June 20, 2008
-
Where are the small creatures? Or is it just me?
This summer, for the first time in 16 years, I'm doing a bit of a vegetable garden. I have two raised beds in a community garden in the "bad" neighborhood, each 4 feet by 16 feet. I've planted 6 tomato plants, three different kinds of peppers, some zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, and some leaf lettuce and Swiss chard. That's all I have room for.
It's an organic garden, no chemical fertilizers or pesticides permitted. So I've been chatting with the guy who got the community garden going - one of life's real unsung heroes - about various natural fertilizers and pesticides. Earthworms, for example. Earthworms greatly enrich the soil by aerating it with their burrows, and also by bringing up nutrients from deep in the soil and pooping them out in the vicinity of your plants' roots. Earthworms, like praying mantises and ladybugs and marigolds and mulch, are one of nature's great allies of the gardener/farmer.
As we talked I realized that it's been years since I've actually seen an earthworm. When I was a kid growing up on the south side of Chicago, after a heavy rain you'd see dozens of big fat nightcrawlers on the lawn and on the sidewalk, driven to the surface by the rain. Even if it hadn't rained, you could take a flashlight outside at night and find them in the grass.
As kids we also spent many happy hours collecting grasshoppers and fireflies ("lightning bugs") in jars, chasing butterflies, etc. One summer, as a sort of impromptu science experiment, I raised about three generations of Colorado potato beetles in a glass jar. I had found the adult insects, and their eggs, on the leaves of some weeds that grew wild in the alley behind my neighbor's garage, and identified them in a book I treasured which was entitled "Insects". Another summer we caught tadpoles and watched them mature into frogs. All this on the south side of Chicago.
Now I don't get outdoors nearly as much as I used to when I was a kid. And I am probably not as observant of the mundane, ordinary things all around us that are so fascinating to kids. But I realize that I haven't seen a nightcrawler or a grasshopper in years and years, and very few fireflies or ladybugs. Are they disappearing from nature, or is it just me?
In the past year I've watched a couple of documentaries about the "silence of the bees". It seems that bees, our principal pollinators, are literally disappearing by the millions, pretty much all over the world, with no explanation. Scientists are feverishly trying to figure it out, because without bees we will eventually lose basically all of our fruits and vegetables. Do you suppose that other small but significant species are dying off as well? Or is it just me? Will we one day be greeted by the Silent Spring that Rachel Carson saw coming back in 1964? Or is it just me?
Comments (18)
Interesting topic! I have a lot of earthworms but I never fertilize/insecticide/herbicide (just used WOW from Gardens Alive) and my neighbors on each side do the same. Fireflies however seem to thrive across the street where they have Chemlawn treatments. But as for bees, that is a problem....
Now that you mention it, I think so too.
My brother-in-law, the beekeeper, has lost most of his hives the last couple of years from some sort of bee, um, "ick", I guess. Something that he treats with tetromiacin. Africanization is apparently a huge factor in his life, as well. I would expect rampant insecticide use is a problem.
Did you know bees are sold by the POUND? I don't understand why this is surprising only to me. How do you get those suckers to sit down on the scale? It's a mystery.
Living in the boonies, far far off the beaten path, I see many creatures. I hauled 4 mice out of the office yesterday before noon. (Live traps, so you never can tell, I may haul those very same dudes out again.) My yard is full of fireants, so many dadburned ants it isn't safe sometimes. Toads, snakes, bugs, bugs, bugs. Everything in Texas bites, stings, scratches or burns.
Things seem the same to me. I can't stick my shovel in the dirt without hitting a worm or 10.
the bees are in my mailbox, on my deck, in my yard, in my car........come and get 'em
I guess it's just you, John. The one thing I agree with you on is the earthworms. I have the same memory of the worms after a rain, and now I don't see 'em so much. I have a young daughter who points out all the small creatures to me and I figure if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't give them a second thought. Maybe if you hang out with some of the local preschoolers, or offer them a penny for every earthworm they bring you...
@deep_deep_dark - Hahahaha! So it is YOU who are hiding all the world's bees??? WHY, deepdark, WHY???
Me thinks you have to bend those creaky old knees and get down to the same level you were as a child. My grands seem to have no shortage of critters.
