1. Honey
At one time, I had a record album of Bobby Goldsboro’s greatest hits. The LP is gone but I copied it to a cassette. Many of the songs were sad, including “Honey,” which was a number one hit, selling a million copies. This chapter is about that sweet substance, starting with an animal that loves that sticky stuff.
Looking at him you’d think Stoffel would make a great pet. Then he opens his mouth. The teeth of this honey badger look vicious. Stoffel isn’t really a badger, but a weasel, Mellivora capensis. He loves honey and belongs to the same family as badgers: Mustelidae. Otters, minks and wolverines are all relatives. Honey badgers can be found in India, Southwest Asia and Africa. Stoffel is fearless and such a great escape artist that he might put Dean Gunnarson to shame. Stossel even inspired a 2011 YouTube video, Honey Badger Don’t Care, which received more than 60 million views. He was the star of that production. There are many videos of those critters, and he probably isn’t in all of them.
Stoffel’s residence is in Kruger National Park in northeastern South Africa. Instead of the word, fearless, perhaps a better description of this critter is ferocious. He’ll tangle with any animal in the jungle, but probably not an elephant. Stoffel isn’t afraid of lions, even though the latter could easily end a honey badger’s life. In the process, the king of the jungle would receive quite a beating. The lion would just back off from Stoffel, especially hearing his roar and seeing those powerful teeth. The little guy also has terrifying claws. Stoffel has another challenge from the hyena, but most will move away from this weasel and depart. Even with a few accomplices, a group of hyenas will usually retreat.
Snakes hardly bother Stoffel, even poisonous ones sinking their fangs into him. The weasel even takes the crawling critter home for dinner, but only one of the animals remains in sight after dessert. Stoffel may have to overcome the poison in his body, so he won’t be roaming far and wide until he recovers, which he does. The poison he accumulates may be just the immunization he needs, without the sting of the needle. As you can see, a honey badger is carnivorous and has few predators. He’s one tough dude.
Spotting a honey badger, you might think it’s a very large skunk, because of the white streak on top of his back and head. While the latter is also known as a polecat, the two animals have the common practice of perfuming the area but in no way is it a pleasant experience. It probably should be regulated. Stoffel and skunks may be half cousins once or twice removed, which is what you should do if spraying begins. The polecat has a weapon that humans and pets fear because of the problems of removal of the stench, which is just as difficult as it was for Jerry Seinfeld after his car was perfumed. The good that skunks do is remove grubs and they won’t bother you unless provoked, but then, you should run. Those honey badgers missing the characteristic skunk white are of the Cottoni subspecies.
Photographing Stoffel is a challenge since he’s always on the go, probably a type A. Honey badgers and humans seem to keep their distance, the former figuring the woman with the camera has a gun hidden somewhere. At the Maholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Kruger Park, conservationist Brian Jones cares for wounded weasels and rehabilitates them. He wonders whether there is any enclosure that can fence Stoffel in. His attempt at confinement consists of cement blocks, but the trees inside it offer a way out for the captive. Stoffel bends them and crawls out on them.
Jones removes all but one of the trees, which is in the middle of the pen. Stoffel then breaks off the branches and constructs an escape ladder. There’s no stopping him. He always finds a way out. Putting an electrified fence seems to be the next step, but Jones doesn’t want to harm the guy, who is some smart animal. His problem solving ability is amazing. I need not remind you that those scary looking claws can dig underneath and provide an escape. Even if you built a cement block enclosure with a concrete floor and cover that Stoffel couldn’t get through, he’d probably find a jackhammer and discover freedom.
At a lodge in the park, zoologist Low de Vries does a night surveillance of honey badgers and other animals scavenging for food at the dump. Grownups as well as pups, who stay with their mother for two years, are on the scene. Porcupines are also dumpster divers, but no challenge for the honey badgers. The others are discouraged when the mother badger lets loose her perfume. Low de Vries is far removed but still affected by the stench. Even entering his car doesn’t help much.
