Dear Blog Reader:
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I made my
last deposit of seed into the ground over the weekend; a nice planting of
greens that should adorn the table nicely for Thanksgiving with a little help
of some row cover. I also wasted some carrot and beet seed. I am fairly certain
that it is too late even with the help of row cover. However, hope springs
eternal and we may catch a break and have a mild mid to late fall and I will
have homegrown carrots and beets for the cornucopia that will be our
Thanksgiving table.
Firewood cutting is proceeding a pace: five loads cut and
six more to go. September, with its five weekends has certainly set a
blistering pace. October will not be sustainable. There is the Hilly Hundred
and some other extravaganza to occupy my time.
Speaking of the Hilly Hundred, I had a close encounter with
the Assassin Deer from Hell on Tuesday night. It was nearly twilight and I was
foolishly unaware of my surroundings; thinking diligently on a work problem in
the caverns of my mind. Suddenly, there is movement to the left in the
periphery of my vision. It startles me out of my reverie. By the time I focus,
I see a 10 point buck racing out of the edge of a corn field, bound across the
road 30 feet in front of me, cut across a newly cut bean field and race towards
a small woods 400 yards to the east. In hopes that social media will activate
an outraged hunting community, a 10 point buck resides in southern Madison County
I have found myself hunting much smaller game this fall. The
back roads of my bike route have been covered with early fall caterpillars
crossing the road. Why did the caterpillar cross the road? I have no idea as to
the answer to that existential question. I can’t imagine what would possess the
fuzzy creatures to take a 20 ft trek across hot asphalt with 76 bare feet just
to get to another bean field on the other side. I do know that they make great
sport on a bicycle. Trying to maneuver a bike with tires ¾ of an inch wide
going 16 miles an hour to a target an inch long moving a foot every 30 seconds,
is a challenge that I do not seem to tire of.
You may decry my sport as cruel, but have you been paying
any attention to your Facebook feed the past three weeks. My constant diet of
cute puppies and endearing cat pictures has been interrupted by pictures of
children with hives and swollen limbs suffering from the effects of a
caterpillar bite. The images of these poor, misshapen, suffering, children have
hardened my heart against the cute cuddly harbingers of winter weather. It is a
bit surprising that we have let our collective danger detectors become so
miscalibrated that we allow our children to kiss bugs without warning. “Oh look
Johnny is kissing the fuzzy little bug that masticates all plant life within a
3 foot diameter.”
Really? Come on people. Why weren’t you paying closer
attention during biology class? Were you one of the deniers mocking Mr. Ashburn
chanting “why should I pay attention? What do I need to know this stuff for? It
won’t help me in my McDonald’s career.”? Maybe not but it might keep your
offspring from being the poster child for the “You may not want to touch that
honey” society.
If you won’t pay any attention in biology class, maybe you
should focus for a minute or two on the lessons that nature shows us every day.
If a caterpillar can defoliate all cover within in a three foot radius of his
home, why don’t the birds look around and swoop in and dine on this big fat
juicy future butterfly in these all you can eat clearings? It’s because Mr.
Wooly is poisonous. We have the multi-segmented monsters crawling across a road
with no cover, no camouflage them being light yellow on a black backdrop and no
crows, or starlings, or cardinals or bluejays come cruising in for a quick
bite. Nature knows. I don’t know how, but the birds must keep a "field guide of
bad for you stuff" back in the nest. How ever it knows, nature knows and is trying to
teach us something if we would just pay attention.
I blame Disney for our stupidity. Yes, I am a Disney decrier.
Look at their track record; Bambi, that cute little caterpillar in Fox and the
Hound, the hallucinogenic smoking blue dude caterpillar in Alice
So come on people. Let’s gather our wits about us and pay
attention in school. Let’s listen to our elders when they tell us “That is make
believe and this is real life. So you may not want to touch that, honey.”
Take care,
Roger
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