One thousand acre Wassookeag Lake lies just outside the little mill town of Dexter, Maine. From 1975 through 1977, Wassookeag was the most northerly of the more than 600 lakes on my watch as an Assistant Regional Fishery Biologist in Maine’s Fishery Region B, the south central coastal plain.

            Lying next to a minor population center in otherwise rural central Maine, Wassookeag received heavier ice fishing pressure than most lakes. The lake at that time possessed small populations of landlocked Atlantic salmon and lake trout (“Mackinaw”). There were never enough to go around, yet I could always find an assortment of several dozen “townies” trying their luck on Wassookeag.

Wassookeag was well inland and high enough in latitude to lie in a much colder climate than lakes along the coast. By late winter the ice might approach four feet in thickness. This was enough to support any vehicle safely.

            During that particular winter we had a couple of February rain storms in between cold weather cycles that had flattened and blended the snow cover on the lake before it refroze.

            Whereas the teens in Fort Morgan cruise Main Street after school each day, when conditions were right, the students at Dexter High School went out and cruised the surface of Lake Wassookeag.

            My mission, on those days when I worked Wassookeag was to sort through the relative chaos and glean accurate angler hour and catch rate information from the confusion.  I found the most effective way was to interview individual anglers out on the ice during the middle of the morning and afternoon, then return to the one vehicle access point – the town boat ramp – during the noon hour and again as sundown approached. I interviewed anglers at the end of their efforts.

            On that particular day in 1977, I returned to shore around 3 p.m. and parked parallel to the boat ramp. With an excellent view of the entire lake, through binoculars I could monitor the activities of about 60 scattered ice fishermen.

            Except for fish holes and a few chunks of litter and debris, the surface of the ice was nearly unblemished except for an 18-inch raised  “wave” in the ice about 100 yards off shore to the west of the south-facing access ramp. This had been created earlier in the winter when someone with a Jeep plowed a road out onto the lake after a big snowstorm. Soon afterward the rain flattened the snow and the cold that followed welded it into the ice sheet. The snow bank created by the plow became a solid, wave-like ridge that presented a potential obstacle to drivers and snowmobilers.

            The day had begun sunny and clear. By afternoon puffy clouds moving in from the southwest began to increase in size and darken. As I sat in the warmth of my Plymouth station wagon, I watched a particularly dark cloud approaching on a track that would bring it right over the lake. Heavy precipitation was dropping from its underside.

            Before the squall hit, most of the cruisers left the lake and headed into town leaving the lake to the die-hard ice fishermen. But a minute or two before the squall struck, one of those huge, 1963-vintage Oldsmobile 98s came down the ramp and headed off across the lake. You probably remember those cars – broad and flat with hood and trunk so large helicopters could land on either end.

As the rusted relic passed close down the port side of my own vehicle, I saw that its 4 occupants were droopy-eyed men in their 60s. I’d run into them a few times before. All four had little else to do all day in a rural town than ride from spot to spot while maintaining a high titer of blood alcohol to ward off the boredom of a long winter.

            Moments later the squall struck Wassookeag with a vengeance. Like a great white curtain it enveloped us and pelted the lake with wet snow driven by high wind. In the 15 minutes it lasted, it blanketed the lake with 3 inches of sticky snow.

            Visibility at the height of the mini-blizzard was barely 100 yards. It was an absolute whiteout. There were no shadows; there was no horizon.

            Halfway through the squall, through wipers set at the fastest speed, I suddenly made out the faint glow of double headlights off to the right. A second later I could make out the large, low silhouette of the Oldsmobile. It was coming on fast and, although I couldn’t see it, I knew it was fast approaching the vicinity of that ridge on the ice.

            So limited was the visibility that no more than a couple of seconds lapsed between my first spotting the car and it hitting the curved ridge at right angles at 35-40 mph.

            The effect was sort of like the launch of a jet from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Suddenly the nose snapped into the air and the great craft left earth on an orbital trajectory. Sadly it lacked the means to continue its rather graceful flight.

            For a brief moment I saw the entire underside of the car as it completely left the ice at a 45-degree, nose-up angle and rolled slowly to the right. Then its right rear corner struck the ice and caused the car to slam back onto the ice on all four tires very violently.

Within two or three car lengths the would-be spacecraft came to a stop with the heads, arms, and legs of its scrambled occupants sticking up out of a pile of bodies clustered more or less in the center of the fuselage. An entire header pipe, muffler, and tail pipe assembly, along with a wide assortment of other rust-colored pieces-parts, littered its wake.

I was just about to drive out and assess the damage and check for injuries when the car suddenly came back to life. Sans muffler, it sounded like a stock car as the driver revved the engine. Ever so slowly the battered, roaring beast moved forward again and limped up the ramp. I rolled down my window and the driver did the same as he pulled alongside.

All four men were nearly as white as the snow. I asked if they were okay. The driver said he thought so, but they all needed to go home and change their underwear.

