by Roland D. Hallee

We talked about vernal pools several years ago, but I think it’s time to visit the subject again.

Vernal pools are seasonal pools of water that provide habitat for distinctive plants and animals. They are considered to be a distinctive type of wetland usually devoid of fish, and thus allow the safe development of natal amphibian and insect species unable to withstand competition or predation by fish.

Typically, a vernal pool has three phases each year: it is inundated in the winter, dries slowly in the spring, and completely dries in summer.

Vernal pools favor native species because non-natives can’t handle the conditions of the water staying on the landscape for as long as it does, but not long enough to support truly aquatic species.

A key formation of the vernal pools is due to the impermeable layer. Clay soils bind closely together and become inpermeable to water. When it rains the water percolates until it reaches the claypan and sits there, filling up with material and water.

Vernal pools can form anywhere that a depression fills with water. They can be found on bedrock of many kinds, or in grasslands that form over a variety of soil types containing silts and clays.

Vernal pools are so called because they are often, though not necessarily, as their maximum depth in the spring. Vernal means, of, relating to, or occurring in the spring. Vernal pools may form in forests, but they are more typically associated with grasslands and rocky plains or basins.

Despite being dry at times, vernal pools teem with life when filled. The most obvious inhabitants are various species of breeding frogs and toads. Some salamanders also utilize vernal pools for reproduction, but the adults may visit the pool only briefly. Other notable inhabitants are daphnia and fairy shrimp, the latter often used as an indicator species to decisively define a vernal pool. Other indicator species, at least in New England, are the wood frog, the spadefoot toad and some species of mole salamanders.

The major threats to vernal pool habitats are agriculture, urbanization, changes in hydrology, climate change and improperly managed grazing by livestock.

Therefore, in some areas, there are restoration efforts underway.

Vernal pools are prime habitats to be targeted for restoration work due to their value as hotpots of biodiversity as well as recent history of extensive destruction and degradation.

There has been a fair amount of controversy surrounding the practice of mitigation, which is the destruction of protected or endangered species and habitats, such as vernal pools, on the condition that whatever entity (business, land manager, etc.) is destroying the habitat will undertake the construction of a replacement habitat to “mitigate’ their impacts. This concept is difficult to apply to vernal pools, which represent a tremendous habitat value – but are difficult to successfully replicate using construction methods. Thus, it has been very controversial to apply mitigation strategies to vernal pool systems due to the obvious risks inherent in trying to reconstruct this kind of habitat. Although some agencies are now requiring two replacements for every vernal pool that is destroyed, in order to compensate for the low quality of man-made habitat.

With natural wildlife habitat threatened on daily basis, it is important to remember, and take into account, the value of these small bodies of water.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

At the 2010 All-Star game, who became the only Red Sox player to win a home run derby by defeating Hanley Ramirez in the final?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

This week, let’s return to the “never seen that before” department.

This past winter, for the first time, I deployed the “better mouse trap” in camp. It consists of a five-gallon bucket, a soda can, a piece of wire, some anti-freeze and a piece of strapping. You place the wire through the can, attach it to the bucket with a piece of wire, and build a “ramp” with the piece of wood. You coat the can with peanut butter, pour the anti-freeze in the bucket, and place it in camp before you close it up in the fall.

Once the mouse smells the peanut butter, it will climb up the ramp, jump across the gap to the can, which will rotate from the weight of the mouse, and the mouse then falls into the bucket of anti-freeze. It’s very effective.

So, this spring, I had captured eight mice over the winter. After giving them a proper burial, I carefully, and properly, disposed of the anti-freeze, and placed the bucket outside until I could put it away in my storage shed.

In the meantime, we received some rain, often, and heavy at times, which left about four inches of water in the bottom of the bucket. Last Sunday, when I finally got around to the bucket, I noticed six beetles floating in the water. They were blackish-brown, with four orange/red dots on the back. “Never seen that before!”

According to Bug Guide, at the Iowa State University Department of Entomology, they are Glischrochilus, a genus of sap-feeding and predatory beetles better known as picnic beetles or beer bugs.

They feed on exuding sap from injured trees and decaying vegetable or fungal matter. They are also attracted to ripening fruit, as well as beer, vinegar, wine, fruit juice and fermenting beverages. So, I don’t really know what attracted them to the bucket of water, that may have still had some anti-freeze residue.

