Odds and Ends from the Miscellaneous File

Nine Inch Nails

Hurricane Helene dropped a tulip poplar tree on our two vehicles and a trailer owned by Kathy’s company on September 27, 2024. The tree stayed on top of those vehicles until October 12, just a bit more than two weeks. At that time, a group of volunteers from a Mormon church in Salisbury attacked the tree with chainsaws and heavy tree-moving equipment.

We were grateful that these kind, hard-working volunteers were willing to give up their free time to help us out, and we pitched in to help where we could. That is when I discovered that I am not a lumberjack. While moving a sawed segment of tree, I managed to drop the damned thing on the big toe of my right foot. History repeats itself: I dropped a piece of railroad rail on that same toe when I was a five-year-old. Mamas, don’t let your babies play unsupervised near a railroad track. Back then I lost the nail: not so this time. I ended up with an ugly pool of blood under the nail at the cuticle. It hurt pretty badly for a couple of days, but after a while, all I had to remind me of the accident was this bit of dried blood under the nail.

Eleven months later, that patch of dried blood is up near the tip of the nail. I measured the distance from the cuticle to the trailing edge of the blood stain: 5/8th of an inch (16 mm for those of you outside the United States). Is that really how much a toenail grows in eleven months? Or is the dried blood being pulled along the nail bed at a slower rate? Why would that be so? Is there a mathematical model to describe the migration of dried blood on a nail bed? Questions, questions . . .

Hey BooBoo!

I’ve written a few posts, and posted more than a few videos on social media, about the bears here in Asheville. We see them fairly frequently. I have two animal cameras that periodically catch the bears on their journeys through our yard, or on their side trips up to the front porch, where they feast on birdseed and hummingbird syrup. In reviewing these videos, I conclude that we see the bears most frequently in October.

A colleague at work noted the other day that the bears are currently in a period of hyperphagia. Yes, I had to look that up, too. Here is what some guy who goes by the initials “A. I.” said on the internet: “Hyperphagia is the extreme and continuous hunger that bears experience in late summer and fall to prepare for winter hibernation. During this period, a bear's biological clock drives a feeding frenzy to consume and store enough fat to survive for months without food or water. The term combines hyper (over) and phagia (eating) to describe this critical survival mechanism.” My colleague at work says that during this time the bears will feed up to 20 hours per day, and put on an additional 20 – 100% of their body weight. (She added, “I can relate.”)

Because of Kathy’s knee, I have inherited the task of taking Lucy on a daily walk, but because I am still working, I take that walk around six in the morning, while it is still dark. (There are a lot of commas in that sentence. Should I have broken it into two sentences? Inquiring minds want to know.) The other morning, while walking Lucy, I heard a loud “pop” near a house on my right, the sound of a small limb snapping. I fished a tactical flashlight out of my pocket and swept the general area. Sure enough, there he was: a pretty good-sized bear up near a neighbor’s house, giving me the evil eye. We kept on trucking.

I always thought, like Mr. A. I., that bears hibernate in the winter. Recently, however, I was introduced to “torpor,” a word indicating reduced body temperature and reduced metabolic activity. A long period of torpor is often referred to as “hibernation” if it occurs in the winter. I wonder, though, if our bears here actually hibernate. A few years ago, in a nicely wooded portion of the UNC-Asheville campus, the campus police fenced off a section of the wood because a bear was sitting there, upright and motionless. The bear was there all winter, an attraction for curious humans. I think of hibernation as a bear curled up in a cave, not sitting upright and motionless out in the open. To my mind, that bear was in torpor.

It may have something to do with temperature. Back in the ‘80s, when I lived in the mountains of Virginia, the locals gave me a rule of thumb regarding when it was safe to assume that the poisonous snakes were hibernating: there had to be five consecutive days of temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I think we had such a stretch of weather in December of 2022, but I don’t think we’ve had a stretch of weather like that since then. Maybe temperature creates the difference between hibernation and torpor.

At any rate, I look forward to new bear videos next month.

Crickets

Even though I walk Lucy in the dark, I am aware of the animals around me. Yesterday morning I was serenaded by an owl. It might have been an Eastern Screech Owl. On the other hand, it might not have been so. I mentioned the bear. I cannot identify all the small creatures that cause the bushes and hedges to move when I walk past. And occasionally a human engaged in the torturous habit of running will cross my path.

The leaves have been falling for awhile, but these are not the colorful leaves. They remind me of the premature falling leaves I used to see in Georgia when the summer was dry. Our summer was anything but dry, so I do not know why these leaves are falling now. They haven’t changed colors yet.

But a sure sign, an even more sure sign than falling leaves, that summer is over and fall is here, is the sound of crickets invading the garage, and ultimately, the house. The crickets have been making an unholy racket for a couple of weeks now. I am sure that, at present, they have only invaded the garage. I am also sure that they will eventually make their way into the house. At that point I will engage in chemical warfare. I can’t take that noise year round.

I am writing this about three days before the autumnal equinox, the official beginning of the fall season. Most people I know wax poetic about fall, claiming it is their favorite season. I disagree. Give me summer anytime. In fact, the reason why I enjoy summer so much is immortalized in one of the few poems I remember:

Spring has sprung,

Fall has fell,

Summer’s here

And it’s hot as hell!

Happy fall, y’all!