 Photo by Joe Lewendowski courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife

by Peter G. Walker

In order to put today’s tale in perspective, and to be fair to all concerned, I need to give you quite a bit of background. First of all, those of you who have never visited the little known region of eastern Colorado, you need to appreciate just how rural it is. Discounting Greeley, which is really an eastward extension of the Colorado Front Range, in an area the size of the entire state of Maine, there are only four “cities” that approach 10,000 people in size. The entire region has a phone book about the size of the one we used 30 years ago for the greater Augusta area in Maine. It’s about as rural as it gets. Mayberry RFD with cattle trucks and wheat fields.

About 45 miles northeast of my home town of Fort Morgan (population 10,000) is northeast Colorado’s other major city, Sterling (population also 10,000 if you count all the inmates in the local state prison). Except for yucky tap water, Sterling is a neat and almost always quiet town. After the 911 disaster, Congress, through the Homeland Security Act, made a lot of grant money available to even remote little towns like Sterling. In the years since 911, there have been several incredibly brutal and senseless slaughters in a couple of Colorado schools and at least one large church perpetrated by deranged students and citizens. Sterling’s government, while realistically not overly afraid of international terrorism, certainly has as much reason as any Colorado town to fear terrorism of the domestic sort. Therefore the remote little business and railroad yard community used its federal money to equip and train a SWAT team.

All of the northeastern counties in Colorado are shortgrass prairie. The only “forests” are widely spaced cottonwoods, peachleaf willows and introduced trees such as brown ash and Russian olive that grow along watercourses, few and far between. Colorado has plenty of black bears and mountain lions, but to have any chance at all of seeing  one you’d need to drive about 150 miles west from Sterling. Nevertheless, in every coffee shop and café in every village in this part of the state, you can easily find someone who, if not themselves personally, knows of someone who has seen a bear or a lion or a panther or who-knows-what in an alley or back behind Old Man Bender’s watermelon patch.

One searing hot summer day about 3 years ago, an employee at the Sterling Wal-Mart spotted a large black animal slipping stealthily into the willow and cattail thicket that grows in the bottom of a large intermittent drainage ditch leading from the back parking lot away from the store towards a housing development. She called Sterling P.D. and reported she’d just seen a bear. The Sterling Police Department activated their SWAT team.

During the melee that took place in the next few minutes with officers donning flack vests and military-style helmets and breaking out their AR-15 assault weapons, someone had the sense to call for a game warden. Veteran Wildlife Technician and Officer Mike Etl at the nearby Division of Wildlife shop at Dune Ridge took the call.

Mike arrived behind the Wal-Mart to find a group of officers huddled like musk oxen near the head of the ditch. To a Colorado Game Warden used to working alone with large animals and throngs of well-armed hunters, the SWAT officers, clad in black with abundant firepower and  body armor looked absolutely bizarre. Suppressing the repeated urge to burst out laughing, Mike gathered the very sparse facts available. He walked down into the ditch and immediately spotted a large, deep track with large claws. It was most assuredly canine and not ursine.

Recognizing the track, the game warden explained to the nervous men in black that it is not a crime to be a black bear in Sterling, Colorado or any other Colorado community for that matter. The intrepid wildlife officer then called for calm and told them all to wait while he went in to investigate.

There was a game trail of sorts through the narrow thicket. The ground became wetter as the ditch dropped progressively lower and finally, after a jungle-style stalk of about 200 yards, the warden caught up with his quarry. Sprawled in a green and slimy water hole was a very large, very hot Rottweiler.

Mike commanded the big dog  to come to him and the friendly beast came to heel just as he’d been asked.

“C’mon,” the game warden said. “I want to introduce you to some people.”

The goo-covered beast happily complied.

As Mike and his new friend got closer to the SWAT team, he called out, “Hold your fire! I’m bringing him out.” A few more steps and he could see the Sterling officers gripping their weapons cautiously and all trying to get a look at the black critter following Mike.

“Aw! It’s a big dog. Stand down!”

And that is what happened when the Sterling SWAT Team took on a bear.

Did you ever hear of a hound making a career change?

Years ago my friend Dave Schnoor, manager back then of the state fish hatchery out in Wray, had a little rabbit hound named Luke. Luke was “beagle-ish,” but by no means a purebred. He was tri-colored like a typical beagle and small in stature. But Luke was heavier set and his head, ears and feet suggested a basset somewhere in his recent ancestry.

At any rate, Luke’s true love, aside from being a Schnoor family member and all the duties that entailed, was hunting rabbits. With his super nose and full voice, he was very good at it.

When Luke was around 7 years old, the unthinkable happened. His humans, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, brought home a pair of Brittany puppies. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with competition. Life was cruel. Life was unfair. And it was about to turn more so.

That fall Luke saw Dave take a shotgun out of the cabinet and naturally assumed it was time to go bunny hunting. He squealed and spun with delight. Imagine his disappointment when it was the two young Brits that were loaded into the Jeep and Luke was shut in his kennel. Luke howled with anger and heartbreak the entire time they were gone.

