Life In The Beaver Ponds

On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17^th, the average daily high temperature is 39° in our little corner of the world in northern New York.  However this year it was closer to 60° and a wonderful afternoon for an ATV riding opportunity to determine what the local beavers were doing.  In midafternoon I did just that.

Last fall Bucky and Eager, our resident pair from the big pond, ejected their offspring from the den.  One merely crossed the farm road to a smaller pond 20’ away.  Another relocated to a former drainage ditch across a small meadow from the big pond.  This later one I named Little Beaver in deference to his parents, and also as a namesake for the comic book character of my youth the young helper of Red Ryder.

On St. Pat’s Day I first stopped at the ditch Little Beaver dammed off last fall, and where he spent the winter in a bank den.  The ice has completely thawed from his running water ditch.  His dam is yet holding up in fine shape.  He built it well.  The branches and limbs he stored near his den last fall have all been stripped of their bark which was used as food through the winter.  As the ice melted and released the stripped branches from its icy hold they have floated with the slowly moving water to the dam area.  They will be used as future dam building material.  Nothing wasted in this small world.

I then proceeded to the area of the other two ponds.  The larger pond of Bucky and Eager is mostly frozen over as of yet, and may remain that way for a day or two.  The smaller pond of the two, on the south side of the road is ice free.  The runoff from the big pond is running through a sluice pipe into the smaller pond, and this water movement thawed the smaller pond sooner than the large one.

Although I notice the above water den of Bucky and Eager appears to be in good shape I have no knowledge of the bank den in the smaller pond, or if the kit remains in it.  I saw no evidence of life in that pond such as debarked branches as in Little Beaver’s ditch.

Equinoxes, Equiluxes, And St Patrick

An equinox is an exact point in time.  This Vernal, or Spring, Equinox is at 5:14 a.m. March 20^th.  It is the moment that the earth’s axis is tipped neither toward, nor away, from the sun. Equinox means equal night in Latin, or twelve hours of day or night.  This is actually a misnomer as an exact point in time can hardly be an entire day.

The day that the equinox happens is called an equilux.  However, for various reasons the length of the equilux day is actually not equal to the length of the night on that exact date.  One of those reasons deals with the bending of light rays coming from the sun by earth’s atmosphere.  Another is that the sun is a huge object.  The twelve hour day and/or night would have to start when the sun was at its mid-point on the horizon.  However daybreak happens when we first see the top of the sun on the horizon in the morning, and sunset is when we last see the top of the sun on the horizon in the evening.  Thus we have one diameter of the sun in addition to our twelve hour equilux day.  Actually, March 20, 2012, the Vernal Equinox, the day will be 12 hours and 9 minutes long, stretching from 7:03 in the morning to 7:12 in the evening in the northern states.  In the Carolinas the sun will rise a minute later, but set at the same time.

Due to the forgoing reasons the day closest to having an equal day and night will be Friday, March 17^th this spring.  As we all know, March 17^th is St. Patricks’s day, and so it be, Laddies and Lassies, that we shall all be wearing of the green when day and night equalize.

The shortest day of the year is the Winter Solstice which falls on December 21^st, while the longest will be June 20^th, the Summer Solstice.

Amerigo Vespucci

Today, Friday, March 9, 2011 is the 558^th anniversary of the birth of Amerigo Vespucci in Florence, Italy in 1454.  He learned business from Leonardo Medici of the Florence House of Medici.  In 1492, the year of Columbus’ search for a western route to Asia, Vespucci was dispatched to Cadiz, Spain to a branch office of Medici.  While there, he supplied Columbus with beef for one, or maybe two, of his seafaring searches for a new path to the Orient.

Between 1499 and 1502 Vespucci sailed twice, or possibly as many as four times, like Columbus, searching for a western sailing route to Asia.  In 1502 a book was published describing his travels.  In this book Vespucci was quoted as saying he didn’t believe he had seen Asia, but where he went was actually a new and different land.  A map was included in the book showing the eastern coast of the new land which soon was named after him.  Amerigo’s given name was used in its feminine version of America, and soon both South and North America were known by those names.

