The Sweetness of Death in Autumn

“Something smells nice right here,” commented my fiancé as we hiked over a rock outcrop strewn with sun-warmed, yellowed birch leaves. The sweet aroma of autumn comes when microbes break down sugars that trees manufactured in the height of summer. Before letting them go, the tree pulled nitrogen and phosphorus out of the leaves and into the twigs, where the molecules will remain on deck to fuel next spring’s leaf growth. But the tree doesn’t need to save every last molecule of sugar.

Yellowing birch leaves smell wonderful in autumn! Photo by Emily Stone. 

His comment got me started thinking about the juxtaposition of life and death in fall.

I’ve been admiring the rich colors of dying ferns in the road ditches, for example. But only this year’s growth is dead. Just like the trees, the ferns are allowing fragile, ephemeral parts of themselves to whither in order to protect their main roots and rhizomes under the soil. These hardy, perennial structures will send up a new ensemble of fiddleheads in the spring.

Cinnamon ferns draw chlorophyll and other nutrients out of their leaves and into their underground stems. They will send up new fiddleheads in the spring. Photo by Emily Stone.

Cinnamon fern fiddleheads will appear right here in spring! Photo by Emily Stone. 

The bergamot flowers in the Museum’s pollinator gardens have shed their purple petals. But the dry brown bobbles that remain atop their stems don’t represent death—they are developing seeds that will initiate the next generation.

Bergamot flowers have already gone to seed. Although the above-ground parts die back, next spring they will sprout from both the roots and the seeds. Photo by Emily Stone.

Some of the goldenrod has already turned into fluffy seedheads, too, with crinkly brown leaves below. Pollen-filled plumes of yellow still dominate the patch, though, and these were crawling with life in the midday sunshine. Northern paper wasps were the most abundant visitors. These are the architects of the papier-mâché nests in the honeycomb pattern with no outer covering. At this point in the summer, most of the colony is waiting to die. It’s just one part of their annual cycle.

Goldenrod going to seed. Photo by Emily Stone. 

The paper wasp’s genus, Polistes, means “founder of a city.” Each spring, a queen emerges from hibernation and starts a colony, sometimes in partnership with another young queen. She lays the first round of eggs and feeds them herself. After they hatch into a generation of sister/workers, they care for their younger siblings. In the height of summer, when the caterpillars they use as baby food are most abundant, the foundress lays eggs that will become reproductive males and future queens. Then she dies. Right about now, the males and future queens are mating. Then the fertile queens will fatten up on flower nectar, find a cozy rotten log for hibernation, and burrow in before the first frost. Everyone else in the colony dies, but not before ensuring the continuation of their genes for next year.

A northern paper wasp and a common eastern bumble bee forage for nectar on goldenrod flowers. Unless they are new queens, neither of these insects will survive beyond the first hard frost. Their hard work will ensure the health of the next generation, though!
Photo by Emily Stone.

The same could not be said about the several porcupine carcasses I’ve swerved around recently. The black-and-white quills strewn across the pavement look a little bit like some of the spiny seeds that grab onto your socks, but quills alone can’t produce the next generation. I’ve learned to expect to see porcupines (live or dead) along roads in the spring as they are drawn to the fresh salad in sunny road ditches. But why would there be an influx of them now? It’s the same juxtaposition of life and death.

This porcupine traveled far to eat aspen catkins one spring. Photo by Emily Stone.

Female porcupines hang out in their relatively small territories all year round. During mating season, the males wander five times farther than normal in search of females. I didn’t poke through the roadkill to determine if the unlucky ones were male or female, but I think it’s pretty likely that these bachelors were taking inventory on their prospects for mating and encountered big metal beasts instead.

While the females probably aren’t quite ready now, their window for mating is only about 12 hours long once it opens, and so it’s important for the males to keep a nose to the very informative scent marks the females spread around. These guys are out of luck, but some of their stronger, smarter, counterparts will soon share in the creation of an adorable new porcupette, to be born next spring.

