by Roland D. Hallee

Over last weekend, I prepared my garden bed for planting, at camp. After tilling the soil, adding some manure, and carefully working everything into the soil, I moved a few containers from one location to another, and there it was. A slug!

I can remember, about four years ago, when slugs were raising havoc with my sweet peppers and Brussels sprouts, and were having a field day with my Romaine lettuce. In 2015, they were responsible for the complete destruction of my cucumber, green peppers and marigold plantings at camp. There seems to be no end to them. That raised the question: what are slugs, what are their usefulness and how do we get rid of them?

First of all, let’s find out a little bit about them.

Slug is a common non-scientific word, which is often applied to any gastropod mollusc, and the word “slug” is more frequently encountered as applied to air-breathing land species, including a few agricultural and horticultural pest species.

Land slugs, like all other slow-moving gastropods, undergo torsion (a 180-degree twisting of the internal organs) during development. Internally, the anatomy of a slug clearly shows the effects of this rotation, but externally the bodies of slugs appear rather symmetrical.

The soft, slimy bodies of slugs are prone to dry up (desiccation), so land-living slugs are confined to moist environments and are forced to retreat to damp hiding places when the weather is dry.

Slugs macerate (soften or separate food in the digestive tract by soaking) food using their radula, a rough, tongue-like organ with many tiny tooth-like denticles.

Like other snails, a slug moves by rhythmic waves of muscular contraction on the underside of its foot. It simultaneously secretes a layer of mucus on which it travels, which helps prevent damage to the tissues of the foot.

Slugs produce two types of mucus: one which is thin and watery, and another which is thick and sticky. Both kinds of mucus are hygroscopic (absorb and retain moisture). The thin mucus is spread out from the center of the foot to the edges, whereas the thick mucus spreads out from front to back. They also produce thick mucus which coats the whole body of the critter.

Slugs’ bodies are made up mostly of water, and without a full-sized shell to retreat into, their soft tissues are prone to desiccation.

Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both female and male reproductive organs. After mating, the slugs lay around 30 eggs in a hole in the ground, or beneath the cover of objects such as fallen logs.

Mostly, slugs are harmless to humans and to their interests, except for a small number of species of slugs that are great pests of agriculture and horticulture. They feed on fruits and vegetables prior to harvest, making holes in the crop, which can make individual items unsuitable to sell for aesthetic reasons, and which can make the crop more susceptible to rot and disease.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but so far I haven’t mentioned any benefits to the ecosystem. Their only contribution seems to be the fact they eat dead leaves, fungus and decaying vegetable material. It has always been my belief that if you allowed those to decompose, they will turn to dirt. Why do the slugs have to eat them?

Frogs, toads, snakes, hedgehogs, salamanders, eastern box turtles and certain birds and beetles are slug predators. Birds include blackbirds, crows, ducks, jays, owls, robins, seagulls, starlings and thrushes. With the large number of crows we have around our camp, I can’t figure out why they haven’t wiped out the slug population.

I also have seen numerous frogs and toads in my garden which might be helping with the fact the slugs have not attacked my tomatoes. Snakes, which are a no-no as far as I’m concerned are allowed to stay. However, those sightings have been few and far in between, partly due, I think, to the large number of raptors in the area.

Just so you know there are different kinds of slugs, Around my garden, at home, especially near the wood pile, I have seen great gray slugs, which almost resemble a small snake. Snakes are something I tolerate, but for which I have no love.

So, as you can see, slugs are a pest, they are disgusting, and they serve very little purpose in our environs.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which Red Sox slugger led the American League in home runs in 1977, 1978 and 1983?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

When I arrived at work on Monday, on my way into the office, I noticed a woolly bear caterpillar walking along the ground.

Strange.

Woolly bears are most visible during September and October. Where did this one come from in May? It was a loner and obviously keepling it’s social distance from other woollies.

