In the galactic scheme, it's not much of an event. Even in the daily routine most of us have, this is not a Richter-scale moment. But I see some significance.
The event?
The dog presented us with a tick last week. After an evening of Fetch in a Field, we discovered a well dug-in tick the next morning, and it rode in on an ill wind. It was actually hard to realize what it was at first, and when we did, it sent us scurrying to research remedies. It was a dog tick, not a deer tick, which meant that Lyme disease is not a threat. I don't want this to be a how-to on ticks, or their removal (tweezers, not matches), because the import of this thing is just the fact it is here.
Ticks can't take this climate. They have never gotten a head-hold at this latitude because it was always too hostile, and they have never really been the blight they are below the bridge. If, as it now appears, they are here and here to stay, it says too much about the changing world.
I'm making a sweeping extrapolation, but one sign suddenly illuminates a whole bunch of signs. The warmest years on record have been two of the last three. Winters are warmer and drier. Lake Superior is actually hospitable to swimmers, but keep that under your suit as long as you can. Once Traverse City finds out you can swim off Whitefish Point, traffic lights will be next.
Possums, the sloths of Kentucky, have now joined the road kill menu in places south of Escanaba. They are a much warmer weather mammal, and it's not a good sign that they too can survive this far north. They will be robbing nests alongside raccoons if they are able to survive.
And feel sorry for the moose. Just as it was taking hold in this part of the world, the climate may make it too hot in the kitchen. A moose can't survive temperatures much higher than 72 degrees. It's why they take a nocturnal turn in the warm months. But a moose needs cold and he survives best in cold. Make the place more hospitable and deer survive better than a moose.
We need to begin to catalogue changes. Biologists at Lake Superior are creating base-lines and trying to understand what's happening, but in the meantime, we have to understand that our world is changing.
Just this month the U.S. Forest Service offered up its local forest plan for the next 10 to 15 years. In a scan of the three-inch document the words "climate change" don't appear. Would warmer seasons change the boreal nature of the forest? Are we headed toward "Ohio" forests and wildlife? I don't know. But then, who does? Now I'm ticked off.
Pat Egan is the former publisher of the Sault Evening News. He is a recipient of the William Allen White award for editorial writing. He and his wife Debra live at Salt Point.
