Tag Archives: wildlife

Cabin Life – #76

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I don’t usually think about snakes, but I’ve had a few run-ins in the last The Wounded Snakecouple of days, and I haven’t really had a choice but to think about them.  Now, I’m not one of those people who screams like a little girl when he sees a snake (anymore), and when I do happen to think about them, it’s usually because a garter snake is slithering away out in the driveway or curled up on one of the rocks out in the yard.

The other morning, I stepped out of the front door and was handed a small garter snake.  My friend had picked the ten inch snake up right outside the door.  We each let him run through our hands and then dropped him back into the grass.  Now, I know it’s bad to handle wild animals, but it’s nice to feel the soft motion of the snake on your hands.  It’s also a reminder that these guys aren’t out to do us any harm, and just want to eat the bugs around the garden.

Later that day, I was testing out the weed eater.  The recoil spring had come out of its housing, so after twenty minutes and an extremely cramped hand, I got the thing running and went to test it on some tall grass.  The weed eater worked fine, but as the grass fell to the ground, I noticed another snake slithering away pretty quickly.  He only went a few feet and as the weed eater ground to a halt, I checked the snake.  I was afraid I had hit him with the string and I was right.

There was blood coming from a small cut on his back, and the tip of the tail was bleeding as well.  I felt bad and considered grabbing him and putting a couple band-aids on, but that just didn’t seem right.  I hate to hurt animals, although I’m not opposed to eating venison and wild turkey.  But this snake, which was much larger, almost two feet long, wasn’t going to be dinner.  Luckily, the wounds hardly seemed fatal.   He slid under a board that was on the ground, and stayed there for a few hours.  I would see his head poke out every once in a while as I walked by, and just hoped that he wasn’t hurting too much.

I checked under the board the next morning, and he was gone.  I felt good that he hadn’t just died right there, even though I knew he could be dead ten feet away.  I worked all day and then in the evening walked over to the fire pit.  I thought I saw something on one of the rocks, and upon closer inspection, it was the same snake.  I could see the scabbed-over wounds, and he didn’t look any worse for the wear.  He hung out for a few minutes, and even let me take some pictures.  I was glad he was alive and appeared to be doing well.  And there’s not a doubt in my mind, that even though I hurt this snake, he’ll still stick around to eat the bugs and help me out.  And that is one very clear example of true forgiveness.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

Cabin Life – #73

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The first clouds we’ve seen in a while are rolling in, and there have even Apple Budsbeen a couple drops of rain that have fallen from the sky.  So instead of writing this while lying in the hammock, I’m sitting in the old rocking chair on the front porch.  I can see the four-wheeler, the wood pile, and the lawn chairs that I’ve been too lazy to put away.  The grass is turning green except for the area where I almost always park.  That grass is dead and carries the color of dried wheat.  Other than that, the colors are coming out, and the rain we’re about to (hopefully) get will only make them brighter.

A coworker commented to me that the colors of spring are just as nice as the colors of fall, but no one seems to care or notice.  Sitting here looking out over the upper field and on to the slopes of the hill out back, I can see his point.  Everyone comes to the Adirondacks to enjoy the fall foliage.  They don’t know exactly when it’ll be, so they watch the news and try to time it right to hit the peak color season in early October or so.

But right now there is a bounty of color that, when you take the time to notice it, is really pretty.  Beyond the grass of the yard, the apple trees are starting to show a dull lime green as the tiny leaves emerge.  The little poplars are glowing, and the maples are covered in deep red flowers.  The white birch bark stands out against the dark balsam needles and even the brown of the trees that aren’t blooming adds to the ambiance.

Right now, I can see the colors.  My eyes aren’t being bothered by allergies, as mornings are usually when I suffer the worst.  I’m hoping that we get this rain and it washes some of the pollen out of the air.  My car, which is normally a nice dark green is now a pale disgusting green with streaks down the sides from where the washer fluid flows when I cleaned my windshield.  It’s odd having to clean it of the dead bugs that are starting to splatter their yellow guts on my glass.

Just now, I heard the first few drops of rain on the tin roof of the porch.  We desperately need some rain, as it’s been almost two weeks since we got any precipitation.  In fact, the last time anything other than pollen fell from the sky, it was snow.  The little stream that runs behind my cabin is dry in most spots, and the seeds I started for the garden could use a little natural precipitation.

It’s amazing to me that after complaining about the amount of snow we got this year, I am now anxious for some rain.  The last two weeks have been nice but hot and dry.  There have been a few forest fires, and I hope that this summer is not a replay of last year.  But as it stands now, we’ve had a pleasant transition from winter to spring, and even though I got my first black fly bite of the year, I’m happy at the changing of the seasons.

