Humboldt is Habitat

I love cannabis, and I love Humboldt County. Cannabis is a beautiful plant with many beneficial uses, and Humboldt County is a very special place. Humboldt County’s steep, rugged terrain, frequent earthquakes and remote location have protected it from development. As urban sprawl and agriculture displaced California’s native wildlife, many of California’s endemic species retreated to the forested mountains of Humboldt County. Some of these species are now found nowhere else on Earth.

Everyone knows about the redwoods, and that Luna, the famous redwood giant that Julia Butterfly Hill lived in for two years, still stands in Humboldt County, along with some of the last remaining old-growth redwood forest in the world. Roosevelt elk, mountain lions and black bear all make their home in Humboldt County’s wild back-country. Endangered species like the spotted owl, coho salmon, pacific fisher and Humboldt martin all face uncertain futures as the very last populations of these once abundant creatures struggle to survive and reproduce here in the last wild refuge left to them. Rare amphibians like the tailed frog and the giant Pacific salamander testify to the great biodiversity that Humboldt County’s ancient forests have incubated and nurtured through the eons.

Today, Humboldt County’s black market cannabis industry threatens them all. A massive expansion underway in Humboldt County’s underground marijuana industry is having a devastating effect on native wildlife. New roads and clear-cuts for marijuana plantations degrade and fragment vital forest habitat. Fertilizer runoff and road sediment choke salmon streams, Noise and light pollution disrupt wildlife behavior. Rat poison and pesticides kill native wildlife, including essential forest pollinators, and leave a legacy of poison that kills and sickens animals throughout the food web for generations. The movement towards legalization and the deescalation of the War on Drugs has unleashed a monster in Humboldt County.

Humboldt County’s cannabis industry is a product of the War on Drugs, and to this day, the vast majority of the marijuana grown in Humboldt County gets sold on the black market. Humboldt County’s black market growers heed no regulation, pay no taxes, and show no respect for wildlife. The black market cannabis industry has always been a “cut and run” business, and our forests are already littered with the detritus of long abandoned guerrilla grow sites from those bygone days. Today the scale of the grows and the number of grows have increased by orders of magnitude. Humboldt County’s forest habitat cannot withstand this scale of abuse.

Most of Humboldt County’s local environmental groups have chosen to work for better regulation and compliance. However, their efforts are overwhelmed, both politically, and on the ground, by an industry that never asks permission and always wants more. Humboldt County government is dominated by real estate developers who seem as eager to cash in on the green-rush as the growers themselves. The great seal of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors depicts a redwood log, not a tree, but a log, sawn at both ends, lying on its side. That pretty much sums up the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors attitude towards the environment.

So far, regulation has done nothing to reign-in the out-of-control devastation going on in Humboldt County. That’s why a new group of concerned Humboldt County residents have decided to take their message to cannabis consumers and policymakers directly. This new organization, Habitat Forever, strongly supports the complete legalization of cannabis, but seeks to draw attention to the terrible environmental impacts of Humboldt County’s black market industry. To this end, they’ve produced a five-minute micro-documentary titled Humboldt is Habitat that examines the environmental impacts of Humboldt County’s black market marijuana industry.

Cannabis consumers might be surprised to discover that Humboldt County’s famous marijuana is not grown in Humboldt County soil at all. Instead, all of the soil used to grow marijuana in Humboldt County is trucked-in fresh each year, often hundreds of miles from its source, up steep, winding dirt roads, causing sediment and erosion that choke salmon streams. Cannabis consumers deserve to know the truth about the products they pay for, and now that cannabis has become legal, consumers should be able to choose whether they want to support Humboldt County’s fisher-poisoning, salmon-killing black market growers, or not.

Habitat Forever reminds cannabis consumers that it is still best to grow your own, and that it is more important than ever to know where and how your cannabis was grown. Now that prohibition is ending, Habitat Forever believes that it is vitally important to move the cannabis industry out of Humboldt County’s critical natural habitat, and to make space for the legal cannabis industry in more appropriate locations, like agricultural farmland, urban brown-fields, close to population centers, abandoned mill-sites etc. Humboldt County’s natural beauty and the world’s biological heritage is far too precious to abandon to Humboldt County’s drug war holdovers still squeezing the last few bucks out of the this heinous crime against humanity known as the War on Drugs.

