Lake Minchumina Community Library

05/01/2020

http://www.newsminer.com/features/latitude_65/interior-alaska-lost-lake-serve-as-the-setting-for-latest-netflix-show/article_82e53ece-8a87-11ea-a4ff-c3ce805e0a00.html

When the BBC wanted to film a reality show based out of Lost Lake Boy Scout Camp, the scouts’ development director, CJ Stewart, gave them a tour of the facility.

05/06/2019

Flash back

03/31/2016

http://www.adn.com/article/20160330/rural-libraries-will-lose-their-internet-if-legislatures-budget-cuts-hold

A state subsidy that supports fast Internet in rural Alaska public libraries has been zeroed out by both the Alaska House and Senate as legislators struggle to address a budget gap approaching $4 billion.

11/03/2015

Catching up on articles...hope you enjoy!

11/03/2015

Seasonal river worries are a part of breakup off Lake Minchumina
Julie Collins, In the Bush
LAKE MINCHUMINA, Alaska — The river that flows past our home is a joker, full of life one day, half dead the next. Every morning we look outside wondering what we’ll see: sand bars appearing or disappearing, more water or less, or possibly no water at all.
Take the morning of April 9. I ran a dog team down the frozen river and across the lake to the post office, and when I returned three inches of melt water had spread over the river ice. The next day, the cheerful rush and gurgle of flowing water filled me with concern as I peered across the silent standing water: nothing was flowing there. I traced the sound with my eyes to the willows on the far side to confirm my suspicions.
The water was spilling over the bank into the brush on the far side, diverting the standing water off the river ice and into the far swamp, away from the normal channel near our home and leaving us land-locked. (As my sister, Miki, put it, “access denied.”)
You could trace this change back to December and January, when winter floods repeatedly flowed downstream, filling the channel and freezing until the river ice bulged above the riverbanks in places. Or back to November, when a snow-free month left the ice exposed so the shallow river froze to the bottom, forcing the still-flowing water upstream over the top of the ice to create the December floods.
Or you could blame the big flood we had last summer. The extremely high lake water backed upriver and the still water allowed glacier silt to settle, filling in the old riverbed. The torrent also overflowed the banks, cutting small new channels through the brush onto the flats beyond.
We could even see this day coming back in 1989, when we were happily living beside a shallow mile-long bay of the lake. During a spring flood the river channel that then paralleled the bay broke through the far end. In two years the entire bay was silted in, leaving us on a riverbank instead of a lake shore. We’ve been adapting ever since.
For a while, it seemed strange to hear the murmuring rush of flowing water right in front of our home, but we came to enjoy it. We did miss windblown waves slapping the shore as the lake disappeared and the rocky beach turned into a muddy riverbank, and we missed the lovely reflections of the Alaska Range in the calm water of the old bay.