I don't have many earthworms here, but I do have horny toads all over the place...............
i remember those worms,,, all over the pavement and sidewalk,,, big suckers,,,, went to boot camp in the great lakes,,, gone huh???
i was gonna say,,, but i see he already did,,,, hidalgogringos got horny toads and they are kind of rare,,, used to have them by the millions when i was a kid,,, he showed us one the other day when we were there...
the bees,,, roundup i believe is what we were pinning it on last i heard,,, maybe caffiene,,,, does roundup have caffiene in it? disorients them and they cant find their way home,,, or something,,,
used to like to catch tadpoles too,,, if i never see another ladybug it will be too soon,,, those suckers bite nowadays,,, never noticed it when i was a kid but the last 5 or 6 ive incountered,,, ive gotten bit by every one of them,,, dont hurt much,,, but still..... seems like they were yellow too,,, didnt they used to be red?
ok,, reading down,, i see some people have worms,,,, used to be a kid when i was a kid,,, we called him wormy,,, hahahahahahahaha,,,, at an initiation when stuff like that was legal,,, had a box of worms,,,, blindfolded everybody and fed them a piece of spagetti,,,, this kid wanted everybody to know he was tough,,, so he just grabbed one out of the box and munched down,,,, hahahahahahahahaha,,,,, idiot.
Well, I can attest to the fact that earthworms do not seem to be a rarity - at least in our part of the country. We find them often when digging in our garden or when we talk "worm walks" (walks to save worms washed to the surface by rain) after a big rain. I still see lady bugs now and then, though not as often as I remember seeing them when I was little. I don't know though, worldwide, how the populations of these creatures are doing, but I imagine the disappearance of bees and other like insects is due to rapid and greedy industrialization - patenting and overuse of pesticides and insecticides, environmental pollutions, etc. Hopefully we rectify this problem before we're in a crisis state like the one in which we have found ourselves with oil. But hey, why look ahead?
Nature is disappearing, not because of Human Beings but because of the weird climate changes caused by that thing I can't even remember... but everybody knows...
@angryflower1 - el nino isnt it???? maybe la nina,,,,, but i think its el nino,,,
@hidalgogringo - which is it,,,, the nino or the nina,,,,, maybe i should have included the ñ,,, now ive probably really made it mad.....
@mejicojohn - It is part of it both... but it's the global warming! Now I remember! Damm... my brain is fried...
Hello! Sorry I've been silent. How are you??? Great stories from your childhood. Having grown up on a farm I remember catching tons of dragon flies and torturing them to death. Yup, was a mean girl back then, but they were everywhere and made much better toy than dirt. It wasn't until later in life that I learned that they're beneficial -- they eat mosquitoes! My parents generation had so many grasshoppers around that as kids they out to rice paddies and caught them for food. I also remember a classmate brought cooked grasshoppers in grade school. By that time eating grasshoppers was rare, so all the boys dared each others to eat it and chased the girls with it.
Living in NY metropolitan area, the only bugs I see are flies, mosquitoes, ants, moths, etc... Been a while since I've seen any grasshoppers or dragonflies. I suppose ants are good. During summer I do see few fireflies around my home. Lovely sight, for sure. Haven't bothered to catch them in a jar though. And yes, it's been a while since I've seen earthworms, even after heavy rain. I'm guessing they've been killed off by heavy pesticide and weed killers.
I hope your garden thrives!
My boys love to catch fireflies. They may be scarce in different corners of the world, but right here--we have more than we've ever seen.
You're right about earthworms--I haven't seen many in the past few years. I remember being scared to death of them when I was a little girl.
As far as bees go, I try to stay away. I'm allergic, Darling.
i've had my eye on the bee situation for a while. it's pretty crazy. the crazier thing is that it's not in the news so not very many people are even aware of it.
i grew up on a farm (partly--it's complicated) and we used to play with earthworms, grasshoppers, fuzzy caterpillars, dragonflies, butterflies...
i haven't really seen a ton of insects around, but that could be that i lived in places where there weren't that many. i recently moved to va, where there's a LOT of flies and gnats but i don't know if the lack of earthworms is unusual since i haven't been there long enough...
i found this article which you might find interesting, which i cited on my blog (comments section.)
A little bit of trivia (or whatever) for you. This came from an exterminator, of all people. I never realized that man, in his infinite wisdomm has produced chemicals which will kill animals, birds, and humans - but man has yet to be able to eradicate even ONE species of bug. S
Comments are closed.