by Roland D. Hallee

I don’t usually do a column on domestic house pets, but I think this one is worth the exception. I have this Maine coon cat that hangs around my house. It belongs to the next door neighbors, but it seems to have claimed my yard as part of its territory.

The Maine coon cat is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically native to the state of Maine, and is recognized as the official state cat.

Although the Maine coon’s origins and date of introduction to the United States are unknown, there are many theories. The breed was popular in cat shows in the late 19th century, but its existence became threatened when long-haired breeds from overseas were introduced in the early 20th century. The breed has made a recovery, and is second only to the Persians in popularity throughout the world.

There are only theories and folklore as to their origin. One involves Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who was executed in 1793. The story goes that before her death, Antoinette attempted to escape France with the help of Capt. Sam­uel Clough. She loaded Clough’s ship with her most prized possessions, including six of her favorite Turkish Angora cats. Although she did not make it to the United States, her pets safely reached the shores of Wiscasset, where they bred with other short-haired breeds and evolved into the modern breed of Maine coon.

Another folk story involves Capt. Charles Coon, an English seafarer who kept long-haired cats aboard his ships. Whenever Coon’s ship would anchor in New England ports, the felines would exit the ship and mate with the local feral population. When long-haired kittens began appearing in the litters of the local cat population, they were referred to as one of “Coon’s cats.”

A myth which is trait-based, though genetically impossible, is the idea that the modern Maine coon descended from ancestors of semi-feral domestic cats and raccoons. This myth would account for the common color of the breed (brown tabby) and its bushy tail. Another idea is that the Maine coon originated between the matings of domestic cats and wild bobcats, which could explain the tufts of hairs that are so commonly seen on the tips of the ears.

The generally-accepted theory among breeders is the possibility that the short-haired domestic cats and long-haired breeds brought from overseas, were responsible, especially the 11th century Vikings. The Maine coon bears strong resemblance to the Norwegian Forest Cat.

The first mention of Maine coons in a literary work was in 1861, when a black and white Maine coon by the name of Captain Jenks of the Horse Marines, was written about by co-owner F. R. Pierce, who wrote a chapter in Frances Simpson’s The Book of Cats in 1903.

In 1895, a dozen Maine coons were entered in a show in Boston. On May 8, 1895, the first North American cat show was hosted at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. A female Maine coon brown tabby, named Cosey, won the silver collar and medal, and was named best in show.

In the early 20th century, the Maine coon’s popularity began to decline with the introduction of other long-haired breeds, such as Persians. The last recorded win by a Maine coon in a national cat show was in 1911 in Portland, Oregon. The breed was rarely seen after that. The decline was so severe that is was prematurely declared extinct in the 1950s.

Maine coons are known as “gentle giants” and possess above-average intelligence, making them easy to train. They are known for being loyal to their families and cautious, but not mean, around strangers, but are independent and not clingy. It is not generally known as a lap cat, but their gentle disposition makes the breed relaxed around dogs, other cats and children. They are playful throughout their lives, the male more so than the female.

Maine coons have a fascination with water, and some theorize that this trait comes from their ancestors, who were aboard ships for much of their lives.

Maine coons are generally a healthy and hardy breed, and have adapted to survive the New Eng­land climate. Their most severe threat is a heart disease most commonly found in cats, whether pure bred or not. Another potential health problem is spinal muscular atrophy, a disease which causes the loss of the neurons in the spinal cord that activate the skeletal muscles of the trunk and limbs.

They have several physical adaptations for survival in harsh winter climates. Their dense fur is water resistant and the shaggier hair on their underside and rear protect them when walking or sitting on top of wet surfaces of snow and ice. Their long and bush raccoon-like tail is resistant to sinking in snow, and can be curled around their face and shoulders for warmth and protection from wind and blowing snow.

My wife and I have had our share of cats over the years, and choose not to have any more. But if I were to have another cat, it would be a Maine coon. There seems to be a mystique about them.

IMPROVEMENT?

Well, Patriots fans, what do you take away from Sunday’s loss to the New York Giants, 10-7?

I think it’s an improvement. After losing, 10-6, to Indianapolis two weeks ago, they only lost by three points instead of four. It is a sad affair when your defense gives up only 10 points in each of those games, and they still lose. It can only get better, right? Can you say, 2-15?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The New England Patriots were the first NFL team to achieve what record during the regular season?

by Roland D. Hallee

We’ve turned another page on the calendar and we are now entering into the time of year when the holidays are upon us, and the wintery weather is on the horizon. What is in store for us this year?