Leaves are falling, plants are dying, life cycles wax and wane. Soon I’ll be cleaning out my vegetable garden and piling the remains on my compost heap. Nature is doing the same. Many Beings will never again see the light of day. But all of that death is accomplished in the name of survival. And so, despite the decay, the end of summer smells sweet.



Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Holy Moly Roly Poly!

"Holy Moly Roly Poly!" This enthusiastic shout came from an adorable, towheaded 4-year old, standing on the far side of a log I’d just rolled toward me. Together, we paused to watch a dozen or more oval gray invertebrates with lots of legs scurry in confusion around their suddenly well-lit home. Then I let the log roll gently back to its original position. We continued down the trail…or rather I continued down the trail, and the boy joined his friends in splashing along the small creek.

 Two Armadillidium nasatum, one likely Trachelipus rathkii found under the log.
Photo by Emily Stone.

This child’s exclamation was my favorite moment of a fun-filled morning with about 20 kids and their adults at the Kishwauketoe Nature Conservancy in William’s Bay on Geneva Lake in southern Wisconsin. The popular “Kish Kids” program began at the picnic shelter with me introducing the magic of a “treasure finder.” This device is imbued with special powers that guide its path. So when you toss a treasure finder (gently, not too high, and not at your friends,) it will always land on something special.

This Treasure Finder (aka a dive ring for the swimming pool) found a violet! 

Photo by Emily Stone.

These kids hardly needed help! The gadget found vibrant green grass, a web of fungal mycelium, and clover making sugar. But just the act of slowing the kids (and adults) down meant that they found spider webs covered in dew, colorful grasshoppers, a pooping snail, monarch eggs on milkweed, and so much more. By the time the 4-year-old and I had rolled over the log, the treasure finder was completely unnecessary for discovery.

This yellow garden spider was an early highlight of the walk! Photo by Emily Stone. 

The discovery continued when I got home. Just based on that boy’s enthusiasm, I knew I needed to write about roly polies. As a start, I uploaded a few of my photos to iNaturalist. To my surprise, all three photos were of different species!

Initially, iNaturalist helped me identify one species as the spurred ridgeback isopod, Haplophthalmus danicus. While they are native to Europe and Asia, entomologists believe they were brought to this continent during the original European settlement—stowed away in the pilgrims’ potted plants and ship ballast, perhaps? When I went back to my observation a few days later, though, two different people with specialties in isopods had made much more educated IDs. This is one of the benefits of posting observations to iNaturalist!

The experts’ IDs, the nosy pill woodlouse (Armadillidium nasatum) and Rathke's woodlouse (Trachelipus rathkii), are two more European species who were brought here, probably by accident. When the nosy pills roll up, they don’t quite form a complete ball, so maybe they don’t technically fit the kid’s ID of roly poly? I called those sow bugs as a child.

This Rathke's woodlouse made their home under a log near a creek in southern Wisconsin. Photo by Emily Stone. 

The common pill bug, aka common pill woodlouse, roly-poly, potato bug, slater, doodlebug, carpenter, wood shrimp, chiggypig, penny sow, cheesybug or Armadillidium vulgare, was the most interesting find of that log. They are introduced from Europe just like the others, but according to the World Catalog of Terrestrial Isopods by German entomologist Helmut Schmalfuss they are “the most extensively investigated terrestrial isopod species.” The benefit of having that title is that we know all sorts of cool facts about their lives!

The common pill bug, aka common pill woodlouse, roly-poly, doodlebug, chiggypig, penny sow, cheesybug or Armadillidium vulgare is a little critter who loves to live in the damp darkness under rotting logs. Photo by Emily Stone.

Many of pill bug’s adaptations are centered around not drying out. Isopod’s ancestors evolved in the sea, and the lungs on their bellies still need a thin film of water to work. So they live in damp soil underneath rocks or rotting logs that provide shade and prevent evaporation. They don’t need complicated eyes; they just have a simple photoreceptor to detect light and dark. They huddle with their relatives and seek out tight corners to reduce water loss through evaporation. They often forage at night, on the gourmet fare of decomposing plant litter, with a few seeds, live plants, dead animals, fungi, and some scat thrown in.

