Subnivean Experiments

One evening in the 1970s, little Gary Siegwarth learned a lesson. While outside his family’s home in Iowa there had been a big snowstorm, inside there was ice cream—ice cream that had to be shared among five kids. Wanting to make sure that he got his fair share, young Gary took the cardboard carton out of the freezer, then out of the house, and hid it deep within one of the drifts. When he came back a day later, the sweet treat was just a melty, unappetizing blob.

An artist's impression of the event. ;-)

“I thought it was the perfect hiding place from my siblings,” Gary told me, “Turns out the ice cream cache quickly metamorphosized into a subnivean shake…I was surprised. I just never really thought about it.” Gary had accidentally discovered the magical realm of the Subnivean Zone.

I’ve been wanting to explore that world a little more, too, but instead of burying precious ice cream, I buried thermometers. The night before our first big snowstorm, I wrapped a few indoor/outdoor temperature sensors in plastic wrap and placed them where I thought snowdrifts would soon form.

One sensor is under the boughs of a hemlock tree. Deer and snowshoe hares are known to seek the cover of evergreens in winter, because those dense needles prevent some warmth from escaping to the stars.

Another sensor is out in the open—just to the side of the planned sledding run—and I made sure to snuggle it in under dry autumn leaves and fern stems. The third sensor is leaning against the base of an ash tree. This one I expect to become more interesting in the spring, when tree wells expand in the strengthening sun.

The final sensor is dangling about four feet above the ground, in the branches of a dying spruce, in an attempt to shade it from the sun and get the most accurate air temperature possible.

Thermometers in place, I snuggled in, too.

By dawn, the sky had shaken down about five inches of dry, fluffy snow. By the end of the day, the total was seven. I watched the digital weather station eagerly, as temperatures from each of the thermometers shifted and changed. I knew that the data would get more interesting as the air temperature dropped.

Sure enough, the evening after the storm, when air temps hit zero in the dying spruce, every other thermometer was significantly warmer, and none more drastically than the one placed in the open, under leaves, with the thickest blanket of snow. Its temperature read 30 degrees. Even as the air temp sank down to 8 below, the buried thermometer only reached 27.

Yes, I keep my house cool. The thermostat is set at 64 and this weather station sits near a window, so it's often even cooler. I wear a cozy sweatshirt, sometimes down vest, curl up under blankets, and often overheat if I'm doing chores! Among my friends I do not have the coldest house. Not even close. I've always been a fan of saving energy and saving money.

According to the International Dairy Food Association, the ideal temperature for ice cream storage is zero degrees Fahrenheit and should not rise above 10. It’s no wonder that young Gary’s ice cream melted! He had placed his stolen treat in the same microclimate as my temperature sensor in the Subnivean Zone.

As winter’s first snowflakes drift through the dark, some land on top of dead plants, fallen leaves, twigs, and other detritus of the forest floor. In many places, snow never fully reaches the ground. In addition, the residual heat of summer still radiates from the earth. This warmth causes the bottommost snowflakes to sublimate—or transition directly to water vapor without becoming liquid first. The damp air then rises through the snowpack and refreezes into a crystal ceiling above spacious (for a mouse) rooms and runs.

As the first flakes fall, they often don’t reach the ground. In the air spaces below leaves, sticks, and other objects on the forest floor, the Subnivean Zone begins to form. Photo by Emily Stone.

In this space, with a blanket of snow to trap the earth’s warmth, and a solid break against the windchill, temperatures hover around freezing. Deeper snow provides even more insulation, and all manner of critters—from mice to martens, bacteria, fungi, spiders, hibernating insects, frozen wood frogs, and more—rely on the moderated microclimate.

To Gary’s credit, it didn’t take much thinking for him to figure out what had gone wrong. As a kid in farm country, he’d heard many times that a blanket of snow was better for the alfalfa and protected it from winter kill. He also had plenty of direct experience with the relative warmth of snow forts.

