In this Issue
August 2005

FIN, FUR & FEATHERS
Summertime musings
By John T. O'Leary, Jr.

John T. O'Leary, Jr.

Summer is upon us. The weather alternating between hot and wet has the gardens making up for lost time. Mother Nature’s berry bushes and fruit and nut trees are set to produce an abundant crop for her birds and critters. The apple trees out back that always seem to drop some fruit early are doing so, but the resident doe deer and her young haven’t shown up to take advantage of this early bounty as they usually do, yet. A huge woodchuck, probably the old boar we’ve seen for the last few years, is living under the wooden swing house, according to the dogs. Rabbits are pruning the pepper plants so the old chuck is safe for now. Slugs are in every nook and cranny. One I have a hard time figuring out showed up in the bottom of a water scoop I fashioned from a gallon plastic milk jug, floating in a five gallon bucket full of water. I asked the resident frog that is Lois’s pet how he figured it happened, but he was speechless. This bullfrog evidently enjoys the pool atmosphere and people, and for this he keeps the pool free of waterboatmen and other insects, as well as patrolling the garden adjacent to the pool for lunch. He’ll come over for a head rubbing and sit on your hand.

Some does and their young were seen in hayfields locally, confirming suspicions that there are a lot of deer nearby. Hay cutting has been a little behind schedule, and the harvest was probably a little beyond mature, but you have to have the weather to cut, windrow (dry), bale, and store, or you put up wet hay, and that is not good. Mold, rot, and even spontaneous combustion can result. Good luck to the farmers. I think they’ll get three cuttings in anyway.

A friend claims three hen turkeys and 32 poults are visiting his bird feeders. One morning, his housecat was outside when the turkeys moved in, and predictably, bedlam ensued. The cat’s rush put hens and poults into his berry bushes and dwarf fruit trees. Some ran and hid in the squash and cucumber vines. Kitty got nothing for his efforts but a scolding and some garage time. Paul, on the other hand, had a lot of plants to re-tie and vines to sort out. He has a doe and twin fawns that are daily visitors.

I hate to admit that I haven’t been fishing in a month, but that’ll change soon, now that domestic chores are more predictable. In late June, there were still some bass on their spawning beds. This is about the time the lakes commission copper sulphated North Pond. This is the same chemical that the state uses in the brooks feeding Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs to kill smelt eggs, and keep the smelt population from growing to its former numbers, which clogged outlet screens and interfered with water distribution. Whether the bass and other fish eggs have been affected by this copper treatment, only time will tell. It won’t show as a fish kill, just a lack of food for the predators for now, and a lack of breeding fish a few years down the road. I’ll be the first to admit a 10-20 percent reduction in the weeds at North Pond would be a benefit to all concerned, knowing that it is a temporary fix, but what price are we willing to pay in dollars and fish?

• • • • •

The following few paragraphs were cropped from the July article by the editors, seeing as I was being long-winded.

If it were not for Terry Hanson and the Spencer Sportsman’s Club, there would be no northern pike program in Massachusetts. If it were not for the Mass. Conservation Alliance, the state would have lost millions of federal dollars per year for the last several years when the governor wanted to put dedicated Fish & Wildlife funds into the general accounts, and with G.O.A.L. and the MCA’s help recently, more millions were rescued from the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Act funds. The League is part of all this. We will lead the fight to make the state’s environmental arms strong and preserve the sporting heritage in this state for years to come. We will succeed.

• • • • •

Imagine being on North Pond just after sunset. The breeze has died, and the water lies like black silk around you. The quiet is broken only by the sound of your spinnerbait purring along in the surface film, when suddenly a huge hump bulges in the water 6 feet from the lure and arrows straight for it. The rod is nearly torn from your grasp—or—South Pond lies flat in the cool gloom of an overcast evening. Fifteen feet below the surface and a ways back from the boat, a miniature brown trout imitation is attached to the ring eye with a loop knot in the fluorocarbon leader about twice as thick as a human hair, all of these measures designed to give the fraud maximum wiggle. The boat is going side to side over the channel, letting the slight current work the lure. And in the dark, the rod is whipped down nearly to the water’s surface, and the reel sings its song.

Be there.

Read previous columns by John T. O'Leary, Jr.