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Septmber 19, 1997 - He's Buried in a Hail of Hickory Nuts6A,* The Suffolk Times -,� September 18, 1997 He's Buried in a Hail of Hickory Nuts While most of our wildlife is in de- cline, there are those who seem to flour- ish in the midst of a drastically changing world. The one that is letting us know they are doing well today is the little and often mischievous gray squirrel. Right now, as I write, there are five or six of these little Focus aerialists high in the hickory tree on right alongside our Mature home, where they've been for by Paul the past week Stontenburgh enjoying the spoils the tree produces. During the week we've been under con- stant bombardment from their debris of shells and nuts raining down on us. Without doubt Barbara and I have raked hundreds and hundreds of these nuts, leaves and debris off our lawn — two wheelbarrows full. We've had squirrels in our trees before but never like this year. All day long there's a constant "rain" of rubble falling. Our low- pitched roof has changed color from its shingled white to a mixture of tan and brown, the results of their nibblings. I pity anyone who travels up our usually well-swept pathway with bare feet, for the sharp pieces of broken nuts would feel like tacks under their ten- der feet. Then to really jar you and bring you into their world of demolition, you are jolted out of your wits when a nut is dropped and makes a direct hit on the alu- minum gutter — it sounds almost like a gunshot. I watched these skilled climbers reach to the very tip of a branch to snatch a nut, then go back to a more secure position to enjoy their prize. Most of the nuts that are dropped on the ground are only half husked. Whether the squirrel has just given up on them or they were accidental- ly dropped, I don't know, but the ground is littered with them. Fight for the Best Spot There's rivalry in the treetops, probably for the best picking spots. It gets so com- petitive sometimes that there's a head -to- tail chase through the trees that eventually winds up when one is run round and round the tree trunk and eventually off into the woods. So swift is the chase that it almost looks as if one squirrel is attached to the other in their mad pursuit. Hickory nuts, as I mentioned, are usual- ly at the tips of the branches and reaching out to get them evidently holds a risk, for we've seen two mishaps today, each one when a squirrel accidentally slipped and fell to the ground. This was no ordinary fall. I'm speaking of a fall from 30 feet or more up in the tree. You could hear a real thump when the squirrel hit the ground, but each time the squirrel got up and hurried off to the tree, where it headed up to continue its feasting. I couldn't believe it. Both Barbara and I closely examined the sharp pieces of shells that rained down and for the life of us cannot see how those little rodents can cut into those hard nuts and extract so cleanly the meat that is hidden in the deepest crevice. If I wanted to attempt it, I'd first have to use a hammer to crack the nut and then pick, and I do mean pick, with a nut pick and then I'd probably only get half of it and give up in disgust, for it's a most tedious job. The fall season, as everyone knows, is the harvest month and my squirrels are surely har- vesting all around our place and rightfully so, for now's the time they build up their needed body fat. It's this stored - up body fat that will tide them over through the winter, when the ground is frozen and the weather too bad for them to get out and dig up their previously stored nuts they buried in the fall. They've already made their tree nests of leaves and grasses that have stood the test of time and are ready for winter occupancy. Squirrels are up and around through most of the winter, especially when we have mild ones as we did last year. On really cold days, when the winter's just too miserable to get out, they'll sleep through that depressed period, all curled up with their fuzzy tails wrapped around them like a blanket until the weather clears. I often get calls from interested people who have seen something unusual and squirrel that has come out of stove pipe all covered with soot. A squirrel we don't have here is a little red squirrel that is a creature of the conif- erous forest, and we just don't have that kind of evergreen forest here on the East End. Where you see these noisy little fel- lows most is upstate, where they are most abundant. Often you'll see where they have stopped atop a stump or log to have a feast of pine cone seeds Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh GRAY SQUIRREL —Fall is a busy time for many of nature's crea- tures, for it is the time of fattening up for winter. Hickory nuts and acorns are now being husked and eaten in the treetops, so much so that there is often a continuous rain of debris falling to the ground. MWIL a MUluaa w4mun 75 Years Ago Sept. 15, 1922 Women to the Rescue: Kansas reports have indi- cated that many farmers' wives and daughters have turned out this year to help the men of the family harvest the crops. Feeling that imported labor costs more than it was worth, about 200 women around Parsons, Kan., went out in the fields and performed the toilsome processes of harvesting. These girls did not have to use any make -up in order to pro- duce good color in their cheeks. A lot of girls and women are tired of the idea that a woman is physically inferior. Some of them seem to be disproving it by giving a demonstration of their ability to do things. School Notes: At the Arshamomaque School a new installation has been made which does away with the anti- quated, unsanitary, unlawful outdoor toilets. On Tuesday afternoon a great many of the smaller children were caught in the downpour of rain and came to the school drenched through. It was for their safety that the grammar school and primary school were suspended for the afternoon. 