The old timers in the Big Piney country pool hall where I spent much of my boyhood, would quite often come in saying, “I ain’t never seen nothing like it”. Because they had a lot of years behind them, if they hadn’t ever seen anything like it, whatever it was, it had to be fairly noteworthy. At the age of 11 or 12, I could say that a lot but it didn’t mean anything. I didn’t have much experience.
But you can be assured that now, when I say “I ain’t never seen nothing like it” it is something of significance, because I am a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman. And I ain’t never seen nothing like the number of wooly worms up here on this isolated country ridgetop of mine. They are everywhere; thousands of them, or at least hundreds, and they are coal black on each end and brown in the middle.
The old-timers insisted that a brown wooly worm in the fall meant a mild winter and a black one meant a hard winter. Therefore, there is little doubt what we have coming, since I am seeing wooly worms with black ends and a brown middle. We will have a fairly cold hard winter from early November to a around Christmas, and then it will turn mild until about mid-February. Then we’ll face a lot of cold and snow and ice right through the rest of February and March.
Wooly worms are the caterpillars, or larvae, of the Isabella Tiger Moth, which is a moth of rather drab orange-brown appearance, very common in the summer, seen at night drawn to lights, as are many other moths. They must have had a good year with all the wooly worms they have produced. The fuzzy worms are very common now, looking for good places to spend the winter. They will crawl under whatever ground clutter they can find and then come forth in the spring to spin a covering and become cocoons. After about 2 weeks they emerge as moths. The tiger moth then lays hundreds of eggs in the summer and the wooly worm caterpillars hatch out. They don’t do any particular damage to anything, as some moths like the gypsy moth and other moth larvae can do.
Lots of creatures do eat the wooly worm, but many others ignore them because of that wooly covering. I have never seen this, but I know it to be the truth... skunks and raccoons roll them around with their feet until they wear the wooly coat off of them, before eating them. Armadillos are so stupid they just eat them as they are. Young turkeys eat a few, but older turkeys, who remember how awful it feels to get a wooly worm hung in their throat, pass them up for grasshoppers and acorns. Young turkey, like today’s teen-agers, won’t listen to a thing and have to learn the hard way. Anyway, I thought some of you readers might be interested in knowing about them, since you are likely seeing lots of them, and very puzzled about what this portends for the coming winter. Now you have the absolute final and accurate winter forecast.
Remember me having some fun with the “Master Naturalist” program the Missouri Department of Conservation has going on, where they take folks who don’t know a shikepoke from a rain crow, and give them several nights of classroom instruction and a field trip or two on weekends, and then give them a certificate proclaiming them “Master Naturalists”.
I got a letter from one of the adult students who was upset with me, saying the classes are a very good thing. He says they are being taught to make birdhouses and plant native trees, and becoming bona-fide naturalists. I want to re-iterate, I do not find any fault with such classes. I am all for them. It is simply the concept of making ‘naturalists’ out of people who learn what amounts to a pint or two, taken from an ocean of knowledge.
“Master Naturalist” is a title few men of today’s modern world can claim, especially those who live in suburbs, surrounded by concrete and brick and steel. I have lived all my life in the outdoors, and I can’t call myself that. Of course, I don’t build birdhouses up here on my ridgetop. I let the birds nest in this natural environment where they have everything they need, and birdhouses aren’t required. And no native trees are needed on Lightnin’ Ridge either, they exist here in abundance.
It is fine to have such classes and training, but that should be called what it is. Perhaps the certificates should say, ‘nature-enthusiast’ or ‘adult scout’ or something of that sort. I have seen real true-life naturalists in my life, and worked with many of them. No true naturalist lives in a man-made world, and if you are a real naturalist, you are looked upon as something of a mistfit, because you don’t much like to be around man-made environments, you like to be out in the woods alone.
If you really are a naturalist, you can paddle down the river for miles without removing your paddle from the water, and nothing hears you coming. You see where a muskrat makes his feeding platform, you know where the mink enters the water and where he exits, and you know what kind of bird makes whatever nest you might find. You know a bobcat track at a glance, you can smell a fox scent post as you pass it, and you can skin and stretch the hides of either of them in a matter of minutes. A real master naturalist has the capability of living off the land, killing and cleaning, growing and gathering what it takes to survive. He learns alright, but he isn’t taught. I doubt most folks can understand that.
But again, anytime a group wants to get together and learn about nature I am all for it.
The MDC can do that, and make money out of it if they want but they shouldn’t be silly enough to use that name, “master naturalist”. It is an insult to those who were just that, like Leopold, Audubon, Seton, Miner and Muir, and other oddballs like them who were so often laughed at because of what they were, and what they believed.
I would like to take some of those “naturalists” the MDC is creating and show them some of the thousands of acres of woodlands where the MDC is conducting logging operations, They could make birdhouses to replace the fallen den trees. There is a lot of inconsistency in what the MDC is doing and what they are teaching.
In late winter and next spring, we will organize a group of a half-dozen experienced outdoorsmen to conduct daily interpretive float trips on the river, and day-long hikes into remote wooded natural areas. If you like to learn about nature, join us on one of those trips. You will not be a “master naturalist” after such a trip, but you will learn a great deal, and enjoy it immensely.
The best of the fall is upon us... don’t miss the opportunity to see the leaves in the deep woods turn and fall. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, MO. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. See some fall pictures soon on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. —