And still, it can take a while for information to sink in. Years later, in junior high, teenage Gary was playing football at a neighbor’s house. They grabbed a snack of ice cream sandwiches out of the freezer and Gary buried his in the snow for safekeeping. As before, the deliciousness melted and oozed away. That was the last time he experimented with ice cream in the Subnivean Zone.

While Gary never admitted guilt to his family in the case of the disappearing ice cream (he thinks he probably got in trouble even while taking the 5th), he still learned something important from these two accidental experiments. And he went on to become a scientist.

I’m not going to put any ice cream at risk this winter, but I am going to watch eagerly as my experiment in the snow plays out. How will deeper drifts and colder air temps impact the Subnivean Zone? I’ll be sure to let you know when I find out!


Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Cozy Carpenter Ants

On dark winter mornings my dad gets up early and starts a fire to make sure the chill is gone by the time my mom joins him for breakfast. By mid-afternoon, sunshine beams in through their south-facing windows and the indoor temperature can easily reach 75 degrees without much help from the in-floor heat. Dad stokes the fire longer on cloudy days, sometimes with help from eager grandkids.

All of those cozy flames require a good supply of firewood.

So, minutes after arriving home for Thanksgiving, I found myself down by the old barn helping my dad start up the wood splitter. Always mindful of protecting people’s hearing, he handed me a set of earmuffs to match his own.

One by one, we hefted one-to-two-foot diameter rounds onto the platform, and I watched as he guided the splitter into the wood grain. Chunk after chunk peeled off and fell to the grass. I loaded my arms and carried them into the stack.

Having my young back at his disposal, Dad passed over the smaller logs (Mom could help with those later) and focused on some of the biggest rounds from low on the trunk or where a branch had diverged to form a Y. It was a red elm, he told me, much denser wood than the American elms he leaves standing dead for woodpecker habitat.

After we’d hoisted a particularly large chunk onto the splitter, I hovered nearby to catch half as it separated. With the slow force of the wedge, a section of tree opened like a book, and revealed another civilization.

I didn't get a good photo of the galleries while splitting wood, but we did include a carpenter ant gallery (and predator!) in our Curiosity Center at the Museum.

Maybe that’s overly dramatic, but the intricate catacombs excavated by carpenter ants were quite impressive. I lowered the split log to the ground and examined it more closely. Several cavities were packed full of shiny black bodies, and as I disturbed them, unique individuals emerged. First was a large ant with wings. A queen, I surmised. Carpenter ant colonies can have more than one queen, although they aren’t friendly with each other.

A large, winged queen sits near a gallery filled with worker ants. 

The other odd individual was smaller than most, but also had a pair of long, shimmering wings extending beyond his abdomen. This was probably a male. Drone ants only come into the picture when the colony is ready to reproduce. They hatch from unfertilized eggs, mate with a new queen from another colony, and die. The observation has been made that they don’t have a father—only the queen bestows her genetic information on them—but they do have a grandfather, because the queen was born from a fertilized egg.

This smaller, winged carpenter ant is probably a male drone. Photo by Emily Stone.

But Wikipedia reports that nuptial flights—when drones mate with new queens so that they can go start new colonies—happen when it’s warm and humid. That’s not how I’d describe November in Iowa. So why would there be guys hanging around the colony?

[Come to think of it, why is a winged queen hanging around? Queens remove their wings after they've mated and found a place to establish a colony. Maybe November weather did feel conducive to mating...until it didn't.]

And why didn’t I see any clusters of small, white eggs? As it turns out, carpenter ants build both primary nests and satellite nests. Primary nests host the queens and the eggs, and require high humidity so the eggs don’t dry out. Older larvae, pupae, and worker ants can handle life in the drier satellite nests.

Both kinds of nests are excavated into dead or dying trees. Carpenter ants don’t eat the wood, but they do chew their way through the soft, wide parts of growth rings formed during rapid spring growth. The denser “late wood” is left for the walls. Tunnels between the rings allow for easy movement, and add to the lacey quality of the galleries.

The ants’ work is important to decomposition in the forest. Not only is their waste sawdust easily returned to the soil, their galleries multiply the surface area available to things like fungi and bacteria who actually can digest the wood.