The woolly bear caterpillar—also called woolly worm or fuzzy worm – has the reputation of being able to forecast the coming winter weather. Whether this is fact or folklore, can be left up to the interpreter!

Here’s the legend: The Woolly Bear caterpillar has 13 distinct segments of either rusty brown or black. The wider the rusty brown sections (or the more brown segments there are), the milder the coming winter will be. The more black there is, the more severe the winter.

If you recall, woolly bears sighted last fall contained a much larger rust band than black, indicating a mild winter. That is exactly what we experienced. It just didn’t predict the length of the “winter,” which doesn’t seem to want to go away. But that is nothing.

Does anyone remember the blizzard of April 6 – 7, 1982? The unusual nor’easter pummeled the region, dropping up to 30 inches of snow in the central Maine area. There were high winds and numerous power outages throughout the state. I was a district manager for a daily newspaper at the time, and was forced to meet the storm head on, actually staring death in the face when I encountered a state snow plow, approaching from the opposite direction, nearly head on in white out conditions. Only my quick reflexes – I was much younger then (I was 34) – saved me. When people complain about the lateness of the last storm here, on April 9, I always point to April 6 – 7, 1982.

Anyway, I digress.

In the fall 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, took his wife 40 miles north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars.

Dr. Curran collected as many caterpillars as he could in a day, determined the average number of reddish-brown segments, and forecast the coming winter weather through a reporter friend at The New York Herald Tribune.

Dr. Curran’s experiment, which he continued over the next eight years, attempted to prove scientifically a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain. The resulting publicity made the woolly one of the most recognizable caterpillars in North America (alongside the monarch caterpillar and tomato hornworm).

The caterpillar Curran studied, the banded woolly bear, is the larval form of Pyrrharctia isabella, the Isabella tiger moth.

If you find an all-black woolly caterpillar, don’t worry—this doesn’t mean that we’re in for a severe, endless winter! It’s just a caterpillar of a different species, and is not used for forecasting. The same is true for all-white woolly caterpillars.

Woolly bears, like other caterpillars, hatch during warm weather from eggs laid by a female moth.

Mature woolly bears search for overwintering sites under bark or inside cavities of rocks or logs. That’s why you see so many of them crossing roads in the fall.

When spring arrives, woolly bears spin fuzzy cocoons and transform inside them into full-grown moths.

Typically, the bands at the ends of the caterpillar are black, and the one in the middle is brown or orange, giving the woolly bear its distinctive striped appearance.

Between 1948 and 1956, Dr. Curran’s average brown-segment counts ranged from 5.3 to 5.6 out of the 13-segment total, meaning that the brown band took up more than a good third of the woolly bear’s body. The corresponding winters were milder than average, and Dr. Curran concluded that the folklore has some merit and might be true.

But Curran was under no scientific illusion: He knew his data samples were small. Although the experiments legitimized folklore to some, they were simply an excuse for having fun.

Thirty years later, the woolly bear brown-segment counts and winter forecasts were resurrected by the nature museum at Bear Mountain State Park. The annual counts have continued, more or less tongue in cheek, since then.

For the past 10 years, Banner Elk, North Carolina, has held an annual “Woolly Worm Festival” each October, highlighted by a caterpillar race. Retired mayor Charles Von Canon inspects the champion woolly bear and announces his winter forecast.

If the rusty band is wide, then it will be a mild winter. The more black there is, the more severe the winter.

Most scientists discount the folklore of woolly bear predictions as just that, folklore. Mike Peters, an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts, doesn’t disagree, but he says there could, in fact, be a link between winter severity and the brown band of a woolly bear caterpillar. “There’s evidence,” he says, “that the number of brown hairs has to do with the age of the caterpillar – in other words, how late it got going in the spring. The [band] does say something about a heavy winter or an early spring. The only thing is … it’s telling you about the previous year.”

Every year, the woolly worms do indeed look different – and it depends on their region. So, if you come across a local woolly bear, observe the colors of the bands and what they foretell about your winter weather.