You can see Habitat Forever’s new video, Humboldt is Habitat at youtube and you can visit their website at www.habitatforever.wordpress.com

Island Mountain and the Truth About the War on Drugs

They say truth is the first casualty of war, and that’s certainly true of the War on Drugs. News reports and public statements about the recent raids of cannabis flower-forcing operations on Island Mountain point out just how far from reality both sides have gotten lately.

I heard Humboldt County Sheriff’s Deputy Lt. Wayne Hanson explain that they “went to Island Mountain to eradicate marijuana just like we’ve done for the last 30 years.” They still haven’t gotten the memo that cannabis is legal in California, or that millions of Californians have the right to possess it, and businesses all over the state have licenses to distribute it. It’s only been 18 years since prop 215 passed. You can’t expect them to change overnight, especially considering how dependent they’ve become on asset forfeiture for their budget.

At some point, though, someone needs to point out that these kinds of raids no longer constitute law-enforcement, but instead cross over into armed robbery, home invasion, vandalism and terrorism. Like Lt. Hanson said, they’ve been doing this for 30 years. They’ll do it for another 30 years, regardless of what the law says, unless we stop them. No arrests were made. The DA will probably not bring charges, because a jury would not convict, and the jury would not convict because no one complained, no one was injured, and no crime was committed. That is, unless you count what the cops did, as a crime.

Still 100 cops spent all week, including a generous amount of overtime I’m sure, out at Island Mountain making criminal mischief with their newly allocated Measure Z funds. They’re like, “Hey, we’re cops, it’s summertime, what else are we going to do?” This is how cops justify the continuation of the War on Drugs these days. Heavy-handed assaults on unarmed vegetation have always been pointless, but now they have become a cherished tradition that they intend to preserve for future generations.

Hanson made sure to talk up the environmental crimes they uncovered at Island Mountain, like water diversions, illegal grading and water theft, and they dragged folks from the Water Quality and Wildlife Departments along for show, but this raid had all the hallmarks of an old fashioned Drug War style marijuana raid: unnecessary, excessive, and expensive. Obviously our Sheriff’s Department has entirely too much money at its disposal.

I have no doubt that those industrial grow operations on Island Mountain have an enormous impact on the environment, but I’m also sure that Hanson exaggerated the impact, at least as he perceived it, by claiming that each of the plants they eradicated used six gallons of water each day. I saw pictures of those plants. They were all small plants with big flowers, probably potted in 5 gallon containers. You cannot put six gallons of water into a five gallon pot on any day, let alone everyday. Despite the large scale of the operations they raided, Hanson still felt the need to exaggerate, just like in the good ol’ days of Drug War hysteria.

On the other side of this counterfeit coin,

we see the pervasive dishonesty of drug-dealers on display as well. LOCO reports that three people in the upper management of California Cannabis Voice Humboldt, or CCVH owned properties involved in last week’s raids. CCVH is one of those new groups lobbying to protect the incomes of local dope yuppies from the scourge of legalization. For months now, these groups have all recited the same mantras: “Preserve family farms,” “Protect Mom and Pop growers,” and “Support sustainable agriculture.”  They’ve all reacted with indignation about the raids on Island mountain.

Lobbying to Keep Pot Expensive

Hezekiah Allen wrote at length about how these raids breached the trust that they had worked so hard to build.

He mentioned the Mendocino County system of institutionalized bribery as an example.

He criticized law-enforcement for targeting people who were “working to come into compliance,” as though those Island Mountain monstrosities were shining examples of the “best practices” he talks so much about.

Those were not little “Mom and Pop” operations. Those were not homesteaders growing a little herb to put new tires on their old truck. Nor were they “small family farms” To me, they look like industrial mono-crop operations, newly hacked out of prime forest habitat. Even if they got all of the water for these grows from rainwater catchment ponds, the sheer size of these operations, the number of them, and the density of them, constitutes a real threat to wildlife because of how they fragment forest habitat

We hear a lot about the need to conserve water in these drought times, but widespread cannabis farming in the forest impacts wildlife in many different ways. Every clearing, every road, and every truck on the road has an impact.

Large operations like the ones on Island Mountain punch big holes in the forest canopy, and turn the animals that live there, like deer, bear, mountain lions, coyotes, gophers and woodrats, into pests, to be exterminated, or at least excluded.

Fertilizer runoff, erosion, light pollution, noise, traffic, pesticide contamination, all of these things accompany industrial agriculture wherever it happens, and I daresay, all of it was, and is still, happening on Island Mountain.

