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.