BETTER THAN HEARSAY - Giving a Hoot

By Michael Ryan

CORNWALLVILLE - When I was a kid, I never gave much thought to what I wanted to be when I grew up. It’s getting kind of late to do it now.

If I had to pick one thing that draws my interest, it is the so-called mysteries of life, the whole “what the heck’s going on here” puzzlement.

Many of us drove our parents nuts in childhood, asking “why” about every infinitesimal nuance not even waiting for one answer to settle in before asking “why” again.

Like for instance, “why is the sky blue?” and maybe our parents would say “because God made it that way,” which is fine but then we’d find out there isn’t really a sky, not the same as a ceiling in our bedroom anyway.

So that set another whole series of questions in motion and it has never stopped for me, the delving, reminding me of a scene from the Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke.”

At the end of the flik, Luke has escaped from prison again and is holed up in an old church, looking skyward as the guards close in on him.

He is smiling, seeking heavenly help, saying, “you made me this way,” and a gunshot rings out, turning Luke stone cold.

When I was a kid, I didn’t think much about the color of the sky. I thought about the human condition without knowing why.

I just did and I was often told I couldn’t know the answers to stuff and people still tell me that but I’m not buying it.

For instance, I wonder what living is like for the insects I see flying around or floating on the surface of the lakes where I swim.

The poor things have fishes gobbling them from below and birds grabbing them from above. I wonder if the swimmers and flyers every collide, granting the bug a reprieve, at least for a few moments?

Maybe I won’t get that answer but I have no such merciful thoughts for ticks who, this year, are like a pandemic with their nasty little legs and blood-sucking mouths.

It wouldn’t bother me if they just vampired us and then went on their merry way but they have to mess people up so we have to get all defensive and, well, you know the rest of that sad story for them.

Here’s the problem. I did a little research on the creatures and, according to TICKsafety.com, “the female hard ticks swell immensely as they store the blood they need to lay their eggs.”

In other words, if I pluck one of the engorged lady varmints off me, I break a mother’s heart. What kind of a monster does that make me?

But there’s more. “Some ticks secrete a cement-like substance with their saliva, which dissolves when the tick is ready to drop off of its host,” TICKsafety.com reports.

“This substance can make it even harder to remove the feeding tick. The saliva also keeps the host’s blood from clotting while the tick eats.”

How convenient. So, it’s a tough world for everybody, I guess, which makes a tale I heard about a baby owl all the pleasanter.

It comes from Greene County Legislature chairman Patrick Linger who I talk to on a regular basis, needing information on what lawmakers are doing and why they are doing it.

I never knew lawmakers had hearts, bleeding we mules of taxation the way they do (not unlike the aforementioned dermacentor variabilis)!

They do, of course, and Linger, in between talking about this and that resolution, shared a yarn about a baby Great Horned Owl.

Linger works at the Corporate Woods Office Park in Albany, just off I-90, learning the owl had fallen out of its nest, leaving it stranded.

“We saw crows dive-bombing it,” Linger said. “The mother was in the tree. I was afraid of her coming after me if we tried to help, seeing the talons on the baby that were already and inch-and-a-half long.”

Crows and owls don’t particularly care for each other. Crows will carry out a mobbing if their territory is threatened, a coordinated effort where multiple crows converge on a single owl, squawking.

There is a reason. Owls eat crow eggs and babies. The baby owl Linger saw never hurt a fly (or a tick) so a call was put into North County Wild Care, a rescue organization.

“The crows were rallying the troops from a mile away, getting louder. That baby owl was in trouble for sure,” Linger said.

Instead of innocent death, North Country came in, got the baby and took it to a vet , fed it, and brought it back at dusk.

A tree-climber placed it in the nest. “I haven’t seen it on the ground again,” Linger said, and it’s nice seeing humans give a hoot.