By nibbling on fungi, pill bugs reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that the fungi release through decomposition. This may make a small contribution toward reducing climate change, especially when you consider that some locations support up to 900 pill bugs per square foot!

In order to keep their eggs from drying out, pill bugs are an invertebrate version of marsupials. Three times a summer the female places a dozen or so eggs into the nutrient-filled water of her brood pouch. Once they hatch, the young will remain in the brood pouch for a few days before emerging as juvenile adults. Since exoskeletons can’t grow, the juveniles need to molt twice to achieve all seven body segments and seven pairs of legs.

The seven segments in their thorax’s tough exoskeleton allow piddlebugs to roll up into a tight ball for protection against predators, which include spiders, centipedes, beetles, and salamanders. If the danger overwhelms them, common pill bugs may play dead just like their buddy in marsupiality the opossum! The towhead and I must not have seemed dangerous, because none of the isopods even rolled up when we flipped the log.

Climate-mitigating, marsupial invaders who play dead? Holy Moly Roly Poly indeed!

Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Second Grade Tracking Stories (Award winner!)

Last week I attended the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin. At the conference, it was announced that my third book, Natural Connections 3: A Web Endlessly Woven won second place in the Excellence In Craft Contest’s book category. Naturally, I’m thrilled. My essay, “Second Grade Tracking Stories” also won first place in the Family Participation-Youth Outdoor Education category for both blog and newspaper. This week I’ll share that essay with you again!

Emily and the award. Photo by Paul Queneau. 

Second Grade Tracking Stories

January 17, 2025

Murmurs of interest rippled through the classroom as I spread a rectangle of green felt on the floor at the front of the room. The murmurs became questions as I placed two lines of life-sized animal tracks, printed and cut out of white paper, onto the felt. When I finally invited the second graders to come up and gather around the felt, I was amazed by the almost instantaneous formation of a perimeter of kneeling children, totally focused on the scene.

Three times a year I get to spend a few days at the elementary school in Drummond, Wisconsin, teaching kids my favorite nature facts using my favorite nature props. Once each season, in Fall, Winter, and Spring, I load seven plastic tubs filled with skulls, furs, graduated cylinders, strips of birch bark, and other oddities into the Museum’s minivan for a visit to each classroom in grades pre-k through six.

The green felt with tracks that I asked second graders to interpret. Photo by Emily Stone. 

“Can you figure out what happened here?” I asked the class. They began sharing their observations, and building a story together. “There’s a rabbit.” “And a wolf!” “The wolf carried off the rabbit!”

I asked them to explain themselves. “How do you know those are rabbit tracks?” I prompted. A girl pointed out the very large hind feet, and the smaller front feet, but she indicated that the rabbit was going the wrong direction. Rabbit, hare, and squirrel tracks are all a bit tricky, because of the way these beings hop.

Rabbits leap forward and land with their front feet I explained to the kids, and awkwardly tried to demonstrate. Then their hind legs swing around and land in front of the front feet, where they push off into another leap. This creates groups of tracks where the hind feet are in front of the front feet—not what we’d typically expect,

With rabbits and hares, the big hind feet are usually paired, with the two front feet placed on a slight diagonal just behind and between them. Squirrels, deer mice, and other hoppers who spend a lot of time in trees, move in basically the same way, but their front feet land right next to each other instead of on a diagonal. As a class, we reassessed the direction the rabbit tracks were going.

Next, we moved on to the guess about the wolf tracks. The tracks I’d set out were only a couple of inches long—much too small for a wolf. “What makes you think they are wolf tracks?” I asked. “They look like my dog’s tracks, and dog and wolf tracks look the same,” offered the boy. Pretty good reasoning, I’d say! I love teaching in the rural communities of the Northwoods, where students have a broad range of outdoor experiences and observations to draw from in their learning.

I commended the boy on recognizing the symmetrical, four-toed tracks with visible claw marks as being related to dogs, but I challenged the class to think about the size. “Would wolf tracks be that small?” I asked. Some students shook their heads no, but looked a little unsure. I had everyone hold up their hand, fingers together. “A wolf track will be about the size of my palm, and as big as your whole hand!” I informed them. I love how small I feel when I find a wolf track in the snow and place my handprint beside it.