Those Island Mountain operations offer a glimpse into the future of the cannabis industry, and that future looks a lot different from its past, for which Humboldt County is so well known. Back in 1995, for instance, if you could manage to harvest five pounds of weed, which wasn’t easy, you could probably make your land payment, pay your taxes and feed yourself all year from the money you made. Back then, if you grew a hundred pounds, you were a big shot. If you did it outdoors, you were Houdini. This year, 2015, if you don’t harvest at least a hundred pounds, people around here will consider you a hobbyist.

The scale of grow operations in the area has exploded by orders of magnitude in recent years, and in this year in particular, as exemplified by the totals tallied in the raids on Island Mountain. The cops seized over 4,300 pounds of processed, packaged bud. That’s over TWO FUCKING TONS of high-grade marijuana, ready to smoke.

They eradicated more than 86, 000 plants, most of them in full bloom. That’s got to be another couple tons of bud. All tolled, this one raid might have taken 10,000 pounds, or five tons, of weed off the market. How do you like that for a price support system?

I’m not saying that large scale cannabis farming is inappropriate. Quite the contrary. I hope I see operations ten or twenty times the size of the ones raided on Island Mountain, but on established farmland, all over America. I like cannabis. I think everyone should have plenty of it, and we should grow it everywhere.

However, I am saying that these large scale cannabis operations are a totally inappropriate use of forest habitat, and their economic viability is likely to be short-lived, at best. It took the insanity of prohibition to drive industrial agriculture into the forest to begin with. It would be colossally stupid to encourage it to remain there, after we change the law.

Yes, these Island Mountain raids should remind us that there are no “good guys” in the War on Drugs. You can’t trust cops, and you can’t trust drug-dealers either. The War on drugs is being waged by heartless, lying, mercenaries on both sides, and their short-term agendas threaten our long-term survival. The sooner we take this industry out of the hands of the cops and the drug dealers, and put it into the hands of honest farmers with real farms, the sooner we can heal our country, our communities, and our watersheds from the ravages of the War on Drugs.

Wildlife Matters, a New Public Affairs Show on KMUD

Oh God, is it Tuesday afternoon already? Like I told you last week I’ve been very busy with a couple of radio projects. I hope you listened to Living Earth Connection this past Sunday. If you haven’t heard it yet, you can download it or stream it by clicking the links below:

Living Earth Connection #11 Interview with John Hardin pt. 1
Living Earth Connection #11 Interview with John Hardin pt. 2

It’s a really good show. That John Hardin is a pretty bright guy, and he’s good at explaining stuff. You could easily find worse ways to spend an hour.

Coming up this Thursday, Sept. 4 at 5pm on KMUD you can hear the other radio project, the one that has kept me too busy to write this past week. Amy and I call this show Wildlife Matters. You might have read about it in The Redwood Times, The Independent, The Times Standard, The Mad River Union, or The Lumberjack. You might have seen it on facebook, or on my Youtube channel. If you missed that media buzz, hey at least I’m giving you a “heads up” 24 hours in advance right here at your favorite SoHum blog.

I fear, however, the show will come as a complete surprise to people who rely on KMUD for information about upcoming KMUD programming.  Apparently, the nice promo I sent them, disappeared into a black hole and was never heard from again.

This happens pretty regularly, We have a great staff at KMUD, and some wonderful volunteers, but KMUD is a dynamic organism containing a high degree of internal chaos. I try not to take it too personally.

My partner Amy Gustin and I collaborated on this show, and it will replace, at least in terms of my commitment to it, the radio show I’ve produced for over four years, The SHARC (Southern Humboldt Amateur Radio Club) Report. After producing 53 half hour shows, at least tangentially related to Ham radio, I am out of ideas and ready for a new challenge.

I wanted to do a show that was a little more ambitious, in terms of production values, and I wanted to work collaboratively. I love working with Amy, and she pitched me a great idea for a show, so here we go. Amy loves wildlife, especially wild animals, and she likes to do research. I like writing, editing and producing. With Wildlife Matters, Amy gets to make a show about the topics she is interested in, and I get to make the kind of show I want to make.

We jumped into this project as soon as we finished last Sunday’s Living Earth Connection show. We recorded the interview with Monte Merrick in his office near Arcata a couple of weeks ago when we made a trip up North, to perform, on Theremin and didgeridoo, no less, at the Humboldt Maker’s Street Fair in Oldtown Eureka.