In a lodge in the park, beekeeper Guy Stubbs has the assignment of keeping honey badgers away from their love, that golden substance. He works on a few ideas and some fail, but he tries again. This time Stoffel is stifled. However, his girlfriend, Hammy, looks like she is on her way to the honey, which she soon reaches. Then Stoffel joins her. In getting to the treasure, the pair is stung repeatedly, but they’ll just sleep off the hundreds of stings. There’s no need for any immunization now.
It was a similar honey harvest that resulted in Stoffel having 300 stings and in need of rescue, which Brian did. The honey badger was in distress but was relieved when Jones calmed him down with Hammy. You can see more about Stoffel and his friends on the PBS Nature special, Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem.
If you’ve seen the early episodes of Saturday Night Live, you may be familiar with John Belushi and the wolverine. Not only was this skit on the premiere performance of the show, it was the very first one. After it ended, Chevy Chase appeared in the scene with the words, Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night. That was on October 11, 1975, and the program was officially, NBC’s Saturday Night, eventually becoming Saturday Night Live. Chase didn’t fall down on that first show, which would come later. Getting back to the wolverine and John, who played an individual learning English, he repeated whatever his teacher said, portrayed by Michael O’Donoghue. This included the line: I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverine. As you can guess, the bit is on the Internet. To find it, search for Belushi and the wolverine.
Wolverines may be more ferocious than honey badgers since they’re much larger. Also known as carjarou, skunk bear and glutton, the wolverine is a distant cousin of Stoffel and Hammy, especially due to where he resides – northern Canada, Siberia, Alaska and northern Europe. A few years ago, a few were seen near Lake Tahoe and are known to be in Michigan. A solitary member of the Mustelidae family, wolverines like the cold, unlike the honey badger, who’d rather be in Africa, where it’s warmer. I think the moniker, glutton, is unjustified as wolverines can’t find that much food where they reside to ever have lavish banquets.
Carjarou manage the extreme cold because of their thick fur. Their legs may be short, but the paws – similar to that of honey badgers – allow them fast movement through the tundra. The quicker you move, the warmer you stay. If they were gluttons, they could never employ such quick movement. These animals aren’t dumb. Approaching the size of a Belgian sheepdog, the male wolverine is almost a third larger than the female of the species and can weigh as much as 70 pounds. The only family member that’s larger is the otter. Like the skunk, these creatures can liven up the air with an unbelievable stench, which they utilize for protection. They have few predators, but wolverines ignore the warning to pick on some animal of their own size, which doesn’t worry them. They don’t mind if their dinner is still in motion. Some of supper choices are elk, adult deer, porcupines, rabbits, beavers and moose. They must call in other relatives to share the moose. Carjarou probably don’t care for bear meat but will stand up to bears and wolves to defend the carrion the wolverine acquired. Their diet can be dead, alive or frozen. To complete their food pyramid, these fearless animals also feast on the eggs of birds as well as on berries, the larvae of insects, seeds and roots.
Like the honey badger, wolverines move fast and avoid being seen. No terrain is an obstacle to them, even steep cliffs, and they don’t need carabiners and pitons. They cover an area of about 500 square miles, sharing it with their relatives – but probably not third cousins. Because of their elusiveness, not many researchers study them. They try anyway and if they have any luck, their observations are from a distance. Doug Chadwick has been a fan of them for years, observing them in the wild. He comments: Like most of the guys on the project, what I really want to do is just be a wolverine. I want to go where I want to go, do what I want to do, bite whom I want to bite, and climb what I want to climb. Apparently he’s not opposed to uncooked frozen food.
Filmmaker Steve Kroschel has spent a quarter of a century pursuing wolverines. Like the care and concern of Brian Jones for honey badgers, Steve works with injured as well as abandoned wolverines in Alaska. Kroschel has raised a pair of orphans since they were born and it hasn’t been easy. Nonetheless, he manages because of his devotion to the two as a surrogate parent. There aren’t many people in the world who perform this generous act. There’s more information at his web site, www.kroschelfilms.com.
You can also watch the PBS Nature special, Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom, which aired in November 2010.