For the first few years, running a motorboat upstream proved difficult but doable. As silt quickly settled where the laden river hit the lake, the delta spread out and lengthened. We motored less and less, and eventually didn’t bother even when we had moose meat to get home. Instead, we transferred our loads – not just the meat, but all the fish we caught for dog food, groceries, buckets of berries, boxes of books – into a canoe or onto our horses for the final part of the trip.
That final distance grew longer as the silty river delta extended farther into the lake. Last fall when we measured the distance traveled by canoe down the river, around the delta, and over to the boat landing, it was two miles.
“At least we still have water!” has been our mantra year after year. We’ve been watching this river for more than 50 years and have seen major changes about every 10 years as the channels clog with silt and slide sideways. Every spring, we watched our channel start to flow with profound relief. At every flood, we wondered if it would break through into some swamp upriver and divert away from us. Each time the river dropped, we wondered if our channel would dry up altogether in preference of another route as the river consolidated in parallel channels farther east.
To our amazement, the river has flowed past our home for more than 25 years. Every year we were grateful, and not just for transportation. We needed the water to pump to the house, garden, barn, dog yard and chicken coop. We needed it for safety in case of forest fires. We loved the cool, silky feel on hot days when we took sweltering dogs swimming.
You can’t predict the behavior of a river loaded with megatons of powdered rock that settles out in the first calm spot it encounters. A flood might divert the river anywhere upstream. When the lake level is low, the steeper gradient speeds up the river so it might scour the channel instead of filling it in. When the lake rises enough to back upriver as it did last summer, the mud flats of the delta lie underwater, allowing silt to fill a new delta on top of the old one, plugging the riverbed when the water drops again.
For now, as we wait for the next installment of this little drama, we’ll be setting out rain barrels, conserving water, and hoping for a wet summer while we consider our options. The river may not actually shift at all, or if it runs within a quarter-mile of our home, pumping water will remain a possibility. The logistics of having a well drilled would be outrageous, but it’s not out of the question. Investing in storage tanks or some sort of water pit might be possible, too. Moving altogether isn’t likely to happen; our roots are too deep to wrench out very easily.
The good news is that this problem, daunting though it may be, is a seasonal one. Come freeze-up next winter, we’ll once again have freedom of transportation, water hauled from the lake, and no worries about the river.
Until then, we’ll treasure every moment that we can hear the sweet rippling song of flowing water, and enjoy every drop we drink.

