The World According to Bill

Humans have had a remarkably successful voyage aboard planet earth for several thousand years as evidenced by our growing population. Many of us have an unspoken optimism that things will continue pretty much as they are now, despite the periodic insults that we throw at our sailing orb. For example, it is not yet clear how our descendants will survive the ongoing climate changes that are occurring as result of the increasing air pollution that humans of our generation have caused and continue. Despite the overwhelming evidence of climate change, some choose to believe that nothing untoward will happen. Their optimism is based on our past success.

Since we’ve successfully fed, clothed and housed the majority of humans for many generations, most people have an unspoken belief that whatever calamities befall us we will be able to fix, allowing humans to continue breeding and producing an escalating standard of living (for many, not all). After all, the success of large populations on many parts of the earth is based on the evolution of our brains that has gotten us to where we are today: an unparalleled standard of living that permits even more births and increased survival rates. The evidence for this view is the ballooning of our population.

The data is irrefutable: in 1804 the world’s population topped 2 billion. It took us about 160 more years (until 1960) before that number reached 3 billion. In succeeding years, we added another billion every 13 years until October 2011 when we pushed past 7 billion living souls. Now, just more than eleven years later we should reach 8 billion. This ballooning of the human population on earth should shock us all when we look at the numbers and speculate on the changes that must occur to accommodate that many humans.

Since science continues to expand and offer more discoveries, many believe that human population growth will continue unabated, but that science will find a way to feed us all. But not everyone sees through rose-colored glasses on this topic. In fact, some scientists have turned this view upside down with the news that early humans became nearly extinct about 70,000 years ago.

Let’s take a quick ride into this topic. The bearers of this heretical news are renowned genetics experts who have been studying the diversity of DNA from samples taken around the world. Their studies indicate that growth of human population has not been a steady upward progress; rather, DNA diversity has indicated that human stocks were suddenly hampered about 70,000 years ago when the earth’s population suddenly took a disastrous dip, leaving just a few thousand breeding adults to re-populate the entire world. The cause of this disaster was a super volcano in southeast Asia. It has become known as Toba, a super volcano that makes other disasters seem like child’s play.

The super volcano Toba, named after the lake that fills its crater, erupted four times, the last being 75,000 years ago in southeast Asia. It was the strongest known explosion ever, affecting the entire planet with smoke and dust that blotted out the sun around much of the earth. Mankind was nearly annihilated.

James A. Michener in his opus, “The Source” describes a small group of humans living along the southern coast of South Africa who were survivors of a human die -off. According to Michener, that they survived at all was based on their good luck in living in protected caves along a shore line in South Africa where the ocean provided a reliable source of food that was unaffected by air pollution. How much of Michener’s text was based on his imagination is unknown, but those who study volcanoes have struck a similar chord in listing the effects of Toba.

The point of this history is that the belief in the invincibility of the human stock is misguided. Although we have survived wars, pandemics, depressions, and other calamities, we have generally squeaked by with only a limited dent in the continuing upward sweep of the human population. But now we have climate change. Some scientists say this may be the big one, the mistake that causes a major and irreversible decline in the stock of humans. Maybe they will be wrong and we will only lose a few hundred million humans as the fires rage, the temperature rises, our oceans expand, and the food chain is interrupted by widespread drought. Here’s a question: Shall we take the chance that science is wrong or should we fix our ongoing air pollution that is causing climate change like that caused by Toba? It is up to us.

Pancake Bay

 

 

 

Pancake Bay is a Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada on the eastern shore of Lake Superior, some 30 miles or more north of the Canadian Sault. We have camped there several times over the years, including a recent week-long trip where we enjoyed the lake shore and its clear, cool water that caresses the miles-long beach during warm sunshiny afternoons.

The beach has a long and colorful history of visitors who arrived from the eastern shores of the continent. The earliest years of North American settlements included villages gathered on eastern shores where landed ambitious men seeking their fortunes. One of the reasons for the earliest coastal settlements was the opportunity to earn mind-numbing profits by trading with native Americans. Frenchmen who had settled in the northern regions became especially proficient in dealing with the several tribes who lived alongside the waterways that served as transportation routes through the forested lands.

The trade centered around North American beaver provided by natives and manufactured goods from Europe. The Indians sold beaver skins with their luxurious hides that Europeans coveted for their use in making hats. Since Europeans had already killed the largest share of their own native fur bearers, they sought other sources, and soon began depleting those supplies as well, including those from the vast lands of Russia. Of course, the price of prime beaver skins climbed significantly, providing extraordinary profits for those traders who exchanged knives, kettles, shovels, axes and other metal tools that Indians had never before seen.

