FORECLOSURES

Even splitting as many logs as I do, I'm always surprised when now and then I find living creatures inside one. The other day I was spitting a 50 cm section of hard pale oak, straight and unblemished, with no holes or cracks, and the clean white halves fell apart to reveal a long brown enclave filled with stunned and hunkered-down ants: Armageddon, right there at the heart of a log!

There they'd been, just a minute before, sandbagging securely into the future, safe from the cold, instinctively anticipating warmer days to come and thousands of little ones running around, and the next thing they knew there was a great pounding and cracking, their world split in half and they had no plan, didn't run or attack, scramble or panic, just stood there in shock at the impossible, this sudden intrusion of light, cold and actual weather into the dark silent paradise they had found and made-- not even tending to the eggs! The warriors just standing there, with the frozen air that I suppose always attends the big question...

So I set the halves of the log down on the ground, sunny side up (fine day) to give the little society time to gather their wits about them, find a new paradise and clear out in peace. I can't really preannounce these foreclosures, can I; still, I felt a bit like a US banker. Came back the next day and the ants were still there, but I don't have a sheriff.

Then some days later I was splitting a ca. 50 cm section of red oak and it fell cleanly apart to reveal a wood beetle larvae about 10 cm long, reaching out in a 'What the hell...' sort of way into a new and unimagined air, slowly moving his head back and forth as far as he dared into this unfathomable space where there was no wood, that had nothing at all to do with wood, trying to be where the rest of his world used to be...

The split had gone clean down the middle of his comfy-looking home of narrow darkness, his almost flatland universe, and suddenly half his reality was gone and something inexplicable had taken its place, he couldn't figure it out, I watched him try and try...

He'd been snug and safe and zoned in all there ever was, when half of it was gone in an instant, replaced by light and air containing mysterious fuzzily moving objects like myself - though I'm not sure he could see - he doesn't need eyes in the zero light of his world, all he has to do is chomp and doze and await his great changes - then there he was exploring the nothingness of a vast transformation, probing whatever the absence of wood was, like nothing in his life or history-- His jaws - his best-functioning apparatus, which does everything that to him is worth doing - worked on the air, trying to chomp it, there's always been chomping in his life, that's his job, but this, what is this... looking for wood to grab and bite a path through as always, the only way into his future, but it's too late, I'm the new owner and I have to foreclose...

Again...

BOB BUNYAN

By now, you kind and discerning visitors to these homely efforts of mine must be growing tired of my recurrent converse about firewood, splitting it, stacking it, all its charm and solid value etc., but when you heat using only a woodstove (catalytic combustor), firewood is a big topic; and because you can only store wood for about three years (especially in this climate) before it begins to lose its firewoodiness, and I've never had a three-year supply since I've lived here - we've been burning pretty much hand to stovemouth for the last 13 years - whereas this year, golden firewood is raining on me from all around and I must strike while the axe is hot, must I not, no time even to straighten out my metaphors, I'm doing pretty much nothing else these non-office days, apart from putting maybe a few spinach seeds in the ground on my way between trees, at odd intervals blowing neighborhood kids' minds with the magnificent menagerie of my humungous compost kabutomushi larvae collection (OK kids, now get ready, I'm gonna lift this used-up shiitake log... OHMIGOD!!) (scroll down to late September for humungolarval pics - they're even bigger now!)... And dealing with firewood, bucking logs, quartering, carrying, stacking, finalsplitting and finalstacking, at the end of the day, before toppling into bed like a felled log, who can keyboard with oaken fingers?

LARVA MINING

One doesn't generally associate neatness with compost; in fact, I never do. For me, compost has always been synonymous with mess. A lovely-in-its-own-beautiful-way mess (with fermentation added, to differentiate it from my workspace). That was certainly true of my own compost pile, a chaotically ongoing accumulation of leaves, cuttings, fertilizers, kitchen garbage, wood ash, wormy chestnuts, chestnut-burr ash and various other random organic detritus of country living.

A couple of weeks ago (as chronicled below) I added some lime to the pile and raked it all to one side to sort of sit there and cure, and it was a mess the way I left it, sort of like a stormy sea of darkly vague unpleasantness. I was going to rake it all out maybe this weekend if I could find the time, good luck on that, and then at some point spread it all on the garden and make ready for next year's pile, starting with the soon-falling leaves, but before I had to do all that postponing I had a little brainstorm.

