Pollen...Ah-choo!

I looked out the window the other night and I had to look twice. It looked as though it was snowing. I put on the porch light and sure enough, a fine shower of “something” was coming down at a steady pace and accumulating on the ground … except it wasn't white, it was yellow. It was a pollen blizzard.  

In my sister's thickly wooded lot, in late May and early June each year, for a few weeks, the local pine trees shower everyone and everything with their pollen. It's a male thing … by the way. Pine cones are male and female. The males produce all the mess. The pollen produced by male cones is carried to female cones by the wind. This male sexual overture obviously works pretty well as pine fossil records have been documented from the Carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago. Like many wind pollinated species, these male pines produce large quantities of pollen in hopes that they'll be successful in meeting up with girl pines and making babies. I personally think these guys go a bit overboard considering the layer of pollen on the car, deck, windows and the yellow haze in the air.

I read that this pollen is actually not responsible for as many allergies as people think, but judging from my red eyes, runny nose and frequent mind-jarring sneezes, I'm thinking pine pollen might be more responsible than pine-lovers would like to admit.

Pine pollen powder has been used extensively in traditional cultures throughout Asia for centuries. It's revered as one of the top anti-aging herbs available. People go out and pay good money for it. Hmmm … perhaps they'd like some for free in my sister's backyard. Bring a broom and a shovel.

I wrote this blog a week or so ago and didn't post it and the pollen in the air has subsided. In its place, tiny, tiny pine pollen seeds by the thousands. Pine needles and sap will come next. There is no respite.

A Chipmunk in the Woodpile

 

I was sitting at Lin's kitchen bar, my usual place to set up my computer and hang out when I'm staying with her. It's near a bay window and I get to daydream, I mean “muse”, while I'm trying to find some inspiration for writing. The windows are all open now and I could hear a distinct chirping sound outside. I looked out, but I couldn't identify the source of the chirp.

The sound continued. I looked more closely. Still nothing. More chirping ... maybe it was clicking ... or was it chattering? not a bird … a squirrel, maybe? Then I spotted some movement in the woodpile. A chipmunk, well camouflaged, sat nestled in the midst of the chopped wood. I tiptoed out the back door and let the door close ever so quietly while I wielded my camera around the corner. Snap! Snap! Snap! I got him, the little rascal.

Actually, I wasn't sure if it was a chipmunk or a ground squirrel. I had to look up the difference on the internet; they're often confused because they look so much alike. First of all, there are 25 species of chipmunks in the world and 24 of them live in North America. This is definitely an Eastern chipmunk. They do favor wood piles, for one thing. This guy's coloring is very distinctive ... five well-defined dark stripes down his back.

A little trivia about this particular species. It has two fewer teeth than other chipmunks and four toes each on the front legs, but five on the hind legs. I don't feel so confused about describing his chipmunk sound now. I read that they have several bird-like or chattering calls; one is a trill at the rate of 130 vibrations per minute and another is a lower-pitched, clicking sound. Like other chipmunks, he transports food in his cheek pouches. He also uses those cheek pouches to transport dirt out of his burrow.

Chipmunks are solitary critters except at mating time. They live in burrows and we think that though this guy hangs out near the woodpile, he actually lives near Lin's front step in a nest under a low clapboard which happens to be bulging out at the moment.

I've seen him twice more since that first chance viewing the other day. His chatter gives him away. This morning he was sitting on the stone retaining wall just outside my window. Remember Chip and Dale, the Disney chipmunks? I couldn't help think of them when I saw this little guy chattering away and then scurrying under the cover of the shrubs when he heard my footfall.

Bugs...Yuck

 

I'm not a lover of bugs … any kind. Insects, spiders, multi or milli-footed critters … they're just not my cup of tea. They make my skin crawl … literally. I wonder about entymologists ... the folks who enjoy making a living at studying bugs.

Granted, if they wanted to, insects could take over the world (and probably have). They do outnumber us despite the fact we have Raid and Deet and cut down all the rain forests. There are more than one million different identified species of insects throughout the world (all the bad ones probably live in Australia), but some experts believe that there may be as many as 30 million insect species in the world that have yet to be discovered and identified. This represents approximately 80 percent of the world's species. Here's the kicker though … at any given time, it is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion individual insects alive (10,000,000,000,000,000,000). That's a lot of bugs!

What brings this topic to mind is that I'm here at Lin's house in Walpole, Massachusetts, USA with time on my hands and it's springtime. I'm enjoying all the birdsong and the blooming flowers, shrubs and trees. I appreciate all the varied shades of new-growth green and taking in all those fresh earthy smells as I walk through a copse of park trees. I'm not enjoying, however, the plethora of bugs that have hatched and are flying and crawling and generally sneaking around. Though they're bothersome, I can handle ants and common houseflies without alarm. I'm gun-shy of ticks, having had Lyme disease on a previous visit here. Some of these creepy crawlies freak me out though. What's amazing is that just walking around the outside of the house, I'm discovering all these new insects I don't think I've ever noticed before. My identification-itis disease has kicked in and though my flesh is crawling, I've got to photograph and identify them. Fishflies with those long plume-like antennae, for instance. Who knew?

There are several good “name that bug” websites. I don't have my good camera with me and thus I'm forced to get closer than I normally would in order to snap a pic that's crisp enough to use for identification and to share with you. What about black fireflies? I've certainly seen lots of fireflies in my life, but I'd never heard of black ones. There seem to be a plethora of them at the moment and they look like they're bug mating which means more in the future. Ick!

Contrary to urban myth, Harvestmen or Daddy-long-legs are not poisonous and not because “their fangs are too short to bite humans” as legend would have us believe. I still don't like them. They're creepy. Other spiders … well, really, let's not go there. In this household, we kill more spiders than we photograph. Apologies (not necessarily sincere ones) to all the arachnid lovers out there and the Association for the Protection of 8-Legged Species. I've got gooseflesh just editing the pics.

Now that I think of it, butterflies and dragonflies are actually a favorite of mine … I try to forget they're insects. I've even got a whole page on my website for butterflies we've photographed and identified. Even moths are nice … in moderation. I don't like them in clouds, swirling around my head though. I found a “Moths By Porch Light” website that I thought was particularly good. And dragonflies and damselflies are beautiful and fascinating. In fact, they might just warrant their own blog post in the near future. In the meantime, enough bugs for now. They're freaking me out.