11/03/2015

Putting the horse back in the saddle a long overdue project
Miki Collins, In the Bush
LAKE MINCHUMINA, Alaska — Meyla is our interrupted project. In 2008, when we bought the untrained little bay Icelandic mare, we hoped to bring her and her new companion, Mr. B., through 100 miles of wilderness to our rural Alaska home. During her initial packsaddle work in Fairbanks we noticed how she squirreled around whenever a branch slapped her load.
High water waylaid that plan, and we ended up flying the horses out after freezeup. Joining our older gelding, Dropi, the pair spent the next few months settling in, with their “training” being limited to learning the ropes of bush life.
We made good progress the following summer. Starting before breakup, Julie and I rode the trained horses, leading Meyla under saddle behind Dropi. By late summer, I was riding the sp***y little horse while Julie rode Mr. B.
Thick black topknot poking straight up between her ears, Meyla scampered busily along mudflats and willows. Although less than 13 hands, she carried me easily, willingly jumping into a trot that varied from big and bold to brisk, short-strided but smooth, and occasionally throwing in a few steps of tolt, the smooth gait Icelandics are famed for.
Still, she often skittered nervously when brush scraped against her saddle. She hated going behind her older companion, ignoring her rider’s restraining reins to dart rudely past. Once out front, with willows slapping her at every step, she saw no reason to slow down, and only a firm hand prevented a runaway.
Icelandic horses tend to be courageous, level-headed critters, but in our experience once one decides something is dangerous, that idea sticks like spruce pitch in fur. Brush was Meyla’s spruce pitch. You’d think that riding a horse several times a week on brush-choked trails would desensitize it. That assumption overlooks the tenacity of an Icelandic.
Spring 2010 found us spending breakup at a remote trapline cabin. Meyla packed in moss for re-sodding the roof, but she didn’t like it. She liked it even less when we loaded packs on the horses, heading out for a 100-mile trek through the high country.
One evening, as Dropi wandered loose in a camp still 50 miles from home, he unbuckled the little mare’s halter. Meyla disappeared in a flash. Dropi followed, and despite an intensive search, we did not see either one for five months. When the bogs froze enough to cross, our wayward pair strolled home, Meyla a fat, shiny ball of energy.
Instead of riding our little scamp, I spent the next summer using her to pack home fish from the boat, through the inevitable brush. Although flighty initially, she gradually settled into the work. Halfway through the summer she had one of her little backslides. Then another. By the end of the summer, I decided she had to go back to kindergarten.
It’s not that Meyla bucked or bolted. She just felt that this whole under-saddle thing was unpleasant and potentially dangerous. She’d rush up against the lead horse for security, or stop dead because every time she moved, those treacherous twigs scraped against her saddle. A swift twirl, her worst move, could unseat an unsuspecting rider.
To her credit, she only dumped a rider twice, both times when wearing a new saddle. We returned the saddle, and she returned to her not-quite-trustworthy ways.
Like many Icelandics, Meyla wanted to hurry forward when a rider sat on her back. Although a valued trait in Iceland (“Willingness,” they call it), this is not especially safe in the Bush. I finally broke her of this habit by sitting on her back with a loose rein while she grazed, finally getting off and “ending” the ride without having actually gone anywhere.
With one of us gone for several weeks during each of the following summers, spare time didn’t come easily. Meyla’s training progressed in fits and starts, backsliding in-between. Then last summer a bout of laminitis forced 28-year-old Dropi into deserved retirement, and we had to decide whether to trade Meyla in for a solid, well-trained horse.
“Since it would take weeks to find a good one and get it home, let’s use that time to train up Meyla and see if she can do it,” I suggested. “She’s really matured the last couple years, and doing nothing has actually made her more trusting.”
As this winter melted into spring, I worked with the little mare several times on the ground, just grooming or saddling and walking her, or sitting on her back while she ate. Then Julie and I led her and Mr. B. the half mile over the hill to frozen lake.
Stroking her glossy bright bay shoulder, I gently swung into the saddle. Meyla stood calmly, and then at my request, followed Mr. B. out onto the ice. She jigged a few times, indicated that we really ought to go first, and scampered a bit too fast now and then. But she listened to me, responding to my hands on the rein and my seat in the saddle. I never felt like she was going to blow up or race off, and she stopped promptly when asked, especially when a little whistle told her “dog cookie,” her favorite treat.
Maybe our little gal has finally grown up.
Or, maybe, she just didn’t find any brush on the lake. Only time will tell.