The next time Dave got ready for a bird hunt with his promising Brittanies, his wife Tammy intervened and implored him to take Luke along lest he drive her crazy with his mourning. Dave agreed to try it.

Most folks do not place beagles or other hounds very high on the canine intelligence tree. But Luke proved the exception. Made to walk at heal beside Dave while the two youngsters romped in front of them, Luke watched carefully and soon figured out the new game. The pups were looking for birds!

If you can’t beat them, join them.

Within two or three hunts Luke created a role for himself as a sort of crew chief and backup. For whatever reason, Dave just wasn’t interested in rabbits any more. So Luke learned to suppress his instincts and become a sort of self-made bird dog.

It was late in that first fall of Luke’s career change that Dave invited me on a bird hunt on Sandsage State Wildlife Area west of Wray. We started out behind the three dogs, the Brittanies working enthusiastically back and forth out ahead while Luke stayed just ahead of us as if waiting for an opportunity to prove himself.

The behavior of the full-grown Brittanies belied their young age. Frequently they would forget the task at hand and tussle with each other. They were, after all, less than a year old.

After 15 minutes of on-again, off-again hunting the Brittanies began to act “birdy” along the edge of corn stubble and I walked up behind them. A covey of bobwhite burst up like the shrapnel of a firecracker in front of the dogs. I’m not known for my shooting ability; but that time it all came together and I knocked down a quail with each barrel. Meanwhile the two pups were already one hundred yards away trying to catch some of the remaining birds as they scaled across the field. Now it was Luke’s turn.

As Dave hollered at his misbehaving bird dogs, Luke quietly worked out ahead and made a double retrieve, returning to his master with both quail in his mouth. A retrieving beagle!

Later in the afternoon, as I was walking along a deer path with Luke coming up from behind me, a cottontail bolted across my path a few yards ahead. I stopped and let Luke pass, wondering what he’d do with a nose full of bunny scent. As he crossed the spot where the rabbit had just been, he slammed on the brakes. He looked off in the direction the bunny had fled, pointed his nose to the sky, and let out a loud, soulful Bo-WOOOO. After all, he was a rabbit hound in his first life.

 by Peter Walker

His name was Tiny. He belonged to the Tedfords who lived up the hill from my grandparents in rural southwestern Maine.

He was quite possibly the oddest little dog I’ll ever see. Physically he looked like a critter made of leftover parts and pieces. His head was pretty much golden retriever both in size and appearance. But his body was more or less basset hound. So his head was way too big for his body.

His legs were extremely short and his tail stood straight up. His hair was long and frilly – a mixture of yellows and whites. The upper half of his tail had long white hair trailing off like the big flag on a sailboat’s mast.

            If he looked absurd, you should have heard him try to bark! Try as he might, the only thing Tiny could muster was a loud coughing noise like a circus sea lion. It always made people laugh.

            But Tiny had heart. His chosen profession was neighborhood greeter and ambassador of friendship.

Every morning Tiny would make the rounds from his house to the half dozen or so houses down the hill. Several of the neighbors were elderly and very much looked forward to Tiny’s enthusiastic morning visits. More than one of the elderly neighbor’s asked to adopt Tiny; but he better served the world as an equal opportunity friend to all.

My best friend – and the only other high school age boy within several miles of my home during that part of my life – was Gayland Brackett, who lived almost across the road from Tiny’s house. One day Gayland was loading up his gear for a pheasant hunt while Tiny supervised the job. On a whim, Gayland invited him along.

Now Tiny looked about as much like a bird dog as a poodle resembles a parrot! As far as anyone knew, Tiny had never gone bird hunting – or even chased a chicken!

Perhaps somewhere in his muddled ancestry, one of Tiny’s antecedents was a setter or a spaniel. Much to Gayland’s surprise, the little guy figured out how to play the game in no time at all!

Plowing through the thick grass was a problem for a little dog with minimum clearance. He would have been very hard to see had it not been for the great white banner flapping from his upright tail.

When Tiny encountered pheasant scent, he determined the general area from which it was emanating, then set off in a wide circle around the source. It was better than a point. As the funny little dog gradually tightened his circles and closed in on the pheasant, the bird crouched and sat tight. Finally, with Tiny only a couple of feet away, the pheasant would burst into the air with a cackle.

Although the little dog’s head was large enough to be a retriever’s, Tiny’s 7-inch legs were just not suitable for bringing back a downed bird. That, too, was no problem for Tiny’s improvisation. Tiny would simply find the dead bird, then sit on it and bark like a seal!

Thus the neighborhood mascot launched a second career as an unorthodox, but extremely effective pheasant dog. In all my years of working in conservation agencies, I’ve never seen a more unique dog. Tiny made the most he could with what he was given, and that was more than enough.

USFWS photo by Peter Johnson, 2008

Oh, why does man pursue the smelt?
It has no valuable pelt,
It boasts of no escutcheon royal,
It yields no ivory or oil,
Its life is dull, its death is tame,
a fish as humble as its name.
Yet – take this salmon somewhere else;
And bring me half a dozen smelts!

