Thoughts while waiting for winter

Reflections during a dismal post-election, pre-Hallowe’en week:

Presumably, and hopefully, blackface will not be part of Hallowe’en costuming this year.

It was when I was a child. The only concern back then was expressed by our mothers. They worried that shoe polish would irritate our skin because the polish contained solvents like naphtha and Turpentine.

Mom insisted on applying a coat of protective cold cream to my face before dad applied the shoe polish.

Times change. We all move along, often becoming smarter and more sensitive.

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Evidence this week that animals tire of being pushed around and hunted. Sometimes they push back.

An Arkansas deer hunter died when a buck he shot and presumed was dead, gored him with its antlers.

The hunter dropped the buck with a muzzle loader, then walked up to check that it was dead. It wasn’t. It got back to its feet and gored the hunter, who died later in hospital.

Meanwhile in Olonets, Russia last week a 660-pound brown bear attacked its trainer during a circus performance. The attack occurred during an act called Clubfoot and the Wheelbarrow in which the trainer forces the bear to stand on its hind legs and push a wheelbarrow.

The bear was not in the mood. It attacked the trainer, pushing him to the floor then climbing on top of him.

Another trainer ran into the ring and began kicking the bear to get it to stop.

Neither the trainer nor the bear were injured.

The trainer later attributed the bear’s attack to its age and joint pain that flares up seasonally. I understand that completely.

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Still with critters, there is new research on ants that provides us lessons for avoiding traffic jams.

Researchers built highway systems connecting large ant colonies with small village type colonies. Then they watched ants moving between the places.

There were no ant jams, nor multiple ant crashes. Ant traffic moved steadily without the traffic snarls we humans see on our highways.

The researchers concluded that ants avoid traffic foul-ups by changing their behaviour to meet changing conditions. No individual speeding up and slowing down. No lane changes to get ahead of the guy in front.

The lesson: humans drive in ways that satisfy their individual objectives. Ants travel collectively, co-operating with each other to optimize food collection for their colonies.

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The recent federal election brought us some new faces to Parliament and a lot of new talk about separation.

The sovereigntist Bloc Quebec more than tripled its standing in the House of Commons but said it will follow a nationalist agenda. For now. Still it is a party formed to achieve Quebec separation from the rest of Canada.

The election also revived talk of separation in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There’s even a new name for western separation  -- Wexit, a meme concocted after Britain’s Bexit movement to leave the European Common Union.

Separation talk, of course, is old hat in Canada. Those of us born and raised in Northwestern Ontario lived with the dream of not being governed by provincial powers created and exercised in Toronto the Good.

Toronto and a large chunk of southern Ontario surrounding it grabbed our natural resources and taxes on money earned from our hard work in the pulp and paper and grain elevator industries. Little of it ever came back to us, leaving us like orphans forced to fend for ourselves.

Those industries declined, killing many jobs and the taxes they paid. Toronto the Good did not give up on the northwest as a source of income, however. Now it has sent its gangs, pimps and drug dealers to suck dollars out of Northwest Ontario folks, Indigenous people in particular.

Thunder Bay has a booming illegal drug industry and was Canada’s murder capital with almost seven homicides per 100,000 population in 2018.

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Despite the federal election mess and Winter whispering “Run hard,  I’m almost on top of you,” we Canadians should not feel down. We still have our sense of humour, despite  most of our comedians having moved to the United States.

So what if our roads are bumpy messes? It won’t be long before all those unrepaired potholes will be filled with snow. There’s smooth sailing from here on in.

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Predictions for winter

The acorns are the first alarm.

Night breezes rustle the oaks, shaking their capped nuts from their branches. I hear them hitting the steel roof above my bedroom. My slippers crack and crunch them when I step onto the deck to check the morning weather.

I am worried. Many acorns are a bad sign. They are one of 20 signs indicating that we are in for an early and vicious winter.

I need to check out the other 19, and if they confirm a bad winter, I need to prepare.

I could consult weather services like Environment Canada, The Weather Network or Accuweather. But they use algorithms now rather than getting outside and looking for real weather signs.

I’m old-fashioned and would rather rely on the age-old indicators passed down to us through folklore. Things like an unusual number of acorns and squirrels gathering them and other nuts to fortify themselves against a long and hard winter.

Or, thicker-than-usual hair on the nape of a cow’s neck, and corn husks that are much thicker than normal.

I don’t have any cows to check but I do have a corn patch. There’s no use checking it out though, because there are no corn husks. The raccoons have stolen the cobs, husks and all.

Raccoons themselves can be a good indicator the winter ahead, according folklore. If you see any with bright bands on thick, bushy tails that’s an indicator of a hard winter. There are no raccoons to be found around my place, however, because they are hiding somewhere gorging themselves on the corn they stole from my garden.