I took this photo of my hand print next to wolf tracks in Yellowstone National Park where the wolves are BIG! Photo by Emily Stone. 

Again, I asked for guesses about the owners of the tracks. Immediately, students offered fox and coyote as alternatives. Either could have been correct for the simple tracks we’d printed for the activity. On average, foxes are quite a bit smaller than coyotes, but big fox tracks can overlap in size with small coyote tracks. In the snow, red fox tracks often look less distinct, because dense hair protects the bottom of their feet from the cold. Coyotes have bare toes that leave crisp track outlines. If you have a very clear track, it’s also possible to see that foxes have wide, chevron-shaped heel pads, and the hind feet of coyotes register with narrow little heel pads.

“So we have a rabbit or hare, and a coyote,” I summarized. “And what did they do?” Together, the kids explained that the coyote killed the rabbit and carried them off, and they knew this because the tracks came from different corners. After the tracks intersected, the rabbit tracks disappeared, and the coyote tracks continued to the edge of the green felt.

And then class was over. After work, I headed out to the ski trail, absentmindedly cataloging the animal tracks at the edge of the groomed snow. I saw the hopping tracks of squirrels leading to and from trees, the heart-shaped tracks of deer stepping right in the middle of the ski tracks, and even the daisy-chain of grouse tracks winding through the underbrush. I didn’t see a single live animal, but these tracks recorded the unseen activity for anyone to read.

Grouse, squirrel and other tracks near my skis. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Did any of the second graders do the same thing? Did they pause while climbing up the sledding hill to see what furry friend had run across it? Did they follow a being’s trail to find out what happened to them? My hope is that our classroom exercise will help them learn to read the stories of the forest.

Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Excellence in Craft Awards!

 

Emily Stone Named Excellence in Craft Contest Winner

 

Outdoor Writer Receives Prestigious Awards 

 

 

Madison, Wisconsin (August 25, 2026) — Emily Stone was named an Excellence In Craft (EIC) Contest winner Monday night at the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

Stone won first place in the Blog/Family Participation-Youth Outdoor Education category for "Second Grade Tracking Stories" (Natural Connections), first place in the Newspaper/Family Participation-Youth category for “Second Grade Tracking Stories” (Ashland Daily Press), second place in the Newspaper/Conservation-Nature category for “Flying Kittens” (Ashland Daily Press), and second place in the Book category for “Natural Connections 3: A WebEndlessly Woven” (Green Darner Media). 

 

OWAA’s annual EIC Contest honors the best-of-the-best in a variety of communications formats – Blog, Book, Column, Graphic/Illustration, Magazine, Newspaper, Photography, Photography Essay, Radio/Podcast, TV/Video/Webcast, and Other. This year's EIC Contest was sponsored by Friesens Publishing and Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

About OWAA

 

Recognized as “The Voice of the Outdoors,” OWAA is the nation’s largest organization of professional outdoor journalists. The association’s membership includes writers, photographers, videographers, radio and TV personalities, digital storytellers and artists. Formed in 1927, the nonprofit association’s mission is to improve the professional skills and opportunities of its members, set the highest ethical and communications standards, encourage public enjoyment and conservation of natural resources, and mentor the next generation of professional outdoor communicators. https://owaa.org

 

Read more about my trip to Madison on my Substack HERE!

 

 

Turtle Travels by K.R. Woollums

Rosie Wollums is about to start her Junior year as an Environmental Studies and Creative Writing major at Coe College. Being in the Northwoods for the first time as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, Rosie was excited to explore and visit Lake Superior.

I stood barefoot, my heels and toes sinking in as if the shifting shoreline of Friendly Valley Beach was going to swallow me whole. The water of Lake Superior lapped gently onto shore, beckoning me in. A south wind pushed the warming water towards me and my new coworker and friend, Katherine. The barren lakebed glittered in the sunlight, even as I stood knee deep. I hadn’t seen any plants, insects, or even minnows. Nothing blocked the light from pouring down onto the expanse of quartz sand except for myself, Katherine, and our shadows.