Ogden Nash, 1902-1971

            I can’t explain it either. But ever since I was a little kid I’ve had a fascination with the smelt. And lots of other Mainers do, too.

            Middle Range Pond, the natural lake at the foot of the hill where I grew up in Poland Spring, Maine had a thriving population of tiny, sardine-sized smelts. They lived in the lake’s depths and were only seen in the early spring around ice-out when they ran up the little tributary brooks late at night to spawn. Men used to stay out all night to go smelting. They would catch the tiny fish with fine mesh dip nets. The limit was 4 quarts per fisherman per night. But, as I soon came to realize, smelts for most Maine outdoorsmen, are simply an excuse to stay out all night and howl at the moon and drink themselves into oblivion.

            When I was seven I got my first bicycle, a 24” Columbia, and shortly after discovered there was gold on the roadsides in the form of returnable bottles: 2¢ for a long-necked beer bottle, 3¢ for a 12-ounce pop bottle, and 5¢ for a quart pop or beer bottle.

            One of my first bicycle trips afield was down the hill to a 2-track woods road that led in to a cove where Schellinger’s Brook emptied into the lake. It was April, 1955 on one of the very first warm days of spring at that high latitude. I don’t remember why I chose that destination but, when I reached the edge of the brook, I knew I’d struck it rich. Every square inch of the rocks and fontinalis moss in the brook from the mouth up to the first falls was coated with tiny yellow-white smelt eggs in testimony of what had taken place the night before. Everywhere on either bank lay returnable beer bottles by the dozen! I was rich!

            It took me awhile to gather up all the good ones and stash them behind a brush pile lest someone else find them and steal them before I could get them all home. In the process I came upon a big dry cell flashlight, the kind with a handle and a red-flashing beacon on the back. Even in the second grade I knew that whoever left that nice light must have been smashed when he staggered back up out of the woods.

            I never really caught the smelt dipping bug. Once in awhile in high school I would go out with a few buddies and try to locate a run. Once I remember walking out on the end of an 8” x 8” cross piece on a logging road bridge. “Be careful of these beams,” I warned my friends. “Some of them may be rot….ten!”

            A second or two later the outer 4 feet of the beam and I both hit the shell ice and water ten feet below. My buddies said the only thing visible in their flashlight beams was my wool cap floating on the surface. I spent the rest of the evening stripped down and wrapped in a car blanket trying to trap the entire output of the car’s heater inside my blanket.

            Angling for smelts was a different story. The smelts in the lake spent most of their time near the bottom even in winter. My older friend at the base of the hill, Ronnie Morrill, had a fishing shack that his dad would put out in the middle of the lake every January. For two months Ronnie and I would fish in 60 feet of water for the occasional lake trout and all the smelts we could catch. To catch a 4-5” smelt at that depth takes a special rig. We used a 10-12” length of spring steel such as an old corset stay anchored to the wall of the shanty above a hole in the floor. To the end was attached a length of fine monofilament line – either 2 or 4 pound test – long enough to reach down to within a foot of the bottom of the lake. On the business end of that line was a small sinker and a #10 or #12 fly-tying hook baited with a tiny sliver of cut up baitfish.

            We usually each fished two smelt lines and set several tip-ups with live shiners or smelts for lake trout in proximity to the shanty. In those days an ice fisherman could have up to five lines.  The object was to watch the tips of the bowed springs closely. When a tiny smelt took the bait far below the spring wiggled slightly. One had to grab the line to set the hook, then haul it in hand over hand. It wasn’t an occupation that would keep a person fed. If we caught enough smelts in ten days afield, for one man to make a meal  I don’t remember when that was. But it was a great way to spend a bitterly cold winter’s day and it sure beat the heck out of Saturday cartoons.

            For some reason the Maine legislature has never looked upon ice fishing at night with favor. Middle Range, like most of the lakes in my county, was closed to fishing after dark. One day Ronnie and I discussed the state of affairs and decided there must be a good reason for it. We figured it must be a conservation measure. Smelts must be much easier to catch at night. Therefore we hatched a plan to test our hypothesis.

            The next weekend we took a small bag of night-fishing supplies out to the shack. As evening came on, we taped black paper across the three, single-pane windows and banked snow thickly around the base of the shack so that no light would be visible from shore. As nightful came on, we turned off the portable AM radio and placed tiny candles just above the smelt springs that gave just enough light to see the movement of the springs.

            Well, darned if it didn’t work spectacularly! Just about dark the springs began to wiggle and we caught smelts one after another about as fast as we could bait our hooks. In a couple of hours we easily caught more smelts than we’d caught collectively in the past 2-3 years! Around 9:30 p.m. we quietly locked up and walked the half mile across the lake to Ronnie’s house making as little noise as possible.