If wood isn’t part of their diet, though, what is? A colony’s foragers will often head out at night in search of insects—either living or dead. They’ll extract the insects’ bodily juices and bring that nutrition back to the colony, leaving the exoskeleton behind. Some species also join the “farming” of aphids for their honeydew. As aphids slurp plant juices, they excrete excess sugar water. In return for this soft drink, ants ward off aphid-eaters like ladybugs. Bacteria in the ants’ guts may help them synthesize additional amino acids.

In preparation for winter diapause, ants achieve up to 50% bodyfat and increase their glycerol content as antifreeze. They also huddle together in their galleries. All of these habits make them a favorite food of pileated woodpeckers, who are quite willing to chisel their way through pretty solid wood in order to access these fatty, sugary, concentrated treats.

By fueling the birds’ metabolisms, the ants themselves are just as important to winter warmth in the wild as the logs they live in are to the cozy fires of people.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Clubmoss Magic

A flock of hikers crunched down the oak-leaf-covered trail behind me, their blaze orange accessories complementing the last of autumn’s browns. The leaves had already been kicked up by herds of turkeys and scraped aside by the local 8-point buck. On this “Deer Widows Walk” (named for the marketing ploy that entices hunters’ wives into stores while their husbands are busy in tree stands on opening weekend of gun deer season) non-hunters of all genders were simply interested in hiking without fear of stray bullets.

The Forest Lodge Estate—owned by the Forest Service but not yet open to the public without a guide—provided just the place. The plan was to hike briskly between nature stops, and a brisk wind off Lake Namakagon held us to that plan.

Not far in, a patch of green—with exclamation points of yellow—caught my eye. Smiling to myself, I reached for the old Bic lighter I’d slipped into my pocket before the hike—hoping for just this opportunity! This would be a nature stop. “Gather up everyone! Make sure you can see,” I encouraged as I crouched next to the patch of doll-sized Christmas trees.

Only those mini trees weren’t really trees. You might know them as ground pine, prince’s pine, or clubmoss. None of those names are entirely accurate, though. They definitely aren’t pines, or mosses, nor do they belong to royalty. If you’re botanical, you might know them by the genus Lycopodium (Greek for little wolf foot), but after recent DNA testing, most of our species have been given new names. Their family remains: Lycopodiaceae.

Back in the 1700s, Carl Linnaeus put these plants into a group we call “Fern Allies,” a sort of catchall name for non-flowering plants who have a vascular system and reproduce through spores. Clubmosses often bear their spores on specialized stems called strobili, which looked to someone like little, yellow clubs.

Before crouching down, I’d tapped one of those strobili experimentally, and had been rewarded by a small poof of yellow. It’s not often that I’m in the woods at the particular moment when the spores are ripe but not yet gone. And now, here I was with both an audience and a lighter.

Gloves removed, I held the lighter downwind of the strobili. With my left thumb and pointer finger I gave a little flick, sending a cloud of spores toward the flame. Poof! For an instant, the fire crackled higher. I flicked again, and another tiny explosion shone in our eyes.

Clubmoss spores contain 50% fat, but that’s not why they are so flammable. Instead, it’s the simple equation of fine dust with a relatively large surface area per unit of volume being combined with plenty of oxygen and a spark. It’s the same combination that makes the news when a grain elevator explodes.

I’ve only harnessed the power of Lycopodium powder to win favor with my nephews or impress field trip participants. Historically, though, it provided the flash for photography. And in 1807, before fossil fuels were widely available, Lycopodium spores were used by French inventors to power the first internal combustion engine and propel a boat. You can still purchase Lycopodium powder, often under the name “Dragon’s Breath,” for relatively safe use in magic tricks and theatrical special effects.

I love making things explode safely, but that isn’t necessarily the neatest thing about these spores. Very similar to the seeds of orchids, they are designed to drift widely, but don’t carry enough energy to grow on their own. Once they land in a likely spot—not compacted or disturbed—the spores are attacked by fungi in the soil. Or maybe attack isn’t the right word. Because the tiny clubmoss gametophyte is fed by the fungi in a symbiotic relationship.