A rock caught my eye. It was the size of my palm, and a few feet away. As I approached, I realized it wasn’t a rock, but a young snapping turtle laying in the sand. The dark, bumpy carapace sat in stark contrast to the pale, smooth lakebed. Despite loving the turbid waters of estuaries and lakes for both home and food, the little turtle lay in the chilly and crystalline waters of Lake Superior.

Rock or turtle? It can be hard to tell in the shifting sunlight. This is a rock, but Rosie found a turtle. Photo by Emily Stone.

The estuary near Friendly Valley Beach holds the most nutrient-rich water in the area. The Sioux River carries nutrients in, and clear, cold, nutrient-poor Lake Superior pushes from the other side. The pressure from both bodies of water keeps many of the life-supporting nutrients within the estuary, and creates an extremely productive area, providing food and shelter for many creatures, such as snapping turtles.

The bare sand of the Friendly Valley Beach contrasts with the nutrient-rich estuary where the Sioux River meets Lake Superior. Photo by Emily Stone.

Back on the shore of Lake Superior, driftwood, weeds, and small spiders filled the otherwise vacant beach. Just feet behind that sat a line of brush and trees, and swallows flew and dipped through the air above. Beyond, lay a lively river, estuary, and fields. Despite the lack of life I saw in the lake, there was plenty to be seen around me.

View from a sandbar looking back at the beach. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Wading past the turtle to a sandbar, I maintained a respectful distance. I didn’t want to disturb the turtle’s sense of safety. While snapping turtles are known for being passive in water, I was a little worried about being on the receiving end of a defensive bite.

Unlike other turtles, snapping turtles cannot hide within their shells. The plastron, or bottom shell, is too small to fit their bodies. So, instead of hiding within their shell, they bite when they feel seriously threatened in life-or-death situations, or are females actively laying eggs. Snapping turtles have a strong bite, up to 125 lbs. of pressure, because they sometimes feed on hard foods. This is almost as strong as our bites, which are 160 lbs.! Common snapping turtles are foragers, eating vegetation, invertebrates, amphibians, carrion, and even the occasional small mammal, bird, or fish!

Given the small size, and rough, bumpy shell, I knew this turtle was a juvenile. Snapping turtles' carapace flatten with age, so mature adults will have a smoother shell. Maybe this teenage turtle came from the nearby Sioux River Estuary, and was exploring Lake Superior, just like me. While it was possible the turtle hatched out a nest on the sandy beach, it wouldn’t have been this year. The turtle was already far larger than any newborn snapping turtle would be, and seemed to be at least a few years old. I knew they couldn’t be near the beach to lay their own eggs because adult common snapping turtle carapaces are 10-20 inches, and this turtle’s was somewhere around 5 inches.

Young snapping turtle with bumpy shell. Photo by Mark G, iNaturalist.

Katherine and I crept further into Lake Superior. We lay in the shallows enjoying the cool water and sun just like the small turtle. After this adventure in Lake Superior, I planned to eat dinner before falling into bed. I imagined the young snapping turtle swimming back to their estuary, grabbing a snack, and settling down just the same.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Weirdos in the Kaleidoscope

Late summer days are a kaleidoscope of vibrant flowers in all colors of the rainbow. Some of the blossoms have their perfect petals neatly arranged while their leaves form regular patterns up their stems. They are a testament to the precision that can be written into genetic instructions for growth.

Royal catchfly is part of the rainbow of our August pollinator gardens! Photo by Emily Stone. 

I find myself drawn to the weirdos, though, like the pearly everlasting flowers woven into a new shape by black-spiked caterpillars, or the milkweed leaves whose tattered appearance hints at a feeding frenzy. (See last week’s article about my front yard safari!) These weirdos are great examples of how our relationships with other beings can be both messy and emergent.