            Among the other ice anglers frequenting the lake in those days was my much older cousin Bobby Walker and his friend Bobby Martin. Bobby had a better-built shanty much closer to the landing on Route 26 than Ronnie’s little tarpaper-covered shack. The week after our successful smelt poaching operation we bragged about our success to the older boys.

            Thus on the following Saturday the two Bobbies came equipped with black paper, masking tape, and candles to give our technique a try. It worked just as well. The two high school seniors had a ball catching smelts through the evening. Perhaps if Bobby Walker’s giggle didn’t carry quite so far on a still winter’s night and perhaps if their shanty was another quarter of a mile off the highway, the game warden would never have become suspicious and walked out to see what was going on.

That’s how, at 9-years-old, I out-poached my cousin Bobbie.

Drawing by Wayne Lewis courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife.

by Peter Walker

            Three years ago my then 7-year-old grandson, Jason, introduced me to the recent hit animated movie “Over the Hedge.” One of the funniest scenes takes place in a tract home when the invading small animals are confronted by the woman of the house, armed with a broom.

            In the confusion the skunk turns to one of her compatriots and says, “I’m sorry you have to see this.”

Then she yells out, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

The view pans back away from the house as, “POOM!” a green cloud blows out simultaneously from the windows and doors.

That incident reminds me of a tale often told in the Walker family. My paternal grandfather, Elmer Walker, was a big man for his generation. At 6’ 3” he had a deep booming voice to match his stature.

My grandparents lived in a huge farmhouse in southern Maine that had been in our family since 1840. Typical of the homes of that era, the barn and house were attached by an enclosed shed to make chores possible without going out into the snow.

In more recent times the shed was finished off into a 2-story apartment. That apartment once served as a doctor’s office and at other times was rented to various people, including Nancy and me early in our marriage.

 The particular incident occurred in summer in the 1950s. At that time my Uncle Gerry and Aunt Claire were living in the apartment and saving to buy a house of their own.

Grampa owned a plumbing company. One of the responsibilities of the trade is making house calls at all hours of the night.

On that particular night, Grampa had been out fixing a water pump or unplugging a drain until after midnight. He returned dirty, tired and hungry to a darkened house and yard. The door to the main part of the house was on a low, open porch.

My grandmother had forgotten to leave the porch light on. Without a light Grampa fumbled through his ring of keys without success. As his frustration grew, the cat – or so he thought – squeezed between his ankles and the door.

At that point my temperamental grandfather took out his frustrations on the bothersome animal straddling his feet. Uttering, “Get out of here, cat!” he cuffed the critter off to one side with the side of his work boot.

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

Grampa caught the full retaliation of an offended skunk dead center in the sternum.

Those who have never experienced the wrath of a skunk at close range cannot appreciate how it overwhelms all the senses. Every nerve in one’s body fires off in panic. Your hearing; your eyesight; everything is temporarily paralyzed.

In that state of impaired thinking, Grampa headed for safety – sort of. Somewhere in his brain the urge to take shelter inside took over. Since he couldn’t find his key, he headed for the barn.

In the back of the barn, a hallway led to an unlocked door through my aunt and uncle’s apartment and on into the main part of the house. Aunt Claire said she and Gerry were watching TV in the sanctity of their darkened living room when their home was suddenly invaded by a bellowing, wounded beast preceeding an odor most foul.

By now my grandmother had been awakened. She met her howling husband at the door into the main kitchen and blocked his way. Instead she herded him back through Gerry and Claire’s apartment and into the barn from which he came, once again fumigating the already reeking quarters.

Once out in the yard, my 95-pound grandmother took control of the situation. She ordered the big man to strip off his ruined clothing while she connected the garden hose. The bellowing changed pitch but never let up as she directed a hard stream of ice-cold well water onto his naked frame and gradually took the edge off the skunk smell.

This was followed by several scrubbings with her homemade lye soap and still more icy rinses.

Needless to say no one in the house got a full night’s sleep and the after-effects of the event lingered on for weeks to come.

(Photograph courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife)

by Peter Walker

            I don’t know whether curiosity actually kills cats, but I do know what sort of trouble curiosity once brought to a red fox.

            A Maine Game Warden buddy of mine named Smally Chandler told me about the incident. Smally worked the Camden-Searsport district on the Maine coast during the early 1970s. In those days there was a great deal of night time deer poaching west of the Penobscot estuary and it kept the district wardens in that region very busy.

            Warden Chandler received a tip from a citizen about night hunters working a remote area in one corner of his district. Checking logging roads by daylight, he found tire tracks, empty rifle casings, and other evidence of possible night hunting in a clover-rich clearing at the far end of a long, one-lane dirt road through boreal spruce-fir forest. 

            There was no satisfactory place to hide a vehicle within sight of the clearing or anywhere along the woods road. Smally decided the only way he was going to catch the poachers was to go in and try to ambush the bad guys on foot.