11/03/2015

Knowing a good tree, from the inside and out
Julie Collins, In the Bush
LAKE MINCHUMINA, Alaska — When cutting firewood I prefer taking big trees because they provide more wood for proportionally less work, but many of the really big birch trees we find nearby have rotten centers with lower-quality wood. You can’t see into the core of a standing tree without cutting or drilling it, but over the decades I’ve noticed a number of external clues that indicate the quality of wood under the bark.
The apparent lack of historical forest fires near our home means we can find plenty of ancient birch trees, big but not always healthy. “How do you tell if it’s rotten inside?” someone asked me a few years ago, and I explained my theories as such:
A tree in poor health has fewer defenses, so one sign I look for is fungal growths of any kind. Lichens, conk fungus or chaga growing on the trunk or branches are suspicious signs, as are mushrooms sprouting from the base. I’m pretty suspicious of burls, too.
One lovely tree in our back yard developed a vertical crack that expanded over the years. When the split began sprouting a beautiful line of fawn-brown Pholiota mushrooms every summer, we feared the tree might blow over onto our house and finally cut it down. Only the outer 2 or 3 inches provided good wood, while the core was rotten through.
In the past 10 or 15 years we’ve been seeing lichens and fungus spreading over many of our birch trees, not just the gnarly old ones but young ones as well, even normally robust saplings. In the short term these lichens probably are fairly harmless, but it suggests to me that our forest is stressed, perhaps by the strange weather we’ve had since the turn of the millennium.
I don’t worry too much about lichens and fungus spreading across the outer bark unless I detect other symptoms of disease. But I don’t like cutting a tree with any form of conk fungus. To me, these distinctive knobbly growths indicate a more advanced state of decay, with rotten wood spreading from the inside.
I don’t see as many ants and other boring insects in birch as I do in spruce trees, but they always arouse suspicion. More often, I spot the horizontal rows of black dots on the trunk that indicate woodpeckers searching for bugs. This tells me that the tree does harbor insects of some kind, and that the woodpeckers have poked holes in the tree, exposing it to infections.
I particularly look for physical damage to the tree: larger broken branches, deep scars, vertical splits and, most especially, broken tops which are often caused by rot weakening the trunk. Once broken, the exposed heartwood allows water and pests to bypass the tree’s tough bark barrier, causing rapid erosion of healthy wood. The dark, p***y wood crumbles apart instead of splitting cleanly, and produces more smoke than warmth when burned. Often rot in the lower trunk disintegrates completely to become hollow.
I rarely cut a tree whose crown has broken off. Broken tops usually indicate a rotten core from the base all the way up. Many trees with large broken limbs or tops look quite healthy, with robust new growth stretching high to replace the lost appendages, but invariably I find rot inside.
Finally, when evaluating trees I look for suckers.
One way birch trees reproduce is by sprouting new growth directly from the base of the tree. In fact, when cutting quantities of wood for our home cabin, I choose trees with healthy saplings at their sides. Firewood has been cut around our place at least since the 1920s, and I want to ensure a continuous replacement of healthy trees for the future. Since a well-started sapling grows quickly, I take great precautions to save these youngsters when felling the big ones.
Much shrieking and wailing goes on when I have managed to finesse the felling of several trees safely past a fine sapling, only to see the last tree drop a few degrees off course and squash my little treasure right to the roots.
A few sucker trees are a good thing, but I don’t like to see a bunch of little suckers sprouting out of the trunk rather than from the base of the tree. Here I see them start as little knobby growths with thin shoots popping out, sometimes many of them, usually in the bottom three or four feet of the trunk.
I think these trees are dying, and they know it. Instead of sending all their nutrients to the branches, they’re investing in sprouting young growth that, with any luck, will mature and replace the old tree. Like the broken tops, these suckers hint that all is not well deep within the tree.
This spring I’ve been cutting trees from a patch of especially big birch. Many measure about 18 inches in diameter so each one provides a generous pile of wood. These great old trees almost always have some rot in the very butt, but if I select them carefully they provide lovely clean wood above that.
I like to leave rotten birch trees in the forest for conks and woodpeckers. By evaluating every tree before cutting, I will only harvest the good ones.