There’s more birds around including lots of grouse and turkey.  I was woken up by a big tom turkey walking through the yard this morning.  He was calling loudly, looking for love.  I got up early and snuck out onto the porch to watch him walk through.  It’s turkey season, and if I was a hunter, I could have gotten this guy with no problem at all.  Lucky for him I’m not, but I did enjoy listening to him and watching him walk from the left trail through the lower field and down the driveway.  His bright red waddle was swinging side to side as he tramped around, and to me, it was just one more color to add to the palate of spring.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

Cabin Life – #60

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Hill out back
Well, I survived Winter Carnival, along with another monster snowstorm.  So far this winter, I’d say that I’ve gotten between four and five feet of snow, most of it coming in two big storms.  Luckily, I had a friend with a plow help me out this time, so I’m not having to hike in to the cabin.  There’s no way I’m moving that much snow again.  I’d rather hike than shovel.

Last week I house-sat for some friends of mine who live in Saranac Lake.  It was glorious to have running hot water, fast internet and unlimited electricity.  Out of the three though, I would still take hot water over the other two.

While I was there, I looked at their bookshelf, and saw a few books on bees.  I remembered that they have bee hives, and I started to flip through the books they had.  And of course, I now have an idea in my head for this coming spring and summer.  Hopefully, this is one idea that will actually be beneficial in a number of ways.

I am definitely getting a bee hive.  Last summer I wrote about bees and how interesting I think they are.  And last spring I was going to make maple syrup, but didn’t get my act together in time to get a harvest of sap.  The bees are going to be a good mix of trying to produce more off the land, getting a natural sweetener to use, and maybe helping out nature a little bit.  Plus, my garden could use more than a little help.

I’m going to start off with one hive, but if it goes well this first year, I know I’ll get another one next spring.  It’s kind of weird to be thinking about bees in the middle of winter, when there’s a foot or two of snow on the ground, but I am actually really excited to get going on this.

In addition to the honey, I’m hoping the bees will be beneficial to my apple trees.  After last year’s lack of apples due to the odd weather back in March, I hope that this is the year I can spend some time on the trees and clean them up.  Add bees into the mix, and I think the apple trees are going to be looking good.

I’m excited about this stuff because this is the kind of thing that can help get me through the winter.  Thinking about the nice days when you can work outside in a t-shirt and shorts and the long hours of daylight definitely bring a ray of optimism into my view.  The days are noticeably longer, my stove isn’t burning as much wood to keep the cabin warm most days, and the little birds at the feeders are still pretty fat for this time of year.

I can’t wait to add bees into this mix.  They’ll be happy and well fed on apple blossoms and blueberry flowers.  And the plants should be thriving with the steady supply of pollinators.  And I will be basking in the sweetness of all their hard work.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

Cabin Life – #56

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Red Breasted Nut Hatch
The sun is slowly creeping up over Whiteface, turning the sky into a mixture of pastel blue, deep purple and burnt orange.  The icicles hanging down in front of the big window reflect the colors as the first chickadees of the morning start to come to the bird feeders.  Herbie and Ed are both on the couch, heads darting back and forth.  The view out the window looks like a Bob Ross painting.  Soft lines and happy little trees everywhere.

The January thaw is upon us here in the Adirondacks.  It’s a nice little break to have temperatures above freezing, but the rain that’s coming surely is not welcome.  Over the last couple of days, I’ve lost almost a foot of snow to the warm, humid air, but I’m not complaining about that.  There’s still plenty of the white stuff on the ground.

So much snow, in fact, that my driveway is no longer drivable.  I’ve been parking at the bottom for over a week now.  There’s obviously a pretty big downside to this, but also a few perks.  I’ve gotten good at not forgetting anything when I leave, and shoveling a hundred yards of driveway is definitely preferable to shoveling a quarter mile of driveway.  Also, the driveway is steep enough and snowy enough for me to ride the sled down to the car.  So even when I have to haul groceries or water up, I at least get a sled ride in exchange.  It’s really not a bad trade.

I called the plow guy back in October, and he said he couldn’t do my driveway this year because he got stuck several times last winter.  I naively thought that I would be able to keep up with the shoveling for the season, and even after the big storm the day after Christmas, I was able to keep the driveway open.  Sure, it was just wide enough for my car to get through, but that’s all I needed.  Then it snowed more.  Everyday day, in fact, and it got to the point where my car just wouldn’t make it up the driveway anymore.

The road I live on is about two miles long.  The first mile is paved, then it turns to dirt all the way out to my place.  The school bus turns around at the end of the pavement, so the town doesn’t bother plowing my end of the road every time it snows.  They only plow it every couple of weeks, regardless of how much snow there is.  This is an annoyance to be sure, but so far I haven’t been stranded out at my cabin.

I noticed last winter that the town plow would catch the end of my driveway and never leave me a snow bank.   This year, however, the first couple of times they plowed they left didn’t go to the end of my driveway, and instead left about fifty or sixty feet of road unplowed that I had to drive through or shovel.  It’s not that much to shovel, but it took me more than six hours to shovel after the Christmas storm and having to clear out that extra fifty feet was a task I really didn’t feel like completing.

