Wild Wednesday ~ Browntail Moth

This might be as close to a PSA as I come with this blog. First, the saga: Saturday evening, I took a walk to the end of our driveway and back, as I often do several times a day. I'd heard some peeping sounds in the birdhouse where swallows make their home, and I made a detour to check out the box, squeezing between a pin oak and an apple tree, both with lots of low leafy branches, on my way there. About halfway home, I felt a stinging sensation on my neck. Assuming the noseeums, which had been out in force earlier in the week, were back at it, I brushed and slapped at the stinging spot, which seemed to move around and grow worse. Back at the house, I started to rub an after-bite stick on the spots that stung, but rather than soothing, the minty ointment intensified the stinging sensation. Then I noticed a small, brown, fuzzy caterpillar on my shoulder. I ran outside, brushed it onto the ground, and smashed it with a rock (I said "I'm sorry" to it as I did so; it should be noted that the caterpillar did not apologize to me). Then I ran in, shouted to C to look up browntail moth, and jumped into the shower, where I attacked the area with soap and water. By the time I got out of the shower, swollen red welts covered my neck and shoulder from sternum to nape. Meanwhile, C found a picture of the browntail moth larva online, and it looked roughly like me attacker, but a quick scan through the literature didn't offer much in the way of treatment advice, so I took a massive dose of Benadryl and another antihistamine we had leftover from one of the kids' rash episodes, and went to bed.

The next day, I posted a picture of my leprous skin on Facebook with a warning that the caterpillars had moved inland. My field guide describes the moths' range as "presently dunes, coastal strand communities, and adjacent woodlands from Maine to Cape Cod." Last I'd heard about the moths, was when M was a baby, 15 years ago, and I was strongly advised against taking him into a state park near the coast. But as advice and consolation came in from friends, I realized that they had invaded much of Central Maine this summer. I also realized there's not much you can do about them. Again with the field guide: "Its short, deciduous setae (or spicules) [i.e., "hairs"], tightly packed into the rusty brown tufts over the dorsum, are highly irritating to most people and produce pronounced dermatological reactions if numbers of them get embedded in the skin." Yeah, no kidding. It's not only close and intimate contact with the caterpillar that's a problem, but the setae can become airborne and get you as you walk around (I believe this happens when they pupate and shed the old skin). They like all woody plants, but prefer apple and cherry trees as well as beech and oak—all of which abound on our property. The thing to do, apparently, is to look for the webs in the winter and early spring, snip them off, and drop them in soapy water. Too late for that this year.

This summer, I have had a neck covered in blackfly bites, an imbedded tick, clusters of bites from noseeums that somehow found their way inside my pajamas, as well as several dozen mosquito bites, and a small patch of poison ivy. Not one of these irritants, however, has deterred me from going outside. After the browntail moth incident, however, not only did I want to stay inside, I was ready to burn down our entire 15 acres. Every time I stepped out, I got goosebumps (which, of course made my rash hurt more, as each hair follicle stood on end, tugging at the stinging, embedded setae) and I cringed away from all vegetation. Over the course of days, however, I started going out, almost as usual (though not stepping off our driveway) and today, I did a visual survey of our pin oak, looking for evidence of brown tailmoth larvae. This is the only caterpillar I found, and I wasn't entirely sure it was the offending specimen (I could have brushed my skin against it as a test, but I'm not that dedicated to science) until I enlarged the photo and saw the two indicative orange dots at the back end (they really weren't that visible at normal size, and they're this caterpillar's most distinctive feature).



As a PSA, this is not very helpful, since I have no idea what to do about the caterpillars or about going outside without getting a "pronounced dermatological reaction."A Tyvek suit, perhaps? One information sheet recommend long sleeves, long pants, tight collar, hat, polyester fabric (apparently less prone to the setae attaching than cotton). But the whole point of summer is to be able to go outside not suited up for an Arctic expedition! As far as treating the rash, among the various remedies people suggested was scrubbing the affected area with a brush. After reading this, I jumped in the shower, and scoured my neck with an exfoliating face wash and repeated the procedure the next morning. This helped immensely, and when a few more spots sprang up on my wrist, I went at them with a nail brush with the result of almost immediate relief. C, who had a small patch on his lower arm, remarked how satisfying this remedy is, when it's what you most want to do to a rash anyway, but are usually not allowed to do.

Update: More information about the caterpillars' lifecycle and marginally useful treatment info here.

Wild Wednesday ~ Early September

Despite our relatively dry weather (not counting last night's deluge), there's a lot of mushroom fruiting going on out there.


I'm not even going to try to pretend to i.d. them, though.

I took a mushroom class a couple of years ago, but it would take a lot more than an evening lecture to learn this complex kingdom.

For now, I'll just appreciate their interesting colors and shapes.

I don't have a lot of interesting new flowers to share with you today, but I saw this guy growing in our dry river bed and thought it might be a hemlock of some time, but it turns out it's water parsnip (Sium suave).

Also near the river I found this:

A rodent skeleton of some kind, almost completely cleaned and desiccated. I'm not sure what it is--too big for a mouse or vole. Maybe a chipmunk or flying squirrel? It's tail wasn't bushy, but most of the hair was gone from the rest of its body as well. It looked like its spine had been severed, but i wonder what (large animal) would have eaten it, picking its bones so clean but leaving it intact. Maybe it fell from a tree. If I was a real naturalist, I would have brought it home for a specimen, but I left it where I found it.

Meanwhile, the insects are very busy, including great big darner dragonflies that course over the fields in the early evening, and this more diminutive, and sedate, meadowhawk.

I walked through our back field last week, and it was literally humming with activity--bees, flies, grasshoppers, wasps, cicadas, all singing their busy, end of summer songs.