11/03/2015

Toilet paper woes and muskrat encounters, or, another day in rural Alaska
By Miki Collins In the Bush
LAKE MINCHUMINA, Alaska — The problem was the toilet paper.
Normally, when you live in the Bush any TP problem would be in the deficit department because someone didn’t order enough. This time, there was too much. The box read, “45 rolls.” That would have been fine; Julie had ordered “2, 30-roll packages, or 40-60 rolls.” Only they sent two boxes. That’s 90 rolls. Then, since we were stocking up while travel was easy, there were nine more big boxes of groceries.
Even that wouldn’t have been a problem. The real problem was the date: April 27. Julie had mailed in our order in mid-March, plenty of time for it to be processed and arrive by early April on the twice-weekly mail plane at the post office, six miles from our home, when a dog team or snowmachine could easily and swiftly haul it all home.
But the letter went astray, and by late April, snow had gone except for deeper drifts and shaded low spots. I had walked with five free-ranging huskies through the woods and across thawing mud flats to reach the dog sled parked on still-solid lake ice. There I had hitched up to mush across the lake before picketing my crew and finally walking the last mile to reach the post office.
Partway across the dog team had unexpectedly plowed through a foot of water sitting on melting ice at a pressure ridge. The waist-high line of piled ice had snatched windblown silt from turbulent winter air. Now a warm spring sun had warmed the dark material, melting the ridge down and creating a deep puddle.
Walt, one of our generous neighbors, offered to haul our 11 boxes to the lakeshore. I knew I’d have to make two trips to get everything home, but with conditions worsening daily, I gratefully accepted.
I managed to pack four big cardboard boxes into the little dogsled. Two more fit into a tote sled I dragged along behind.
The five big dogs pulled my load easily across the ice. In lead, Jarvis and Calico surged forward as they approached the pressure ridge, telling me they remembered that water and were ready to get the team through. Although pleased by their impulsion, caution won out. I stepped on the brake and stopped them.
I knew they’d go right through that water, but it was deep enough to get my groceries wet even in the raised basket sled, and I really wasn’t confident in the safety of that underlying ice. When shore ice goes bad over shallow water we don’t worry too much since wading ashore is an option. Over deep water, really bad things can happen.
Turning three dogs loose, I led the other two 100 feet along the ridge to check out a place that looked a bit safer. Even this had a half-inch of new ice frozen above ankle-deep water. Without an ax or chipper to check the underlying ice, I eased nervously across. Safely over, I called my crew, cheering as they regained solid ice, sled splashing behind and tote sled bobbing along after that.
By following a frozen ridge of aufeis, the team managed to get me to within 200 yards of home, leaving me one last challenge. Because flooding claimed our usual trail from the river up to the house, I made three trips dragging supplies in the tote sled up a steep trail cut by the hooves of our horses into the loose shale of a 10-foot-high bank.
In the early evening I selected five of the seven eager dogs who’d been left home, hitched them to the sled and bombed back across the lake, this time with an ice chipper on board. Numerous vigorous stabs into the ice at the pressure ridge convinced me that here at least, strong solid ice underlay the irregular puddling surface.
(My concerns proved justified because that day a four-wheeler broke through another spot along the same ridge, requiring a collection of neighbors a couple of hours to recover it as it bobbed nearly submerged over deep water. Luckily, the driver escaped with just a dunking.)
I had left three cases of groceries and all that toilet paper for the second trip. One huge box of TP teetered on the bush bow of the sled. The other sat in the tote sled.
Most TP these days comes encased in a protective shell of plastic. Usually, I find plastic wrapping to be maddening and environmentally damaging. This time, I rather regretted that this stuff was wrapped in paper and encased in cardboard. Any time I stepped on the brake a rooster tail of watery slush cascaded squarely in the tote sled, where it melted to saturate the bottom of the box and soaking an edge of the contents.
I only needed four dogs, so when Cricket indicated he was afraid of the creaking shore ice as I loaded up, I turned him loose. After a half-mile on our back trail the 90-pound youngster found a muskrat, perhaps starved or frozen out of its home and now ranging perilously. In the swift battle that ensued, the 2-pound muskrat thrashed Cricket with a painful if superficial bite to the nose.
When Spoí indicated that he could do a better job, I told him to go ahead. Cricket had probably wounded his rival, and muskrat season was still open. Moments later my leader had a bloody nose but the little beast had been swiftly dispatched and added to my load, to be skinned at 11 p.m. after finally toting the last of the groceries up the bank.

