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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 27, 2019)
14 Wednesday, February 27, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Tales from a Sisters Naturalist by Jim Anderson They’re all stinkers Mustelids can be pretty stinky. In addition to the American badger (which I wrote about recently), there are several of its cousins that have the same ability: American marten; ermine aka short-tailed weasel; fisher; long-tailed weasel; mink; northern river otter; striped skunk; Western spot- ted skunk and wolverine. When I was a kid on the farm back in the 1940s, my dad said to me, <Jimmy, if you ruin this brand-new pair of shoes I got for you like you have all your oth- ers, wading around in Allspaugh9s pond chas- ing turtles and frogs, I will never buy you another pair of shoes.= It took me a week to ruin those new shoes and the warning came to life. To purchase footwear in the future I took on a paper route for the New Haven Register and started trapping skunks (albeit reluctantly; even as a kid I did not want to kill anything) then skin- ning them, and selling the hides 4 which was enough to add to the paper route money for new shoes back in those days. My grandfather allowed me only 10 skunks. His rea- soning was that skunks had a right to live, too. In addi- tion, he made sure my sets would kill the skunks imme- diately without suffering. Grandpa 4 who we called Puffy, for the stinky pipe he sucked on continu- ally 4 showed me how to skin a skunk without run- ning into trouble with the animal9s scent-applying mechanism. I remember the first les- son vividly because he made a serious error and we both got blasted. When we came in for supper that night my mom said, <Oh, oh it went wrong didn9t it dad? Well, you two can eat out in the barn.= The next day when I got to school 4 and even after several washings and de-scentings 4 Miss Fogerty, my seventh-grade teacher, asked me to sit in the back row. Skunks are notorious for their anal scent glands, which they can use as a defensive weapon, usually with great success. They have two glands, one on each side of the anus. When a skunk is trapped, death is violent and that automati- cally erupts the nozzles that squeeze out on either side of the vent, and pressurizes the glands. These glands produce the skunk9s spray, which is a mixture of sulfur-con- taining chemicals, such as thiols (traditionally called mercaptans), which have an offensive odor (Hah! An understatement if there ever was one!) When skinning a dead skunk the animal is either on a bench or hanging head-down. Either way the tiny nozzle can be over- looked and the skinner can accidentally slice it with the sharp skinning tool with horrifying results. In 1954, while living with Dean and Lily Hollinshead on their ranch, Timberlane, located on George A. Jones Rd. in Bend, Dean asked me if I9d take care of his livestock while he and Lily went on a trail ride in the Cascades. They were like parents to me, and of course I said yes. I milked the cows, fed and watered the horses, fed their chickens and col- lected eggs. It was during the egg- collecting part of that won- derful week that I had the opportunity for a one-on-one relationship with a spotted skunk, the adventure that I wrote up in my book, <Tales of a Northwest Naturalist,= which you can find in Paulina Springs Books or at the library, or send me an email and I9ll see that you get one. What a grand time that was! When it comes to wea- sels, many years ago my family and I had a face-to- face (literally) run in with the long-tailed variety at a cattle guard over near Burns. <Look! What9s that?= Caleb shouted. When I looked to see which way he was looking or pointing I was surprised, it was straight ahead, the way I had been looking. I swiveled my head back to the area ahead of us, but saw nothing but a cattle guard coming up. <Where did you see what you saw?= I asked, and Caleb pointed straight ahead at the cattle guard. OK, so I came to stop with the cattle guard about three feet in front of us. <Now where?= I asked, and as I did I saw PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON A long-tailed weasel. Close enough to a spotted skunk. a smaller-than-a-golf-ball brown shape slowly com- ing up behind one of the rails on the cattle guard, and the voice of a kid in the back seat. <There! See it? Right there behind the rail crossing the road.= Anyway the photo above is what we all saw as that beautiful long-tailed wea- sel stood up to see if all the noise we were making might have scared up something for it to eat. That turned out to be a very nice piece of habitat to see wildlife scur- rying about, so much so that I try to slow down to this day when crossing a cattle- guard, fearing I might miss something. CHECK OUT this week’s Nugget insert! Ray’s Food Place New All Access App! Barrel racer! Hot Deals for App Users only! PHOTO BY GARY MILLER The 2019 Sisters Rodeo featuring an image shot by Rochelle Villanueva was unveiled in an event at Dixie’s last week. Posters are available for purchase at Dixie’s, Open Range and Heritage USA. Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts $1.99 fi rst 2 Selected Quaker Life, Cap’n Crunch or Oatmeal Squares Cereal $1.49 fi rst 2 Selected Classico Pasta Sauce 99¢ fi rst 2