The French traders soon exhausted the supply of beaver from sources close to the French settlements that were primarily located on the east coast of North America. The response from the Frenchmen was to travel further inland to seek out Indians who had skins to sell. The Frenchmen traveled further and further inland with each new season, paddling large canoes that could carry hundreds of pounds of skins and the heavy metal tools for trade. A specialized teamster business began with Frenchmen called ‘Voyageurs’ manning the canoes and toting two 90- pound packs at each land crossing needed to avoid waterfalls, and other obstructions to safe travel. After several seasons, the Voyageurs were traveling into and across Lake Superior, in their large but lightweight canoes, for trading trips that lasted two years, one year to travel west and the following year to return to their homes with their canoes loaded with packs of the valuable fur. The fur packs included not only beaver, but other hides as well. Deer hides were considerably less valuable than prime beaver pelts, universally priced at one dollar per hide, giving rise to the term “bucks” to indicate deer pelts.

Pancake Bay was one of the overnight shore stops on the travel itinerary for Voyageurs. The name “Pancake Bay” deserves an explanation.

Voyageurs were a colorful group of workmen. As a class, they were Independent, inured to hardship, happy-go-lucky sods who had not a care in the world beyond the well-being of their canoe mates. The fourteen men in each canoe sang, talked, and gossiped about their homelands in the complete isolation in the forested lands surrounding the waterways. Each day of work was the same, paddling for as long as daylight permitted, up to 18 hours per day, going to shore to eat and sleep as daylight dwindled after kindling a large fire for cooking. This, for most of each year until they arrived at a remote western fort at the farthest western edge of Lake Superior where their journey was interrupted for the winter season while Indians brought their furs for trade. In spite of this hardship, the Voyageurs were neither well-paid nor well provisioned for their lengthy journey.

The provisions for the journey were provided by the company who organized and paid the salaries of the Voyageurs. The food was simple and boring with little regard for taste, variety, or nourishment. The only nod to the tastes of the voyageurs was the allotment of rum for the entire trip that was provided for each canoe at the start of the trip. The small keg was carefully loaded onto each canoe at the dock where the men assembled, each man carefully watching the keg and each fondling his small metal cup that would remain with him as his single drinking vessel. The rum didn’t last. The canoes departed from Quebec and later Montreal, and the men said goodbye to civilization at their first overnight island stop upriver from their departure. The paddlers had their first shore meal before attacking the keg of rum, each man demanding his share. The entire keg was consumed that night in a drunken party, ensuring no further battles about the remaining liquor.

Food for the Voyageurs included an inadequate amount of flour. At their overnight stops, each man received his allotment of flour that he kneaded with a small amount of lake water into a worm shaped dough ball that he carefully threaded around a stick. Thereafter, he held his stick near the fire to make bread. “Bannock,” some called it. If the overnight stop was extended while repairs were made to the canoes, an iron skillet was produced and coated with grease from salted pork to make pancakes. As the canoes made their way west, the flour was slowly consumed. Legend has it that the Pancake Bay stop, not only looked like a pancake with its nearly round shoreline, it was also the place where the last store of flour was consumed on most trips west.

Fortunately, today’s Pancake Bay Provincial Park has none of the hardships for modern-day campers despite its small population gathered near the Bay. Instead, near the Provincial Park is a single small restaurant known as “Voyageurs” that features a Bannock bread and a famous picture of a boat being paddled by voyagers taking two English passengers, one a likeness of the first white woman who came to the area. Just a mile or more south is the only other active business in the area, a busy souvenir store formerly known as ‘the Indian store’ featuring wood carvings and other hand-crafted items made by many local people including Native Americans who live nearby. Across from the Indian store is the remaining business of the area, a version of a fast-food store that features freshly caught whitefish from Lake Superior.

Our camping vacation to Pancake Bay was a treat despite the occasional cool weather. We re-discovered the pleasure of taking an early morning coffee to the deserted beach as the sun rose as well as afternoon naps. Of course, we partook of the fresh fish for dinner and drank in the beauty of Lake Superior’s eastern shore while relaxing to the sound of the gentle waves lapping the sandy shore.  

 

My Battles with Neighborhood Critters

 

 

When we purchased a Roscommon cottage 32 years ago, we began a hobby of feeding birds. It became a treat for us: watching the greedy little beggars just outside two windows as they jostled for position at each feeder. There seemed to be dozens of bright yellow goldfinches challenging one another for dominance and a chance to gorge on tiny thistle seeds. After we demolished the cottage and replaced it with our retirement home, it was time to build a new feeder some distance from the windows but close enough to watch the variety of birds that began visiting on a regular basis. I decided on a feeding station, the better to attract different species with different foods that appealed to a larger variety of birds.