So one clear October night with a full moon rising in the east, Warden Chandler hiked up the logging road with a pack on his back. The cloudless sky meant the temperature was going to plummet through the night until it was well below freezing by daybreak. He planned to stay reasonably warm on his stake-out. In his pack was a thermos of hot coffee and a tightly rolled sleeping bag.

The road had been used the year before to haul pulp wood from a fir stand that had been logged off. It crossed a long wooded swamp which would have been a problem if the logger had not built the road bed up a couple of feet with dirt from a barrow ditch along each side.

Warden Chandler set up his vigil by encasing himself in the sleeping bag in an inclined position with his feet toward the bottom of the ditch and his head on a “pillow” of grass and clover at the edge of the road. He was situated so that he had a clear view down the road for more than 200 yards in one direction and the clearing where poaching would presumably take place in the other.

Now came hours and hours of waiting. On this particular night the poachers never showed up. The game warden did his best to remain alert to sound, light, and movement along the silvery roadway while hunkering down in his sleeping bag.

Some time after midnight, with the full moon high overhead, Smally became aware of shadowy movement at the far end of the stretch of road that he lay beside. 

It was not human movement. It was a wild animal and not a particularly big one. As it worked its way closer, the warden could see that it was a red fox methodically checking the weeds first on one side of the road, then the other.

Lying absolutely motionless with only his head sticking out of the bag, the wildlife officer probably looked like nothing more than a log or a shapeless mound in the shadows. The crisp air was motionless.

Gradually the industrious little fox drew very close. Chandler hardly dared to breathe. As the fox checked the opposite road shoulder only 20 feet away, it suddenly lifted its ears and keyed on the man’s head. Perhaps it detected a subtle movement or a faint sound. What was this? Something good to eat?

On full alert the fox stealthily crossed the road toward Smally Chandler, moving cautiously on slender black legs. Closer it tiptoed…closer and closer. Chandler held his breath and the fox very nearly touched him on the nose with its muzzle.

At that moment the man blew air into the fox’s face with a sudden whoosh. The lightning reaction of the startled animal was to jump straight up. Warden Chandler said it appeared as if the animal suddenly levitated several feet, reversed direction in midair and disappeared into the brush across the road without ever coming down again!

The human brain is a complex organ. There is still so much about this natural computer with its enormous capacity for data storage and retrieval that is a mystery to science. Obliquely, my story today is about a little-used function of the human brain stem.

Evolutionists believe the human brain stem represents the original brain possessed by our reptile-like ancestors millions of years ago. As such, it was not capable of very much thought, but it served to keep body functions like breathing and heart rate steady. It was also capable of conducting certain instinctual reactions to external stimuli – reactions like fright response.

Scientists today tell us that this thickening of the nervous tissues at the base of the human brain still serves these same functions. The brain stem tells the heart how fast to beat and maintains our breathing without our having to think about it.

 But what about instinctual behavior? Is it possible to react to fright without thinking about it? Can the brain stem, in response to certain strong, primitive stimuli, take command of our bodies and attempt to deal with a situation while bypassing conscious thought?  I’m here to tell you that it can.

For more nearly 40 years I have worked in a wildlife agency field office in one place or another. Members of the public are always bringing in injured critters for us to take care of. Sometimes they make ill-advised attempts to adopt wild animals and birds and make pets of them. Sooner or later, whether voluntarily surrendered or by confiscation, we end up in possession of them.

I first moved from a Maine fish hatchery to a regional fish and wildlife headquarters in 1974. During my first week there I learned an important lesson. Never open an unmarked box or sack without nudging it first to see if anything nudges back. The very angry great blue heron that narrowly missed my face when I opened a burlap sack left in the hallway taught me to be more careful.

On the other hand, curiosity can overcome even the most important lessons in life. I once returned from the field to find a hand-written sign taped to the bathroom door in the Brush, Colorado office that said, “CAUTION. LIVE BOBCAT. DO NOT ENTER.”

I, of course, just had to get a look at that bobcat. Who would have thought that a bobcat kitten can actually transform itself into an out-of-control electrical appliance? But, I digress….

One of the laboratory analytical processes that I performed years ago as the Maine State Fish Pathologist involved the screening of trout and salmon kidney tissues with a special microscope that used a black light to make treated pathogenic bacteria glow in the dark. I therefore had to black out the window in my small laboratory and spend several hours at a time working alone in a nearly pitch black room.

On such days I hung a sign on the door asking my colleagues to stay out. I usually cranked up the radio for company. 

One day in 1982 I was sitting in my darkened laboratory with my eyes in the microscope when I was aware that the door had opened for a second or two. That was not unusual. Frequently Bert, our mailman, slipped my mail in onto the end of the counter. I kept on working without looking up.

A minute later while buried in some sort of thought, I felt something gently press on the top of my right thigh. Keeping my eyes on the illuminated microscopic field, I absentmindedly reached down with my right hand to brush away whatever it was. Instead, my hand closed over a softball-sized furry head with stiff whiskers.

