentage retains a few junvenile wing coverts or other feathers.

The American robin has an extensive range, estimated at upwards of 6 million square miles, with a population of about 320 million individuals. It is listed as “least concern” on the endangered list. At one point, the bird was killed for its meat, but is now protected throughout its range in the United States by the Migratory Bird Act.

The American robin is a known carrier of West Nile virus. While crows and jays are often the first noticed deaths in an area with West Nile virus, the American robin is suspected to be a key host, and holds a larger responsibility for the transmission of the virus to humans. This is because while crows and jays die quickly from the virus, the American robin survives the virus longer, hence spreading it to more mosquitoes, which then transmit the virus to humans and other species.

The American robin is frequently seen running across lawns, picking up earthworms by sight, and its running and stopping behavior is a distinguishing characteristic. It hunts visually, not by hearing.

The robin also has a place in human culture. the Tlingit people of Northwestern North America held it to be a culture hero created by Raven to please the people with its song. One of the Houses of the Raven Tribe from the Nisga’a Nation holds the robin as a House Crest.

The robin is considered a symbol of spring. A well-known example is a poem by Emily Dickinson, I Dreaded That First Robin So. Among other 19th century poems about the first robin of spring is The First Robin, by Dr. William H. Drummond, which, according to the author’s wife, is based on a Québec superstition that whoever sees the first robin of spring will have good luck.

Although the comic book superhero Robin was inspired by an N. C. Wyeth illustration of Robin Hood, a later version had his mother nicknaming him Robin because he was born on the first day of spring. His red shirt suggests the bird’s red breast.

But, unlike Emily Dickinson’s poem, I don’t dread that first robin, I embrace it.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

When Dale Earnhardt was killed on the final lap of NASCAR’s 2001 Daytona 500, who was crossing the finish line as the winner?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

Another sign of spring is upon us.

While out checking and emptying my maple sap buckets last Monday, I saw a common house fly on the side of the bucket. The first one of the season. A sure sign of spring, but also the beginning of their irritation.

The housefly is the most common fly species found in houses. The female housefly usually mates only once and stores the sperm for later use. She lays batches of about 100 eggs on decaying organic matter such as food waste, carrion, or feces. These soon hatch into legless white larvae, known as maggots. Adult flies normally live for two to four weeks, but can hibernate during the winter. The adults feed on a variety of liquid or semi-liquid substances, as well as solid materials which have been softened by their saliva. They can carry pathogens on their bodies and in their feces, contaminate food, and contribute to the transfer of food-borne illnesses, while, in numbers, they can be physically annoying. For these reasons, they are considered pests.

The housefly is probably the insect with the widest distribution in the world; it is largely associated with humans and has accompanied them around the globe. It is present in the Arctic, as well as in the tropics, where it is abundant. It is present in all populated parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas.

Houseflies play an important ecological role in breaking down and recycling organic matter. Adults are mainly carnivorous; their primary food is animal matter, carrion, and feces, but they also consume milk, sugary substances, and rotting fruit and vegetables. Solid foods are softened with saliva before being sucked up. They can be opportunistic blood feeders.

Adult houseflies are diurnal (active during the day) and rest at night. If inside a building after dark, they tend to congregate on ceilings, beams, and overhead wires, while out of doors, they crawl into foliage or long grass, or rest in shrubs and trees or on wires. In cooler climates, some houseflies hibernate in winter, choosing to do so in cracks and crevices, gaps in woodwork, and the folds of curtains. They arouse in the spring when the weather warms up, and search out a place to lay their eggs.

Houseflies have many predators, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, various insects, and spiders.

Houseflies are a nuisance, disturbing people while at leisure and at work, but they are disliked principally because of their habits of contaminating foodstuffs. They alternate between breeding and feeding in dirty places while feeding on human foods, during which process they soften the food with saliva and deposit their feces, creating a health hazard. However, housefly larvae are as nutritious as fish meal, and could be used to convert waste to insect-based animal feed for farmed fish and livestock.

During the Second World War, the Japanese worked on entomological warfare techniques. Japanese Yagi bombs developed at Pingfan consisted of two compartments, one with houseflies and another with a bacterial slurry that coated the houseflies prior to release. Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera, was the bacterium of choice, and was used in China in Baoshan in 1942, and in northern Shandong in 1943. Baoshan had been used by the Allies and bombing produced epidemics that killed 60,000 people in the initial stages. The Shandong attack killed 210,000; the occupying Japanese troops had been vaccinated in advance.