Near the milkweeds is a thick patch of goldenrod. They weren’t quite blooming last week on my safari, but many of the stems were topped by arching plumes of little green buds, just about to burst into soft yellow flowers. Several of these stems, though, were topped by tufts of leaves, as if the stems had been pulled through pinched fingers and all the little green triangles collected in a bunch. They looked a bit like doll-size cabbages. Weirdos indeed!

Goldenrod cabbage gall. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Goldenrod galls like these were my first introduction to insect galls back in college. I remember walking through a field on a nature hike at the very beginning of Fall Block—a requirement for my Outdoor Education major—and finding both the round ball galls I’ve written about before and these leafy cabbage galls on the goldenrods.

Goldenrod ball gall. Photo by Emily Stone. 

I’d never heard of galls before, even though there are likely over 100,000 species of insects who lay their eggs on a plant, have their larvae chew their way in, then induce the plant to grow some form of house around the larvae. The larvae then drink the plant juices and enjoy the gall’s protection. Eventually each insect metamorphoses and emerges as an adult, ready to lay eggs and start again. Gall-forming insects include species of midges, flies, wasps, and mites. Each insect parasite has their own preferred host plant.

Knowing this, I thought a quick search for “goldenrod cabbage gall” would give me all the information I needed. Instead, according to an article about galls on the iNaturalist website, there are at least a dozen insects who create similar leaf bunch galls on goldenrod!

Picking my way through the descriptions of the top two galls, I realized that if I knew what species of goldenrod they were on, that would help with insect identification. But looking at a list of characteristics that separate Canada goldenrod from giant goldenrod, I still wasn’t sure. Some species, like the delicate zig-zag goldenrod of forests, or seaside goldenrod of shorelines are pretty distinctive, but these big plumy types can be tricky.

So, I texted Sarah Boles, a native landscaper and long-time Museum volunteer who planted these gardens and asked what species of goldenrod she’d put in. “None!” was her reply. All the goldenrods in our pollinator gardens blew in of their own accord, on tiny seeds carried by fluffy parachutes built for pioneering.

Finally, I decided to crack open a gall to see what I could find. Breaking the leaf cluster off the top of the plant, I split it open from top to bottom down the center. I’d expected a central chamber with a single larva, not all that different from the ball galls we dissect with sixth graders during our MuseumMobile programs. Instead, the gall looked empty. Then something moved. A tiny yellow larva wiggled out of a tiny chamber formed by the curled base of a miniaturized leaf.

A tiny yellow midge larva hides at the base of a leaf inside the cabbage gall. 

Photo by Emily Stone. 

Ah ha! Using that search image, I could now see that almost every leaf base held either a larger yellow or a smaller white larva. Some of the yellow larvae had a stomach full of green visible through their translucent sides. Now it was clear, these galls were formed by the gall midge Rhopalomyia capitata, whose galls are dormitories with 6-20 roommates. Knowing that, I could also assume that the flower was giant goldenrod—Solidago gigantea. The insects had done the plant identification for me!

Older (yellow) and younger (white) midge larvae in a cabbage gall. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Looking again at the plants, I could now see that all the goldenrod with cabbage galls had smooth stems among the flowers, while the others had hairy stems. It had been hard to be confident about these subtle characteristics without the insect’s help.

Sharing my story of discovery with Sarah, we got to chatting about how goldenrod was taking over the gardens and needed to be cut back to allow the milkweed, spiderwort, figwort, and other plants to survive. Gazing out over the garden, I realized that the plants with galls on them were shorter, with many fewer flowers, some wouldn’t have any flowers at all. They wouldn’t be able to contribute as much to goldenrod’s spread. Perhaps these little midges are Nature’s way of keeping goldenrod in balance. The weirdos have their place in the vibrant kaleidoscope of the world!

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Front Yard Safari

The flower head looked odd. Pearly everlasting—with their beautiful flat-topped cluster of white flowers with yellow centers—had finally bloomed. And now the petals would dry out and hold their shape for many months. Except, as I walked past the small patch of native plants between the Museum and the Forest Lodge Library, I noticed that one of the flower clusters was a shapeless blob of petals. Dark balls, like peppercorns, clung to the bottom. And did one of those petals move?