Even though Christopher Columbus was in the new world several years before Vespucci it is the latter’s whose given name is now so familiar.

Spring Is Here

The ritual of looking for signs of spring in Northern New York is a time-honored tradition.  While growing up and until I was in my fourth decade, I always waited for my first sighting of a robin as a harbinger of spring.  Only when I had seen a robin did I realize spring had arrived.

Then came a day when I was driving along a country road with my brother Bob as a passenger.  It was a warmish day and spring was nearing.  We simultaneously spotted several red wing blackbirds pecking in the gravel of the roadside.  I mentioned it was odd to see them as I knew they migrated, and I had not seen a robin yet, usually the first of the migrating species to return.  Bob informed me that the red wings always preceded the robins by at least a day or two.  I had never in my life noticed that, but ever since I’ve found it to be true.

On another early spring occasion I stopped to visit my mother.  In the middle of her kitchen table was a vase filled with pussy willows.  I mentioned that it was nice to see any form of new growth after a dreary winter season.  She told me that my brother Ron had picked them and delivered them to her, as he did every spring.  I didn’t know that.  She told me Ron had done that for many years so that she might see spring’s first arrival.  I argued that red wings were the first sign of spring, but she insisted pussy willows were usually ahead of the red wings which, of course, preceded the robins.

So, as my mother never lied nor was she ever wrong, I now knew that I must watch for pussy willows to learn that spring had arrived.  Tuesday, March 6^th, I spotted these sprouting from their pods near a wet area on my property.  I took a photo so that you might see them also.  Later the same day, my wife pointed out a pair of red wings eating from the ground beneath our yard feeder.  I was unable to obtain a photo before they left, possibly to continue their northward journey into Canada five miles or so away.

I haven’t spotted a robin yet this spring, but on the other hand spring will not officially be here yet for another dozen days.

The Dream Sheet

After three good years stationed at VT-9 located at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Meridian, Mississippi it was time for a transfer to a new duty station.  During the latter part of 1969 I was asked to fill in a Dream Sheet.

Officially it was named NAVPERS 1306/34 Duty History and Preference Card, but all Navy men referred to it as the Dream Sheet.  At some point before it was time for a transfer to a new duty station all Navy personnel were asked to fill one in.  There were seven lines to chronologically fill in your complete Navy career history.  There were five more lines to fill in all Navy schools completed.  There was a remarks section, and then came the dream part.

I was scheduled for sea duty.  As my first and second choices for a new home port I opted for Brunswick, Maine and Jacksonville, Florida.  For three possible choices of type duty I chose Patrol, Composite, and Weather Reconnaissance Squadrons.  My reasoning was due to familiarity with those types of duty.  I had been in Patrol Squadron Eight, and I had been in Composite Squadron Ten.  Being a part of a Weather Recon Squadron (Hurricane Hunters) flying in a Super Constellation sounded like a perfectly good idea to me.

Which of those options was I actually assigned to?  Well, my orders were to be transferred to Attack Squadron 25 home based at the Naval Air Station Lemoore, California.  Prior to my arrival there though I was to undergo training at Attack Squadron 122 also based at Lemoore.  I arrived at VA-122 on February 3, 1970.  I was transferred to VA-25 in the next hangar over, on April 17, 1970.  I was immediately placed in control of all maintenance of the dozen VA-25 aircraft that was performed at night.

On May 1, 1970 I accepted my 4^th and final honorable discharge, after nearly 15 years of service in the United States Navy.  Nowhere on that dream sheet had I mentioned either an Attack Squadron or the left side of America.  I decided the Navy and I were no longer compatible.