This last time they plowed though, the driver must have seen my car parked just off the road in the driveway.  He backed the plow truck into my driveway and cleared that fifty feet of snow.  It was a relief to sled down there yesterday and know that my car was in the clear.  I don’t know if they did it to help me out.  But either way, it’s that little helping hand that locals give each other that makes me love the Adirondacks.

Cabin Life – # 55

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Black-capped chickadee through a dirty window
I woke up this morning, as usual, buried by animals.  Ed was lying on my chest, Herbie was at my shoulder flicking me in the face with his tail, and Pico was on my left, resting his head on my open hand.  It was nice and warm in the cabin even though I hadn’t gotten up all night to feed the stove, and I would have been content to lay there for a while before getting out of bed.

I thought about how my car was buried in a snow bank halfway up the driveway and how it’s going to take an hour or so to get it free.  I thought about how I’m still not done shoveling more than a week after our first big snowstorm.  I thought about how nice the bed felt.  Then Ed stretched and farted, and I jumped out of bed more quickly than I would have liked.  Pico and Herbie didn’t wait around in the danger zone either.

I fed the animals looked out the big window.  It seems like it is getting light a little bit later, but the reflection of the snow definitely helps the pre-dawn light to shine a bit brighter.  I checked the seed levels in the two bird feeders and decided that they don’t need to be filled today, but that I probably will fill them, just to put off shoveling my car out for another few minutes.

The feeders have been active this winter.  Last year, I had mostly black-capped chickadees, with an occasional visitor such as a house finch or blue jay.  But this year, there is an almost constant presence of chickadees, and white- and red-breasted nuthatches.  And from what I have observed, the red-breasted nuthatches are, well,  jerks.

All three species are pretty small birds, able to fit in the palm of your hand.  But the red-breasted nuthatches are the smallest, with the chickadees in the middle and the white-breasted nuthatches being about the same size as the largest of the chickadees.

There are two feeders, each with two sides to feed on.  At any given time there may be a couple of chickadees on one of the feeders, but then a red-breasted nuthatch will fly in and take over one of their spots.  Even when the other feeder has no birds on it, the reds will chase off a chickadee.  The white-breasted nuthatches don’t seem to be involved in this and generally take off before the reds have a chance to run them off.  The chickadees always share the feeders.

Even though I’m fairly short, I’ve never suffered from “little man syndrome,” that particular attitude short guys can get where they feel the need to overcompensate for their lack of height.  They like to start bar fights for no reason and generally see everyone as a threat.  I think this is what’s happening with the red-breasted nuthatches.  They’re small, so they’re just kind of overcompensating.  They’re not violent, but they’re not passive either.  The other birds seem to have figured out that this is just the way it is and they don’t bother fighting back.  They just get out of the way.

I know that if these birds thought that the seed in the feeders was a limited resource, they would guard and protect the feeders.  But because they know that there is ample food for all, there shouldn’t be that much competition.  I like having the variety of birds that come to the feeder.  It’s interesting to me and it’s the perfect reality TV for the cats.  I like watching them sift through the seed for their favorites.  I like watching them take an impossibly small seed and grip it in their feet to peck it open.   But I like it even more when all the birds can linger in peace eight inches from my window.

Cabin Life – #45

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The silence out here can be both comforting and disconcerting.  It’s not that there’s no noise, because there can be a lot.  But often, it’s just the wind in the trees.

There was one neighborhood in Jacksonville where I heard sirens every night.  For two years.  A woman had her purse snatched in broad daylight, and she was a cop.  I heard gun shots a few times and more domestic diputes than I care to remember.  I heard kids crying for hours on end and guys blasting rap at four in the morning.  There was a lot of noise in that place.  The apartment I got after that one was a few blocks from the ocean and on Sunday mornings, when everyone else was at church and Pico and I played firsbee, I could clearly hear the rolling sound of the ocean.

But out here, I’ve never heard sirens.  I saw flashing lights one time, when the fire department came to put out my chimney fire, but that’s it.  Occasionally I can hear a big-rig downshifting on Route 3, but even that is a quiet rumble in the distance.

I have one flashilight that is amazing.  This thing is basically a light saber.  After dark, before I let Pico out, I go out first and scan the fields with the big light to see what animals are hanging around.  Usually there’s a bunch of deer (nine the other night) and that’s it.  I let the screen door slam and they take off into the upper field, where Pico won’t see them and give chase.

Last night though, I went out and checked around.  About halfway up the Upper Field, I saw a set of eyes glowing green in the dark.  I waited and scanned around, thinking I would see some other eyes to confirm that it was just some deer, but no other eyes showed up.  I slammed the screen door and watched the eyes.  They didn’t move at the sound.  As I stood there in my slippers watching the eyes, they watched me back.