11/03/2015

Gardening in Alaska means a never-ending game of whack-a-w**d
By Miki Collins For the News-Miner
Lake Minchumina — To grow enough vegetables to last a full year, my twin sister Julie and I maintain quite a bit of land under cultivation. With a 70-by-80 foot vegetable plot, small greenhouse, 20-by-40 foot strawberry bed, and plenty of small spots and pots planted with flowers, w**d control remains a perennial priority.
During the past four decades of serious gardening, I’ve established a few rules and several reasons to break them. Sometimes I want w**ds to germinate, and sometimes I don’t. Even though they are easiest to kill when tiny, I occasionally let invaders grow awhile before (attempting to) eliminate them. The one hard and fast rule, broken only by lack of time, is that no w**d is allowed to go to seed.
After our exceptionally low-snow winter of 2014-15, an early break-up led to a snow-free garden by late April. With soil warming quickly, I noted with pleasure the number of w**ds that germinated before I even started the rototiller in mid-May.
It’s not that I like to see so many w**ds, but when their seeds litter the ground, I like them germinated early. That way, one tilling destroys the vast majority of little invaders, with a second destroying most of the remainders. That’s a whole lot of w**ds that don’t survive to come up amongst germinating carrots.
In addition to wiping out those early w**ds, spring tilling also leaves the soil loose and workable. When the first heavy showers bring out the chickw**d, a hoe can easily dig the tiny plants up roots and all so (unless they re-root in moist soil) they can’t grow back.
I can remember back in the 1980s spending hours on my knees, pulling one chickw**d at a time from newly germinated carrots. Because the w**ds stood taller and thicker than the seedlings each one had to be pulled before our tiny carrots were revealed.
“You should plant the rows far enough apart so I can run the tiller between them to knock down the w**ds,” our father told us. Being in our early 20s, we indignantly declared we would do it all by hand. It took a couple decades for me to start doing just what he had recommended. Tilling on a hot day kills most w**ds, and raking a day or two later eliminates any survivors.
Between that, amending the soil, and aggressively eliminating mature w**ds, I finally came to grips with our w**d problem. Thanks to a couple decades of effort, I can maintain a tidier garden even while investing less time w**ding, and new-born carrots aren’t competing with w**ds.
With compost made from horse manure, w**ds, grass, leaves and kitchen waste, the soil maintains its lightness. Taproot w**ds, including sheperd’s purse, dandelion and lambsquarters pull up easily, roots and all, and even the extensive and durable root system of chickw**d can be quickly exposed.
Like germinating vegetables, w**ds are extremely susceptible to drying out when they first pop up, as well as often being completely dependent on their first two leaves. Once more leaves form, the plant can lose a few or even be sliced off at the surface and still regrow from its ever-expanding root system. A few quick hoeing jobs in June and to get those newborns can save hours of work later.
When still small, w**ds can be left on their deathbeds, preferably under a hot sun which quickly drains any remaining life. Once they’ve started flowering, I remove them to a hot compost pile. Even if they haven’t yet gone to seed, the flowers can continue to grow after being pulled up. (Even if you don’t garden, you’ve probably seen the yellow heads of mowed dandelions turn into seed.) Burying the plants in compost helps arrest this development, and if hot enough, the pile cooks any mature seeds.
Eliminating mature w**ds is vital because one w**d can produce tens of thousands of seeds. I’ve seen new gardens on freshly-broken soil that only had the odd chickw**d or so turn into a tangled mat of greenery the following year.
However, occasionally I leave w**ds to grow until just before flowering. When 6- to 8-inches high, I can snip leaves off lambs quarters for soup, and then till or hoe the remainders into the soil for a quick flush of nitrogen from their decaying carcasses.
Many experts insist w**ds always steal moisture from your vegetables. Chickw**d, however, produces a refrigerant that keeps it cool so at night dew forms on the moisture-loving plant. (That’s why on nippy September mornings you may find frost only on chickw**d). Under a burning June sun, chickw**d helps maintain soil moisture. Bigger w**ds will be harder to extract, but the vegetables seedlings will still be alive.
Whether hoeing or tilling, I’ll go back a day or two later to hoe out any w**ds struggling back. Once damaged they’ll rush all their reserves into seed formation, kicking out a whole new crop for next year, so I make sure they are good and dead, not just mostly dead.
One w**d pulled today can prevent tens of thousands next year, and millions the year after that. Proper w**d control may be demanding, but it’s no where near as time-consuming dealing with the consequences.