Every letter in the word, wolves, can be found in the word, wolverines, but they’re not exactly related. Coywolves evolved when coyotes and wolves started dating, and it wasn’t through Facebook. They can be found in eastern North America and identified as red wolves, eastern coyotes or eastern wolves. Throwing in foxes, these species are probably all distant cousins in some way. There’s another animal that’s a more obvious relation, but that’s for later. Many of these species have gotten a bad wrap, as witnessed by the 1983 movie, Never Cry Wolf. There the wolves were blamed for killing off the caribou herds, when they were just going after the weakest of the herds and thinning them out. The caribou probably would have died anyway, so this action actually strengthened the herd. Wolves do the same with other animals, specifically sheep. If you haven’t seen the flick, I highly recommend it. It’s a humorous, environmental motion picture that’s insightful and worth a few stars. Tyler, the two-legged scientist played by Charles Martin Smith, was a true hero and friend of the earth – except for his culinary meal choices. However, we can excuse him since he was running out of food. His scene underwater was scary, but his beverage choice was all right.
Many farmers and hunters think that predators are harmful to cows and sheep, but ridding a region of wolves can be more of a detriment as has been recently shown. Their absence may lead to a preponderance of some species that devour plants and shrubs that cows may feed on. The result is beef that may not be grass fed and unhealthy for human consumption. In the ecosystem, predators are needed for so many reasons – this includes the two-legged kind.
Packs of wolves once could be found from the tundra of Alaska to as far south as Mexico. By the early 1960s, habitat loss and extermination changed that in most of North America. In the early 1970s, the Rocky Mountain wolf entered the list of endangered species and Greater Yellowstone became one of three recovery areas. In the mid 1990s, over 40 wolves from Montana and Canada were introduced into the national park, which became a wolf research area. The animals have spread through Yellowstone and continue to help the ecosystem.
Allen Boone encountered an animal that most people avoid. Zephyr was a skunk that lived by day in the woods, so he wouldn’t be shot and then roamed the neighborhood at night for gourmet food. The others couldn’t get him because he was smart and Boone befriended him. You have to unless you don’t mind baths of tomato juice. Allen respected him so much that Zephyr went through the garbage with the human close by and then made himself at home within a few feet of Boone. It continued when Zephyr introduced his family to Allen.
This impressed him deeply. When he went to a meeting in Los Angeles on human relationships, he offered the suggestion that these connections should not be limited to humans. The subject of skunks came up, but many didn’t feel the same way about them as Boone. One dissenter raved on about skunks’ nuisance capabilities and left snorting. He was a lawyer, but a few days afterwards apologized to Allen after a bit of research, saying, I know relatively few humans that I consider fit to be called skunks.
Bill Bezanson spent his early life on a farm in Romeo, Michigan, in the middle of the twentieth century. There probably weren’t any wolverines or honey badgers on the property but maybe some wolves. The family had two barns so Bill was allowed to use part of one for rescuing animals. He cared for foxes, possums and even a skunk – he didn’t douse Bill since he was smart. Bill also helped a raccoon, whose mom was smacked by a car. His siblings didn’t make it, but Pierre LaPoop did, named by Bill’s grandmother.
Pierre was kind, devoted and loved by Bill. They even played together, even though Pierre was wild. The mischievous animal could fish without a pole, shuck ears of corn, ransack garbage and open doors without a key. Once when the family came home, Pierre was tossing plates in the kitchen. He thought he was a juggler. He also washed his hands a lot in the rain barrels. Seeing this, Bill’s dad threw him into his truck and drove him a couple dozen miles away, where he left him.
A few weeks later, Bill and his father were fishing when Bill saw a raccoon up a tree and called out, Pierre, is that you? The animal came down and showed his affection to the lad. Bill’s dad accepted Pierre back into the homestead since he didn’t have funds for a plane ticket.
LaPoop grew up and departed. He found a wife through a dating service and the pair had four little ones. Bill and his dad found this out because Pierre brought his brood back to show them. Father and son held each young raccoon. When done, the family of raccoons left and moved into the woods. Pierre had just come to say good-bye.