So, what about seeing one in the spring. Woolly Bears nearly freeze solid during hibernation. Their body produces a chemical called a cryoprotectant that acts like an antifreeze which protects their organs and body tissues from being damaged from freezing. Once spring arrives and the outdoor temperatures begin to warm to the high 40s and 50s the caterpillar thaws and becomes active again. The Woolly Bear will soon spin a cocoon and pupate, eventually emerging as an adult Tiger Moth. When the caterpillar emerges as an adult it will have a short life span where it will need to find a mate and lay its eggs to complete the life cycle. The adult moth will only live for one to two weeks. They have no mouth parts so they essentially starve to death.

To watch the process evolve, you witness one of the true miracles of nature.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Before joining the Red Sox, Manny Ramirez spent seven years with which team?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

There is nothing like beating a subject to death. But, in this case, it’s worth every word.

You have to be living in a cave not to know that deer ticks are at an all time high. They are everywhere. Friends and family have told me stories about their encounters with the insect, and they all have one thing in common. They have all had multiple numbers on them at one time.

Also, as you know, deer ticks are hazardous to your health, primarily because they are the carriers of the dreaded Lyme Disease. In the last decade alone, the population of ticks of all kinds has ballooned in the United States. The number of ticks that carry Lyme disease has been on the rise in the mid-Atlantic states, and has skyrocketed throughout the Northeast. It has gained a reputation as a serious health problem in many areas.

On top of that, with most of us trying to get outdoors this time of year, and with the recent mild winter we experienced, the deer ticks are already active and will be out in force this summer. My wife and I have been to camp to begin opening up for the season, and we are already wary of their presence. We haven’t seen one, yet, but we know they are out there.

Only adult female ticks and nymphs can transmit infections through their bite. Male ticks attach, but they don’t feed or become engorged. Adult females have red and brown bodies and are larger than males. Nymphs are actively feeding between early April and early August.

Although not all deer ticks are infected with Lyme disease, you never really know. Only ticks that have fed on infected mammals are infected. About half of deer ticks are infected (usually white-footed mice can be other culprits).

Deer ticks live two to three years, and in that time usually enjoy three blood meals. In the spring and summer of its second year, a nymph will take its second meal. They insert their mouth parts into the skin much like a corkscrew, which ensures them a nice tight grasp. They often take up to five days to complete their meal.

This fact is key to reducing panic when discovering a tick. An infected tick must be attached to its host for at least 24 hours, and up to 48 hours to transmit the disease. It’s the very reason for checking your body right away after any possible exposure to a tick-infested environment.

Deer ticks crawl. They usually grab onto people or animals that brush up against plants near ground level, and then they crawl upwards to find a quiet place for their blood meal. Although many sources will state that ticks don’t land on you from an overhanging tree branch, many people have insisted it has happened to them.

Ticks live in wooded, brushy areas that provide food and cover for mice, deer and other mammals. The ideal tick environment is humid. Your exposure will be greatest along trails in the woods and fringe areas between woods and the border, where they will wait patiently on the tips of vegetation for an unsuspecting host to walk by.

Life is too short to avoid the outdoors during our short spring, summer and fall. In Maine, that is about half the year. There is no need to be brave, just be smart: cover your body; wear repellent; check yourself for ticks, if you find a tick, remove it immediately; shower soon after being outdoors; throw clothing in the dryer, that will kill any ticks present; and finally, if you are concerned, don’t hesitate to contact your doctor.

The best way to remove a tick is to use fine-point tweezers and grab the tick as close to the skin surface as possible. Pull backwards gently but firmly, using an even, steady pressure. Do your best not to jerk or twist. Don’t squeeze, crush or puncture the tick’s body, the fluids inside may contain infection-causing organisms. After removing the tick, wash the skin and your hands thoroughly with hot soap and water. If any mouth part of the tick remain in the skin, leave them alone. They will be expelled on their own. It could take weeks. Trying to remove them will only cause you unnecessary pain.

