A Tribute From a Friend

(Ed. note: This post is not written by Lou, but by a friend of the family. It is from a book of memoirs entitled "A Thin Slice of Sky." The author is Thomas L. Burnett)

He was part Jeremiah Johnson, part Audubon, and part soldier of fortune. Lou rented the old cabin while we spent two years in Whitewater. He holed up with his books, guns, letters, and botany collections to outlast the winters.

Bundles of dried peppermint hung from his ceiling. A burlap bag of venison jerky slumped against one of the support posts, like a laborer on siesta. The cabin was dark and warm. His bed had no pillow. "Bad for your back and neck", he asserted. He stretched and tacked animal pelts to the outside of the cabin. Crammed into the north wall, serving as cheap insulation, were envelopes from women around the world.

Dad admired Lou for living life so easily. Dad coveted his powers of observation. Lou saw the natural world acutely. Ever ready, a botanist's magnifying glass hung around his neck.  He frequently flicked it open to examine rocks or plant parts.I was entranced by his jolly yodeling and tricky whistling.

Lou's mountain prowess was legendary, at least in our family. He was a real live hero, stamped from the mold of Pecos Mill and Daniel Boone. One day he squinted and gestured southwards to the bony ridge. "Biggest buck I ever saw lives up there." he said. "I was sitting up there quietly one day, when down below me what looked like a cherry tree started to move. That was no tree, that was his antlers. Never saw him when I had a gun."

In all my figure hunting, I kept a lookout for this monster, believing all the time that a mule deer pf such grandeur could really exist.

He told of meeting a bear face-to-face coming around a corner of a trail. He was alarmed but determined not to show it. "I just growled at him", he said.

The bear decided he had met his match. Ursus turned and padded away. Even now, when I hike quietly on paths paved with moist leaves, I imagine meeting a bear and wonder if my courage would ever match Lou's.

A walk with Lou was an education in ecology; he knew and told how plants, soil and climate fit together. He named the conifers, grasses, dicots and ferns. He explained the mutual lechery of algae and fungus within lichen. Stopping at a swiped anthill, a black mudhole, or a rotten log that had been ripped open, he estimated how much time had elapsed since the bear had visited. He spotted a tuft of cinnamon-bear hair on a barb or fence wire. No one else was as observant.

"This is what the ruffed grouse eats in the winter."

"A porcupine likes aspen--one's almost girdled this sapling."

"A bull elk has used this tree to scrape the velvet off his antlers."

He was a walking plant identification guide, a lecturer without a podium. Though he never attained his doctorate, due to personality clashes, he said, no professor stirred my interest in nature the way Lou did.

He suggested we gather Morel mushrooms one summer evening. It had been raining for two days. We walked through O'Connell's place, across an aged logging bridge and into a young stand of lodgepole pine. On the forest floor was a buildup of needles, springy under foot. Two or three times each year we'd make this fifteen minute hike and harvest a couple of pounds, to be sauteed with dear stakes or scrambled into eggs and bacon.

Like a playground drug pusher, Lou got my father hooked on puffballs. Compared toe Morels, one could really make some volume with puffballs as they grew to the size of grapefruit or cantaloupe. Dad would spot these freebies in the pastures of the Church Farm and bring them home, like a Viking proudly bearing his plunder from the Anglo-Saxons. Slabbed and fried in butter, their tofu-like flesh was supposedly edible, though I don't think the kids ever found out. Even mother, who normally loved any food that was free, was lukewarm about puffballs. Perhaps Dad ate them just to be macho--not to be outdone by Lou.

My own male ego was also exploited once when, with Lou we were hunting atop the Bald Mountain. We had shot a young buck and had dressed it out. Being the inordinate distance from one mile from the house, we though it best if we took some nourishment before attempting the return.