There are other animal signs to watch for. Two woodpeckers sharing the same tree and pigs gathering sticks are said to be reliable signs of a long, cold and snowy winter.

I don’t really understand those. All woodpeckers share the same tree – it’s the one outside my bedroom window on which every woodpecker in the county hammers at five o’clock in the morning.

And pigs gathering sticks? There are no pigs around where I live and what they would do with sticks is beyond me. Unless pigs have taken up hockey.

Another sign that folklore holds highly reliable is the “early arrival of crickets on the hearth.”

I don’t have a hearth. I have a woodstove and any crickets gathering there would be fried to a crisp because it has been so cold in the mornings that I’m already deep into my winter woodpile.

The 20 ‘bad winter ahead’ signs offered by folklore aren’t all that helpful this year so I consult the tried and true farmer’s almanac.

That can be confusing. There is The Old Farmer’s (apostrophe s) Almanac that dates back to 1792. Then there’s the Farmers’ (s apostrophe) Almanac that started in 1818 and it’s easy to get them mixed up.

A Canadian version of the Old Farmer’s Almanac tells me to expect a winter of “snow, snow and more snow.”  It is predicting no fewer than eight major snowstorms, including “a series of significant snow events” in mid-to-late January.

The Farmers’ Almanac is calling for a “freezing, frigid and frosty” winter for most of the country. It predicts more lake effect snow for Ontario – as much as 70 centimetres in one day. Add to that a prediction of a late and chilly spring.

The average winter snowfall for Haliburton County (November through March averaged over 1981 to 2010) is 8.2 feet. Last winter the county received 10.5 feet November through March, plus more rain than usual. It snowed, at least a trace, on 96 days last winter between November 1 and March 31.

So the outlook for winter 2019-2020 is not looking good. The only positive predictions are that the winter will start late, but when it does it will bring frigid temperatures and heavy snowfalls in January and February.

If you doubt any of the predictions you can check out a couple of folklore signs on your own. Look to see if the ants are marching in a straight line rather than meandering, Or, watch to see if muskrats are burrowing holes high on the river bank.

If you see those things, break out the snow shovels and haul in more firewood.

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The story of Trumpinocchio

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a solitary child with no interest in things that amused other children. His sole plaything was a fat red crayon with which he drew world maps.

His crayoned maps showed a world in which Russia was given greater space and prominence. One showed Greenland as part of the United States. A later one showed the U.S., including Greenland, a part of Russia.

Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanova Putina worried that their son Vladi was too introspective, too sullen. They consulted a child psychiatrist who recommended a hobby for the boy, so they bought him a wood carving set.

Vladi was delighted. His first project was a puppet. He carved the legs, arms, body from tamarack and the head from soft pine. He glued on yellow straw for hair.

Then he strung all the pieces together with strings attached to an X crossbar.

He practised manipulating the cross bar so the puppet danced and jumped and did whatever Vladi wanted it to do.

He wanted to name his puppet Goldilocks but it did not translate well into Russian. So he called it Trumpinocchio, which translates as pine seed brain.

Vladi worked the strings so expertly that the puppet looked like a real person - arms and legs moving, eyes blinking.

Then one day the puppet’s lips moved. They just twitched at first, then fluttered, then flapped at hurricane force speed.

“I want to be a real person,” Trumpinocchio began jabbering. “A real guy who does really big things and makes things really great again. Are there any cheeseburgers here?”

Vladi was excited. But as the weeks passed the blabbering puppet became annoying, pestering relentlessly about becoming a real person.

So Vladi took him to see Baba Yaga, a mystical woman who lived in a dark forest nearby, and was known for her magic.

Baba Yaga granted magical favours to important and powerful people, and could see into the future that Vladi would become a spymaster, spin doctor and powerful politician. She agreed to turn Trumpinocchio into a real person.

“But I can’t guarantee how he will turn out,” she warned. “It’s hard to predict when the head is made of pine. He needs to go to school.”

So the Putins enrolled Trumpinocchio in school, bought him a laptop computer and signed him up for a Twitter account. He blabbered and Twittered incessantly, bragging about his accomplishments and spreading fake news about teachers and students at his school.

At home he preened at the bathroom mirror for long periods, causing other household members to have bladder accidents. There was constant arguing over the television because he hogged it to watch American shows.

Trumpinocchio refused to learn to spell or to add numbers. The school nurse observed that his nose grew whenever he lied, which was often. The school principal reported complaints from female students.

“He’s ruining our lives,” Mr. Putin Sr. told his family. “He’s taken over the bathroom! He’s taken over the TV! Yesterday he walked into the door and punched a hole in it with his nose. He’s got to go!”