Poking the blob, I found that it gave easily under my finger, as if were made of soft cloth. Peeling open a corner, I spotted yellow stripes, red dots, and multi-tipped black spikes. Yikes! That’s what this American painted lady caterpillar wanted me to think…and then to leave them alone.

An American painted lady caterpillar hides inside the house of flower petals they wove together. Photo by Emily Stone.

A few weeks ago I found a younger version of both the plant and the caterpillar on the Superior Hiking Trail. With no flowers blooming yet, the smaller caterpillar had tied together the fuzzy, gray-green leaves into a little home. I’d never seen this older version with the gorgeous, woven-petal shroud.

Scanning the garden, I soon discovered a few more caterpillar homes in the pearly everlasting, all with dark bales of frass (caterpillar poop) spilling out. Some gardeners might be frustrated to lose a few flowers, but hosting native insects is exactly why we plant native species in our gardens, instead of importing species from all over the world who don’t play a positive role in our local ecosystem.

As I poked around, I noticed something else dark and spikey hiding under the canopy of petals on a caterpillar-less flower. Was that an ant? With extra legs? And then I found a better window into the action: a brown spider clasped a black ant in a death grip. The larger front legs probably indicated they are a crab spider—a group who often sits on flowers to ambush their prey.

A crab spider feasts on an ant in the dining room created by a pearly everlasting flower.
Photo by Emily Stone. 

Inspired, I began a slow walk around the Museum’s pollinator gardens. Goldenrod buds looked ready to burst. Most of the bergamot had already erupted into purple pompoms of petals. A tattered male monarch butterfly rested on a stem. And then a tuft of yellow, black and white on a milkweed leaf caught my eye.

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars feed only on milkweed and dogbane leaves, and concentrate toxins from the plants into their bodies to protect them from predators. The brightly colored hairs offer some protection, too! Photo by Emily Stone.

Just like the American painted lady, these caterpillars are very selective about their baby food. Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars only munch on the leaves of milkweeds or their cousins the dogbanes. Just like monarch caterpillars, their bright colors are a warning to birds and would-be predators that they have concentrated the cardiac glycosides from the plant and have become both toxic and distasteful. Once the aptly nicknamed “milkweed tigers” metamorphose into drab brown moths, they warn bats about their bad taste by making ultrasonic clicks.

Although monarch and moth caterpillars would seem to compete for the same food source, it’s reported that monarchs prefer tender young milkweed leaves, and the moth larvae focus on leaves too old and tough for monarchs.

Walking slowly, I scanned the flowers for anything out of place, any disruption to the normal patterns. On the dark center of a black-eyed Susan, I found a small green anomaly. Crouching down, I found myself face-to-face with the fierce scowl, long horns, and serrated edges of a jagged ambush bug. They lie motionless on a flower until an unsuspecting pollinator comes looking for a sugary treat. Wham! With front legs so strong and scary that scientists call them “raptorial,” the ambush bug ambushes the hungry visitor; jabs them with that vicious beak; injects paralyzing, digesting poison; and drinks their fill. Using this technique, they can catch and eat prey more than twice their size. If you try to squash an ambush bug, they will bite you. While painful, their poison is not dangerous to humans.

Jagged assassin bugs lie motionless on a flower until an unsuspecting pollinator comes looking for a sugary treat. Then they attack! Photo by Emily Stone.

Looking up, I found the green stem of an aster absolutely covered with bright red aphids. While aphids have piercing/sucking mouthparts just like the ambush bugs and other relatives in the group known as “true bugs,” they suck plant juices instead. This stem must have gotten too crowded with the clones of one female, because a few of the aphids had sprouted clear wings, readying themselves to escape the crowds and expand to a new frontier.

Aphids, including a few with wings, crowd onto the stem of a flat-topped white aster.
Photo by Emily Stone. 

My loop around the yard complete, I headed back into the air-conditioned Museum to look at my photos. Some people fly halfway around the world to witness the dramas of nature play out on the African savannah. I found plenty of action walking halfway around the yard.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.