Interview with Terry VanDeWalle

You’ve had pet snakes for many years. Have you also had pet frogs or toads and turtles?

I have not had any frogs or toads as pets, but we have had a few turtles in the house at times. My daughter is really interested in turtles, and I have picked up several hatchling turtles that we have headstarted, including painted turtles, snapping turtles, and a Blanding’s turtle, a threatened species in Iowa. Headstarting is raising hatchlings in captivity for a while, letting them grow, and then releasing them back where they came from. Headstarting can really increase the survival of young turtles, which are highly prone to predation by raccoons, opossums, skunks, and other predators. Keep in mind that a permit may be required to keep wild turtles in captivity, particularly certain species.

What’s your best turtle story?

I have a lot of turtle stories, but one I like is about a snapping turtle. I was trapping turtles in Lee County, Iowa, as part of a survey of a County Conservation Board property, and I caught a 10-12-pound snapper. I wanted to photograph the turtle, so I left it in the trap and carried the trap and turtle up to my truck in the parking area. It was mid-morning, and I wanted to spend some time looking for lizards while the temperature was right, so I took the turtle out of the trap and placed it in a bucket while I searched for lizards. I left the trap set up so that it would dry in the sun. After about half an hour, I came back and was going to photograph the snapper and then let it go. I went to the bucket and the turtle was gone. I looked around a bit but did not see it, so I figured it had gotten out of the bucket and headed back to the water. I turned around to get the trap so that I could reset it and, you guessed it, the snapper was in the trap. Apparently, it had gotten out of the bucket, walked 10 feet, and crawled right back into the trap. If I had known it was going to be that easy, I would not have carried all those traps down to the water.   

Your graduate research was on turtles; what particular species did you study? My research looked at the effect of river modification (channelization, dams, bank stabilization, etc.) on the diversity of aquatic turtles. We evaluated the effects on all of Iowa’s aquatic turtles. As expected, we found that the more highly modified the river, the lower the number of species of turtles in the river.

What are your current research interests?

For the past 11 years, I have been doing a long-term mark/recapture and radio-telemetry study with massasauga rattlesnakes in Iowa.

What other plants and animals are you especially interested in?

Although reptiles and amphibians are my favorite, I really consider myself a naturalist and have an interest in many types of plants and animals; I really enjoying walking or driving through areas identifying species as I go. Over the past few years I have been working quite a bit with bats as part of my job as an environmental consultant.

Malformed frogs have been much in the news in recent years. Are turtles similarly threatened?

The current thinking is that many of the deformities that we saw in frogs were caused by parasites. Turtles, as far as we know, do not experience the same thing. The primary threat to turtles is loss of habitat, predation of nests and hatchlings, and roads.

Tell us about your next laminated guide. What other publications are you working on?

The next laminated guide will be Salamanders in Your Pocket. It will cover the same 12 states as the other guides. Although we only have 5 species of salamanders and newts in Iowa, there are many more species as you go south and east.

I am also currently working with Jim Christiansen, Neil Bernstein, and Jeff Parmelee on a book covering the natural history of Iowa’s reptiles.

What are the best places in the Midwest to see reptiles and amphibians?

This will likely seem like the obvious answer, but the best places to look for reptiles and amphibians are where there is suitable habitat, such as wetlands, streams, lakes, ponds, grassland, woodland, etc. Unfortunately, throughout the Midwest, much of our natural habitat has been lost, and the places it remains are often public areas, like county or state parks or wildlife refuges. So these areas probably provide the best opportunities to observe reptiles and amphibians along with many other species of wildlife as well. Many states have watchable wildlife guides that describe the best areas. The places that are good for reptiles and amphibians are also good for a whole host of other species, so remember to look up and around once in a while to see the birds flying over or the muskrat swimming by.