Eight inches of old snow patchily covered the ground. Near a big fir tree, where there was no snow, we built a small fire. Lou divided the liver into three pieces. We roasted them on sticks, as if roasting marshmallows. Camp Robbers hung close by in the trees. When the meat was black on the outside, we tried to eat it. It was rare inside. Lou ate his; Dad ate some of his. I tried, but after a few feeble attempts, the men said I didn't have to eat any more if I didn't want to. The troops of Napoleon retreating from Moscow didn't have it any tougher.

Another foolishness Lou forced upon my father was bathing in the creek. A thick growth of willows offered privacy from the country road. Bathing here was not a leisurely affair, even for hardy Lou. Ninety seconds usually sufficed. The procedure was as follows; yell; soap very lightly ; yell; rinse; yell; dry off. Actually, yelling was fairly uniform throughout. I tried it once as a teenager. A bath in 29 degree water sounds like a manly challenge. It sounds invigorating until you are naked and standing with one foot on a sharp rock, the other on a mossy, slippery one. The air temperature had dropped from it's afternoon high of 89 degrees to 59, and the only mosquito in 300 yards is biting the back of your thigh. At that moment, being a mountain man like Lou loses it's appeal.

Control of the Packrat

(From a school paper, written 1961)

The various species of rats included in the genus Neatoma are interesting, and some of them are quite handsome, but their business operations are usually one-sided. Their nuisance rating is high when a hunter misses his wrist watch or eye glasses, and discovers sign pointing to a "packrat", or "woodrat", as the thief.

As long as the woodrat dwells at a distance from human habitation, he is an innocuous and interesting animal. When he favors a ranch cabin with his presence, he can contaminate grain and other foods, especially if they are carelessly stored, in such containers as burlap bags. His habit of collecting such interesting objects as jewelry, silverware, and socks causes many humans to develop a definite antipathy toward him.

This rodent may be easily captured by taking advantage of his natural habits, such as his custom of traveling close to walls, and running behind objects where possible, due to his protective instinct for remaining near to cover. A length of stove-pipe laid parallel to the wall, with a size 0 or 1 steel trap set inside, is almost certain to result in a catch the first night.



Another effective location for a trap is in a flat cake pan, with rolled barley or oats completely covering the trap. The constantly-roving rat is easily caught here, also.

A different method of control is with the use of a flashlight and firearm. This can best be illustrated by relating the following anecdote.

Wes Darling is a cattle rancher in central California. On roundup one fall, he and his brother slept in the cabin which Wes maintains on his summer range. Their slumbers had been disturbed by the gnawing and rustlings of a pack rat which had his homestead under the cabin.

The second night, Wes bedded down with a flashlight and a loaded 12-gauge shotgun nearby. When the rodent entered the cabin and began its nightly investigation of the kindling pile, Wes snapped on the light and fired as he caught the rat in the beam. The rat and the charge of shot left the cabin together, boring a new hole as they went. The event was somewhat complicated by the sudden awakening of Wes' brother (who is a detective sergeant). He leaped from his bed, stumbled over the bed where Wes slept, and turned the stove over as he fell to the floor. Apart from such domestic perils, this method has more disagreable and lasting effects, if there is a woman dwelling in the building who dislikes holes in the walls of her home.

If the house is built with log walls, and replacement panes are readily available for the windows, the preceding method may be varied, as was once done on the Gros Ventres range in Wyoming. Ralph Lerocq and five other punchers were on fall roundup, and had just moved into the cabin which had been built for such use. A bushy-tailed woodrat attracted their attention through most of the night, and they decided to rid the premises of his presence. Since each carried a pistol for romantic reasons (they were no more efficient with a handgun than most other cowboys), they planned to use these to solve their rat problem. The end of a wooden apple crate was propped in such a position that it would fall and block the entrance to the rathole when the supporting stick was jerked away by means of a string, the other end of which was taken to bed by Ralph.