50 Years Ago Sept. 12, 1947 Suffolk Sales Total $150 million: The sale of merchandise and foods continues to be Suffolk County's largest business, according to the current Sales Management want to share it with me. Three things come to mind this week. One is the con- tinual sighting of black squirrels, a rela- tively rare darker cousin of our gray squir- rel. Most of the sightings have come from around the hamlet of Southold. I, too, have seen these black squirrels and they surely are an oddity. They look like a Survey. Expenditures in the retail stores of Suffolk in 1946 totaled $150,555,000 as compared to the $105,805,000 in 1945. This is the equivalent to spending at the rate of $770 per person, as compared with the United States average of $692. Food purchases, a principal index of living standards, accounted for most of each dollar spent in Suffolk County. The food bill was $44,766,000, far above the $31,594,000 of 1945. Per person it amounted to $228, more than the $171 spent in the rest of the country. 25 Years Ago Sept. 14, 1972 Here Come the Spurrlows: The Spurrlows, a musical group which has appeared on the Bob Hope Show and given a command performance at the White House for President Nixon and 110 wounded Vietnam veterans, will give a two -hour show at Mattituck High School on Tuesday. The 20- member group -has put out 10 long -play stereo albums. Tickets for the show are $2 for adults and $1 for high school and junior high school students. `The Godfather' Opens: Exclusive Eastern Long Island Engagement, Paramount Pictures Presents: "The Godfather." Starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton. Greenport Theatre. Now through Sept. 19. (Advertisement) and other telltale signs of the meal they left behind. The other sighting that's quite unusual is the report of a white deer seen in the Cutchogue area. These show up every once in a while and when Grum- man was going full -swing in Calverton, there was a time you could see their white deer behind the long fence almost every evening. This is the first sighting that I've heard of here on the East End recently. Surely deer are common enough in our area that sooner or later a white deer would have to show up. The third sighting was one from Brookhaven. It was one we had wit- nessed in Mattituck some years ago. The find was a baby bat. I'm not sure why the baby was found away from its mother, but I can speculate that per- haps the mother had been flying with its young and somehow the baby be- come dislodged and fell to the ground. Young bats cling to their mothers, who often fly about with them attached. We once found a mother on the ground with two rather large young attached. Evidently the load was just too much to carry and she settled on the ground where we found her. Not wanting anything to happen to these often misun- derstood creatures, we took them to an open shed and left them hanging there. The next day they were gone. Little brown bats are common through- out the summer, flying at dusk about our lawns and trees. They eat just about any- thing that flies during that dusk -to -dark period, from mosquitoes (one stomach examined contained over 300) to flies, moths, beetles and a lot of unknowns. They have the ability to home in on their prey by using their own special kind of radar. Of course, bats are not birds but actually flying mammals that through the evolution of time have developed a wing by attaching a skin -like membrane between each of its now - elongated fingers and its body. It is with these skin -like wings that the bat helps bring food into its mouth while flying. Its erratic flight gives you some idea of how many times a bat changes direction to catch its food. A pret- ty remarkable little animal, I'd say. All these sightings go to prove we live in a remarkable world, one that i!L put there for all to see, one that is out there for all to know, one that is out there for you and me. P.S. Before this article went to press, we received another call about a bat hanging happily from someone's family room ceil- ing fan. We moved it out of the house. Ali, freedom. ry M4 'R f] s ". mss; � 3 xa ` x Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh GRAY SQUIRREL —Fall is a busy time for many of nature's crea- tures, for it is the time of fattening up for winter. Hickory nuts and acorns are now being husked and eaten in the treetops, so much so that there is often a continuous