Animal Behavior

I see deer out my window most mornings. They seldom travel alone, but groups can be any size from two to maybe eight. (It's hard to count the larger groups because they're moving around in the woods and aren't all visible at once.) I don't know how these groups form, or whether the same animals are usually or perhaps always associated with the same groups. Perhaps it has to do with kinship. Maybe naturalists have more information on this. In early summer you will often see a doe with her fawn, but in winter and early spring you will see these variable groups. 

 

A couple of days  ago there was a group of six, browsing in verge between my front lawn and the woods. I saw a couple of things I had never seen before. One was what might be called grooming behavior. Two of the animals started licking, and perhaps nibbling, on each other's neck. This might be a form of social bonding, but it could also achieve removal of ticks. 

 

Shoots haven't started to come yet here in Windham County, so I really have no idea what they could have been eating, but it was something in the dirt. One of them started digging with its forefeet, and eating something it found in the disturbed soil. I walked down there and took a look. It had dug up quite a large area, irregular but roughly three feet in diameter. However, I couldn't see anything interesting that gave me any hint of what it might have been after. That the deer disturb the forest soil in this way was news to me.

As interesting as all this is, and as  attractive as they are, the deer population has grown wildly out of control. Since there aren't any Indians, cougars or wolves to kill them, and hunting is no longer very popular among us European settlers, they just breed and eat. There are many more deer in New England today than there were before the Europeans came, and they damage the forest. Their only effective natural enemy is the automobile, unfortunately, and that also makes them directly dangerous to humans. If you want to hunt on my property, you're welcome to.

The Tower Clock

I keep promising to start posting here regularly and then I flake off. Anyway this time I really mean it. 

Yesterday my neighbor, who is also the town first selectperson, asked me to wind the town clock while he was away for a week. I didn't even know there was a town clock, let alone that it was part of the job description of the first selectperson to wind it. It turns out that somebody donated the clock to the town a long time ago, and specified that it be installed in the belfry of the Congregational church. So obviously almost nobody realizes that it even is the "town" clock. It occurs to me that this is probably a First Amendment violation but nobody cares. 

 

The reason the First Citizen is winding is because the church member who used to do it can no more. The congregation has dwindled and right now, the church seems to be inoperative and doesn't even have  pastor. So Gary didn't know what else to do and started winding the clock himself. This is obviously not a long-term solution. Anyway we went over there and he taught me how to do it. This involves going up to the balcony, then climbing a steep ladder and going through a hatchway into the belfry. The clock is a beautiful Seth Thomas mechanism has to be at least nearly 100 years old because the company stopped making them in 1929. I saw one before in a clock shop where I had my grandparent's old pendulum clocks repaired, and I wanted to buy it then as a decorative object. Of course hardly anyone ever sees this one.

It's weight driven. The weights fall down a shaft to the side, so it's a bit different from the model you see at the link. Lifting the bell weight is a lot of work, even with the mechanical advantage of the crank and gear works. It probably weighs two or three hundred pounds. The weight that drives the clock is much easier to lift. Towns installed these clocks in the 19th Century when most people couldn't afford timepieces, but life was becoming much more regimented by time due to factory work. Our town was exclusively agricultural back then, however, so presumably this was just intended as a prestige item. Willimantic, which was a factory town, is a bit too far away for the locals to have worked there before the automobile.

Nowadays, I suspect that the burghers don't really care about the clock. I think if they do want it to stay in operation they'll have to come up with some money to put someone on retainer to wind it and keep it oiled. It seems that nobody cares about old stuff anymore. The price of antique furniture has crashed and antique houses don't sell. I regret that actually. Anyway I'll wind the clock tomorrow and again on Saturday, before Gary gets back. Then I hope we'll have a conversation about what to do next.