By Bill Felker Nature has, for the most part, lost her delicate tints in August. She is tanned, hirsute, freckled, like one long exposed to the sun. Her touch is strong and vivid. Mass and intensity take the place of delicacy and furtiveness. The spirit of Nature has grown bold and aggressive; it is rank and course; she flaunts her weeds in our faces. She wears a thistle on her bosom. — John Burroughs The Fourth Week of Late Summer The Moon and Sun and Stars The Soaring Swallow Moon becomes the Starling Murmuration Moon at 3:17 a.m. on August 27. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon passes overhead in the middle of the day, encouraging creatures to feed more near that time. Scorpius moves into the southwest in the evenings of August, and the Big Dipper dips into the northwest. The Milky Way is overhead, along with the prominent star groups of the Northern Cross, Delphinus (which looks kind of like a dolphin), Lyra and Aquila. In the east, the great square is rising, Weather Trends As the final cool wave of the month approaches, the likelihood of rain doubles over the average of most August days, and the chances for chilly highs in the 60s or 70s jump toward September levels. The first system of September is mild throughout most of the United States, but it introduces light-frost season, during which the chances for a minor freeze increases slightly with each cool front. Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year Signs of fall coming include rows of lanky great mulleins black and gone to seed, pokeweed the size of small trees with purple stalks and berries, the panicled dogwood with white fruit and leaves fading pink, trefoils decaying, staghorns dark brown above their slightly red or yellow leaves. Grackles become louder in the afternoons now, but an entire morning can go by without a cardinal song or the sound of a dove. Ragweed pollen disappears with the last of the garden phlox. The year’s final tier of wildflowers is budding: beggarticks, bur marigolds, asters, zigzag goldenrod. Puffball mushroom hunting season begins if the nights are cool and wet enough. Telephone wires fill with birds as migrations accelerate. Flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, house wrens, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, Eastern bluebirds, robins, grackles, and black ducks move south. Flocks of starlings (murmurations) swoop above the fields. In the Field and Garden Magnolia scales appears on magnolias. Summer apples are almost all picked. The harvest of tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes, and corn silage, and the third cutting of alfalfa hay continue throughout the area. The best of hickory nutting season begins as sweet corn picking winds down in anticipation of cooler, wetter weather. Mind and Body The S.A.D. Stress Index (which measures the forces thought to be associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder on a scale from 1 to 100) slides into the mild 30s as the moon waxes slowly. through the week. Almanack Classics “Mark and the Skunk By Lucille K. Doenges, New Bremen, Ohio This is a true story about a skunk. It happened 40 years ago, but it’s still fresh in my mind. My husband and another man were working on the roof of a garage right outside our house. Our little boys were playing nearby. All at once I heard my husband yell. A skunk had come in our yard and was on top of our 13-month old baby, Mark. My husband grabbed a board and managed to kill the skunk without hurting Mark. The skunk had tried to bite Mark through his diaper. There were tooth marks on his buttocks. No skin had been torn. We called the doctor. He told us we had to call the sheriff. He wanted to know what happened to the skunk. When we told him we had killed it, the sheriff came out immediately and picked up the dead skunk. It would be taken to Columbus to be tested for rabies. It is unusual for skunks to come up to where there are people and especially in the daytime. A few days later, we were informed that the skunk was rabid, and we were to take Mark to our family doctor. The state would send the serum that was necessary, and Mark would get a shot every day for 14 consecutive days. So every morning, Mark and I would head for St. Marys. He was so good about it. He knew why we were going. He never cried or acted as if he didn’t want to go. He would walk into the office and get on the cot without a complaint. When the nurse gave him the shot, he would leave out a little cry and give the nurse a really dirty look. He got a shot in the stomach one day and the next day in the buttock. His body looked like it had been scalded after two weeks were up. The nurse felt worse than Mark after several days. She would give him a sucker. He would say “Thanks” and “Goodbye.” The shots never seemed to bother him, but I was very glad when those two weeks were over. *** Lucille’s story has an important moral: always be suspicious of animals (wild or domestic) that are acting in a way you don’t think animals should be acting. Stay away from them! *** ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER In order to estimate your SCKRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ. YERBU BUYER RREID DRIER FLREI FLIER RRFAI FRIAR YERRF FRYER REYSH SHYER REIT TIRE IRORP PRIOR RALI LIAR RHEGHI HIGHER THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER FLCKRIE EIURKCQ RQLOUI CARVI KERCIW EIKCNKR ERECKI REKLIC RECKIS KCILSRE Copyright 2022 – W. L. Felker |