That’s when my reptilian brain stem high-jacked my body. It may be the closest thing I will ever have to an out-of-body experience. Completely beyond my conscious control, my body sprang back and took me through the narrow darkened room out into the bright hallway. From somewhere deep in my chest a most piteous deep roaring and howling burst forth, all entirely beyond my control.

After several seconds the noise subsided and I was able to shut off the autopilot and regain control. It was then that I began to hear the rib-splitting laughter of the fishery managers and game biologists that worked down the hall. When I switched on the overhead light in the lab, a 25-30 pound beaver balanced on its haunches with both paws on the seat of my chair staring at me as if it, too, thought the whole episode was hilariously funny.

It turned out that a couple had hand-reared a beaver kit until the living room furniture and the bedroom set came under peril. After making friends with the not-so-little guy, my buddies down the hall thought I might like to meet it, too. So, one opened the door while another shoved the beaver into my darkroom.

If anyone ever leaves off a live badger, or perhaps a mountain lion at the Brush DOW office, I will give serious thought to catching the next flight from DIA back to Augusta, Maine!

Let’s face it. Chickens are not smart. Inside that small, silly-looking head is a brain about the size of a garbanzo bean. That’s not much to work with. 

Still, insofar as a hen can cluck while at the same time walking from Point A to Point B, chickens are capable of rudimentary multitasking.

 Now, if you want to really cripple the intellectual abilities of a chicken’s brain, add about a half cup of testosterone. I grew up in the country. In my younger days I dressed out many a chicken. I can attest to the fact that a rooster’s gonads are many, many times the size of its brain. You know what that phenomenon does to the behavior of teenage boys. Just imagine its effects on a chicken! Whereas a normal chicken brain might broadcast the signal, “Worm ahead. Eat it.” – a testosterone-soaked rooster brain is more likely to consider whether to pick a fight with said worm or make love to it. 

Unfortunately, in the mental gymnastics of rooster thinking, there is inability to inject the concept of size or probability into the equation. To a rooster, a grizzly bear looks pretty much like a pigeon. It’s his job to run both of them off, then go receive thanks and maybe a little nik-nik from the pullets. 

As a 5-year-old, I am not sure whether I was physically intimidated by the alpha White Leghorn rooster in my Dad’s flock so much as I was creeped out by the blank, reptilian look in its eyes. Whether from a rooster or a snapping turtle or a playground bully or a politician, I’ve always gotten the willies from that look. At any rate, I had no desire to tangle with the white rooster. 

Since it was my job to feed and water the flock and collect the eggs, I needed a strategy to avoid confrontation. My mother always saved uneaten toast, bread heels, and salad scraps in a bowl for the chickens. I would take those out to the henhouse and toss them through the fence into the outdoor pen, then imitate the sound the rooster made when he was trying to impress the hens with his chivalry. The hens would pour out into the yard with the rooster right behind them. While they feasted, I’d slip into the henhouse and drop the gate to bar their return. 

Twenty odd years earlier my own father was not as fortunate. The tyrant rooster in his world was allowed to roam the grounds at will and thus was an ever-present threat. One day while walking through the main room of the barn old beady eyes ambushed the 5-year-old from a side entrance. There was no place for the boy to run except in circles all the time yelling for help with the big, fluffed-up rooster close on his heels in hot pursuit. 

As it happened, help was not long in coming. Dad’s 6-years-older brother, Bob, was tending the cows in the stanchions in a side room and could hear the commotion. The older boy arrived on-scene carrying a three-prong pitchfork. He waited for his younger brother to pass, and then flung the pitchfork at the big rooster. The long steel tines almost missed entirely, but one pierced the webbing between the base of one wing and the outer joint then stuck firmly in the gray boards of the barn wall pinning the indignant chicken so that its toes did not quite touch the floor. 

That is quite of lot of indignity for one rooster to suffer. But it paled to what came next. Before the pitchfork was pulled from the wall, the mop-headed little kid whom the big bird so enjoyed tormenting was allowed by the bigger human to get in a few retributive slaps and kicks while the big bird hung squawking helplessly. 

That rooster did not learn any permanent lesson. (There is only so much memory in half a dozen neurons.) Instead he became increasingly brazen, now attacking my grandmother as well as all three boys whenever their backs were turned. When my grandmother joined the chorus of lobbyists for the rooster’s demise, it probably meant the end was near anyway. But the old bird had yet to commit the ultimate blunder. 

Grampa Walker was a very large man for his time. He kept a watering trough filled beneath the barn during times when the brook ran dry in late summer. He came home one evening and filled two pails of water to carry down to the stock trough. Getting there involved crossing in front of the barn door, then descending a little hill and circling around to the open underside of the barn. 

My grandmother described how, as Grampa passed the big front door of the barn, the rooster’s head craned out from inside and watched the big man go by with hands full. As the bald head disappeared beneath the crest of the hill, the rooster’s hackles went erect and the bird lit out on his tail. 

Five minutes later Grampa came back up the hill into view. In one hand were the two empty pails. The other held the leg of a large, limp chicken carcass. The old bird finally went too far. The reign of terror was over.