As the attentive reader will recall, I had found a number of kabutomushi larvae in the pile when I was raking it out, they seem to like it there, for its heat, softness and nutrition... I thought maybe since kids (mainly boys) paid money for the adult insects, someone might like to take a few pre-insects for their science class or something, then they'd get their beetles and I'd get my compost pile properly organized, without lifting a finger.

So on the off-chance we checked with the Haruya boys and learned that they had found a female kabutomushi in September and were now kabutomushi fanatics hoping that she'd laid some eggs and they'd get some larvae, so when we said you want some kabutomushi larvae for free they said wellberightoverknockknock. You'd think we gave them each a Ferrari, they were so joybouncy. Of course the kabutomushi is the Ferrari of insects among Japan boys, so their delight was understandable.

We got out the rake and let them have at it, imposed a larval quota, first time I ever did that, told them to leave the compost pile neat when they were finished, and when they were done digging up their quota they rearranged everything, you never saw such a neat compost pile, flat and even as a fine dark shag carpet, I'm gonna feel bad messing up that elegant area out there.

COMPOST AND CANDY

Out first thing this morning to start sectioning some firewood but first I had to dump some kitchen garbage on the compost pile but first I had to do what I'd been promising myself I'd do one of these days, decided this was the day: turn the compost pile with the rake.

So I put down the kitchen garbage bag and went and got the rake out of the toolshed but first I had to put some lime over the top of the compost heap but first I had to pull up the weeds so the coast would be clear for the lime scattering (gardening procedural discovery often runs backward) so I began pulling up all the weeds, a lot of them actually vegetables that had sprouted too late from seed in the garbage, and when that was done I went to the lime box and opened it to get the lime but first I had to go and get a trowel to scatter the lime with so I went and got it, then scattered the lime - my plan was advancing at last - then I dumped the garbage over one side of the compost plot then got the rake and began raking one half up over the other and with about the fourth rakeful I uncovered what looks every time like a panicking horse's eyeball staring up out of the earth, shining white and smooth with a dark tinge, like an alien thing suddenly there in the deep soil, it was a kabutomushi larva, head downward in the ground, smooth, round, darkish tail up, as always, about as big as a hen's egg when they get full size, shocking every time, living secretly there in the subsoil...

I dug it out with my fingers and set it aside so I wouldn't step on it or hurt it with the rake, then went on raking more gently and uncovered another one, set that aside too, then another, and another - ultimately five in all - large, heavy, pearly, slow-moving, oddly vulnerable, truly alien-looking things; was about to put them back, cover them over in darkness again and wrap it all up before sharpening the chain saw, but first ran into the house to get the camera and took a picture of the the first four larvae in my gloved hand, then the biggest one alone... (click on that picture for more detail than you might like)

At the end on the left here are those insanely popular kabutomushi larvae made out of chocolate...

Smaller than the real thing, I suspect...
The actual-size creatures would cost a fortune in fine chocolate...
The resulting beetles can be quite expensive too...

CHOCOLARVAE

Over the years I've dug up a number of these large pale creatures in my garden - larvae of the kabutomushi - but needless to say the thought never entered my mind that one day those shrimp-sized grubs would be available in gourmet chocolate form... I've also mentioned herein the hefty wood beetle larvae I find that are a countryside delicacy and are also now available in creative chocolate, though neither mode of grub appeals to me personally, even in the colorful variety.

It's no surprise though that these chocoversions of the larvae are a such a hit in Japan. Originally created by the sweetsmaker Komatsuya (who seem to be focusing on the offbeat: they also offer a durian ice cream bar!) [in Japanese, but click on blurred images for further clear images] as a sort of souvenir for a local insect festival (a common event in Japan, where kids have insect pets, the rhinoceros beetle being a favorite), the larvae sold out so fast that they made more... and never stopped, refining as they went, until now the star larva has an ectoderm of white chocolate, a body of chocolate and corn flakes, legs of dried squid and an orange peel mouth, and now that they're selling even more like hotgrubs online, if you order them in the delight of fright ("they're scary but I want one!") you'll have to wait 3 to 4 months to get your tasty pupal snack.