It was great to talk to Monte. Monte came to our attention a couple of years ago as “Bird Ally X,” the man who came to the rescue of hundreds of oiled, starving and injured pelicans all up and down the Lost Coast.

He became a musical inspiration when we heard him speak at Godwit Days, a birders event that happens every Spring in Arcata. At Godwit Days, Monte reported on this whole pelican disaster, and how they responded to it. To accompany this heartrending story, off-stage a lone banjo player picked out some of the slowest, saddest, dockside pelican conjuring banjo music I ever heard.Amy and I talked about that presentation a bit, and those talks eventually turned into The Big Picture.

Monte came to our attention again, recently, when he asked that the renewal of the County’s contract with Wildlife Services be removed from the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ “consent calendar.” In other words, Monte told the Board of Supes, “I know you’ve been paying this guy to kill animals for almost a hundred years, but maybe it’s not really such a good idea, and I think we deserve a chance to talk about it.” We talked about it. Unfortunately, the Supes renewed the contract anyway.

That’s what gave us the idea for the show. People don’t know enough about Wildlife Services, at least I didn’t, until Amy started filling me in about their history, their practices, and their political maneuverings.

We asked Monte Merrick for an interview because he obviously knows a lot about Wildlife Services, and, as co-director of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, he knows a lot about humane alternatives to the trap-and-kill policy of Wildlife Services. He was kind enough to grant us an interview, at the office, on the weekend, and we very much appreciate the time he took with us.

While Amy reviewed the recording, I worked on the theme music and the promo. Amy identified the clips we wanted to use and developed the angle for the show, I worked out the show’s format. I wanted to produce a tight, scripted show with dialogue, that would also include unscripted interview excerpts, clips from speeches, sound samples etc.

We hammered out the dialogue together, one bit at a time, then rehearsed and recorded each bit individually, working them around the interview segments. Slowly, we assembled the show. I crafted the intro and ending with lots of animal noises, jungle sounds, and original theme music. Thanks to Patrick Rose for the djembe drum track. Just last night, we finished it, and it sounds pretty good.

This episode of Wildlife Matters looks at Wildlife Services, a shadowy branch of the USDA responsible for exterminating wolves in the early part of the 20th Century, and for killing millions of other animals every year, for over a century, using poisons and other indiscriminate methods. Wildlife Services amounts to subsidized pest control for farmers, ranchers, and rich people in their country estates, and to Wildlife Services, the life of the animal means nothing.

We contrast Wildlife Services with Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, who get no taxpayer funding, but handle the same kind of human/wildlife conflicts with an entirely different approach. We talk to Monte Merrick about the Humane Solutions movement, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s mission, and about his experiences with Wildlife Services.

So, that’s what the show is about, but I’m more excited about how it sounds. I hope you’ll tune in, just like you hope I’ll write something funny for next week.

Every Day is Halloween in SoHum

 

Every Day is Halloween in SoHum

Tomorrow is Halloween, at least officially, but here in Southern Humboldt County, every day feels like Halloween. Silly costumes and cheesy decorations can’t compare with the scary stuff we contend with all the time here in SoHum. Here’s a sample:

Black Cats I don’t know why anyone would be afraid of a house-cat because of it’s color, whatever it was, but we do have some black cats around here that will make your heart stop. Mountain lions are scary enough, but in our forests, black, or melanistic mountain lions are fairly common. Of the three mountain lions that have crossed my path here in Humboldt, two of them were black, nose to tail. I saw one black mountain lion while walking on BLM land in the King Range and another ran across the road as I was driving through Honeydew.

Skeletons We have more skeletons around here than we have closets to stuff them into here in Humboldt County. If you wander around the hills of SoHum long enough, eventually you’re bound to discover some human remains. You might find a bloated corpse at the tide-line on the beach, a tennis shoe, with a foot still inside it sticking up out of the river bar, or a mauled and partially eaten limb abandoned by a bear in the woods. So many people go missing in Southern Humboldt every year that if you walk in the woods long enough, sooner or later you’ll find one, or become one.

Ghosts We have at least two ghosts in SoHum, and they are both the ghost of chance. That is, in our small rural community, we have two candidates who are both running for Congress, and each of them has a ghost of a chance of being elected. If you believe in ghosts, you might consider voting for Andy Caffrey or Dale*. There’s a scary thought.  *Dale works at Shop Smart in Redway, and has officially announced his candidacy.  I couldn’t find his last name anywhere, but if you live here, you know who I’m talking about.