For the deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, deer are the preferred host, but they can also be found on small rodents. After the female is engorged, the tick drops off and overwinters in the leaf litter of the forest floor. The following spring, she will lay several hundred to a few thousand eggs in clusters. They are very hardy creatures. They will be active even after a moderate to severe frost, as daytime temperatures can warm them enough to keep them actively searching for a host. In the spring, they are one of the first invertebrates to become active.

It may be monotonous to keep hearing about the health hazards of being infected by a deer tick, but it’s one that needs to be repeated.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The 1927 New York Yankees batting order, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, was known by what nickname?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

I think this week we will make a diversion from the usual. To paraphrase an old adage, “Even though our ancestors came across on different ships, we are all in the same boat, now.”

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I will present my take on observations I have made since the outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent order to stay at home.

Because I am one of those deemed essential workers because of my job in the media, I get around a little, but I don’t flaunt it nor abuse it. It’s from the house to the car, to the office, which is closed to the public, confined with one other worker. At the end of the day, it’s back to the car and back home.

Because I am doing some work from home, I discovered last Friday that my printer was out of ink. Figuring it was essential that I go get some, we traveled to Staples, where the store was practically empty. We only saw three people. My wife and I needed a few items at home, so we figured while we were out, we would do that task so we could hunker down for the rest of the weekend. We avoided Walmart where the line was almost never-ending. We have friends who went there over the weekend and stood in line for two hours. Not a healthy situation.

So, we went to Hannaford where there was a short line – everyone obeying the six-foot markers that had been installed on the sidewalk. Something wonderful happened. Everyone, young and old, was extremely patient and cordial, even though we were standing in the rain. Something else developed. There we were, actually having conversations with total strangers. How refreshing was that?

They were only allowing 50 patrons at a time in the store. Once my wife and I were permitted to enter, we considered all the other people waiting in line, and hurried as best we could to get what we needed, going our separate ways in the store to gather the items, check out and let someone else enter the store, and out of the weather. We wondered how many other people did that. They even had toilet paper, which we took only one 4-pack, leaving some for others. Again, thinking of our neighbors.

The following day, we continued our early and accelerated spring cleaning. Following that, we dressed warmly, and went off for a walk through the neighborhood and around the nearby park. A power walk that took about 20 minutes. Once home, on a relatively quiet day, weatherwise, we sat on our side porch to enjoy the rest of the afternoon until the temperature starting dropping.

In that hour we sat there, we couldn’t help but notice people in the neighborhood still going about their routines – and some not so routine – while the rest of us conscientious citizens stayed home in the hopes it would help mitigate this pandemic. We watched one building, which we couldn’t help because it is located right across from us, where a group of young people – mostly teenagers – as they came and went out of the apartment all day long, piling into cars and pickup trucks, and certainly not practicing social distancing. We wondered what it was they were doing that was essential.

Obviously, there are people out there that are not taking this crisis seriously. Also, from our home, we can see one of Waterville’s more traveled streets, and the flow of vehicles was non-stop, all day long.

This is not meant to complain, but to alert some people that this virus is for real, and we need to take the appropriate measures to try to end it sooner than later.

On Sunday morning, we attended church services, at home, of course. It was a little strange to see it live and not being able to actively participate. We also noticed over 200 other parishers were viewing the service. It made us think how very fortunate we are to not be among the infected, and to live in a rural state like Maine, away from the “hot spots” in the country, and separated from all the congestion of everyday living in the more populated regions.

So, to everyone else out there, let’s be smart, considerate, patient, and above all safe. The bottom line is that everyone else’s safety depends on you.