When I was about 12 or 13, a family by the name of Kelly lived in the old Mills farm about a mile further up White Oak Hill from where I lived in southwestern Maine.  I used to mow their huge lawn and, when they were away, I took care of their pets and stock. One day at the beginning of a two-week period when the Kellys would be out of town, I carried a partial sack of laying mash into the chicken pen on the second floor of their huge barn. The flock consisted of about 30 black laying hens (brown eggs) and a single, enormous barred gray roosted with 2-inch long spurs that almost could have doubled for tent stakes.

 As I bent over the long wooden trough to spread out the feed, I completely dropped my guard. From behind I was rammed as if by one of the linemen on the Broncos’ offensive line. But that was nothing compared to the pain of the rooster’s spurs jabbing into both sides of one of my calves. I had been violated!

 Without pausing to think, I looked at the unfinished wall ahead of me. There, leaning between two studs as if deliberately set out for me, was a 30” piece of half-inch copper pipe. In a rage I grabbed the pipe, turned on the rooster, and swung for the fence. The giant rooster was laid out flopping on the floor, apparently in his death throes.

But I could not celebrate my successful revenge for even a millisecond. Icy fingers of reality gripped me instead. Okay, tough guy, now what are you going to do? You’ve just cruelly killed someone else’s rooster. How are you going to explain that? 

I avoided coming to terms with it for a little while by leaving the twitching carcass where it lay and going outside to mow the lawn. As I pushed the lawnmower around I first mentally beat myself up for giving in to my temper, then began to sort things out and make a plan.

 I could not commit the double sin of letting the huge chicken go to waste. I needed to dress it out and put it in the Kellys’ freezer. Then I would just have to face the music and confess my sins first to my folks, then to the Kelly family.

 I put the lawnmower away and went into the house (I had a key) and found a sharp knife and a couple of large plastic bags. I climbed the barn stairs and entered the hen pen to retrieve my victim.

 But he wasn’t there! Instead, sticking up from deep within the crowd of cowering hens along the back wall was a rooster’s head bent off to one side at about 45 degrees. On it’s neck was a baseball-sized hematoma. The eye on that side was swollen shut, but the rooster was conscious and semi-functional. It didn’t look like he was going to make it; but there was hope.

 Every day for the next two weeks the bulge on the rooster’s neck grew smaller. His swollen eye reopened after about a week and, by the time the Kelly family returned from their vacation, the old bird could nearly hold his head erect again.

 So, in a way, I got away with it. I never told anyone about the incident until many years later. But to this day, whenever I lose my temper – which is less and less as I get older, I remind myself of what I did to that poor rooster and what a senseless act a temper tantrum is.

            One day last summer Ouray noticed the family pack of weiner dogs were excited about something on the back lawn. Going to investigate, he spotted a gray and black object in the grass and it was moving. It was a baby bat. Assuming it had lost its mother, and knowing enough about bats to realize he probably shouldn’t handle it directly, the boy put on some heavy work gloves to capture the little bat and put him in a terrarium. He figured that the baby bat’s mother could access the baby through the open top and the little animal might be at least somewhat protected from cats and other small terrestrial predators.

The mother bat came close, but apparently was unable to maneuver into the terrarium. She got as close as she could and wouldn’t leave the tree branch above her baby.

So the next morning Ouray Ocanas Ouray placed the baby bat on a low branch. The mother bat went to it immediately. The first order of business was to feed the little one who had not eaten for almost 24 hours. The mother bat embraced her offspring affectionately as it suckled and seemed not to mind the proximity of the two humans. Once the babe was satisfied, the adult bat took it up into the foliage and disappeared.

The bats that Ouray Ocanas assisted were hoary bats, a large but little known species widely distributed in the New World, even in Hawaii. Full grown hoary bats are about 5½ inches long and beautifully marked with warm, reddish-brown faces outlined in black and silver-tipped body hair. Their wing membranes are black against flesh-colored limbs.

Hoary bats are migratory. They mate in fall, but females are able to delay implantation of their (usually two) eggs in the womb so as to time birth for mid-summer when large insects (moths, grasshoppers, and beetles) are most abundant. Females usually travel up into mid-latitudes to bear and rear their young while the males travel much further north and segregate from females through the summer.

Only a few hoary bats live in caves alongside other bat species. The majority live solitary lives in trees, either deciduous or coniferous. Daytime roosts are well concealed from above but open beneath to facilitate quick escape.

In Mammals of Colorado (1994. Denver Museum of Natural History), authors James P. Fitzgerald, Carron A. Meaney, and David M. Armstrong state that, until a female hoary bat with young was observed in Greeley, it was thought that this species only migrated through eastern Colorado and did not reside or raise young here.

Ouray Ocanas’ findings and Mandy Colburn’s photography are additional proof that hoary bats are part of the fauna of Colorado’s eastern plains.

Thanks, Mandy and Ouray, for sharing your experience with estesbog.com.