11/03/2015

Small in size but mighty in number, it's a bug battle
By Julie Collins
Lake Minchumina — “OW!” I shouted. “That felt more like a hornet than a horse fly!”
My sister, Miki, in the meat shed a few yards away, dropped her equipment and looked suspiciously around. Then I spotted a yellow jacket scaling my braided hair toward my neck above the sting he’d injected in my arm.
“It’s a hornet!” I called, flicking the little beast off and simultaneously scampering away from the battle zone.
“There’s a nest under the eaves!” Miki replied. “I’m stuck in here!”
Receiving a glancing blow from a second stinger, I retreated farther. “Wait ’til they calm down then make a run for it,” I suggested.
In another minute or so the enraged buzzing quieted down as the insects retreated back to their work, and Miki tiptoed unharmed from the shed. When cooler evening air put the aggressive insects to bed, we returned for a first assault. To our disappointment, the can of Raid wouldn’t spray up to the tall peak of the screened shed. The next time I started the water pump to fill the water drums in the dog yard, I aimed a hard spray at the nest for as long as I dared before dropping the hose and fleeing.
(For those of you who read my May column about the river diverting to leave us land-locked, after breakup it returned to flow past our home, so we can still pump river water.)
Anyway, after the brouhaha at the nest quieted down, I slipped back to assess the damages. The wasps seemed to assume they’d been victims of a devastating natural disaster rather than a deliberate attack, and appeared more distraught than furious. The soggy outer shells of wasp paper had disintegrated, exposing the innards full of larvae. A couple days later, a second shot of water finished the contest. I may have lost the initial skirmish, but I won the battle.
Whether we win the war remains to be seen. By the third week of June we’d already demolished starter nests by the water pump, in the shop and in Junebug’s dog house. Yellow jackets thrive in hot dry summers like this one, largely because they feed on the aphids that multiply prodigiously in these conditions. Without a heavy rain to knock down the aphids, we may experience more drama before cold weather forces the yellow jackets to retreat.
One of the few times we welcome bears is during a bad hornet year. One year the hornets were so thick they were stripping the meat from the whitefish we’d split and hung to dry. The fish were eaten down to the skin by the time they had dried enough to store, which made them nearly worthless for winter dog food.
Frustrated, I began seeking out the many nearby hornet nests so we could obliterate them. During the search I found quite a few underground nests that had already been destroyed. Unknown to us, a bear had been sneaking around the area digging up nests to eat the larvae, moving so quietly we didn’t even realize he was around.
This was just the kind of bear I liked, one who cleans up unpleasant problems without creating any mischief. He never even tried to tear down our fish rack. Some bears are like that, avoiding humans whenever possible.
I’ve heard that sugar-water attracts wasps early in the year when they need energy to build nests, but as summer progresses they seek protein for the larvae. Certainly, in bad years they scavenge in the buckets of fish that we feed our dogs, usually later in July when they’ve already proliferated but before cooler weather slows them down. Sometimes they gather so thickly I have to tap the bucket to launch the swarm before slopping the fish into the cooker. Luckily, yellow jackets are mainly aggressive only when defending the nest or when threatened with bodily harm, so I can handle the infested fish buckets if I’m careful.
Earlier this summer, I pulled our hand cart to the fish shed while Miki laid a fire in the dog-pot cooker a hundred feet away. Stopping at the shed door, I heard an angry buzzing coming from the bed of the cart. I cringed, thinking a nest had formed in the cart, but then leaned forward to examine a bizarre sight.
A dragonfly and a black hornet lay clenched in mortal combat in the cart. (We call them black hornets; I think they’re properly called bald-faced wasps.)
I scrutinized the warriors, wondering exactly what was going on. After all, dragonflies eat insects, possibly including hornets. But black hornets also eat insects, possibly including dragonflies. The long skinny dragonfly probably weighed about as much as the short fat wasp.
“Who’s killing who?” I wondered.
Then the dragonfly’s head fell off. “I guess that answers the question!” I gently set the fish bucket and a can of rice beside the brutal scene and pulled the cart over to the dog pot. By the time I reached Miki, the black hornet had eaten his victim’s innards — the thorax only — and flown away leaving a scattering of detached legs, the body with its gruesomely hollowed-out chest cavity, and the dismembered head.
Makes me glad these insects are not big enough to prey on people. They might be numerous this year, but at least they’re small.