DEFIANCE

Did you hear about the doctor who decided it was OK to play a round of golf at the Augusta Country Club, despite Gov. Janet Mills’ order for all golf courses to close in conjunction with the stay at home order, and social distancing? It seems he essentially claimed the order didn’t pertain to him because no one was profiting. Nice example, doc, for the rest of us.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Name the four Boston Red Sox batters to have hit 200 or more home runs at Fenway Park?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

Well, here we are. All stuck in the same place. I realize the severity of the COVID-19 coronavirus that has now taken a strangle hold on all of our normal every day lives.

But, after speaking with several other people, with the media blitz we are getting from the news, it is becoming a little much. I understand that it is suggested that we all stay in our homes, until this passes, so as to not spread the virus any more than is occurring.

Last weekend, I spent many hours in my garage, at home, while processing the maple sap I gathered during the previous week. That is always a promising time of year. The gathering of maple sap, and converting it to that sweet, homemade maple syrup, usually, in my mind anyway, marks the end of winter. At least it’s within sight. I even took the time to clean my car from the winter grime and clutter that accumulates inside the car, by what seems like mysterious ways. Where did all those receipts and cough drop wrappers come from?

The day was Saturday, and it was quite a pleasant day, save for the cold wind that would gust up from time to time. One thing I did notice was that my neighborhood, which is located in the middle of the city of Waterville, was quieter than normal. Far less vehicular traffic than in the past. No buses nor children walking home from their daily schooling. Not a sniff of diesel fuel in the air.

Oblivious of the coronavirus outbreak were the numerous birds that visited our feeders which hang from our side porch. In and out, all day long, going about their normal routine.

Squirrels scurrying about, from tree to tree, down the driveway and across the street. A never-ending process of survival. I did notice, however, that winter, and even the spring’s strong winds, had dislodged a nest from high in one of my pine trees. Do squirrels begin to build new nests, or do they bunk in together in someone else’s crib?

On Sunday, a beautiful day of sunshine without a cloud in the sky, my wife and I decided to take a Sunday drive. Something we had not done in quite some time because there was always something else to do. With our church suspending all Sunday Masses for the foreseeable future, we took advantage of the extra time to get out of the house. After all, we would be in our car, and have no physical contact with any other human beings.

We decided to do the circular drive through the towns around China Lake. Rumors had it that ice was out.

We proceeded out of Winslow and toward China on Rte. 137/202. As we approached the head of the lake, it was, “nope, ice is not out yet.” Let’s go take a look at Three Mile Pond and Togus Pond. “Eureka, ice out at both locations.” There is hope after all.

The last destination would be our lake, where we spend the summers, Webber Pond. Sure enough, ice is out on Webber Pond, except for a small portion in the east cove. Historically, that will disappear quickly as winds shift the ice.

After arriving home, we sat and discussed our little excursion of the day.

It reminded us of the “good ol’ days.” Being able to go for a Sunday drive without the problems of heavy traffic. Hardly anyone on the roads.

It almost seems like since the outbreak of this virus, life has actually slowed down.

It is interesting, though, to observe Mother Nature, at its finest, continue at its own pace, with all the wildlife going about their own routine.

The bears are awakening from their winter slumber, as are skunks, raccoons, and something I saw in the road on Sunday that I was not able to identify while driving back to Waterville along Rte. 201. Soon, we should begin to see opposum, woodchucks and other species that go into partial hibernation during the winter months.

Spring is all around us, and we anxiously await the warmer days and the time when this virus has become history and part of our memories.

Stay safe. Think about the coming of warmer weather, and the emminent all out war against black flies and ticks.

ICE OUT
DID YOU KNOW?

Ice out has been recorded on China Lake since 1874. In the 132 years between 1874 and 2005, ice went out in March on only four occasions – 1901, 1902, 1953, and 1981. In the 14 years since, March ice out has also occurred four times, 2006, 2010, 2012, and 2016. Should ice go out before next Wednesday, it will mark the fifth time in 15 years.

You could make a good case for climate change.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

How did former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra get his first name?

Answer can be found here.