Turtles, Bears, a Harrowing Crash -- Oh my!

And a patriotic dessert recipe

Jun 29, 2025

In today’s Sunday Paper Edition post, we’ll feature both a sighting and a column by Outdoors Tomorrow columnist Bob Henke, perhaps the area’s most famous columnist who had been a regular contributor to the Post-Star until its downsizing in recent years. Their loss is a gain for our readers!

But first, can you solve this Scrabble anagram? If you get a 7-letter answer in less than a minute, you get 1 million points! Two minutes, 500,000 points. Three minutes, 100,000 points. Otherwise, you’re playing for pride. Points are redeemable at the Greenwich Big Lots!

Answer at the end.

Outdoors Tomorrow

Sighting

The formula for when snapping turtles lay their eggs is typically the first rainy night after the full moon in May. A few of them do not get the memo and may nest anywhere between May Day and mid-June. This girl down in Fort Miller was pretty much on schedule and her nest was right beside several others.

Ancient wildlife

By Bob Henke
Journal & Press

I seem to be turning into something of a curmudgeon. Small things annoy me and stick in my mind; things that I would have shrugged off in the past. There was a great example of this yesterday. I received several ads in the mail and popping up on the cell phone. Three of these were for businesses whose name started with “Ye Olde...” This kind of historical inaccuracy, that I have been aware of for decades, kept returning to my mind and at one point I found myself poised to answer one of the ads just so I could snark at them for Ye Olde. Weird.

Of course, Ye Olde is silly in general but my objection is historical. Ancient Britons wrote using an alphabet of runes called Futhorc. This was a bit more expansive than our alphabet as it included 34 characters. One of these was the rune “thorn,” which made the sound “th.” Then the Catholics came along and ultimately the Latin writing system replaced Futhorc. However, there is no Latin equivalent for thorn so it was often used in hand-written material. When printing began, the type included only the 26 letters so thorn was often represented by a capital Y. Therefore, there was never a Ye Olde. It was always “The Olde” at least until we forgot how to read the olde texts.

Speaking of olde things, I was accosted in a restaurant a few days ago and asked if I could stop writing about wildlife we have now and talk about how wonderful things were in Washington County in the past. Also, I should stop just talking about animals and do plants too. I actually try to alternate between animals, plants, rocks, and natural phenomena like lightning. Maybe to get back on track, I can handle all this at once.

I am not sure where in the past to start. Maybe about 600 million years ago? The predominant life forms were plants: ferns and algae. The air was very polluted with a corrosive poisonous gas—oxygen—that was threatening all plant species. As far as Washington County goes, we were underwater—this was the Iapetus Ocean. In fact, the most common thing geologically for this area is to be under water, either wet or frozen.

Maybe that is too far back? Let’s try only a couple million years. Oops! We are under ice again. It was the Pleistocene and the glacier was about a mile high in this area. Things did get a little better around 20,000 years ago when global warming started. Glaciers still formed dams blocking the north and south but much of this area was receiving glacial meltwater, enough to form a huge lake called Lake Vermont. There was not much wildlife because it was basically surrounded by barren, ice-covered areas. Lake Vermont would have looked like a huge bowl of milk from the air. I have always been disappointed by glacial streams. I expected pristine clear water but instead they are totally cloudy from ground up rock. The sediment settled out in Lake Vermont forming the huge masses of blue clay that made us a predominant brick-producing area in colonial times and bedevils farmers with heavy soils.

Around 13,000 years ago, things got more interesting from a wildlife perspective. As the northern ice receded, Lake Vermont drained and the climate mellowed. Things began colonizing immediately. Epiphytes (mosses, lichens, ferns) are the greatest explorers and always get there first. Some specialists eating them, like caribou, may use the area but epiphytes are always followed by grasses, followed by grazers. Our most dramatic grazer was the mammoth. Elephants developed on this continent in several different branches. Mammoths were grass-eaters. Washington County may also have been host to camels, horses, giant beavers, reindeer, dire wolves, giant condors. After a while, there might even have been some people—but the evidence is still out on exactly when humans arrived on this continent and who they were.

Regardless, moving in was a bad idea because as the ice receded, the huge blockage between the North Atlantic and the Champlain Valley disappeared. This was bad because the bedrock and soils were depressed by hundreds of centuries of ice, 5000 feet thick. This made us lower than sea level and there was a huge flood of salt water, forming the Champlain Sea, which ran from Quebec to here. It probably formed really fast and wiped out entire wildlife communities.

Greenwich was a seashore community.

These were interesting times. The water was not quite a salty as seawater because of continuing glacial meltwater so there was a wonderful mix of what we think of as saltwater and freshwater species. The first colonists are anadromous fish (migrate to spawn in fresh water). The contact with the North Atlantic does not last long but it leaves us some interesting legacies. The fish species that were found in the Champlain Sea include: ciscos, capelin, artic charr, cod, suckers, tomcod, sticklebacks, and bull sharks. There were harbor seal, harp seal, bearded seal, and ringed seal and possibly some of the newly evolved polar bears. There were also harbor porpoise, fin whale, humpbacked whale, bowhead whale, and Charlotte.