Well, most of my natural signs are not visible this year. One of the forecasters of snow amounts, the hanging of bee hives, was not present this year. The activity of the bees was almost non-existent toward the end of summer. Remember, the higher the hives, the more snow can be expected.

Secondly, the wooly bear caterpillar. Old farmers folklore states the wider the rust colored band on the furry caterpillar, the milder the winter. I have not seen one single, solitary wooly bear caterpillar this year.

The onion peelings are the only one that I have been able to use. My wife and I use a lot of onions. In this case, folklore has it the easier to peel, the milder the winter – the onions have been relatively easy to peel.

The first cicadae was heard on or about July 26 this past summer. Farmers’ folklore says 90 days following that, we will see the first killing frost. Although the 90-day period ended on October 26, it usually doesn’t take effect until after the next full moon, which was October 28. Although a frost was predicted, it didn’t happen in the Kennebec Valley. Side note: It was 37-degrees when I drove to work on October 30. However, there was a frost on October 31.

So what’s in store? Well, I had to go to several sources to find out. Coming up with a consensus was difficult. But here goes.

Winter officially arrives this year on December 21, 2023. On the winter solstice, those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere are tilted as far away from our Sun as possible.

Many sources are predicting snow, seasonable cold, and all of winter’s delights! This winter’s forecast will surely excite snow bunnies and sweater lovers alike, promising a lot of cold and snow across North America.

Snowfall will be above normal across most snow-prone areas. Get prepared for plenty of snow throughout the season! Keep a shovel at the ready early, especially in the Northeast, where snow will arrive beginning in November with a myriad of storms, showers, and flurries continuing through the beginning of spring.

Along with above-normal snow, we’ll see normal to colder-than-normal temperatures in areas that typically receive snow. Expect just the right amount of chill in the air for an afternoon of adventurous snow sports like snowmobiling, skiing, cross-country skiing and ice fishing. Only snowy New England and the Atlantic Corridor will enjoy winter temperatures milder than typical for their regions. Which I guess is good news when it comes to the heating bill. Much of the U.S. coastline, from New England down to Florida will see mild to cool temperatures.

The Old Farmers’ Almanac explains that we are approaching the middle of Solar Cycle 25, which is increasing in intensity and already as strong as Solar Cycle 24, which possibly had the lowest solar activity in about 200 years. Such low activity has historically meant cooler-than-average temperatures across Earth, but this connection has become weaker since the last century.

They go on to say the expected El Niño has emerged and should gradually strengthen into the winter. El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. Typically, El Niño conditions result in wetter-than-average conditions from southern California to along the Gulf Coast and drier-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Will we see a “Super El Niño?” We also expect a warm Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Also significant are the equatorial stratospheric winds involved in the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, or QBO.

Wow! My head is spinning!

WAKE UP, FANS!

Amazing how much of a difference a week makes. After feeling good about the New England Patriots’ last second upset win against the Buffalo Bills, our collective bubbles were burst with this past Sunday’s performance against the Miami Dolphins. The 31-17 loss was disappointing, especially after scoring a touchdown on a long pass early in the game that gave the Pats a 7-0 lead. I guess it’s on to Washington and a showdown with the Commanders. A winnable – and loseable – game.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

When was the last time the New England Patriots started a season 2-6.

by Roland D. Hallee

I’ve always been interested in folklore. It is intriguing how older generations and cultures came up with them, with most dealing with nature.

While sitting around a campfire with friends once in late summer, we heard a cricket chirp in the distance. One of the friends, we’ll call her Lauri, groaned at the sound. “What’s the matter?” I asked. Lauri responded, “Hearing a cricket means the end of summer.”

Interesting!

Well, my curiosity got the best of me. I started asking many acquaintances, friends, family and whoever else would listen: Had they ever heard of that folklore? The answer has been “no” every time. One thing I failed to ask Lauri was where she had heard that. It probably is an old wives tale or something, just like the cicada predicting the first killing frost in the fall, or the wooly bear caterpillar forecasting the severity of a winter.

Crickets, family Gryllidaeare, are found in all parts of the world, except in cold regions at higher latitudes. They are also found in many habitats, upper tree canopies, in bushes, and among grasses and herbs. They also exist on the ground, in caves, and some are subterranean, excavating shallow or deep burrows. Some live in rotting wood, and some will even run and jump over the surface of water. They are related to the bush crickets, and more distantly, to grasshoppers.

Crickets are relatively defenseless. Most species are nocturnal and spend the day hidden. They burrow to form temporary shelters, and fold their antennae to conceal their presence. Other defensive strategies are camouflage, fleeing and aggression. Some have developed colorings that make them difficult to see by predators who hunt by sight.

