The bees are disappearing, but at least the ticks are increasing.
And in case you want to turn a tick into a pet, I warn you, they are very affectionate.
Is this history? To say that human and animal histories are intertwined is obvious. Here are some of the animals that made big news here long ago and today:
Buffalo, red wolf, beetle, pig; panther, rattle, moose, wild dog; coyote, mussel, trout, flying squirrel; woolly adelgid, dove, cat, owl; hellbender, beaver, bee, bat, bear; and armadillo, deer, monarch, heron; and ditto species found on farms, and new finds, such as the giant earthworm.
Looking over my shoulder
One of the most popular columns to ever appear in this space was one on the panther, locally, the ‘painter’, taxonomically the eastern puma.
I quoted a 2001 Science News report that quoted Wib Owen of the NC Division of Wildlife Management as saying he’s never seen one in 22 years. Fred Bonner, editor of “Carolina Adventure,” said, “The panther is the wildlife equivalent of a UFO or Loch Ness monster.”
Eyewitness readers disagreed.
It reminds us of the sightings of bobcats in the news, and it reminds me of the time 13 years ago when I went to Jupiter on an assignment and came across a fallen bobcat hanging from the rafter of an auto repair shop.
Certain creatures fare badly in the brave new world; others thrive because they can adapt to new food supplies and means of killing.
If the extinction and extinction of species like the passenger pigeon, cougar, and buffalo seems like ancient history, history must be picking up speed as I can look back on my few decades in Western North Carolina and feel that eras are passing.
Take the trout
I remember watching the lake at Grandfather Mountain with the late Hugh Morton and hearing him talk about increasing climate change and the fate of trout, which are unable to survive in water above a certain temperature.
Trout has had other problems over the years.
In the early 20th century, logging increased water temperatures by removing shade trees, clogged spawning grounds with sediment, and dislodged habitats.
The brown trout went upstream. Lumberjacks filled the streams with trout – not a brook, but rainbow and brown.
“The rainbows proved incredibly popular as game fish and were successful in taking over former streams,” wrote Rose Houk in “Great Smokies National Park: A Natural History Guide.” “But the fish played a few tricks with the biologists.”
Rainbow trout hatch later than the stream, but get bigger. They took over from the natives. In 1976, the Park Service began electro-stunning rainbows and carrying them downstream along built barriers.
That didn’t quite work out. In 2008, park officials added Antimycin to trout streams, killing rainbow and brown trout; and then followed with an antidote before reintroducing the native fish.
This is not to say that we should not care about the newcomer trout. In places where trout continued to thrive, such as Abrams Creek, they have disappeared.
“There is a striking coincidence,” writes Jim Casada in “Fly Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” between that phenomenon and “the reintroduction of otters. … The preferred habitat and habits of harbor porpoises make them more vulnerable to otters than is the case.” is with rainbows and specks.”
If fish could talk.
Talking about talking
According to Cherokee lore, animals once spoke.
“In the old days, the animals, birds, fish, insects and plants could all talk, and they and the people lived together in peace and friendship,” begins the Cherokee myth, “The Origin of Disease and Medicine.”
Humans, however overcrowded, developed dishonest weapons and, according to the deer, stopped praying for forgiveness before killing game animals.
That was part of the deal, as evidenced by the myth, “The Origin of the Bears.”
The first bears – people who resisted urban life and advocated for life in the forest – said when they left their settlement and transformed into their new forms (and I paraphrase):
“Hey folks, life in the woods is easier. Stay in your villages if you like, and if you ever starve, say the holy words and we’ll sacrifice one of our kind.’
code
If you look to the historic Cherokee for a guide, history can be seen as a dynamic interplay of the sacred and the profane. Both tendencies are at work today.
Author Ron Rash, in his essay, “Fishing Lessons,” published in “Garden and Gun,” reveals an experience he had as a 14-year-old, hunting trout along Goshen Creek in Watauga County.
“The prettiest” trout, found once you climbed along the rainbow trout water, was the brook, “their flanks studded with olive, gold, and red – dorsal fins as orange as fireweed. As I got older, I felt guilty that I them from the creek to eat. By my teens I didn’t do that anymore.”
Yet in our modern morality narrative we also see how bees will not pollinate flowers; bats do not eat insects; the red wolf, rattlesnake, and moose won’t tell us if they’re thankful they got a spot on the ark; and I have resorted to irony and sarcasm in my history article.
Rob Neufeld wrote the weekly “A Visit to Our Past” column for the Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column was originally published on August 26, 2013.