Terry VanDeWalle, Frogs and Toads in Your Pocket and Turtles in Your Pocket, with photographs by Suzanne L. Collins
  

Comfort Food From Iowa

Apple Goodie

3 cups sliced or diced apples
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup melted butter
1 rounded tablespoon flour (2 level tablespoons)
Salt and cinnamon to taste
3/4 cup oatmeal
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

Combine apples and white sugar and put in buttered 8x8 Pyrex pan. Mix soda, baking powder, melted butter, flour, and salt and cinnamon to taste. Spread over top of apples. Combine remaining ingredients and crumble over the top. Bake 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Cut in squares and serve with hard sauce or whipped cream. I don't use either one; good without.

Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers, by Evelyn Birkby

Winter Bird

Pine Grosbeak
Pinicola enucleator

During the winter of 1989-90 snow cover was sparse, so it was easy to walk our woodland trails. On January 2, I heard whistling calls and, in a grove of red cedar trees, spotted a flock of plump, cardinal-size birds with short dark bills. A few were pinkish red with black wings and white wingbars. Most had gray plumage with yellowish green heads and napes. I soon identified the birds as male and female pine grosbeaks. I knew this sighting was unusual, since pine grosbeaks come this far south only sporadically, so I notified Anne Marie Plunkett, who arrived the next day with Ray Glassel and Bob Janssen, both of whom, at three hundred ninety-seven species each, still tie the second-place record for the most species seen in Minnesota. The three friends found the grosbeaks in the same cedar trees where I had seen them.

North American Fringillidae, also known as winter finches, include purple finches, goldfinches, redpolls, pine grosbeaks, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, and evening grosbeaks, among others. They are small to medium-size arboreal, seed-eating songbirds that fly fast, undulate in flight, have high-pitched calls, and gather in flocks when not nesting. As with the northern owls, patterns of movement and numbers vary greatly from year to year in response to fluctuations in food supplies, especially in winter. The birds I saw had moved south because of a poor crop of mountain ash berries, conifer seeds, and seeds of other trees across much of Canada.

Breeding locations also depend on food supplies and vary from year to year, but nesting primarily occurs in the open spruce and fir forests of Canada. The male grosbeak sings soft, whistled notes to defend his territory and in courtship feeds his mate. He remains nearby while she gathers moss, twigs, grass, lichen, and rootlets to build a bulky nest fifteen to twenty feet high on a horizontal branch or in a fork of a conifer. She sits on her two to five eggs for about two weeks. Her mate feeds her on the nest. Both parents develop throat pouches in which they carry seeds, buds, berries, and some insects to their nestlings. Young birds fledge two to three weeks after hatching.

Because of their flocking nature, these birds may be vulnerable to the spread of disease. Habitat destruction from logging operations is another concern, as are poor food crops and competition with other species.

I will always connect the 1990 occurrence of pine grosbeaks in my woods to the three expert birders who came to see them, especially Ray Glassel, a beloved Minnesota birder who has since passed away. The birds remained among the cedar trees for six weeks, which was fortunate because they have not appeared in my woods again.

Nancy Overcott, illustrated by Dana Gardner, Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest

Winter Story

The garden began to come up in April and as we had perfectly lovely weather things started to grow very fast and every morning I ran literally ran I was so eager to see how much things had grown over night and then nearly the first of May the hoppers hatched. Yes hatched i[n] millions and billions. One of the neighbors who had out a little small grain came one day and said, "Well nothing can live over two days. The hoppers will have every green thing eaten."

And then that night came a blizzard from the north and first came sleet or rain that froze ice over everything it touched and later turned to snow with [the] hard north wind. We had very little fuel and that little was wet. We managed a little breakfast some way but I was so chilled and everything so wet the roof leaking so badly J.T. insisted on my putting on his overcoat while he put one on his brother Donald had left us which was large and he could put Willie inside and going to neighbor Ellis[es] till the storm let up. They had a dugout and shingled roof so we knew they would be comfortable especially as he had a team of mules so had been able to haul wood. It was 3/4 of a mile west and I did not believe I could make it and would rather go to bed but there was no dry place for the bed and J.T. rolled the bedding up as small as he could to keep it dry. You see before this we had taken the straw roof off and put on a sod roof but the rafters were so light we could not put much dirt on so it leaked and leaked, muddy water at that. Well J.T. got me on the south side of him and Willie in his coat but some way I could hardly walk and he had to help me along with his arm around me and then just as we got to the door and the warm air struck me I fainted and nearly fell. 