Male crickets make a loud chirping sound by scraping two specially textured limbs together. This organ is located on the fore wing. Most females lack the necessary parts to stridulate, so they make no sound.

Crickets chirp at different rates depending on their species and the temperature of their environment. Most species chirp at higher rates the higher the temperature. The relationship between temperature and the rate of chirping is known as Dolbear’s law. According to this law, counting the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by the snowy tree cricket, common in the United States, and adding 40 will approximate the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Some crickets, such as the ground cricket, are wingless. Others have small fore wings and no hind wings, others lack hind wings and have shortened fore wings in females only, while others have hind wings longer than the fore wings. Probably, most species with hind wings longer than fore wings engage in flight.

Crickets have relatively powerful jaws, and several species have been known to bite humans.

Male crickets establish their dominance over each other by aggression. They start by slashing each other with their antennae and flaring their mandibles. Unless one retreats at this stage, they resort to grappling, at the same time each emitting calls that are quite unlike those uttered in other circumstances. Once one achieves dominance, is sings loudly, while the defeated remains silent.

Crickets have many natural enemies. They are eaten by large numbers of vertebrate and invertebrate predators and their hard parts are often found during the examination of animal intestines.

The folklore and mythology surrounding crickets is extensive. The singing of crickets in the folkore of Brazil and elsewhere is sometimes taken to be a sign of impending rain. In Alagoas state, northeast Brazil, a cricket announces death, thus it is killed if it chirps indoors, while in Barbados, a loud cricket means money is coming, hence the cricket must not be killed or evicted if it chirps inside the house.

In literature, the French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre’s popular Souvenirs Entomoloquques devotes a whole chapter to the cricket. Crickets have also appeared in poetry. William Wordsworth’s 1805 poem, The Cottager to Her Infant includes the lines, “The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, The crickets long have ceased their mirth.” John Keats’ 1819 poem Ode to Autumn, includes the lines, “Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft, the redbreast whistles from a garden-croft.” Could this be from where that folkore about the end of summer comes?

Crickets are kept as pets and are considered good luck in some countries. In China, they are kept in cages specially created. The practice is also common in Japan, and has been for thousands of years. Cricket fighting is a traditional Chinese pastime that dates back to the Tang dynasty (618-907). It was originally a common indulgence for emperors, but later became popular with commoners. (I hope Vince McMahon doesn’t read this!)

While serving in the Army in Southeast Asia from 1968-69 (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam), I learned that crickets are commonly eaten as a snack, prepared by deep frying the soaked and cleaned insects. In Thailand, there are 20,000 farmers rearing crickets, with an estimated production of 7,500 tons per year. No, I didn’t try them.

And, of course, in popular culture, we have Walt Disney’s Jiminy Cricket in the 1940 film Pinocchio, and in the 1998 film Mulan, Cri-kee is carried in a cage as a symbol of good luck.

In the media, the sound of crickets is often used to emphasize silence, often for comic effect after an awkward joke.

I’ll bet you didn’t think crickets had such a valued place in societies and cultures for centuries.

Roland’s trivia questions of the week:

Is Jim Rice the all-time Red Sox home run leader among right-handed batters?

by Roland D. Hallee

From time to time, it happens. You see something unusual, don’t know what it is, so you go to your research material to find the answer. You use multiple sources, do your homework, then, when you think you have found the answer, it ends up being wrong.

Well, it happened again last weekend for me. While working in my garden at camp, I noticed this unusual looking dragonfly. It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill, old brown ugly dragonfly. It was extremely colorful and just seemed out of place.

My research pointed to it being a Graphic Flutterer, rhyothemis graphiptera, The illustration looked remarkably similar to the photo I had taken, but there was one thing that didn’t add up. The Graphic Flutterer can only be found in Australia, the Moluccas, New Guinea and New Caledonia. That’s half way around the world from here.

So, like I have done many times before, I turned to my contact, a wildlife biologist at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, emailed the photo to him, and he responded in short order.

“This is a Halloween Pennant,” (no, not a little flag you would wave on October 31), Celithemis eponina. This is a native dragonfly in Maine, an uncommon, but not rare, species that breeds in slow streams, ponds, and lakes with abundant aquatic vegetation.”

Well, it sure fits. If you have been to Webber Pond, in Vassalboro, in recent years you will see that the lake is abundant with aquatic vegetation.

The Halloween Pennant can be found across the eastern United States, ranging from the east coast to the states just east of the Rocky Mountains. They can also be found on some Caribbean islands and in Ontario province, in Canada. Seen mostly during June and July during the summer, they are actually active year round.

The Halloween Pennant gets its name from its orange-colored wings, which have dark brown bands. They are often found on tips of vegetation near the edges of waterways. Mine was just hanging around on a Tiki torch near my garden.

