You Can’t Fool Mother Nature
By BILL DUNCAN Enough is enough. Back on Feb. 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil, weather prognosticator extraordinare, stuck his head out of his burrow, saw his shadow and left us with six more weeks of cold and wintry weather. If I count the weeks right, the six weeks are up and it is still cold, wet and wintry. So now we have to see what the other animals predict about the weather. I have no doubt they are better weather prognosticators than humans. Even insects have that unique ability to know what’s ahead. I like spiders, but my wife doesn’t, so she would not have noticed that it is rare around my house to see a spider lately. That’s because spiders are most active in fair weather. I don’t know where they go for the winter, but this winter season they must have gone south. I have made an unscientific study of this phenomenon and have been observing the behavior of the cows on the expansive ranch across the road from my house. Usually, the cows are roaming around the fields for the best grass, but lately I have seen them huddling, or even laying down to feed, a sure sign of bad weather. I have also noticed flocks of birds flying lower to the ground and gathered close together on tree branches and telephone wires. History is full of weather folklore about animals predicting weather, but when I became convinced they had built in weather stations was when the Tsunami struck Sri Lanka and it was surprising how few wildlife victims there were even though the floodwaters reached two miles inland. Experts believe the animals, even the elephants, had a sixth sense that alerts them in plenty of time to reach high ground. I grew up in Florida and I remember from my youth that the old timers would predict hurricanes because dolphins always came into sheltered bays about the time the seas whipped up offshore. Seagulls would come inland. I recall an old sea ditty I heard deep sea fishermen recite as I was growing up: “When the wind is in the north, the skillful fisher goes not forth. When the wind is in the east, ‘tis good for neither man nor beast. When the wind is in the south, it blows the flies into the fish’s mouth. But when the wind is in the west, there it is the very best.” At one time bilogoist Charles Curran thought he had a weather prognosticator equal to that groundhog in Punxsutawney, the wooly bear caterpillar, a fuzzy larvae that becomes the tiger moth. He discovered that if the black strips on the caterpillar’s coat were longer than the brown segments, we would have a mild winter. A narrow band meant a long winter. He was sure of his predictions until 1955 when he found two groups of caterpillars living near each other that had vastly different striations. Native Americans have long relied on animals to predict weather patterns. Lately, science has been paying closer attention to some of these folklores. Anthropologist Richard Nelson lived with Alaska natives above the Arctic Circle studying their habits for more than a year. He detailed their observations about animal predictive behavior in his book, “Hunters of the North Forest.” He believes these natives are more on target than the weather stations with all their scientific gear. For example, he noted that the Kutchin Indians say the black bears predict how severe the weather will be while they hibernate in their dens. They sleep closer to the entrance prior to a mild winter and deeper inside when there will be a long, cold winter. We humans also have that sixth sense about the weather, but it usually causes us a lot of aches and pains, when those arthritic conditions flare up. Few, if any doctors, would rely on such an unscientific diagnosis. Problem is we can’t go deeper in the den to sleep it off, or even run for the hills. (Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
The View From Here