As I researched more, I found they frequently drown as they feed. They congregate in large numbers – does six constitute a large number? – when such beverages are present. They are known to ruin picnics and outdoor gatherings like BBQs, earning them the name “picnic beetles” and “beer bug.”

At the university, researchers attract the bugs using bait that contains beer, molasses, vinegar and pineapples, among other ingredients.

They can be found in North America and Eurasia. In North America, their range is from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, to Florida, Kansas, New Mexico and Oregon. Their habitat consists of hanging out under the bark of injured or dying trees, on sap, oozing tree wounds, decaying or fermenting fruit. They are considered pests of certain fruit and vegetable crops like strawberries, corn, tomatoes, apricot, raspberries and peaches. They normally only become a problem when fruits are damaged or are overripe and beginning to ferment. They are extremely difficult to control because they are attracted to the odor of food. (Could it have been some remnants of peanut butter on the can?).

On strawberries, they will leave a deep cavity very similar to the damage caused by slugs. In sweet corn, an ear damaged by corn earworm will attract sap beetles. The larvae of sap beetles then feed on the undamaged kernels. They can be found from silk to ear maturity.

But it is the strawberries that are primary targets for the insect. These beetles prefer over-ripe fruit but also readily attack ripening fruit.

The use of pesticides is not very effective and is not recommended. Sap beetles have been seen on ripe fruit, so pesticides should not be used on the crop.

Carbaryl and bifenthrin can be used to control severe infestations. These pesticides may kill existing beetles, but if the fruit is present, they cannot prevent additional sap beetles from moving into the garden. As always, follow the pesticide label directions attached to the pesticide container you are using. Remember, the label is the law.

I don’t think I have to go that far. The six beetles that I had seem to be the only ones around. I have seen no others in nearly a week.

I’m just still curious why the bucket of water attracted them.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which NFL team appeared in four consecutive Super Bowls, and lost them all?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

In a published report by Matthew R. Bailey, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, up to 41.3 million Americans contracted the flu this season, according to the latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 500,000 people have been hospitalized because of the virus. Thousands of people have already died of the disease.

But an end to flu seasons altogether may not be far off. Several research teams are working on the first “universal vaccine,” capable of fighting multiple strains of the virus. Such a treatment could effectively wipe out the disease.

These researchers’ chief obstacle isn’t science but politics. Some radical activists are pushing lawmakers to ban the use of animals in medical research — like studies for a universal flu vaccine. Curbing animal research will consign countless people to preventable suffering and death.

Flu season tends to elicit little more than a shrug from most people. But it’s surprisingly deadly. Each year, the influenza virus kills as many as 650,000 people worldwide. Last flu season, more than 900,000 Americans were hospitalized and 80,000 died — the most in 40 years.

The death toll would be far worse if not for medical advances made possible by animal research. Tamiflu, the first oral antiviral of its kind, was developed thanks to research in mice, dogs, rats, and ferrets. Scientists created the flu vaccine via research in chickens.

The vaccines and treatments currently on the market don’t provide total protection against influenza. There are many different strains of the virus, so it’s tough to predict which strains will be most prevalent in any given year.

That’s problematic, because vaccines are manufactured months before flu season starts. If those vaccines don’t match the virus strain that’s circulating in a given year, people can fall ill despite having received their shots.

Patients desperately need new and better treatment options. And thankfully, research in animals is yielding insights that could lead to universal flu vaccines.

Consider the work of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. They are developing a universal vaccine. When they inoculated mice, rabbits, and ferrets with the experimental therapy, the animals’ antibody responses lasted for over 30 weeks — long enough to be effective throughout flu season. The team intends to advance to human trials in the next two years.

And then there’s the research in llamas. Just a few months ago, a paper published in the journal Science posited that a nasal spray containing antibodies from llamas could be the key to universal flu prevention.

Despite the promise of this research, many activists remain committed to ending animal trials.

They believe that computer models and cell cultures are complete alternatives to animal research. But even the most powerful computers are insufficient to simulate all the chemical and biological processes at work in a living organism fighting a pathogen like the flu. Cell cultures can’t capture all the other action going on inside a living body — some of which may have an unforeseen impact on its effort to fight an invader like the influenza virus.

