Woods, Waters & Wildlife

A trapper searches for signs of mink and other furbearers along an Ohio stream (photo by W.H. "Chip" Gross).

Nature's assassin

There is a pair of serial killers on the loose in the hinterlands of Ohio. The male, with his weasel-like face and small, black, beady eyes, looks menacing; his girlfriend, similar in appearance but only about half his size, is just as bloodthirsty.  

In general, the weasel family has a dubious reputation, particularly its scientific subfamily Mustelinae, which in Ohio includes not only mink but also ermines, least weasels, and long-tailed weasels. Adding to this foursome’s loathsomeness is the fact that they smell bad, emitting a strong, musky odor from anal scent glands, which they use for marking territory or attracting a mate.  

Spatulate-leaved sundew

Meat eaters

It took more than 6,000 years for the last ice sheet, the Wisconsin Glacier, to spread across what is now Lake Erie and Ohio, at an average rate of about 160 feet per year.

“Even into medieval times, bogs and fens remained mystical and frightening places,” says Denny, a member of Mount Gilead-based Consolidated Cooperative. “Fueling some of those fears was a natural phenomenon known as ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘jack-o’-lantern’ — a mysterious, flickering light often observed hovering and moving around at night within bogs, swamps, and marshes. 

Did you know robins were once hunted and eaten by humans?

Tastes like robin

Hunting earthworms on our lawns or building nests in our shrubbery, robins are so ubiquitous today that we barely give those attractive, red-breasted songbirds a second thought. 

The slaughter began with large mammals — elk and deer in the East, bison in the West. Once those populations were decimated, the professional hunters moved on to waterfowl: ducks, geese, and swans. After those species were depleted, shorebirds were next in line. Smaller than most waterfowl, shorebirds made up for their small size by numbering in the millions. They also decoyed readily and tasted good on the dinner table. 

Last on the list was songbirds.  

Ken Mettler, an AOA board member, surveys Bison Hollow Preserve in Hocking Hills.

Conservation corps

Some natural resources conservation groups talk a good game. Others diligently and quietly go about their stated mission, making a decided difference in the out-of-doors year by year, decade after decade.

To get a feel for AOA, I tagged along on one of the organization’s many annual educational events open to the public. The field trip attracted some 30 people to Cedar Bog Nature Preserve, a few miles south of Urbana. It’s the oldest nature preserve in the Buckeye State purchased with state funds (in 1942), and is owned, operated, and managed by the Ohio History Connection. 

Detail from an artist’s rendering of the execution of Col. William Crawford.

Frontier Justice

One of the most infamous incidents in all of early Ohio history occurred 241 years ago this month, on June 11, 1782, when Col. William Crawford of the fledgling U.S. Army was burned at the stake by Native American locals out for revenge.

The story begins several months earlier, in March 1782, when 96 members of the Delaware tribe, who had converted to Christianity, were rounded up, massacred, and burned along with their entire village of Gnadenhutten (meaning huts, or tents, of grace) along the Tuscarawas River by Col. David Williamson and his contingent of frontier militia.

Baltimore orioles, such as the adult male on the left and the juvenile at right, migrate through Ohio beginning in late April and early May each year.

Looking good in orange

Roman Mast’s backyard looks like a bird-feeding test kitchen.

“I have my oriole feeders out by the last week in April,” Mast says. “Through the years, I’ve tried a lot of different foods to attract orioles, including sliced oranges, but my main food now is simply grape jelly.” Orioles and a few other species, such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, gray catbirds, and some warblers, seem to love the stuff. “A red-bellied woodpecker even comes to my jelly feeders occasionally,” Mast says.

Author and conservationist Louis Bromfield named his famous farm Malabar after the beautiful Malabar Coast of India, where he and his family lived for a short time during the early 20th century.

Mohican country

In 1896, a baby was born in Mansfield — a boy who would one day grow up to travel the world, become a writer, and win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1927, at just 30 years of age.

In his 1945 book titled Pleasant Valley, Bromfield wrote of the area: 

It is a pleasant land all about you, valleys where the bottom land is rich, bordered by hills covered with wild and luxuriant forest, the whole filigreed with the silver of the streams called Switzer’s Run, Possum Run, and the Clear Fork; and far down lies the blue shield of Pleasant Hill Lake bordered by the deep red of sandstone bluffs and the blue black of hemlock trees.

Success was not only converted to a “convict ship,” complete with all her ghastly accoutrements, but was also the “oldest and most historic ship afloat.” 

Nothing succeeds like Success

There has likely never been a more ironic name for a prison ship than Success.

A group of promoters purchased the ship, planning to sail her around the world for the public to board and tour — for a price, of course. But before her debut, they believed Success needed a bit of refurbishing. 

They brought aboard some unusual equipment: handcuffs, leg irons, branding irons, metal straightjackets, a triangle-shaped whipping post, even a medieval torture device known as an iron maiden. 

And they painted on the sides of the hull, in large black letters, the words “Convict Ship.” 

Wild at heart

Aldo Leopold, the “Father of Wildlife Management,” described his classic book, A Sand County Almanac, like this: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”  

To conserve and improve fish and wildlife resources and their habitats for sustainable use and appreciation by all. - Mission statement of the Ohio Division of Wildlife

Teddy's bear

Teddy bears will be purchased in untold numbers this Christmas season as gifts for children, both around the country and around the world. Ever stop and wonder why?

Guiding the president for several days was Holt Collier, the most famous bear hunter in the state. Born a slave, Collier was now a freed man who made much of his living by bear hunting. He and his pack of top-notch hounds were said to have taken more than 3,000 black bears.