The "boys" retired in good spirits, having packed in enough food and drink to keep them this way. The principal actor in the scene made his entrance soon, and when assured of this by the direction of the sounds, Ralph jerked the string, and the intrepid punchers, reckless of any danger from their prey, left their beds with drawn six-shooters. They lit the lanterns and began the execution. After some near misses, the rat realized his unpopularity, and began an earnest search for exit holes. He forsook the floor in favor of the ceiling joists. Splinters flew, and shooters were more in danger than the target, because of their larger size and greater numbers.

Having found no way of leaving through the roof, the woodrat dropped to the floor once more, the jumped onto a chair and ran across the table. A full gallon can of syrup was resting there, and was centered by a .38 special slug. The eventual demise of the prey was anti-climactic. Perhaps the most important qualifications for this technique would be a fairly high intellect and a masterly skill in handgunnery.

Slowly, humanity is accepting the fact that the most efficient way to control woodrats (and all our other animal neighbors) is to use preventative measures, such as properly-constructed buildings, and vermin-proof storage. If such natural controls as gopher and bull snakes, screech and barn owls, and weasels are allowed to live in some measure of security, they are quite willing, even eager, to control rodents.

Since woodrats have proven to be adaptable to general laboratory use, and may assume great importance some day soon, it behooves mankind to act in a mature way in his "packrat" control. They may be means of conquering some vicious disease, some day very soon.

"The White-Faced Hornet-a Good Country Neighbor"

By Lou Jonas
(Originally published in the Piedmont Outdoors)

A teacher might envy the ease with which the white-faced hornet cant arouse immediate interest in the dullest of students.



Of course, its efficient attention-getter, the stinger, is seldom used, unless you are foolhardy enough to shake the branch of an apple tree where Vespa maculata has her nest. We have had large nests within a few feet of our door, at least two different years, and none of us except me was ever stung by a white-faced hornet (When I shook the apple branch.)

Of course, when the temperature hits 100 degrees or higher, it pays to be careful: wasps, like humans and other animals, get more short-tempered in hot weather.

This wasp has a more chunky build than most, and the white face and white stripes on a black background help to identify it.

The nest is not hard to identify, with its large size, after the colony is well-populated. Some measure as much as two feet in length in the South, where the warm season lasts longer.

In the fall, the old queen hornet in each nest has become senile, and is merely waiting for cold weather or a predator to finish her life. The young queens leave the nest, and winter under bark, or some other sheltered place, from which they emerge to begin a new colony the next spring.


Old nests are seldom used--the queen starts from scratch, chewing fibers from weather or partly-decayed wood, and builds a series of horizontal combs enclosed within a paper envelope.

Comstock said, "A small empty nest. . . is evidence of a tragedy. A queen. . . had started to found a colony. . . " but before she could rear a brood of workers to relieve her of the task of gathering food and paper, some predator such as a bird or a praying mantis had captured her.

Hornets eat spiders, caterpillars, and other insects. Wherever a farmer soaks feed for his hogs, flies are apt to gather, and there one can expect to see Vespa sitting on the edge of the barrel, revolving a fly in its "hands", nibbling around the edges like a kid with a tasty apple.

Vespa's speed is reported as 13.3 miles per hours, so a swift runner can escape the ministrations of aroused hornets, especially if his enthusiasm has been boosted by one or two injections.

Some experienced "hornet-escapers" recommend running through limber brush such as willow or hazelnut bushes, which, while swaying as a result of a man's swift passage, may whip the hornets out of the air, or cause them to ricochet and lose speed, or at least confuse them.

One article, at least, has been written about the ability of hornet venom to counteract rattlesnake venom, but the exact dosage was not specified (The best self-treatment for rattlesnake bite is still an ounce of prevention.).

Having known many veteran bee-keepers to extol the praises of bee venom (similar to that of hornets) as a preventative for arthritis and rheumatism, and knowing of experiments which were done at Montana State University, to discover the effects of wasp venom in the treatment of arthritis, one might speculate whether this readily-available medicine is not responsible, at least in part, for the good health most outdoorsmen enjoy.

Let us be properly grateful for these treatments we receive from our sharp-tailed friends.