Ferret models have yielded especially informative insights for researchers, since two of the most common flu strains in humans also naturally infect these animals.

Within a decade, scientists could feasibly wipe out the all-too-common influenza virus, which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year – as long as activists don’t deprive them of the essential research.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who is the NFL’s all-time leading rusher?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

While on my way to work this week, I saw no less than five dead porcupines on the side of the road. The thought then came into my mind: Porcupines, nuisance or ecological necessity?

It all depends with whom you talk. I know some people who are overrun by the animals to the point where they are raiding the gardens, and having to deal with their dogs being injured by porcupine quills due mostly to the dog’s own curiosity. While others find a use for them.

Simply put, porcupines are rodents. That puts them in the same class, and are actually related, with raccoons, rats and beavers. They are indigenous to the Americas, Southern Asia, Europe and Africa. They are the third largest of the rodents, behind the capybara and beaver.

They can grow in size to be 25 – 36 inches long with an 8 to 10-inch tail, and weigh from 12 – 35 pounds.

The common porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum, is an herbivore, so look out gardens. It eats leaves, herbs, twigs and green plants. They may eat bark in the winter, evidence of which I have seen in many places. The North American porcupine often climbs trees to find food. Like the raccoon, they are mostly nocturnal, but will sometimes forage for food in the day.

Because of the scarcity of predators, porcupines are plentiful and are not endangered.

The name porcupine comes from Middle French porc espin (spined pig). A regional American name for the animal is quill pig.

The porcupines’ quills, or spines, take on various forms, depending on the species, but all are modified hairs coated with thick plates of keratin, and they are embedded in the skin.

Quills are released by contact with them, or they may drop out when the porcupine shakes its body. The porcupine does not throw quills, but the flailing muscular tail and powerful body may help impale quills deeply into attackers. The quills’ barbed ends expand with moisture and continue to work deeper into flesh. Porcupine quills have mildly antibiotic properties and thus are not infectious. Quills, however, may cause death in animals if they puncture a vital organ or if a muzzle full of quills leads to starvation.

Once embedded, the hollow quills swell, burn and work their way into the flesh every time a victim’s muscles contract, digging a millimeter deeper each hour. Eventually, they emerge through the skin again, some distance from the entry point though sometimes they spear right through the body.

I have had first hand knowledge of how painful a porcupine quill can be. Many years ago, my children had chores to do after they got home from school. One of them was to make sure they picked up after themselves following their after-school snack. Upon returning home from work, I found a folded paper towel on the counter. I grabbed it to crush it into a ball to throw away when this sharp pain shot through my hand. When I unwrapped the towel, I found a porcupine quill inside, but now embedded in my hand. It turned out my daughter had brought it home from school to show it to me. She obtained the quill from a “show and tell” session at school.

Because they have few effective predators, porcupines are relatively long-lived. The average life span of the porcupine is 7 – 8 years, however, they have lived up to 15 years in the wild, and 18 years in captivity. A predator needs to learn only once to leave a porcupine alone. Bobcats, great-horned owls, mountain lions, coyotes and wolves, when extremely hungry and unable to catch anything else, may give it a try anyway. The fisher, however, is a skilled porcupine killer. It uses its speed and agility to snake around a porcupine’s rear guard defense and viciously bite its face until it dies.

At one time, however, especially when game was scarce, the porcupine was hunted for its meat and considered a delicacy. A practice that continues in Kenya today. Because they are slow, and can remain in the same tree for days at a time, they are about the only animal that can be killed simply with a large rock. Native people of the North Woods also wove elaborate dyed quill-work decorations into clothing, moccasins, belts, mats, necklaces, bracelets and bags. Because the work was so time-consuming and highly valued, quill embroideries were used as a medium of exchange before the coming of Europeans.

When not in trees or feeding, porcupines prefer the protection of a den, which can be found in rock crevices, caves, hollow logs, abandoned mines and even under houses and barns.

Porcupines are highly attracted to salt. They may chew on any tool handle that has salt left from human sweat. They have even been known to chew on outhouse toilet seats. Road rock salt is very tempting to them, and puddles of water from the snow-melt in the spring are especially luring and could account for their high road-kill mortality rate. They have even been seen gnawing on automobile tires that have been exposed to rock salt.