Zombies Meth eats brains, leaving in its wake, toothless, hollow-eyed, walking corpses that wander the streets in search of…money… MONEY… MUST HAVE MONEY. This mindless quest for more money has infected almost everyone in SoHum, so the streets are full of zombies, but brains are hard to come by. Frankly, if people in SoHum had more brains, they wouldn’t need so much money, but try convincing a zombie of that.

Bats Nocturnal flying mammals that devour mosquitoes by the thousands are a real blessing here in SoHum. However the bats wielded by local townsfolk strike more than fear into the hearts of the poor and homeless.

Witches Humboldt County’s Wiccan community is responsible for cleaning up a stretch of Highway 101 North of Redcrest, and they have their own Spiritual Perspectives show on KMUD. Around here, witches are pretty mainstream.

Pumpkin-Headed Dummies What would Halloween be without Halloween dummies made of old clothes stuffed with fall leaves, with a jack-o-lantern perched on top for a head. We have a scary, empty-headed stuffed-shirt around here all the time. We call him Blake Lehman.

Trick or Treat If you ate at Treats, you were probably tricked into it.

Bigfoot Sightings Sure, the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, regarded as the most convincing evidence of the existence of Bigfoot, was shot near Willow Creek on the other side of the county, but you can see large, hairy, odoriferous primates of unknown origin any day of the year in SoHum. On Wednesday mornings, you might just see one working on his blog.

SoHum Vactation Guide

SoHum Vacation Guide

 

I know you are planning your Summer vacation right now. I live in a very tourist dependent community, and we have a lot to offer the smart vacationer here in SoHum. Whether you like to hunt, fish, hike, backpack, camp, cycle, or just sit in a hotel room between a loaded gun and a pile of cash, I want you to enjoy your stay here in SoHum and hope that you return home with many fond memories, and a trunk full of marijuana.

 

We love tourists here in SoHum. We love the way you take up every last parking space in Garberville. We love waiting behind your enormous RVs at the gas pumps, and we especially enjoy fishing your bloated corpses out of the ocean, because it reminds us to stay out of the water, and keeps our rescue teams well trained in case of a real emergency.

 

Our local economy also depends on tourist dollars. Besides the fact that none of us stay at the hotels much, none of us eat at Sicilitos Pizza or Cadillac Wok either. Neither of those businesses would survive long without a steady supply of people who don’t already know better.

So, I want to encourage everyone to come to SoHum on vacation this Summer. Enjoy the scenic splendor. Relish in its rugged natural beauty, and experience first-hand, one of the last truly wild places in the lower 48 United States, but before you embark on your SoHum safari, you should know a few things about the native wildlife, and prepare yourself accordingly.

A Guide to Enjoying the Back-Country in SoHum

Skunks we have two kinds of skunks here in SoHum, the stripped skunk, common across most of the US, and a smaller, cuter spotted variety. These smaller cuter spotted skunks have a mellowing effect on the stripped skunks.  They now compete with each other for human attention. Yes both stripped and spotted skunks are extremely affectionate on the North Coast and most lack any fear of humans. If you see a skunk with its tail raised, that signals affiliative behavior and means that it wants to be petted.

Cute and friendly Western Spotted Skunk

Mountain Lions While mountain lions remain common in Humboldt County, most people don’t see them until its too late. Still rarer, are sightings of their oh so cuddly and playful cubs. If you happen upon mountain lion cubs in the back country, pet them, scratch their chins, get a few photos and stick close to them until their mother returns.

Cuddly Mountain Lion Cubs

Black Bear We have quite a few black bears in SoHum. Bears around here have had some bad experiences and shy away from tourists, as a result, but tourists often leave here unnecessarily disappointed that they didn’t see even one bear during their entire stay. While camping in the back-country, if you want to see a bear, just slather your entire body with bacon grease before you go to sleep. If you do that at nightfall, I guarantee that you will see a bear before sunup.

Black Bears Love Bacon Grease!

Yellow Jackets Yellow jackets produce the most delicious honey. You won’t find yellow jacket honey in stores because it naturally contains a chemical euphoriant almost identical to cocaine, so trade in yellow jacket honey is banned by federal law. People around here know that yellow jackets are extremely docile, and if you sing to them, you can just stick your hand right into the nest and grab a handful of delicious, euphoria producing honey.