“Send him to America,” said Mrs. Putin. “He’s always talking about Big Macs and Cokes.”

So Vladi called his friend Mitchikov and asked him to help settle Trumpinocchio in America where Vladi expected that he might become useful.

Vladi financed his puppet in various business ventures, including real estate, but they all failed because Trumpinocchio could not add. There was Trumpinocchio Airlines, Trumpinocchio Hotels, Trumpinocchio University. Even Trumpinocchio Vodka with its 24-karat gold labelling went bankrupt.

As predicted, Vladi became a powerful Russian spymaster, who was increasingly frustrated that Trumpinocchio could not get focussed and become useful.

So he returned to the dark forest to consult Baba Yaga. Her advice was cryptic.

“Look beyond what you can see, Vladimir,”  she said. “Reality is what you tell people it is. There are always alternate facts and alternate realities. Go back to Moscow and think about what I have told you.”

Vladi spent days in his Kremlin office pondering Baba Yaga’s enigmatic advice. Then it hit him like a lightning bolt. He grabbed his telephone and called America.

Some months later Trumpinocchio became a reality TV star.

And, as they say, the rest is history.

And no birds sang

Fifty-seven years ago last week – September 27, 1962 –  Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, the book that really got us thinking about what we are doing to the environment.

Silent Spring predicted more future consequences from indiscriminate use of pesticides and other ways that we are abusing our world. Those predications are coming true.

A dramatic new analysis published in the journal Science says the U.S.-Canada bird population is almost three billion birds smaller than it was 50 years ago. The analysis is based on a study by seven research institutions in Canada and the United States.

The number – 2.9 billion fewer birds - is shocking, but not totally surprising. That fits with my observations at the cottage, where songbirds once provided an abundance of  joy.

A few finches and grosbeaks, once a daily feature at our place, showed up a couple of months ago, bringing a spark of hope. But this fall there is little birdsong around our place and walks in the woods have not flushed one ruffed grouse.

Almost six decades after Silent Spring, I am witnessing Silent Autumn.

Habitat loss and pesticides are two proven causes of bird decline. There are fears now, however, that changing climate is a contributing factor.

Scientists says there is no evidence that climate change is directly killing birds. Changing climate is, however, having indirect effects.

Recent studies have reported huge declines in insect populations. Insects and birds are hugely important to each other. Many birds eat insects for food. So fewer insects to eat means more birds searching for food to stay alive.

More importantly, rising world temperatures are bringing insects, and diseases they carry, to places they have never been before. For instance, mosquitoes carrying malaria, West Nile Virus (WNV) and other diseases are populating areas beyond their historical range.

There is a ton of Americans research on the impact of mosquito-borne disease on birds. U.S. studies have detected the presence of the West Nile Virus in more than 300 species of birds, including ruffed grouse.

Little research has been done in Canada, possibly because nasty bugs and the nasty things they transmit have been limited to warmer areas south of us.

That is changing. Our temperatures are rising and bugs and viruses are moving north. Ticks carrying Lyme Disease are one example. Mosquitoes transmitting the WNV are another.

Canadian research, especially into the impact of West Nile on birds, is urgently needed,

Thankfully we are getting some, from Dr. Amanda MacDonald, a University of Guelph researcher specializing in wildlife disease.

Her study is building data on wild turkeys and ruffed grouse exposed to West Nile in Ontario and Quebec. She is encouraging turkey and grouse hunters to help by submitting blood samples from birds they have shot. The study supplies filter strips for blood collection and postage-paid envelopes for submitting the samples.

Birds can be infected with West Nile when bitten by a mosquito which has bitten and drawn blood from an infected bird or animal.

Not all birds exposed to the virus become ill, or die. However, it does seem to hit hardest the corvid family of birds, of which crows and jays are members.

American research indicates that West Nile is reducing ruffed grouse populations. MacDonald’s study will provide information about levels and locations of exposure and could be a start to determining whether West Nile is a factor in shrinking grouse populations.

It also will be important for wild turkeys. Governments and private organizations spent much time and money on reviving wild turkey populations in Ontario. Any threat to that revival needs quick and thorough research.

We must learn everything about what is killing the birds so we can do more to prevent the losses. Not just because they are lovely to look at and wonderful to listen to.

West Nile, Lyme and other insect-borne diseases are becoming more common in our world. So far this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reported well over 300 human cases of WNV, with 45 states and the District of Columbia reporting exposure in mosquitoes, birds or humans.

Silent Spring warned us 57 years ago. Now things that can hurt us are moving our way and we need to be better informed, better prepared.

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