In Maine, porcupines join a short list of other animals that are open to hunting all year, including coyotes, woodchucks and red squirrels.

So, are porcupines a nuisance, or do they have a role in the grand scheme of things, ecologically?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who is the only player in New York Yankees history to achieve over 3,000 hits in his career?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

Groundhog day was a little over two months ago. However, this is the time of year when they usually start to make their appearance, emerging from their dens following a long winter of hibernation. Until last Monday – when winter reared its ugly head, once more – it looked as if we would be seeing these little rodents soon. They may have rethought their intentions, and gone back to sleep.

Groundhogs, Marmota monax, also known as woodchucks, are a rodent, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. It was first scientifically described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758.

The groundhog is also referred to as a chuck, woodshock, groundpig, whistlepig, whistler, thickwood badger, Canada maramot, monx, moonack, weenusk, red monk, and, among French Canadians in eastern Canada, siffleux, which translates to whistler.

They are a lowland creature, found through much of the eastern United States across Canada and into Alaska. Adults are 16 – 20 inches long, including a six-inch tail, and weigh between 5 – 12 pounds. Extremely large individuals can weigh as much as 15 pounds.

The name woodchuck is unrelated to wood or chucking. It stems from the Native American Algonquian or possibly Narragansett word for the animal, wuchak. The similarities in the name led to the popular tongue-twister: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

Groundhogs prefer open country and the edges of woodlands, and is rarely far from a burrow entrance. It is typically found in low-elevation forests, small woodlots, fields, pastures and hedgerows. It constructs dens in well-drained soil, and most have summer and winter dens.

In the wild, groundhogs can live up to six years, although three years is the average. In captivity, they can live up to 14 years. Humans, dogs, coyotes and foxes are about the only predators that can kill adult groundhogs, with the red fox being the major predator. Young may be taken by owls and hawks.

According to studies, despite their heavy body weight, they are accomplished swimmers and will occasionally climb trees to escape a predator. They prefer to retreat to their den when threatened, and will defend themselves with their incisors and front claws. They are territorial among their species and will skirmish to establish dominance.

When alarmed, they will use a high-pitched whistle to warn the rest of the colony, hence the nickname whistlepig. They will also squeal when fighting, seriously injured, or caught by a predator. They will also produce a low bark and a sound produced by grinding their teeth.

They are excellent burrowers, using the burrow to sleep, rear their young, and hibernate. An excavated den can remove about six cubic feet of soil, on average, or almost five bushels per den. They are relatively large and include a sleeping berth and an excrement chamber.

The burrow can be a threat to agricultural and residential development by damaging farm machinery and even undermining building foundations. However, in a June 7, 2009, issue of the Humane Society of the United States, How to Humanely Chuck a Woodchuck Out of Your Yard, John Griffin, director of Human Wildlife Services wrote, “you would have to have a lot of woodchucks working over a lot of years to create tunnel systems that would pose any risk to structures.”

The burrow is used for safety, retreat in bad weather, hibernating, sleeping, love nest, and nursery.

Groundhogs are one of the few species that enter into true hibernation. In most areas they hibernate from October to March or April. They drop their body temperature, the heart rate falls to 4 – 10 beats per minute and breathing falls to one breath every six minutes. Researching the hibernation patterns of groundhogs may lead to benefits for humans, including lowering the heart rate in complicated surgical procedures.

Groundhogs are already used in medical research on hepatitis B-induced cancer. Humans can’t receive hepatitis from woodchucks but the virus and its effects on the liver make the woodchuck the best available animal for the study of viral hepatitis in humans. The only other animal model for hepatitis B virus studies is the chimpanzee, which is an endangered species.

Always thought to be a nuisance species, groundhog dens often provide homes for skunks, red foxes and cottontail rabbits. The fox and skunk feed upon field mice, grasshoppers, beetles and other creatures that destroy farm crops. In aiding these animals, groundhogs indirectly help the farmers.

Well, I had a groundhog living near my garden a few years ago, and he unceremoniously cleaned out all my string beans. Well, I unceremoniously captured him in a Hav-a-Hart trap, and relocated him to the wild, and wished him the best of luck.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Before Mookie Betts, who was the last Boston Red Sox player to win the American League batting title?

Answer can be found here.