St. Elmo's Fire

As a member of a flight crew on a Navy P2V5F Neptune aircraft we were far out over the Atlantic Ocean on a night patrol in 1959. We were having a bit of a problem.  Our starboard main engine was backfiring and belching flame back over the wing. It was pretty in a way when the bright red, blue, and yellow hues cascaded over the arch of the wing, yet scary too as a fear of the unknown sort of thing.  I was ordered to leave my bow observer position in the nose bubble, and come up above with the rest of the crew.  If that flying machine, no matter how good it was, went into the water the plastic nose bubble was not a good place, as if any part of the aircraft would be.  I went to the after station to sit and converse with the ordnanceman.

If the flames sending tendrils over the wing were not enough to command our attention suddenly along a bulkhead there appeared a gaseous object about the size of a basketball. It was a shade of fluorescent green, and was slowly creeping along traveling toward the front of the plane.  It seemed sinister somehow added to an engine problem hundreds of miles east of the Atlantic coast of America.  I approached it and was able to easily push my hand into it, and then withdraw it with no seeming effect. At the same time I was able to use my hand to move it along the bulkhead nearly like rolling a ball on the floor.  While my hand was immersed in it, and afterwards for a short period, the hair on my arm stood straight up in the same manner as static electricity would make it do.  The green haze remained for several minutes, and then disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had arrived.

I was later told that the phenomenon was named St Elmo's Fire after the patron saint of sailors. In the days of iron men on wooden ships it was considered good luck to spot it, and I tend to agree, as my presence here attests we made it back to a safe landing that dark and rain swept night.

Liberty At Argentia, Newfoundland

It began as a fairly innocent adventure, but as sometimes happens things didn’t exactly end as something to write home to mother about.  It started when a young Navy aircraft maintenance man bought an older model Chevrolet from a civilian worker on the Naval Air Station at Argentia, Newfoundland.  His name was Mitchell, but that doesn’t really matter.  The outcome would have been the same had he been named Smith, Jones, or Johnson.

Anyway, one quarter of VP-8, a U S Navy Patrol Squadron, was on deployment at Argentia during the first half of 1958.  To put it mildly there was nothing to do on this barren piece of land on a peninsula attached to another peninsula.  There were precious few villages anywhere nearby, and no way to get to them had there been anything to do once anyone got there.  So when Mitch got the chance to buy the aged Chevy he jumped on it.

He didn’t know how to get there, but he knew that there was a place named St. Johns out there somewhere, and the first Saturday evening he owned the car he, and three buddies, headed out to find it.  I only know from hearsay what happened next, and most of it was unprintable.

It seems they ultimately did find their way to St. Johns.  Once there they visited some places where they purchased a few small glasses of brew.  In one of these establishments they by happenchance met some of the fine local young ladies.  Many hours later Mitch headed back to Argentia with his four friends.  Yes, the number had increased by one as one of the young ladies had agreed to travel with them in hopes of making some extra cash during a visit to the Base.

They were only a few miles from the Base when the ancient Chevy developed a cough and died beside the road.  The five occupants set out to continue the journey on foot.  After the lengthy partying the night before this apparently was not an easy task, but they persevered and ultimately arrived back at one of the two barracks during the middle of Sunday afternoon.

The young lady promptly found an unoccupied bottom bunk where she immediately started a business.  I believe she was making money as a model as there was a fairly long line waiting to visit her, and many, if not all of them, had cameras.  The business was short lived as she was asked to leave the premises by some killjoy officer.  I’ve no idea how that was accomplished.

The following day, a Monday, Mitchell got permission to take the day off from his normal duties in order to recover his car.  He had a friend with him that it was said could fix any car blindfolded, no matter what was wrong with it.  When the two of them arrived at the old Chevy Mitch could hardly believe his eyes.  In less than a day it had been stripped of all parts that conceivable could be removed by a professional crew if they had a week to do it in.  Nothing was left but the shell, minus wheels, doors, the engine, radiator, and anything else not welded on.

Once more they plodded toward the Base, and ultimately returned to the barracks.  That’s about the end of the tale, except for the 15 to 20 sailors that somehow developed an STD.