Pennsylvania Game News - September 2008 - 54

ity, or Fluke” looked under rocks in an Oregon tide pool and posted striking photos of a starfish, sea anemone, purple crab, sea snails and mussels. Bev Wigney discovered mating millipedes and a woolly bear caterpillar with its newly molted husk nearby. Pablo at “Roundrock Journal” in the Missouri Ozarks turned over his first rock and carefully photographed the coiled northern copperhead beneath it. And there was a grand prize winner — Fred First of “Fragments from Floyd” who photographed a raccoon flipping rocks in southwest Virginia’s Goose Creek. Here on Brush Mountain we tried several different approaches to rock-flipping. Early in the morning, Dave flipped a rock on our scrub barrens habitat of lowbush blueberries and huckleberries, scrub oak, mountain laurel, sweetfern and bracken on our small, hundred-year-old, powerline right-of-way. What he found was a handsome, coiled, red and black Narceus millipede, in his words a “superabundant composter of forest litter throughout the northeast, where they apparently serve as a significant reservoir of calcium and phosphorous in otherwise acid, well-drained mountaintop soils.” In mid-morning, Dave and I sallied forth with our ultimate weapons, two enthusiastic seven-year-olds — my great niece Morgan and her best friend Devon. Our plan was to flip rocks in and next to our barely-flowing stream. Both children plunged in, turning over rocks, and after an hour and a half, we had compiled a pretty good list — several northern dusky salamanders, a wood frog, mountain dusky salamander, ground beetle, crayfish and earthworm, which circled Morgan’s thumb to her great delight. Under rocks on our dry road bank, we uncovered tiny ants guarding their eggs. Unfortunately, the kids’ attention flagged sooner than mine did. While I continued compulsively flipping rocks, they climbed up and down the road bank in search of wild mushrooms. Devon, who is a devotee of the Food Network, was desperate to eat them, but I told him we could do so only if we found chicken mushrooms. In that way, rock-flipping metamorphosed into mushroom-hunting. We had no luck that morning and, as promised, I took them up to the spruce grove for a picnic lunch. This is Morgan’s favorite place and she wanted to share it with Devon. “What is this peaceful place?” Devon asked about the dark, cool and quiet spruce grove. Child of the New Jersey suburbs, he had never been so far from the sidewalks. He kept relating his experience here to computer games and television shows and I, who have neither played computer games nor owned a television, had no idea what he was talking about. His other passion was race cars, a passion he shares with his father and one that I have absolutely no affinity for. When we found many inedible mushrooms under the spruces, Devon kept picking and throwing them with boyish bravado. He also collected a deer leg bone there with true reverence. Morgan tried to play house with him, as she often has with 54 GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - September 2008

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