I’ll have more to say about my garden in Elma. I had two raccoon encounters, though I didn’t see any of them on either occasion. The first occurred in Plainville, just outside of Syracuse around the time of my summer corn roast. I grew quite a few vegetables, so the day before the event I went to see if the corn would be ready. It looked real good. The day of the party I saw quite a few of the corn stalks on the ground. The raccoons had beaten me to the punch. Fortunately they left some so I didn’t have to buy any that day. The previous year I didn’t experience that problem because the farmers planted feed corn all around me, something that wasn’t done the year of the raccoon raid.
A few years after that in another suburb outside Buffalo, I couldn’t grow corn unless I wanted to feed the wildlife. For that Saturday corn roast I bought corn at a farm stand – it was out of this world, as always. After people had eaten, the garbage bags were filled and I had to remove it to the recycling / landfill place, which wouldn’t be open until Tuesday. I placed the bags inside a six-foot high area surrounded by a chain line fence. Before long, some raccoons got to the refuse after hopping the fence.
Just as most people see Pierre, his relatives and my visitors as an annoyance, many feel the same way about squirrels. In late spring of 2014, I was about to watch a PBS Nature special about pelicans in the outback, but realized that I had already viewed it. Instead I watched a The Nature of Things feature on the CBC. It covered squirrels: red, brown and gray ones. The program began with a guy who was set to nuke their neighborhood as he was fed up with the critters. I’ll say more about him in a while.
Scientists had a project to determine if squirrels were smart enough to find the acorns they buried. I’m not sure where I came up with the idea that those critters buried the nuts so they could dig them up when they were hungry months later. This is not the case as squirrels have to stuff themselves to survive the winter – thus they do the burying and then the finding and eating within a short span. Another consideration is that even with a shovel, it’s hard to dig up frozen ground.
The first task of the experiment involved planting tracking devices in the acorns. Next a single squirrel – let’s call him Sam – had to take the bait. That is, he had to bury a few of the doctored acorns. He was then captured and moved to another place for a few days. With him away, observers checked to see if other squirrels would dig up the bounty, but none did. Either it was out of respect or they had their own cache to uproot. It should be noted that when Sam did the initial burying, he may have done some pretend digging and then placed the acorn in a different spot underground. This wouldn’t be a problem for the observers.
When Sam came back, he went straight to work and located the buried acorns. This he did by triangular tracking, combining mathematics and the location of objects in the surrounding area to reach the nuts. Sam was one smart squirrel. He wouldn’t starve over the winter.
Squirrels have such finesse among the trees, gliding from one branch to another. If it looks as though they are flying, that’s because they are. You may think that these creatures ascend the tree by moving up it. In essence, they remove both sets of legs at once and fly a short distance. All along we thought differently about what they do.
Red squirrels may be predominant in one area, but not gray ones. The latter could be close by, though. Surprisingly this results because of the humans and the way they live. Think of the fear of one type of squirrel, which may not be sensed by another. So if a red squirrel doesn’t worry about howling canines while a gray squirrel does, the environment changes accordingly.
In England, red squirrels and gray squirrels don’t co-exist together because the latter carry a virus that kills off the red squirrels. One solution may be to kill off the gray ones, but it’s rather cruel. One scientist is working on creating a vaccine to protect those in danger of the virus. This is a much better option. Humans who brought the squirrels from America are to be blamed for the problem.
When I lived in Elma a dozen years ago, I had to protect my garden from deer, raccoons and woodchucks, which I somehow managed. I was fortunate to not be bothered by squirrels since they could easily hop any fence. A chain link fence wouldn’t stop them and the garden would have to be fenced in above and completely covered with chicken wire. I didn’t have fencing on the top, but there were squirrels around since I lived near plenty of trees. In the spring on my property and the empty lot next door, numerous saplings broke through the ground, including maples and oaks. The latter indicate that the squirrels around were planting acorns, but not retrieving all of the acorns. The squirrel could have had enough to eat or maybe a predator got him. There were more maples sprouting than oaks, but I surrounded the young plants with fencing to protect against deer, woodchucks and rabbits that would devour them otherwise.