In a pattern called “the alternation of generations,” the tiny gametophyte produces eggs and sperm, which combine and grow into the sporophyte—the clubmoss we know and love. Clubmosses grow slowly, though, and the sporophyte’s first year of growth is entirely below the soil, and entirely fed by the same fungi that partnered with its parents.

Once the young clubmoss reaches the sunlight, it begins to photosynthesize and produce its own sugars, but even then it grows slowly. Each year the horizontal stem, called a rhizome, grows a little farther and sends up just one vertical shoot. Clubmosses don’t need to grow rapidly, because toxic alkaloids in their leaves deter most animals from snacking on their ever-greens. Christmas wreath-makers are their main enemies, since a single wreath could contain—and kill—many years’ worth of growth.

It’s best to leave these delightful plants in the woods, where, if you happen to find them when their spores are ready and the wind is right, you can see a little clubmoss magic.


Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Inspired from the Ocean to Idaho to Wisconsin

Sometimes, on a gray day during the shoulder season, a phone call from a friend can be just the thing. Yesterday, Kris Millgate’s familiar, throaty voice beaming through space brought a smile to my face, and a wave of memories, too.

Kris and I met in Montana, at my very first Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) conference. I’d only just joined the group as a way to network with other outdoor journalists in my brand-new role as a newspaper columnist for the Museum. I’d checked a box on my registration requesting a conference mentor, and Kris had volunteered. “I take my job as mentor seriously,” she told me up front. That was almost as intimidating as her resume.

After years in TV journalism, with the requisite pretty face to match, Kris became a freelance writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She hunts, fishes, hikes, rafts, flies a drone, and keeps up with two hockey-playing boys. Behind that pretty face is a whip-smart brain that’s always going 10,000 miles a minute, and below it are limbs filled with muscle and determination. I listened in awe as Kris told stories of her adventures (and mis-adventures) and dished out sage advice on how to be an award-winning journalist.

When I stopped by Kris’s home in Idaho Falls on my road trip to Alaska in 2018, she gave me a tour of some of Idaho’s wildness. It was different than Wisconsin, but the deep forests, clear rivers, and cold spring rain felt very familiar. I love making connections between ecosystems across the continent, so last summer, when Kris decided to make a documentary about the challenges that Chinook salmon face on their great migration from the Pacific Ocean to her neighborhood, I knew I wanted to bring that story to Wisconsin.

I took this selfie of Kris and myself next to one of those wild, rushing rivers in Idaho in 2018!

Chinook salmon aren’t doing well in Idaho. Despite what Kris calls “the best spawning habitat you could ever want” in her state, fish get stymied by dams in both directions. On their way out to the ocean as fingerlings, calm pools behind the dams slow the little guys down. Humans employ fish ladders, barges, and trucks to help the salmon get around the walls we’ve built in the water. After the salmon have fed in the rich ocean food chain and grown to be as long as your arm, they must once again navigate eight dams in their quest toward the spawning ground.

In response to salmon’s decline, humans have set up hatcheries to buoy the population enough for sport fishermen to catch and members of the Shoshone-Bannock, Yakima, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Nez Pierce tribes to exercise their treaty rights. Not unlike GLIFWC protecting hunting and fishing rights in Wisconsin’s Ceded Territories, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission works to protect tribes’ right to catch fish by making sure that there are fish to catch in the first place.

Kris’s documentary about the challenges facing Chinook salmon began with what she called “a doozy of a road trip” during the pandemic last summer. She captured that journey in her documentary “Ocean to Idaho,” and also in her book “My Place Among Fish,” which details the backstory and the outtakes in her humorous, high-energy style. I’m thrilled that on December 7 the Museum is hosting her first film screening east of the Mississippi. Kris will Zoom in to The Rivers Eatery in Cable to share her story and the film, and answer questions afterwards. Redbery Books will have Kris’s book on hand. (More information is at www.cablemuseum.org.) Attend virtually by registering here.

My friend Kris Millgate snapped this photo of herself during a huge road trip she took to document the challenges that Chinook salmon face as they travel from Idaho to the ocean and back. Her new documentary film, Ocean to Idaho captures that journey. Photo by Kris Millgate.