It is a medium-sized dragonfly but also considered large for its species. They can range from 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 inches in length.

The adults fly around above freshwater habitat and the surrounding vegetation, and feed on smaller insects they capture in flight. They are considered very strong flyers, and can fly during rain and strong winds.

And, listen to this, they have some positive impact: They help control the mosquito population and have no negative affect on humans. I can only hope I see more of them, considering the healthy mosquito population we have at camp.

They are also secure in numbers and currently have no conservation concerns, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In case you’re interested, dragonflies have been in existence since the Permian period (299 – 251 million years ago).

In the end, I was not too far off when I identified it as a Graphic Flutterer. According to the Animal Diversity Web, at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, the male Halloween Pennant closely resembles the Graphic Flutterer.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

This New England Patriots QB holds the record for most passing yards in a season. Who is he?

by Roland D. Hallee

While sitting around a campfire a couple of evenings ago, someone asked the question: Where have all the bugs gone?

We began to discuss how few black flies, mosquitoes, June bugs, etc., we have seen so far this spring and summer.

Bugs are an interesting subject.

If a dollar value was put on the services insects provide, this would equal roughly $70 billion in the U.S. alone.

With an estimated 5.5 million species, insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet. More than one million have been named by scientists — and many more have yet to be discovered. In fact, insects account for 80 percent of animal life on Earth.

But, both the number and diversity of insects are declining around the globe due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change. Without widespread action, many of these important creatures face extinction within the next few decades.

For instance, worldwide declines in insect populations have sparked considerable concern. To date, however, significant research gaps exist, and many insect threats remain under-investigated and poorly understood. Example, despite their charismatic bioluminescent displays and cultural and economic importance, the 2,000-plus species of firefly beetles have yet to be the subject of a comprehensive threat analysis.

Writing in BioScience, Sara M. Lewis, of Tufts University, and her colleagues aim to fill the gap with a broad overview of the threats facing these diverse and charismatic species – as well as potential solutions that may lead to their preservation into the future. Lewis and colleagues catalog numerous threats, foremost among them habitat loss, followed closely by artificial light and pesticide use. The future is not bleak, however, and the authors describe considerable opportunities to improve the prospects of bioluminescent insects, including through the preservation of habitat, reduction of light pollution, lowered insecticide use, and more-sustainable tourism.

By making a few small changes in your life, you can help curb this worldwide problem. Insects are crucial to life on Earth and what you can do to help save these amazing creatures.

The question that is always raised is why should I protect insects?

While many insects can seem like pests, they provide a wide range of services to other plants and animals in our environment. In fact, a diverse range of insect species is critical to the survival of most life on Earth, including bats, birds, freshwater fishes and even humans! Along with plants, insects are at the foundation of the food web, and most of the plants and animals we eat rely on insects for pollination or food. For example, 96 percent of songbirds feed insects to their young.

According to the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, roughly 35 percent of the world’s food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce. That means you can thank a pollinator for about one of every three bites of food you eat. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than 100,000 different animal species play roles in pollinating the 250,000 kinds of flowering plants on Earth, with insects like bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, flies and beetles being the most common. Additionally, some insects are natural predators to pests that may harm food crops.

Some insects are known as decomposers, meaning they break down dead materials like fallen leaves and animal carcasses and turn them into simpler materials, making nutrients available to primary producers like plants and algae. In other words, decomposers are nature’s own recycling system.

Only a very small fraction of insects in the world are considered by humans to be pests, meaning they cause harm to people, plants, animals and buildings. While insect pest control costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually, this number would be much higher if it weren’t for the countless beneficial insects that serve as natural predators to pest species, like fire ants and mosquitoes. Additionally, some parasitic insects like small wasps lay their eggs inside pest species, driving their population down. To adequately control pests, we need beneficial insects.

Insects are the primary menu item for many reptiles, birds and amphibians. If insect populations continue to decline, some food webs might collapse entirely.

We also depend on insects for silk, dyes, honey and medical and genetic research. But, aside from the services insects provide, they are simply fascinating animals that spark curiosity in humans, especially children. These incredible creatures exhibit many extraordinary behaviors that are unthinkable in other forms of life and have inspired technology that we use today, like drones! Take some time to really observe the insects in your backyard, what behaviors do you see that captivate you?

Since many insects have yet to even be discovered, there may be benefits we don’t even know about yet!

So, the next time you think about swatting, spraying or crushing, maybe, just maybe, that creature can serve more benefits to you alive than dead.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

A large brown bear named Blades is the mascot of what Boston professional sports team?