And then a thought entered my mind.  What if this was the bear that I’ve seen so many signs of?  There’s almost never just one deer hanging out by itself, and the non-plussed attitude displayed at the sound of the door slamming made me think that maybe it was the bear.  He was too far away for me to see clearly, but it was clear that he was not taking off just because some door closed.  But when I slammed the door again, the head came up and I caught a good glimpse of a doe standing near the upper edge of the field.

My tensions relaxed, I went and got Pico, comfortable in the fact that the deer was far enough away that Pico wouldn’t take off after it, and that it was not a bear.  When Pico’s tags jingled, the deer took to the woods.  I could hear the low bass vibrations of it bounding away.  Pico sniffed around and I watched with the light saber pointed not directly at him, but off to the side.  I don’t want to blind him.

It was quiet and calm, with only an infrequent rustle of leaves to fill the void.  And then I heard the low bass vibrations of a moving animal.  I shined around and saw no eyes, but the upper field hasn’t been mowed in years and the shrubs are getting big, providing great cover for whatever it was I was hearing.  The sound grew louder and I looked at Pico to see where he was.  He was at least a hundred yards away with no clue about what was running through the field.  I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or what direction it was heading, but my immediate thought was “bear.”

I glanced at the clueless Pico once again and just then six set of eyes came into view.  It was a doe and two fawns, apparently hidden in my first inspection of the field, taking off in the opposite direction.  I relaxed then and shut off the light.  I could see Pico trotting back towards the cabin in the moonlight.  Just then a shreik came out of the night.  It took my brain a moment to process that it was an owl, and it scared me.  Bad.  Stupid owl.

Cabin Life – #33

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My garden is a joke.  I tried, but the spot is just not very good.  Too little light and mediocre soil make a great combination for disappointment.  The peas are doing alright, and the lettuce is coming along, but the basil and carrots are struggling.  Even my tomatoes are pathetic.

It’s a small raised bed made with flat stones.  I didn’t do any real prep to the spot though.  There was a rotten tree trunk in the middle and I pulled that out and added a little top soil, but not nearly enough.  I weeded and turned the soil.  I should have added more soil and some composted manure to help.  What the garden really needs is to have a few trees cut down.

I like the idea of raising my own food, but it requires prep work that I just didn’t do.  I have no problem learning from my mistakes, and take this as a lesson learned.  But I also like the idea of creating an environment that brings some wildlife into the mix.  At first there were the usual worms and bugs, but then I noticed a little hole in the middle of the garden.  Only about an inch across, I figured it was nothing.  The plants didn’t look any worse for the wear, so it just went ignored.

A week later I noticed another hole that went down under the rocks, and even caught a glimpse of the tail end of something, but with no tail.  Later that night I took Pico out and saw two Northern Leopard frogs side by side in the garden.  I’ve seen these little guys before but never knew what they were.  There’s now three of them in the garden most evenings.

There’s no bugs other than some bees and flies in my garden.  The frogs seem to be taking care of the slugs and snails, which is nice.  The plants aren’t doing very well, but at least it’s not because they are being attacked by insects.

Cabin Life – #21

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There’s a soft, wet blanket of snow covering everything.  It’s also eerily quiet.  The last two mornings I’ve been woken up by a yellow-bellied sapsucker banging on the metal roof of the wood shed.  And the morning before that, Pico woke me up barking at the turkeys that were walking by.  Today, the birds are silent.

The rabbits that are all over out here are brown on top and white on the bottom.  It’s an interesting site as they sprint down the road in view of my headlights, then dart off into the woods.  All winter, I saw lots of rabbit tracks, but no actual animals.  Now that there is no snow and they are that awkward combination of colors, I see them all the time.  Their winter camouflage obviously works well.

The two robins that have been hanging around are constantly scanning the ground for worms, and the ruffed grouse run that weird little scramble of theirs whenever we get close.  I think most of the birds that are around, and there are quite a few, realize that we are more a source of food than a threat though.

The chickadees and robins don’t take off when Pico and I are out, and the yellow-bellied sapsucker let me take a picture from about ten feet away.  (For those of you who don’t know, the sapsucker is a type of woodpecker.  When I took his picture, he was banging his head on a metal pipe, so maybe he’s not tame so much as brain damaged.)  The American woodcock didn’t even bat an eye when I rode by on the four wheeler.  And the eastern phoebe that picks up all the seed that the chickadees drop looks akin to a gray-colored robin with no legs.  It’s like a baseball with a beak.

Maybe it’s just that no one lived here for a long time, so the animals are used to not being in any danger when they walk around, but I like when they come into the yard, or I see them out in the big field.  And since I don’t feel like hunting, they don’t have to worry about being bothered for a long time yet.