It's possible that some long-lost cousins of the Idaho Chinook who Kris followed are currently living in Wisconsin waters. Chinook were first introduced to the Great Lakes in 1877, and successive plantings spread them throughout all of the Great Lakes. In Wisconsin, they are most abundant in Lake Michigan from Kenosha to Green Bay. The populations are completely supported by hatchery fish, though, since streams flowing into Lake Michigan don’t provide the right spawning habitat, and no successful reproduction occurs. That’s the opposite problem of Chinook in Idaho, where ideal spawning habitat exists—just out of reach.

While not as prominent as out west, dams in Wisconsin impact fish, too. I’ve written before about sturgeon in the Couderay River who are moving back upstream after a small dam was removed. Those incredible fish are still absent from the upper Namekagon, though, due to additional dams.

As I looked out of my window at the gray November sky and listened to Kris recount 850 miles of personal and ecological challenges, I asked her how she still sounds so upbeat. “No matter where you live,” she told me from Idaho, “the fact that the wild is still trying to make its way with us in the way is remarkable. The wild is still trying to do what it was intended to do. Stick your feet in a creek and you’ll realize that the connection is still there for us.”

Yep, I thought with a smile on my face, a phone call from a friend can be just the thing.


Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Not Mosquitoes

One evening a few weeks ago, I looked up from my computer to see a thick swarm of mosquitoes at my window. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the tiny, leggy, little buggers bounced against the screen in the lamplight. More swarms greeted me in the morning, as they knocked against the windows and formed a gauntlet to my car. Several carpooled to work with me. Others joined me while brushing my teeth the next evening.

The bugs were everywhere. But none had landed on me, or tried to bite, or even buzzed in my ear. That’s not typical mosquito behavior! So, in the spirit of science, I caught one out of midair and gently squashed it. Even a hand lens couldn’t tell me much about this tiny tangle of legs, but after a photo shoot with my macro setting, I was able to ascertain this critter’s innocence: it was definitely not a mosquito.

The spines on its knees were my first clue. The lower joint of each leg had at least one and sometimes multiple little pointy prongs sticking out of it. The two tiny wings were clear and delicately veined. The abdomen was narrow and dark, with a lighter tip. And, most oddly, a projection on the underside of its thorax, what we’d think of as our chest, almost looked like a pale-colored mite clinging like a monkey on his mom.

Stumped, I sent my photo around—first to one entomologist friend, then another. When between the two of them I came up with the family Mycetophilidae and the common name “fungus gnat,” I sent the photo to “my mushroom guy” and he confirmed “Definitely Mycetophilidae. Huge family over a thousand spp. Google glow worms…”

Mycetophilids are in the order Diptera with mosquitoes, gnats, and other two-winged flies. As I parsed the Wikipedia article, everything began to make sense. They are described as having a “strongly humped thorax and well-developed coxae.” Did I know that an insect’s coxa is the base of its leg, roughly equivalent to our upper thigh? Definitely not. But the humped back and large, pale-colored coxae on my insect are what had looked like a monkey-baby mite to my unaided eye. Fungus gnats are also said to have spinose legs, which must be the scientific way to describe bayonets sticking out of your knees.

I was a little disappointed that none of my entomologist friends could identify my little guy to species. As it turns out, this would require close study of wing venation (ok, that’s not too hard) and chaetotaxy (which means the arrangement of the bristles on their body), and genitalia (which strikes me as a little too invasive for such a recent acquaintance.) Plus, with over 3,000 species in Mycetophilidae, it might take weeks to get through a dichotomous key.

“Most of their natural history secrets remain untold.” wrote Peter H. Kerr in his entry on fungus gnats for the Springer.com Encyclopedia of Entomology. That may be so, but we know more than nothing. For instance, fungus gnats occur on all continents except Antarctica. Most (but not all) types of fungus gnats feast on the fruiting bodies, mycelia, and spores of fungi. They prefer damp habitats where their favorite fungi grow, and sometimes form thick swarms. In those forests, they play an important role in the food web.