rain of debris falling to the ground. MWIL a MUluaa w4mun 75 Years Ago Sept. 15, 1922 Women to the Rescue: Kansas reports have indi- cated that many farmers' wives and daughters have turned out this year to help the men of the family harvest the crops. Feeling that imported labor costs more than it was worth, about 200 women around Parsons, Kan., went out in the fields and performed the toilsome processes of harvesting. These girls did not have to use any make -up in order to pro- duce good color in their cheeks. A lot of girls and women are tired of the idea that a woman is physically inferior. Some of them seem to be disproving it by giving a demonstration of their ability to do things. School Notes: At the Arshamomaque School a new installation has been made which does away with the anti- quated, unsanitary, unlawful outdoor toilets. On Tuesday afternoon a great many of the smaller children were caught in the downpour of rain and came to the school drenched through. It was for their safety that the grammar school and primary school were suspended for the afternoon. 50 Years Ago Sept. 12, 1947 Suffolk Sales Total $150 million: The sale of merchandise and foods continues to be Suffolk County's largest business, according to the current Sales Management want to share it with me. Three things come to mind this week. One is the con- tinual sighting of black squirrels, a rela- tively rare darker cousin of our gray squir- rel. Most of the sightings have come from around the hamlet of Southold. I, too, have seen these black squirrels and they surely are an oddity. They look like a Survey. Expenditures in the retail stores of Suffolk in 1946 totaled $150,555,000 as compared to the $105,805,000 in 1945. This is the equivalent to spending at the rate of $770 per person, as compared with the United States average of $692. Food purchases, a principal index of living standards, accounted for most of each dollar spent in Suffolk County. The food bill was $44,766,000, far above the $31,594,000 of 1945. Per person it amounted to $228, more than the $171 spent in the rest of the country. 25 Years Ago Sept. 14, 1972 Here Come the Spurrlows: The Spurrlows, a musical group which has appeared on the Bob Hope Show and given a command performance at the White House for President Nixon and 110 wounded Vietnam veterans, will give a two -hour show at Mattituck High School on Tuesday. The 20- member group -has put out 10 long -play stereo albums. Tickets for the show are $2 for adults and $1 for high school and junior high school students. `The Godfather' Opens: Exclusive Eastern Long Island Engagement, Paramount Pictures Presents: "The Godfather." Starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton. Greenport Theatre. Now through Sept. 19. (Advertisement) and other telltale signs of the meal they left behind. The other sighting that's quite unusual is the report of a white deer seen in the Cutchogue area. These show up every once in a while and when Grum- man was going full -swing in Calverton, there was a time you could see their white deer behind the long fence almost every evening. This is the first sighting that I've heard of here on the East End recently. Surely deer are common enough in our area that sooner or later a white deer would have to show up. The third sighting was one from Brookhaven. It was one we had wit- nessed in Mattituck some years ago. The find was a baby bat. I'm not sure why the baby was found away from its mother, but I can speculate that per- haps the mother had been flying with its young and somehow the baby be- come dislodged and fell to the ground. Young bats cling to their mothers, who often fly about with them attached. We once found a mother on the ground with two rather large young attached. Evidently the load was just too much to carry and she settled on the ground where we found her. Not wanting anything to happen to these often misun- derstood creatures, we took them to an open shed and left them hanging there. The next day they were gone. Little brown bats are common through- out the summer, flying at dusk about our lawns and trees. They eat just about any- thing that flies during that dusk -to -dark period, from mosquitoes (one stomach examined contained over 300) to flies, moths, beetles and a lot of unknowns. They have the ability to home in on their prey by using their own special kind of radar. Of course, bats are not birds but actually flying mammals that through the evolution of time have developed a wing by attaching a skin -like membrane between each of its now - elongated fingers and its body. It is with these skin -like wings that the bat helps bring food into its mouth while flying. Its erratic flight gives you some idea of how many times a bat changes direction to catch its food. A pret- ty remarkable little animal, I'd say. All these sightings go to prove we live in a remarkable world, one that i!L put there for all to see, one that is out there for all to know, one that is out there for you and me. P.S. Before this article went to press, we received another call about a bat hanging happily from someone's family room ceil- ing fan. We moved it out of the house. Ali, freedom.