I soon learned that the seeds I generously offered for birds became a hot news item that was somehow broadcast to a variety of other creatures who ventured from the forests to my bird feeding station. The largest and seemingly most hungry of these critters was a neighborhood bear. Soon, it became obvious that the bear was not interested in sharing his good fortune with the birds; he wanted it all. He proved his selfishness on one occasion by carrying off the entire feeding station. I found some portions of it scattered about at the edge of the forest. I took his wanton destruction of my hand-built feeding station as a challenge that led me to building a new station, this one sturdier and beyond his reach by constructing the new station at the top of a tall pipe that I buried in the ground. Of course, it was something of a nuisance to refill the feeders as I had to use a ladder each time the avian beggars needed more seeds.

My success in foiling the bear didn’t last long. One morning I awoke to find the sturdy pole bent into an L shape. The enterprising bear had bent my carefully buried pole completely to the ground where he must have calmly wrestled the feeder from the pole and carried the entire station to the woods. This time, I never found just where he carried it. Perhaps he took it to his friend’s house and they all chortled at their cleverness and my inadequate design. I dug the pole out of the ground to try again, but, lacking a pipe straightener, I was unable to straighten the bent pipe. I went back to the hardware store yet again for new supplies. This time I came home with an even sturdier pipe, a 1- and 1/2-inch black iron pipe and bags of cement. I buried the heavy pipe, again establishing a new feeding station to be beyond the reach of bears even if they stood on their toes. I had a temporary set-back with the new pole when I learned that bears are smart enough to shake loose an unattached feeder from the top of even the highest of poles. After that experience,  I was careful to secure the feeding station to the top of the pole by a plumber’s attachment threaded onto the pipe. So far, the attachment has proven to be bear-proof.

Fast forward 30 years. I have continued feeding birds with fewer interruptions from bears as I finally learned to stop feeding birds in the early spring when bears have emerged from their dens and are powerfully hungry. This strategy has helped, but not eliminated the bear problem as the occasional bear wanderer sometimes stops by for a snack. More recently the critter problem has been from the smaller denizens of the forest: raccoons, 3 species of squirrels, and the annoying little chipmunks who aren’t afraid of humans: my chipmunks seem to enjoy chattering at me while I replenish the seeds.

My introduction to the raccoon problem occurred in a peculiar fashion. I had refilled the feeders after a long day and I mistakenly left my stepladder in place at the feeder. The next morning, I found the raccoon had discovered my ladder and climbed to the top step and made the tiny step onto the feeding platform where I found him calmy munching on sunflower seeds. Thereafter, he became a regular at the feeder – most times consigned to the leftovers that the birds scattered to the ground.

As the prices for feed increased this year, I decided to mount an all-out attack against the marauders stealing from the birds. Of course, I consulted Dr. Google for advice about foiling the most recent thief, the oversized raccoon. Following Google advice, I made a hasty trip to the hardware store and came home with an oversized plastic pipe whose purpose was to cover the steel pole. Google explained that raccoon hands are not large enough to gain a purchase on the oversized plastic pipe, thus preventing them from climbing to the feeder at the top. It worked. I haven’t seen a raccoon since the installation of the large pipe. Although, in all honesty, it could be a result of the feeder being empty most of the time since squirrels and chipmunks seem undeterred by the plastic pipe. I can verify this since I watched a red squirrel climb from the ground to the top and then open the door of the feeder and sit on the mound of sunflower seeds contained therein. As a consequence of this bit of red-squirrel gymnastics, I decided to concentrate my efforts in squirrel -proofing by installing a squirrel guard on the steel pole. Since none of the squirrel guards at the hardware would fit my oversized steel pipe, I was forced to improvise.

I found an old child’s sled in the barn (a roundy plastic thing that skids down a snow-covered hill, inevitably going backwards eliciting screams from the children – it’s a hoot to watch). I sawed the plastic doo-hickey to fit my over-sized pipe. I placed it at the top of the plastic pipe to which I added a plastic cap at the bottom and top to the plastic pipe, attached with plastic tie straps. The finishing touch was the addition of boards on the top of feeder to prevent the red squirrel from climbing inside. The entire assembly was secured to the pipe with an automotive exhaust pipe clamp (not visible in the photo). The entire feeder became a Rube Goldberg sort of assembly designed to prevent bears, raccoons and squirrels from stealing the seeds. I could hardly wait until the critters tried to steal my seeds again. Here is an embarrassing photo of my new invention.

The following morning, I looked at the bird feeding assembly to insure it was free from squirrels, bears, raccoons and miscellaneous other creatures, thus working as intended. To my consternation there was a red squirrel sitting on the platform happily munching seeds. I said a few bad words as I examined the evidence. All of the plastic tie straps had been chewed in two pieces and were laying on ground, and the lower cap had also been chewed but it still remained in place. There was no other damage to the contraption, nor any clue how the critter had climbed around the flexible yellow guard-shroud to reach the platform.

So that’s where I am today. I intend to take a break from my squirrel war for the time being, following the old adage that some things just aren’t worth fighting over, especially a few seeds that seem to fatten up the red squirrels in my neighborhood. I’ll keep you up to date if any other developments in the squirrel wars demand my attention.