A few species of fungus gnats become pests in the damp soil of gardens, farms, nurseries, and overwatered flower pots. Most of the time, though, a female fly will lay her eggs—up to 1,000 in her week-long life—in the cap of a freshly sprouted mushroom. The larvae develop quickly (three weeks from egg to adult) while burrowing into the cap, or make sticky webs on its underside. A few types of larvae are semi-predacious and may eat other insects who visit the mushroom.

Later, I took my mushroom guy’s advice about Googling “glow worms.” Radiant turquoise jewels dripping from cave ceilings appeared in Google Images. As it turns out, in a related family of fungus gnats, about a dozen species have developed bioluminescence. They mostly live in sheltered grottos in New Zealand and Australia. There, tiny larvae spin nests out of silk on the ceiling and dangle dozens of threads of silk beaded with droplets of mucus. Breathless, calm habitats are necessary so that their lines don’t get tangled. Breathless, I’m sure, are explorers who find a replica night sky illuminated on the ceiling of a cave.

The gnat larvae’s glow results from luciferin, a chemical compound similar to that used by fireflies. A hungry larva glows brighter than one who has just eaten, and that glow lures midges, mayflies, mosquitoes, and moths to their doom.

A trip to New Zealand may be in order someday, but for now, I’m just happy to know that it wasn’t a pack of mosquitoes still trying to invade my house in November!

Author’s Note: This article was originally published in 2016, but the fungus gnats are back in full force, so I wanted to share it with you again!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Driveway through the November Doldrums

Frosty cold slid down my lungs as I trotted out of the driveway for some morning exercise. Not sure I’d quite call it running, but I do find that if I get outside in the gray light of dawn and get my heart pumping, I sleep a lot better at night. If I don’t get outside, the November doldrums seize hold.

Some people get bored with repetition, but by taking the same route each time, I’m able to keep track of little changes in the woods. Hoof prints appear and disappear at the bottom of the swale where moisture collects. Fallen leaves have faded from sunny yellow maple leaves, to brown maple and oak leaves accented by lemony aspen leaves, to a surprisingly lovely tapestry of browns and grays.

I still remember a childhood reading of a pioneer book where some woman (was it Ma Ingalls?) delighted in the beauty of a brown-patterned dress. At the time, clothed completely in little girl pinks and purples, I was skeptical. Now I could get lost in the subtle beauty of those shades and patterns.

The leaves didn’t just change color, though. They also curled at the tips and were blown into drifts by the turbulent breeze that follows my car down the drive. And then, within those drifts appeared bare spots where the leaves had been pushed aside and the soil surface scratched until it turned black. Even where there weren’t bare spots, the leaves had been tossed like a salad. How would that happen? It took me just a few seconds to guess at the culprits. Have you come up with an answer yet?

I confirmed my guess by taking a night walk out to the trail cam I have posted mid-way up the driveway and switching the memory cards. The first previews during the download process confirmed my suspicion: turkeys! First, a single bird emerged into the lower left corner of the image, and then—over a series of 60 images—a flock of 15 wandered into view. With heads down, backs hunched, and overlapping feathers tipped with tan highlights, their oval bodies looked like giant isopods (pill bugs) on stilts.

An isopod. Source

While I love observing subtle clues to the animals in my neighborhood, the trail camera has given me a much clearer window into the night. Last year at this time, there were regular dustings of snow to record tracks. Dry or frozen gravel doesn’t work nearly as well.

So, I’d seen a few heart-shaped tracks of deer, but was thrilled when the night vision capabilities of the camera captured the head of a big buck as he entered from the left, walking toward my house, with his neck lowered as if exhausted by the weight of his 8-point rack. A few hours after the big buck, and a few minutes after I biked out of the driveway on my morning commute, a little 4-point buck looked nervously toward the road, sniffed a cluster of leaves, and then escaped up the embankment. Was he avoiding the big guy?

Does also showed up a few times, but never in close proximity to a buck. Will that change as the rut revs up?