It occurred to me that someone with a bee phobia might freak out a little, walking among such buzzing,

But I didn't bother the bees, and they didn't bother me.

I mostly just felt happy about all the good pollinating going on around me, and the health and well-being of so many wild pollinators here in my corner of the world.

I also spied this caterpillar on an aster stem. Z got me a caterpillar field guide for my birthday and this was my first chance to use it. Fortunately, this guy had some very distinctive markings and I quickly found that it was a brown-hooded owlet (Cucullia convexipennis), which grows into a much less interesting-looking moth.

Finally, frogs have been on the move, hopping out of the way of my feet as I walk in the woods, or along the river and pond. But this pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris) sat nice and still for me to snap its photo and I finally sat down to learn the difference between it and the northern leopard frog (Lithobates pipiens).

The leopard frog is usually green (though it has a brown phase), while the pickerel is coppery brown. The leopard's spots are more rounded while the pickerel's are more square and arranged in two neat rows down the back (as you can see below), while the leopard's are more randomly arranged. Finally, the ace in the hole is that the pickerel has bright orange-yellow coloring under its hind legs. I didn't pick this one up to check, but based on the other characteristics, I'm going with pickerel.

What's wild in your neck of the woods this week?

June Notes & Musings

1.  Summer came suddenly yesterday (ya know, on the summer solstice), with temps going from 60s during the day and 40s (brrr) at night to the 90s with Iowa-like humidity and hazy ozoney air. Hello summer!

2. E found this moth on the sunroom door this a.m.:

I believe it's a rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda) of the Saturnidae family. At first I thought it was the primrose moth, which I often find (aptly enough) hiding inside the closed blossoms of the evening primrose. But I that has a different pattern of coloration, and a different body shape, and it's in the Noctuidae family. The sherbet pink and yellow are the same, though. Interesting example of convergent evolution, doncha think? And just plain pretty (we moved it to a less sun-baked location after its photo shoot).

3. I finally finished reading Harry Potter #7 to E and Z last week. We started the series back in September (with a few side forays into the Wind in the Willows and the Magic Treehouse, among others)!! So what did they want to do immediately? Start Harry Potter #1 all over again!!!!! It has provided an interesting opportunity to discuss foreshadowing with M. Like when Hagrid says you'd have to be mad to rob Gringott's. M claims that JK Rowling didn't know what was going to happen at the end when she started (though I heard that she'd had it planned out from the beginning). Regardless of what she knew and when she knew it, it begs the question: is foreshadowing only foreshadowing if the author plans it that way? Or is there serendipitous foreshadowing (or more likely, unconscious foreshadowing)? I only write short stories, which don't provide a lot of room for foreshadowing, which is a good thing, because that would only provide one more opportunity to do something badly.

4. Baseball is finally over!! I would be hooting and hollering, but M's team lost the second playoff game last night and my normally stoic boy spent the rest of the night sobbing. I did my best to hold his sadness and disappointment for him, even though he just wanted me to go away. I think he was probably mostly upset about striking out three times and being tagged out on first the one time he hit. Maybe also about being sidelined from pitching for the most of the season. Maybe that's just me projecting. Anyway, I tried to remind him that "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, as long as you tried your hardest and had a good time," which has been my mantra since Farm League. Of course, I could point the finger of his misery (or his desire to wallow in it) directly back at myself, because just hours earlier I received an email from a former professor who is at Rio+20, where he ran into an old friend of mine, whom I have lost touch with, mainly because hearing from her was terrible for my self-esteem: she was always doing something amazing with her life, and it always reminded me that I was not quite measuring up to my expectations for where and who I wanted to be (this is totally my issue, not hers, and it's not that I cut off contact her because of this, but I've never gone to great lengths to maintain contact because of this). Anyway, hearing that she's in the midst of the climate talks (even if everyone thinks they'll go nowhere), while I'm at the lowest ebb of my not particularly illustrious career turned my mood very sour for the rest of the evening. So perhaps I should remind myself that it doesn't matter whether you are successful, as long as you try your hardest and have a good time (hmm...cold comfort).

5. After I finished/gave up on comforting M and crawled into bed, I heard a noise outside that sounded like someone (thing) moving rocks. Then I heard peeping/cheeping like chickens. At 9:30 p.m., I had the crazy thought that the two or three chickens whose carcasses did not seem to be among the fallen had somehow hidden out in the woods for a whole week and now were home looking for dinner. I went out on the deck and some large animal (dark, but short. A fisher perhaps?) slunk away and the peeping became louder and more insistent. I called C (who was at his radio show--don't ask) to see if he bought more chickens (even though we had agreed to wait until we had a safer coop) and he said his mother had dropped them by earlier. I looked into the mobile coop and saw chicks running around on the bare ground cheeping loudly. Even though it was a hot night, they were probably cold with no bedding and no light. Not to mention scared sh*tless by the big hairy thing trying to eat them. I spent the next hour outside in the dark with mosquitoes dive-bombing me, trying to coax seven chicks (apparently there had been ten originally) out from under the extremely heavy chicken ark through a gap in the wire fencing. I was not worried about the predator--I was cursing loudly enough to scare away a pride of lions. Sticking my head and arms into this coop--that was still splattered with blood and strewn with feathers (and probably chicken bits that I missed when burying the corpses) by the very dim wind-up flashlight was the last thing I wanted to be doing at 10 p.m. C arranged for his mother to come and get the chicks today, so that we can replenish our flock at the right time, on our own terms--when we have a proper coop that will not serve as a buffet table to hungry predators, and after we've taken the time to mourn our first beloved flock. I don't really think the best response to loss is to get a replacement, and I don't want my kids to grow up seeing animals as disposable, even if they are just chickens.