By Diana Kincannon
Like our neighbor’s gentle cow,
I want a little wander now
and then to any spot wherever,
finding pleasure
in surprising places.
No more time for straight or narrow!
I am become a butterfly,
an all-aflutter jitter-buggy
butter-cuppy butterfly,
dipping, sipping here a sweetness
then another, over there.
by Lydia Mahan
A friend of mine once said, “They make the world go round.” He was talking about volunteers. In fact, they do a lot to pick up the slack, the extra pieces that often get
left behind.
I’m a volunteer and I can certainly attest to the fact that I pick up a lot of “extra pieces.” I volunteer with a charity organization called Community Cat Alliance (CCA). Our mission is Trap-Neuter-Return, or TNR, in Frederick County, Virginia. It can be challenging work. Without question, it is rewarding work.
We are a small group of men and women who have a passionate calling to help those who cannot speak for themselves, namely feral and abandoned cats — and often, their kittens, many of whom are in desperate need of medical care. We go into the field and work with caretakers who are doing their best to feed and shelter colonies of cats, or one or two cats. The need is the same; all of these cats and kittens need to be spayed and neutered to stop the pervasive over-population of cats and kittens in our area.
We are in the midst of kitten season, and there is a tremendous need for foster homes. All you need is a bathroom or an unused guest room. Kittens are taken from the field and evaluated by our medical coordinator. If kittens need to see a vet, CCA arranges the visit with the foster parent’s schedule and we pay for the visit. We provide foster parents with what they may need: Food, toys, litter and litter boxes, medicine like Pyrantel (a broad spectrum wormer).
If you need to leave for vacation, we will provide respite for your kittens. In fact, we welcome homes that only want to do periodic respite! When kittens are two pounds (about 8 weeks), we arrange for them to go to a clinic to be vaccinated and spayed and neutered. We then return them to you. The next step is for one of our partners to take them and adopt them into their “forever homes.”
If having kittens in your home is not feasible, we have other needs that may be interesting. Social media your thing? We put out a periodic Mewsletter that we could use help with. Are you a Facebook expert? You could help us. Interested in going into schools to help educate the next generation about the importance of spaying and neutering all pets? How about attending local Chamber of Commerce events, or becoming an ambassador for CCA by becoming a Rotary member?
If you’re interested in trapping, we will train you and provide you with traps. Periodic transport? We need folks with cars large enough to accommodate several traps and carriers to transport cats and kittens to the vet clinic and back — not every week, but once a month. We need folks who are willing to drive to Staunton, Va., to pick up low-cost cat food we pay for, and then pass on to our caretakers. Fundraising? Lend us a hand. Make a gift basket, help with publicity, record a public service announcement for us, write an article.
CCA tends to attract folks who are retired. Makes sense, right? Retired people have flex schedules. But even if you work full time, and have children, if this is a cause you are passionate about, we can find one of those extra pieces that works for you and your family.
Look us up; check us out. We work hard, we do good work. The volunteers at Community Cat Alliance need your help. The abandoned and stray “community cats” out there who have been dumped, and born in the field need you even more. Think about it. Do it.
And if you can’t help us with any of the above a $20 donation will go further than you think. Go to www.communitycatalliance.org. Thank you
by Charlie Paullin
Virginia is on track to implement updated rules for animal waste created by certain farming operations, despite disagreement on how to regulate older earthen lagoons that pose a greater risk of releasing pollutants into groundwater.
Wednesday, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin approved the regulation changes for farmers who confine cows, pigs and more for 45 days or more within a year for dairy, eggs and meat production, as well
as slaughtering.
Youngkin’s approval comes after the citizen-member State Water Control Board OK’d at a June 25 meeting the general permit for 108 animal feed operations in the state, meaning the rules in the one permit applies to all the operations. The current general permit is set to expire Nov. 15, so the revisions will take effect Nov. 16 for another
10-year period.
Waste from the animals can be stored in containers, concrete structures, or earthen lagoons, which are ponds of manure that use natural and chemical processes to treat it. The operators can treat the waste, recycle it or apply to their land as compost, among other purposes.