One of the most unexpected sightings almost escaped my notice. Ruffed grouse perfectly match the leaf litter by design, and her little body is just a blur as she crosses the gravel in a single frame. By toggling back and forth, though, I finally spotted her actual first capture by the camera—hidden under the same cluster of leaves that the young buck had sniffed. A jaunty blue jay hopping down the road rounded out the camera’s bird sightings.

Can you spot the grouse?

My favorite captures are always the fluffy-tailed coyotes and foxes. It’s been reported that they don’t get along, and that coyotes will harass and even kill the smaller foxes. Somehow, they each seem to have found their own niche in the neighborhood by alternating nights on my driveway.

The fox must remain vigilant, though. On the night before Halloween, he walked past the camera, noticed it, and stared straight into the lens. His eyeshine was so bright that the two orbs appear to merge into a super-hero-esque white mask. Then, with swirling tail, he turned and ran.

I will follow tomorrow morning, as I trace the same old route in the same gray light of dawn. Will the leaves have changed some more? Will someone leave me tracks to find? Or will I have to wait for the camera to unlock the mysteries for me? And whatever I find, will it be enough to keep those November doldrums at bay?

[Whenever I write about my trail cam, I get lots of requests for the make/model and recommendations. The one I have is very similar to many in its price range. I’d recommend reading the reviews and buying one within your budget.]




Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Trick or Treat with a Jagged Ambush Bug

Did any little bees buzz up to your porch last weekend, looking for a sugary snack? How did you treat them? Did you smile and coo at their costumes? Wiggle your gnarled hands at them menacingly? Or did you pounce from the shadows, grab them with your strong front legs, and use your sharp beak to inject poison and then suck up their liquefied body tissues?

Not that last one? Well, you must not be a Jagged Ambush Bug.

If it sounds terrifying, don’t worry—I spotted my Jagged Ambush Bug way back in early September, and this member of the Assassin Bug family has probably hunkered down for the winter.

The day was warm but overcast when I went snooping around the Museum’s pollinator gardens. We’re working on some interpretive signage that will be installed next summer, and I wanted to see what flower species were still in bloom. A plume of goldenrod caught my eye because it was just thick with bumble bees. Most of them were crawling and darting chaotically, but I spotted an orange-belted bumble bee that looked more cooperative. When I leaned in to snap a photo, I discovered that an oddly shaped yellow and brown bug was attached to the head of a very dead bee. That’s why it was so cooperative!

This unfortunate orange-belted bumble bee made its final visit to a goldenrod flower where an Jagged Ambush Bug waited. The bug attacked with its strong front legs, injected poison with its sharp beak, and will now slurp up liquified bee guts. Photo by Emily Stone.

This is the modus operandi of ambush bugs. They grow up to look like a beautiful flower so that they can blend in perfectly on said flower. Then they’ll sit and wait 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.

(You, my friend, are far more than twice their size. Although, if you try to squash an ambush bug, they will bite you. While painful, their poison is not dangerous to humans.)

This hardly fits my image of “cute as a bug.” Usually, the way we use the word bug is imprecise. We call lots of insects and cuties “bugs.” But there is one group of insects that even entomologists who study insects call True Bugs. These are pretty easy for kids—and even adults—to identify, because they have a big X on their back. The top half of the X is formed by a triangular piece of their exoskeleton that sits behind their head. Behind this triangle are their crossed wings, which are leathery at the bases and clear and veiny at the tips. The border between thick wing and thin wing makes the bottom triangle of the X.

So, X marks the True Bug. The ambush bug’s piercing-sucking mouth is also a key family trait. Luckily, not all are quite so scary. Stink bugs, a familiar True Bug with that distinctive X, are more likely to imbibe on piña colada than join Dracula for a cocktail—they use their proboscis to pierce plants or fruits. While ambush bugs can use their beak as defense, stink bugs rely on their namesake stench to deter predators.

Stink bugs have the tricks, flowers have the treats, and ambush bugs are those twisted people who love to jump out of the shadows and yell “Boo!”

Who were you?

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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. The Museum is now open with our exciting Mysteries of the Night exhibit. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.