1849, workers building railroad between Rutland and Burlington were 20 feet deep in pure blue clay when they encountered whale bones. Charlotte (named for the town where it was found) was a female beluga whale who lived there about 12,500 years ago. She was 15 years old and apparently died in deep water.

After about 3000 years (10,000 ago,) isostatic rebound occurred. Our area raised well above sea level, a water flow fairly similar to what we see today occurred and it shrank to become freshwater Lake Champlain. There would have been thousands of “endangered species” disappearing at the time! Now things really changed. Conditions were right and the grasslands grew to brush. Second growth is the most prolific terrestrial ecosystem. This one was filled with things like giant sloths, huge woodland bison, whitetail deer, and mastodon. When the grasslands went, so did the mammoth, but mastodon, a different type of elephant, had teeth like deer for chewing wood plant materials.

Plants have always been the greatest destroyers of ecosystems, and that remained true to form. Hardwoods took over, and formed huge expanses of climax forest. With the exception of canopy-dwelling birds and arboreal animals, a mature forest is a biological desert. Once again, many species died out. Some of the more mobile ones, like deer, lasted in small populations due to forest fires.

Then the deer caught a break—the humans discovered agriculture and deer populations exploded. Everything that humans do from planting corn to slash and burn agriculture to building highways creates deer habitat. The deer pay their rent when humans, their natural predator, take a couple but deer never formed a huge part of native American diet, there simply were not enough. We have created more habitat in the past 100 years. There are more deer today in Nassau County, NY than there were in the entire world in 1492. There were also no honey bees here, they came with Europeans; natives called them white man’s flies.

One thing you could have seen here during colonial times (and I am sorry to have missed) is passenger pigeons. Once the most abundant bird on the planet, they became extinct in less than 100 years. Flocks were up a mile wide and 300 miles long, containing a billion birds and taking several days to pass. (Don’t look up!) Their demise used to blame market hunting, and it was undoubtedly a factor, but the population underwent a huge increase when European diseases killed native Americans, thus eliminating competition for food. It was on the verge of crashing (dynamic imbalance) when the market hunting began and this may have been just a little too much extra, taking them below the level to sustain. Last one died in 1914.

100 years ago, we had many of the same animals in this area we do nowadays with a few exceptions. We had fewer deer, more black squirrels than gray, huge stands of American chestnut trees, high populations of porcupine, a few moose and elk, and huge spawning runs of sturgeon, eels, and walleye pike. Since that time, things continue to warm. In past 6 decades, we have begun to see many more southern species like, opossums, carpenter bees, cardinals, alewives, white perch, and hummingbirds. Canada geese are wintering here while woodcock and grouse are declining. The next few decades will bring Africanized bees, copperheads, nutria (they are already in Chesapeake Bay), kudzu, and probably Carolina parakeets.

There. I have covered birds, animals, insects, fish, plants, and geology. That ought to buy me a little slack on topic selection for a while…

Contact Bob Henke with your sightings or questions by mail c/o The Greenwich Journal & Salem Press, by email at outdoors.tomorrow@gmail.com, on Twitter at @BobHenke, or on Facebook.

DEC to Salem: Bear with us

By Jan Baxter
The Salem Press

Salem has had quite a few bear sightings in the last few weeks. From bear cubs meandering through the arched breezeway at Salem Central School to a 300-pound bear leisurely enjoying a break sitting in the sun in a local back lawn, there seems to be a lot of bear activity.

Town Supervisor Sue Clary has been in touch with the Department of Environmental Conservation, and they’ve provided helpful information on what to do and what not to do, in regard to bears in our area. The Supervisor is working with the DEC to have them assess the bear population in the town and what next steps, if any, need to be taken.

Why the increased number of bears? According to the conservation website bearwise.org, June is the time bears are wandering:

“Yearlings leave mom and search for food, shelter and a place of their own. Adult males travel far and wide looking for mates. Nursing moms venture farther from home base searching for food. Cubs keep growing and developing.

“Bears that were born last spring and denned up with bear-mom the past winter are now 18-month old yearlings. If all goes well, they’ll be the size of a medium-sized dog by the end of June, although their fur coats can make them look larger. Yearling females are often allowed to move in next door to their mom. Yearling males are strongly encouraged to move out and go find a new territory of their own, so most young bears wandering far from home are males.

“They may look big and furry, but yearling bears are all trying to figure out how to live without their mom’s help. They are often lonely and lack the fully developed survival skills of an adult bear. They are also hungry and inquisitive and will instinctively check out anything that seems as if it might be a source of food.”