When I recovered I found myself in bed with warm irons to my feet but I did not feel very well all day so do not think I got up. Nor did I seem to want to eat or drink, just to lie still in a kind of stupor. J.T. went back home to see to the stock and about getting some kind of fuel raked up [and] probably went over to the garden for small pieces of old corn stalks and put [them] in the house.

A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen

Winter Gardening

Saturday, January 21

One month beyond the winter solstice, and we're deep into the kind of weather that sends farmers, retirees, and other "snowbirds" south to places like the Texas and Florida gulf coasts. The kind of weather that gives a special punch to TV ads touting cold remedies, snow tires, ski lessons, rock salt, and Caribbean love boats. The kind of weather that tells me to pull on my heavy wool socks, long johns, t-shirt, flannel shirt, and sweatshirt, and enjoy the simple pleasure of keeping warm on a bitterly cold day. The temperature this morning just ten above and the north wind gusting up to thirty-five miles an hour for a windchill factor of twenty below. Not exactly the sort of weather to tempt even the cross-country skiers outside.

But shortly before noon this morning, when I was up in the attic scanning the landscape, touching up some of my previous reports, and thinking about the one for today, I noticed Kate lugging our large splitoak harvesting basket back and forth between the house and the gazebo. She'd mentioned something the other day about having to defrost the basement freezer, but not wanting to do so until the weather turned cold enough outside so she could temporarily store the frozen produce outside. But I'd forgotten the plan, so when I ran downstairs to ask her what she was doing, her answer momentarily brought me up short.

"I'm just making something out of winter."

And so she was. At the north end of the gazebo, she'd carefully piled up all the frozen cartons, containing all the beef broth and duck broth she'd made during the fall, the fresh gulf shrimp we'd bought this summer and fall, and all the tomato puree and spaghetti sauce we'd made from the bumper harvest of tomatoes this summer. At the south end of the gazebo, she'd set up a large cardboard carton filled with ducks from a local farmer's wife, chicken pot pies she'd made a few weeks ago, and ice cube trays of frozen pesto that I'd made from the bumper crop of basil this summer and fall. The box was closed, the top weighed down with a heavy stone garden turtle to protect the stuff inside from the neighbor's untethered dog.

But the mere sight of it all having come back outside to the gazebo at the edge of the garden on one of the coldest days of the winter gave me a sudden feeling of intense warmth, a renewed sense of the deep interconnectedness of things in the world, of the seasons and a new understanding of Shelley's timely question: "If winter comes can spring be far behind?"

"You bet," said Kate, the point of which I could feel acutely in every one of my chilled fingertips after carrying all the frozen boxes back in again.

From Carl Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook

Looking for a good art exhibit to visit?

Come see Bill Witt's photography from Enchanted by Prairie at the Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery located on the ground floor of the Fine Arts Center at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

Hours: 9 a.m. - 7 p.m. daily

Comfort Foods of Iowa

A Recipe for a Day
"Take a little dash of water, cold,
     And a little leaven of prayer,
And a little bit of sunshine gold,
     Dissolved in the morning air.

Add to your meal some merriment
     And a thought of Kith and kin,
And then as your prime ingredient,
     A plenty of work thrown in.

But spice it all with the essence of love
     And a little whiff of play,
Let a wise old Book and a glance above
     Complete the well-made day."


Baked Ham
Mrs. Erma Geist, Joliet, III


Select a thick ham weighing fourteen pounds, scrape trim, cover with fresh, cold water, let soak over night. In the morning, drain and dry; prepare a thick dough by mixing flour and water together, roll out to one-half inch thickness and enclose ham in it, wet the edges and press them firmly together; place ham in a large dripping pan and bake slowly in a moderate oven from four to five hours, remove from oven, break off shell and skin, trim off any ragged portions, stick fat side with whole cloves in diagonal rows an inch apart, grate the crumbs of white bread thickly over this surface and return ham to oven until a golden brown. Ham cooked in this way is cooked in its own juices and is very delicious and no waste.


David Schoonover, editor, P.E.O Cook Book