Yellow Jackets Produce Delicious, Psychoactive Honey

Gray Squirrel- DANGER!!! Gray Squirrels should be avoided AT ALL COSTS!!!–  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come upon the partially decomposed body of a tourist in the back-country where victim’s mouth and eye sockets were stuffed with acorns. Only gray squirrels can do that to a man. Red squirrels just watch, and laugh.

Deadly Grey Squirrel AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!

Elk If you’ve never ridden an elk, you owe it to yourself to try. An elk-back ride from Bear Harbor to Jones Beach is the perfect way to see the Sinkyone Wilderness Area.

Everyone should try riding an elk at least once

Snakes most of the snakes on the North Coast are both venomous, and protected under the endangered species act, so don’t mess with them. However the western diamondback rattlesnake is exceptionally docile, and likes to be handled. Distinguished by the presence of a rattle on the end of its tail, which the rattlesnake uses to announce its presence, and attract friends. Many tourists find these snakes so cuddly and affectionate that they take them home where they become cherished household pets. Mothers find that their gentle rattling sound soothes restless babies, school children like to take them to school for show and tell, and teenagers like to show them off at parties. Rattlesnakes rarely grow longer than two to three feet in length, so they create far fewer problems in the long run than larger species commonly kept as pets, like boa constrictors and pythons.

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in typical "friendship" pose

Blue Bellied Lizard, or Fence-Post Lizard –DANGER!!!!- The bright blue hue of of this lizard’s underside tells all of nature to “Back Off!” This diminutive reptile possesses the most deadly bite in the entire Western Hemisphere. Perhaps more frightening, the blue bellied lizard can spit venom accurately, up to 30 yards. One single drop of blue belly venom in a human eye, can cause permanent blindness. If you see a blue bellied lizard in the back-country, immediately drop to the ground, close your eyes, and cover your eyes with your hands. With your hands covering your eyes at all times, crawl, on your elbows and knees, to a safe distance (about 100′).

DANGER!!! Blue Bellied Lizards spit blinding venom and their bite CAN KILL!!!

Ticks Some ticks contain antibodies that impart to their host, and immunity to blue bellied lizard venom. Most of us locals have had so many tick bites that blue bellied lizards no longer concern us much. We all know that the best thing to do when a tick bites you is nothing. Just let it be, don’t disturb the tick, no matter how much it itches, until it bloats up and falls off on its own. That way, you can get the maximum immune boosting benefits from each tick.

Beneficial North Coast ticks boost immunity

Marijuana Forest rangers plant marijuana in remote parts of our National Forests to reward adventurous hikers. If you find marijuana plants while hiking on National Forest land, you’ve found a great place to camp. There’ll be water nearby, usually coming out of a pipe (you may have to cut the pipe to get it, that’s OK). Make yourself comfortable, and enjoy the free herb.

Forest Rangers plants marijuana in our National Forests to reward adventurous hikers

Mexican Hunters Many sportsmen from Mexico spend the entire summer in our National Forests. Most of them know the forest so well, that they know where to find all of the good marijuana patches. While they speak little, if any English, carry no hunting license, and usually hunt with automatic weapons, I’ve always found them friendly. As long as you understand that a barrage of gunfire aimed in your direction is the traditional way of saying “Welcome” in Mexico, you should have no problems with them

Mexican sportsmen enjoy hunting in our National Forests

If you just keep these simple suggestions in mind while you explore this this natural paradise, you should have a great time on your SoHum vacation.

Word Power, Balanophagy

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Balanophagy

bal an oph a gy (‘baal an off a gee) n, acorn eating

 

With tan-oak acorns ripening all around me, it looks like another good year for acorns. Once leached of tannins, acorns make a great nutty tasting flour. Today, people call tan-oaks “weed trees”, and mostly use them for firewood, but almost everyone who lives in the forest relies on those acorns for the majority of their calories. Lots of birds, both year-round residents and migratory visitors rely on tan-oak acorns, or the worms in them, for survival. Deer, bear, elk, squirrels, tree rats, skunks and shrews all eat them, who in turn feed the owls, bobcats and mountain-lions.

 

Anthropologist Edward Gifford once called balanophagy “the most characteristic feature of the domestic economy of the California Indians.”

That was back when California’s economy worked, at least for the Indians. If California’s economy ever works again, I think balanophagy may well reemerge as the most characteristic feature of the domestic economy.

Bon appetit!