via Pink Tentacle

GRUB GRUB

Last summer in my hurry before leaving for the states I sectioned and stacked a half-cord of oak where it was most convenient at the time, beneath the plum tree, and obverse to the prevailing wind. As a result the wood couldn't dry adequately, so the wood beetles and fungus-cultivating ants renovated it into an insectivoral Beverly Hills Grand Hotel. In further consequence, this morning I was out early continuing the task of stripping the damp bark off the sections under the watchful eyes of butterflies, dragonflies, a frog in his niche in the deck joinery, and Dr. Crow, who was up in the chestnut tree burbling over the prospect. He knows that whenever I do this I uncover handfuls of fat white wood-beetle larvae, some the size of Wichetty grubs, that dine on the oak cambium layer and into the wood itself, and when exposed just fall to the ground and lay there invitingly, like crow antipasto.

When I first started splitting oak around here, splitting trunks 2 feet in diameter at the time, a villager stopped by to watch and commented that if I found any of those big white oak grubs, they're really delicious, a traditional local delicacy, like Osuzumebachi (giant hornet) larvae. I passed on it at the time and have since continued to do so, though the grubs are as big as shrimp, and I'm sure that in a time of no food they'd make quite a tasty (and organic) gumbo. Anyway the Crow family has known all this stuff for eons, and he couldn't wait for me to leave his restaurant.

As I was working I kept hearing the acorns fall on my upmountain neighbor's ceramic tile roof, causing me to recall that unfortunately for my neighbor he hadn't thought, before he built his log house, to cut down the big oak or at least the branches that right overgrow the roof; and for a number of weeks this time of year, the crafty old tree releases its thousands of acorns one by one (like a machine gun if it's windy); the hard nuts strike the roof here and there like bullets, rebound all over the deck and against the glass doors, making a nutty racket 24 hours a day, waking my neighbor up at night. And of course the pattern of acorn ballistics is completely random, which is much worse; he lies there waiting...

Our chestnut is now also doing the same thing - something to be careful of when you walk under the tree - and its spiky missiles are much larger, thudding on the deck and rebounding off the big glass doors on two sides of our house, which can be startling in the dead silence of evening, but very considerately the chestnut does this only for a few days, and not during the night. Or maybe I sleep too soundly...

Enough of these musings; getting hot as we near noon, time to have lunch and let the good Doctor enjoy his antipasto.

OSUZUMEBACHI HUNTERS

Yesterday was Culture Day, a national holiday, when everyone presumably does cultural things, but we made our monthly trip to our secret spring high up in the mountain forest to get some of that really good water where it comes pouring out of a cliffside.

On our way up there along the road that curves through the cedar forest, while slowly edging by two pickup trucks parked halfway out in the road I spotted three men up the steep slope in the forest to one side of the road, not lumbering or anything, couldn’t tell what they were doing.

We got to the spring, and had filled all our jugs and bottles and watered the plants we’d bought at a farmer’s roadside stand on the way there, then headed back. Passing the two trucks again, I saw that two of the three men had come down to the road; the third, halfway down the slope, was dressed in what looked like some kind of space suit and was carrying a well-laden bag.

We stopped to look. The two men on the road were grinning from ear to ear, each holding a two-armful load of large slabs of dull brown comb, speckled with white bumps. The spacesuited one was dressed, I could see now, to ward off stings. They had just raided a nest of Osuzumebachi (suzume: sparrow; hachi: bee, wasp, hornet). Osuzumebachi (Vespa mandarinia), very fierce-looking hornets that are quite aggressive in the fall when stocking their underground nests. They get their 'sparrow' name from their size, which can reach up to two inches long. They also have very long stingers. I got stung in the foot by one of them a few years ago, in slow motion, as I recall, and it put me in the hospital--but that's another story.

Osuzumebachi larvae are a highly prized delicacy and reputedly magic tonic, so are very valuable, given the risk one undertakes in harvesting them. One of the tree-tending fellows had probably noted the nest site during his labors and waited till the larvae would be just right (they were the white bumps on the comb) - about the size of small shrimp - and came up to harvest them.

Another trick hornet hunters use to find Osuzumebachi nests is to bait a stick with the hornet’s preferred insect prey, then while the hornet is busy eating they tie a long strip of white cloth around its thorax and follow its flight (often a very long way) back to the nest.

The surviving hornet hunters then take out all the larvae and soak them in sake and do other secret tonic things with them I haven’t been able to find out yet.

Related article added later:
Killer wasps threaten farmers in Shaanxi