Bears are omnivorous; eating grasses, berries, fruit, nuts, seeds, insects, grubs, as well as human sources of food like corn, honey, bird seed, trash, and pet food when available. They are attracted by smells like barbeque grills and often find bird feeders’ seed an easy food source.

To combat having bears in your lawns and on patios and decks, the DEC suggests you keep your grills cleaned after each use, bring the grill grease can inside, and burn the grill on high to burn off excess grease. Close the grill cover after each use.

Garbage bins should be closed and, when possible, put into a shed or garage with the exception of garbage collection days. Stop filling your bird feeders after April 1 and bring the feeders into your garage or shed if possible. If you are a beekeeper, use electric wiring to ward off the bears from your bee hives. Contrary to what the cartoon Winne the Pooh may portray, bears are after the bees for protein rather than the honey in the hives.

If you are outdoors and see a bear nearby, don’t panic. The DEC reminds us that bears are often as scared of us as we are of them. Never try to approach a bear or offer it food. Feeding bears is illegal in New York state.

If you feel threatened by a bear, back away slowly but do not run. Making loud noises such as clapping and yelling, honking car or air horns, should frighten away the bear.

The NYS DEC can be reached at contact@dec.ny.gov or 518-402-8044.

A Harrowing Escape

According to Sheriff Jeffrey J. Murphy, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at about 9 A.M., the Washington County Sheriff’s Office responded to a one-car rollover motor vehicle crash in the Town of White Creek.

Wendy Taber, 44, of Eagle Bridge was traveling on Andrews Road in the Town of White Creek when she lost control of her vehicle, struck a National Grid utility pole, and rolled over. The collision brought down live power lines onto the vehicle, igniting a car fire with Taber still inside.

As she attempted to escape the vehicle, Taber was electrocuted by a downed powerline and lost consciousness. Taber regained consciousness and as the vehicle filled with smoke, she continued to try to exit the vehicle and sustained additional electrical shocks. Eventually, Taber was able to jump free from the vehicle to safety.

Cambridge EMS provided on-scene treatment for electrical burn injuries. She was transferred to an Albany Medical helicopter and flown to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. National Grid crews also responded to secure the scene and assist first responders. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

At Home Science

A Patriotic Recipe

Ice cream pie, a no-fail summer dessert

By Diane Rossen Worthington
Tribune Content Agency
Special to Journal & Press

Ice cream desserts are a summer treat. Ice cream pie answers the wish for a decadent, yet easy-to-prepare dessert. This ice cream pie can be made ahead and is Seriously Simple to assemble.

Since you are buying the crust, if you want, you can insert the pre-made crust into a glass or porcelain plate for a pretty presentation. Softened ice cream is spooned into the crust and the pie frozen, then a cool berry compote is spooned over the pie slice just before serving. For a Fourth of July theme, use strawberry and vanilla ice cream and garnish with raspberries, blueberries and whipped cream. It’s a knockout summer dessert.

If you want to make this treat even more festive, arrange raspberries and blueberries (that can be frozen) on the outside border. I also look for little American Flags, found in seasonal aisles at most stores and often in the bakery section of the supermarket, to decorate the top of the pies.

If you want to make this pie for other summer events, pick your favorite ice cream flavors to build this pie. Consider combinations like chocolate chip and mocha or salted caramel and chocolate. Have fun with selecting your own signature combinations. You can also swap out raspberry compote for hot fudge or caramel sauce.

This is easy to make and can involve children as well. Kids can help decorate the finished frozen dessert. This is a great item to keep in your freezer. Remember to remove the pie from the freezer 15 minutes before serving for easy slicing. Enjoy.

Seriously Simple Ice Cream Pie with Blueberry Sauce

Serves 6 to 8

Note: Make sure the ice cream is soft enough to work with but is not already melting; remove the ice cream from the freezer for 20 minutes before working with it.

For the pie:

1-pint strawberry ice cream, slightly softened
1-pint vanilla ice cream, slightly softened
1 (9-inch) purchased graham cracker piecrust or chocolate-cookie piecrust
2 tablespoons toasted almonds, sliced or chopped
1 (6-ounce) container blueberries
1 (6-ounce) container raspberries
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
For the berry sauce:
3 cups blueberries
2 tablespoons brown sugar or to taste
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1. Spoon ice cream into the crust (first spread strawberry, then spread vanilla and then smooth top.

2. Sprinkle with almonds; freeze until firm. Remove from freezer 20 minutes before serving so you can cut it.

3. Place blueberries and raspberries in a circular pattern on the outside edge of the pie. Place Fourth of July or other cake decorations on top.

4. While the pie is freezing, make the sauce: Combine the berries in a medium saucepan and add the sugar and zest. Over medium-high heat, cook the fruit, stirring occasionally, until the fruit falls apart, about 8 minutes. Taste for desired sweetness and cool to room temperature.

5. Cut pie into wedges; place on plates. Spoon sauce over or on the side and serve immediately.

Advance preparation: The pie may be prepared one month ahead, covered well and frozen.