You Can’t Hide from Me, Yellowjacket

At the moment, I don’t have a particular beef if you are a yellowjacket. And I’ve more or less forgiven a pair of them for that time they stung me when I startled them by hammering on a fascia board near their nest under the eave of my lake storage shed.

While I have no immediate issue of concern with yellowjackets, I remain wary. And just yesterday, I found one attempting to hide under a sunflower alongside my back deck. I don’t know what this solitary yellowjacket was up to, but I want all yellowjackets to know I am wise to their ways, and I’m posting a photograph to prove it.

Hiding Yellowjacket

—Mitchell Hegman

Custom Metal

 I thought I was done with the cabin after finishing the kitchen on the main floor, but I soon realized I have plenty of finish work I can do on the basement level. A couple of weeks ago, to that end, I ordered some metal panels and custom trim pieces to accommodate the odd structure of the daylight wall there. The framing became complicated where the foam blocks and concrete met the dimensional lumber framing. The end result, in simple terms, is an unholy stack of corners.

Posted are two photographs showing my progress after about ten hours of work. I really like the clean, bright look of the metal. Additionally, I managed to wrestle all this sharp-edged material into place with only three minor cuts to my person, none of which required a visit to Doctor Desiree.

The Daylight Basement Wall

Corner Details

—Mitchell Hegman

A Walking Mohawk

While poking around in the meadows near my cabin, I found a walking mohawk. Not a Mohawk people. I mean, I found a mohawk haircut climbing up the stem of a desiccated angelica plant.

This is not something I see every day, so I captured a photograph with my smartphone and marched off to the next weird thing.

Once I got back into service, I submitted my photo to my Google Lens app to identify the mohawk. Apparently, I captured the image of the caterpillar stage of a banded tussock moth.

The Walking Mohawk

—Mitchell Hegman

Raided in the Night

Between sundown and sunrise, all manner of critters emerge in the notch valleys of the Northern Rockies to go about making their living. This includes predators, scavengers, and all the hapless nibblers in the timberlands and open parks.

Strange things can happen in the darkness. My cabin and all that surrounds it are not immune to either the associated wonders or treacheries.

I mentioned how I battled with weeds on Sunday. In doing so, I filled one trash bag with spotted knapweed and another with thistle. I lugged the two bags back from the wilds and pitched them alongside the cabin.

When I woke the following morning, the bags had been dragged off to near the fire pit, and something had torn them open for inspection.

Definitely not the work of a mouse. At the same time, I don’t suspect the raid was the work of a bear. A bear would have shredded the bags to bits and made a big mess on the spot. Other than what happened to the bags, I didn’t see any other clues.

I would hazard a guess at what critter is responsible.

I hauled the bags back to the cabin and then double-bagged them for a trip to my trash bin at home.

My Bags Back at the Cabin

—Mitchell Hegman

The Rogue Shirt

My shirt went rogue on me yesterday.

Early in the morning, I stepped outside my cabin in the cool mountain air wearing a long-sleeve button-up over a t-shirt. I immediately hiked out to pull and bag a small patch of knapweed I found about 100 yards from the cabin. Following that, I walked around the lower ten acres of my parcel to survey for other weeds.

Somewhere during this hour-plus excursion, conditions warmed and my button-up shirt went rogue and abandoned me. You might think I would have paid more attention to my shirt, but I tend to hyper-focus when it comes to warring with invasive weeds on my property.

Much later in the day, I wanted a long-sleeved shirt for another excursion. After ransacking the cabin to find the shirt, it dawned on me that I wore it earlier in the day on my weed mission. Before long, I found myself retracing my steps from the morning. Sure enough, at the heavily forested edge of my property, I found my shirt sprawled out in the boughs of a tree and sunning itself.

My Rogue Shirt

—Mitchell Hegman

The Banded Woolly Bear

Yesterday afternoon, we spotted a couple banded woolly bears in a willow near the cabin. These are particular favorites of mine. A banded woolly bear is the caterpillar stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth. Here in Montana, the caterpillars emerge from eggs in late summer and early fall. They remain active and feed on broadleaf plants until cold weather sets in. When the weather begins to cool, the woolly bears seek out protected places in the understory: under deadfall, under leaves, or in root tangles. The woolly bears overwinter by curling into a coil and more or less freezing solid. Even the heart of the caterpillar stops beating. In the spring, the caterpillar emerges and pupates before becoming a moth.

Interestingly, in the Arctic, due to the short growing season for vegetation, the woolly bear must feed for several summers and freeze again each winter before becoming a moth.

Folklore holds that the thickness of the dark middle color band is a predictor of winter. If the dark band is thin, the winter will be severe; if the band is thick, the winter will be mild. The middle band, as a matter of fact, grows wider as the caterpillar ages.

I’ve written about them in two previous blogs, but don’t mind sharing again.

Banded Woolly Bear

            Isabella Tiger Moth (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

The Angels Rest

Ho. Let us stop for the night. The better angels, the burning ones, have agreed to ascend to the treetops and watch over us. The lesser angels will tend to the animals and then care for the cherubs.

Those from the third sphere will remain close to the ground. The archangels will stand watch at the edges of the camp, while the ordinary angels will see to the small things: distributing blankets, brushing and calming the restless horses, and feeding sticks to the fires.

And the cherubs? They have been told to stay out of trouble, although no one expects them to listen. So let us sleep. The angels have their duties, the animals will soon be bedded, and the stars have been set free to wander through the night.

—Mitchell Hegman