Getting back to our avenging resident from a few paragraphs ago, he’s come to his senses. He figures the animals were here before him, so why not coexist. If his resident gray squirrels like some of his flowers, he can do without them, planting others that animals won’t touch.
Certain animals belong to different families, but they’re all rodents: gophers, beavers and woodchucks, who are also known as groundhogs, whistle pigs, or land-beavers. Of the lot, the beaver is the greatest friend of the environment, despite what many people think. Those that hate the animal want to hunt and kill that industrious creature because of the floods that he causes. These men with guns even resort to blowing up the animal’s dam. Others just bulldoze the dams. Much to their dismay, it would soon be rebuilt, even overnight and the destroyers would probably say, damn. At least the beaver didn’t mine their homes.
Those who don’t approve of the work of any beaver just don’t realize what he or she can do for areas where water is in short supply. For now, suppose the beaver’s name is Bucky. Researchers out west noted that a stream there was barely visible, maybe an inch deep. When Bucky came there and began his project, it wasn’t long before there were ponds with water five feet deep, lush growth and animal wildlife. This is exactly what the scientists wanted the animal to do.
As far as flooded areas or those about to be inundated with water, Bucky had to be persuaded to build dams in the appropriate places. One gentleman environmentalist tried a few things. With some effort and ingenuity, he managed to have Bucky build the needed structures and kept the water in check, without paying him. Bucky didn’t ask for supper breaks or benefits either. Had the Army Corps of Engineers been called in, local residents would have had their taxes increased.
Beavers – Castor fiber in Europe and Castor Canadensis in North America – have been around for four million years, and some of their relatives even before that. Living in the United States and Canada, they once numbered in the hundreds of millions, but more recently that has been reduced to about nine million. Hunting and trapping for their fir caused the decline. Canada is noted for its wilderness and yet these two efforts nearly made the beaver extinct. The beaver is the Canadian National symbol. I’m not sure why that is. Was it because of the furs or the environment?
It’s miraculous that they still inhabit the earth but that should be no surprise since my words on destroying their dams and fast reconstruction earlier illustrates their determination. They’re tenacious and tough as they come, having survived climatic and geologic changes over time.
Wherever beavers are active, you can find water. Even in periods of extreme drought, the species can change the landscape and bring the water by their activity. Scientific studies showed that with beavers, ponds had nine times more water area than those without them. Beavers once were a third of the size we see today, when they weighed about three pounds. There was one close to nine foot long. I wonder what he fed on – anything he wanted. If he battled the hunters and trappers, I wouldn’t place any bet on the latter.
Timber – truly a great name – was an injured one-year old given to the care of Michele Grant. Because beavers are family oriented, Michele wanted to provide love to him, but not too much so Timber could be released back into the wild. They touch noses as a sign of affection, which his caretaker experienced. Grant swam with him and his progress was slow, at first staying underwater for a few seconds and then a minute. This creature can be underwater for fifteen minutes at a time. Beavers are vegetarians, eating leaves and branches. Eventually Timber graduated to the latter and one day was gone. Michele searched for him without any luck and after a few weeks she found a beaver skull and was sad. A bit later she was at a neighbors pond when she saw Timber. He had survived and even had a wife and family. Because beavers are faithful, Timber never had to worry about alimony payments.
Beavers build winter residences – an elaborate underground network in the water of the pond. They store plenty of branches for the cold months and their residence for that time is more like a hotel, since other rodents join them and don’t pay any rent. They all exist in harmony. Beavers are foresters, felling trees for the dams they construct. I’ve never seen a beaver on the Ellicott Creek Trailway, but I’ve seen a stump without the rest of the tree confirming their presence. Beavers work in construction, but they don’t create subdivisions that displace wildlife. Lastly, they’re the greatest environmentalists of all the animals. You can read more about these amazing animals in Glynn Hood’s book, Beaver Manifesto. Another informative, entertaining beaver treatise about Archibald Belaney and Anahareo is the book, by Anahareo, Devil In Deerskins: My Life With Grey Owl. Archie is also known as Grey Owl.