(Click the Play arrow to listen to this column.)
Harvest season has begun in the Couple Acre Wood.
We stand still among the trees, the dog and I, and listen to hickory nuts, some whole and some in the pieces remaining from the ongoing repast of Eastern gray squirrels, clattering from the canopy like balls in a wooden pachinko machine.
Bowie stiffens his stance “on point” and stares up into the trees, wishing he could climb up and have a talk with whoever is dropping stuff on us.
The squirrels greedily devour the ripening nuts but soon, their bellies full, they will carry their remaining booty to facilities they have designated for storage of winter supplies.
My nose revels at the complex aroma of the previous night’s rain. I can name some of the components, though only because I can see most of the sources. I cannot, for instance, separate the dirt from the composting leaves, or pull out the exciting olfactory delights of a Patent Leather beetle or a Wood mouse hiding in the moldering fibers of composting trees. For that magical ability I am exceedingly jealous of my canine friend.
He often leads me to a favorite field where he can spend an hour or so — longer if I’d agree to it —poking through the grass, digging and threatening the residents of the many indentations in the thatchery. The visible holes are connected by a maze of subterranean tunnels of which Bowie seems completely unaware.
He finds a likely entrance and starts to dig, his butt sticking up in the air and his head disappearing into the earth. There’s no way he’s going to catch what’s down there but he’s got no hearing for anyone who tries to tell him that.
I have seen him chase after a rabbit, only to be halted by his leash as the rabbit disappears around the far corner of a house. When we arrive at the other side of the structure, he searches for where the rabbit should have appeared — and often has. I imagine the conversation.
From the rabbit: “How did you know I’d be here,”
The dog replies: “Silly rabbit. I’m smarter than I look.”
Occasionally, he pursues a Wood mouse he has detected in the mass of leaves and mycelium bedding. So far he hasn’t caught one but several times I have been standing over a downed tree and watched a tiny rodent depart the side away from where the pup has been snuffling and scratching. The mouse and I have a brief chuckle while the ambitious canine keeps digging, unaware that his quarry has left the area.
His patience and energy is simply amazing. I know there is so much going on in those fallen trees and the rooted masses beneath them and, as I mentioned, my eyes are green with envy that I don’t have Bowie’s nose to see them.
There is a hickory nearby, about 70 feet tall, that may soon join the current object of Bowie’s attention as host to communities of bugs, grubs and a variety of ants. Its assortment of branches has long ago fallen to earth, leaving the naked tree to become home to several generations of Red-headed woodpeckers.
One day, the tree, having hosted untold families along pathways leading to its penthouse levels, will surrender to gravity and become home to Horned passalus beetles only Bowie can hear scurrying about in the tunnels and paths woven through the wood.
I’d like to attempt a census of the residents sojourning in the forest floor, many of them identified as pests, though mostly by companies whose business is to eradicate them. Google is wonderful for leading me to the identities of many organisms I discover on my wanders, but the identifiers often are accompanied by commercial offers to rid my presence of whatever I have found.
We human critters seem to have the idea that anything we don’t put there must be removed?
They really don’t eat much.
Text and Images ©2024 John Messeder, award-winning environmental storyteller, nemophilist and social anthropologist living in Gettysburg, PA. He may be contacted at john@johnmesseder.com