In literature, The Impertinent Insect is a group of five fables, sometimes ascribed to Aesop, concerning an insect, in one version a fly, which puffs itself up to seem important. In the Biblical fourth plague of Egypt, flies represent death and decay, while the Philistine god Beelzebub’s name may mean “lord of the flies”. In Greek mythology, Myiagros was a god who chased away flies during the sacrifices to Zeus and Athena; Zeus sent a fly to bite Pegasus, causing Bellerophon to fall back to Earth when he attempted to ride the winged steed to Mount Olympus. In the traditional Navajo religion, Big Fly is an important spirit being.

William Blake’s 1794 poem The Fly, part of his collection Songs of Experience, deals with the insect’s mortality, subject to uncontrollable circumstances, just like humans. Emily Dickinson’s 1855 poem I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died speaks of flies in the context of death. In William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, the fly is, however, a symbol of the children involved.

Ogden Nash’s humorous two-line 1942 poem God in His wisdom made the fly/And then forgot to tell us why, indicates the debate about the value of biodiversity, given that even those considered by humans as pests have their place in the world’s ecosystems.

So, I guess the fly has its good and bad, mostly bad. I know one thing, when one enters the house, or camp, they can be annoying as all outdoors.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who was the first player in MLB history to win the Most Valuable Player, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, batting title, and World Series in the same season?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

There it is! That familiar odor in the wind that reminds you of a warm, summer night. It is unmistakable, and sometimes can be a sort of positive sign of spring. That odor was definitely in the air at our house this past weekend. Essence of skunk.

Striped skunks, Mephitis mephitis, had been classified to be in the same family with ferrets, weasels, otters and badgers. However, recent generic evidence suggests the skunks are not as closely related as first thought, and therefore are now classified in their own family.

Skunks are placid, retiring and non-aggressive. You can actually talk to a skunk, and it will avoid you. They try very hard not to get in harm’s way. I have had instances where I have spoken, softly, to skunks that have approached me, and “talked” them into taking another route. Although they have excellent senses of smell and hearing, they have poor vision. They cannot see with any clarity all objects more than 10 feet away, which also makes them vulnerable to death by road traffic.

Actually, one summer, we had a family of five skunks living under our deck at camp, and, believe it or not, we didn’t even know they were there until one morning, around 5 a.m., just as the sun was beginning to rise, I saw one adult crawl under the deck, followed by the three kits, and then the second adult. Other than that, no odor, nor any other sign of their presence.

Skunks are omnivorous, eating both plants and animal material, and changing their diet as the seasons change. They eat insects and larvae, earthworms, small rodents, lizards, salamanders, frogs, snakes, birds, moles and eggs. They also commonly eat berries, roots, leaves, grasses, fungi and nuts.

In settled areas, skunks also seek human garbage. Less often, skunks may be found acting as scavengers, eating birds and rodent carcasses left by cats. Skunks will even find their way into garages and cellars where pet foods are stored.

Skunks are one of the primary predators of the honeybee, relying on their thick fur to protect them from stings. The skunk scratches at the front of the beehive and eats the guard bees that come out to investigate. Mother skunks are known to teach this method to their young.

Skunks are not true hibernators in the winter, but do den up for extended periods of time. That is why, this time of year, you will see, or smell, the occasional appearance of skunks. They come out to forage while the temperatures are warmer. However, they remain generally inactive and feed rarely, going through a dormant stage. They often overwinter in a huddle of multiple females, up to as many as 12, while males often den alone. The same winter den is often used repeatedly.

When born, skunk kits are blind, deaf, and covered in a soft layer of fur. About three weeks after birth, their eyes open. The kits are weaned about two months after birth, but generally stay with their mother until they are ready to mate, about one year of age.

The mother is very protective of her kits and will often spray at the first sign of danger. The male plays no part in raising the young and may even kill them.

Most predatory animals of the Americas, such as wolves, foxes and badgers, seldom attack skunks, presumably out of fear of being sprayed. The exception is the great horned-owl, the skunk’s only serious predator, which, like most birds, has a poor to nonexistent sense of smell.

The skunk, still, gets no respect. The word skunk is a corruption of an Abenaki name for them, segongw or segonku, which means “one who squirts,” in the Algonquian language. Even in slang French, mostly Canadian-French, the term for skunk relates to its odiferous characteristic, known as “une bete puante” (animal that stinks). The real French word for skunk is “moufette”.

It is commonly known that skunks make excellent pets. However, make sure of one thing before you proceed. Is the keeping of a pet skunk legal in your state? As for Maine, it has been illegal to keep a skunk since 2002. Only if you acquire a Class B or C license from the USDA can you keep a skunk in Maine, and must be for educational purposes only. Keeping of skunks is legal in only eight states, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Long an enemy of most humans, when all is taken into consideration, skunks aren’t really all that bad.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who holds the American League record for most home runs in a season?

Answer can be found here.