The rules are part of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s program to regulate pollution discharges to prevent harm to the environment. One concern with animal waste is a potential to release nitrogen into groundwater that can feed into waterways leading to the Chesapeake Bay, which state and federal partners are struggling to clean up.
“We are focused on nitrogen discharges to groundwater, but bacteria would also be of concern,” said Patrick Fanning, Virginia staff attorney with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, in an email to
the Mercury.
There are also new requirements for nutrient management plans, an analysis for nitrogen and tools to determine a 100-year flood plain, or areas where groundwater can get inundated following heavy rain from intense storms likely to happen once every century and can lead to more groundwater connections that may flow up to the surface.
Some farmers had raised concerns over costs to any changes, said Betsy Bowles, DEQ animal feeding operations inspector. But other farmers were in support of the new rules, which incorporate previously less enforceable guidance on conditions for closing a waste
storage device.
After receiving feedback from farmers and environmental groups, which primarily wanted more monitoring, DEQ didn’t make any changes to the rules, which were presented to the public in their final form for the first time at the
June 25 meeting.
The Virginia Farm Bureau spoke at that meeting in support of the rules. The only other commenter, Fanning, with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, called DEQ’s decision to not make one change, “a bad take and a bad interpretation of
the law.”
The Bay Foundation, on behalf of several other organizations, submitted 10 requests, including requiring one groundwater monitor above and two groundwater monitors below earthen lagoons that were made before 1998. Those lagoons were grandfathered into regulations, and made without the more stringent requirements in place now, Fanning said, meaning “these are the lagoons that are most likely to be discharging
to groundwater.”
Bowle’s said DEQ interpreted the law to mean that monitoring can only be required if there is already monitoring in place,
Bowles added.
“Our understanding of the law, for being able to require more groundwater monitoring is if they are already monitoring but there is a change that we need to increase from one every three years to more frequent,” Bowles said.
But Fanning, in his comments to the board said DEQ’s interpretation “is simply not true,” pointing out the law states DEQ “may include in the permit or nutrient management plan more frequent or additional monitoring of waste, soils or groundwater as required to protect state waters.”
And, he added: “How would DEQ ever know if there is a problem if they’re not requiring monitoring?”
Fanning sought guidance from the Attorney General’s office, but Ross Phillips, senior assistant attorney in the OAG, sided with DEQ, and certified the rules.
Tony Banks, senior assistant director of the agriculture, development and innovation department with the Virginia Farm Bureau, said in an interview with the Virginia Mercury, his organization is supportive of DEQ’s interpretation of the law and that the older lagoons were built to engineering standards of the time.
“If we had an issue that would’ve become apparent at this point,” Banks said.
DEQ spokeswoman Irina Calos added the agency is “unaware of any complete lagoon failures at permitted farms in Virginia.” One time, during the 2004
Hurricane Gaston, floodwaters overtopped a lagoon that was in compliance with
the permit.
“In general, DEQ does visual site inspections of waste storage structures to include lagoons every three years but can and does inspect sites more frequently as needed,” Calos said, adding that if there are concerns with noncompliance DEQ can require a permittee to obtain an individual permit with groundwater
monitoring requirements.
Charles Paullin covers energy and environment for the Mercury. He previously worked for Northern Virginia Daily in the Northern Shenandoah Valley. This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury.
Story and illustration by Doug Pifer
One warm evening in early May I was watching several purple martins as they circled and landed on our four-tiered aluminum martin house. Seconds later, a big Cooper’s hawk charged by, barely missing a martin perched on the porch of its nest compartment. The martin flew off and the hawk continued into the far woods without missing a wingbeat.
A few days later I was haying the animals and looked up to see a big pair of wildly flailing wings on the far side of the martin house. The Cooper’s hawk was clinging to the house while martins fled the scene. Seconds later the hawk flew off, talons empty. I couldn’t see what happened. I imagined the hawk had just grabbed one of the martins as it retreated into its nest compartment and then tried, without success, to pull it out.
For the past eight years we’ve had a resident martin colony return to nest in the martin house and gourds. During that same span of years, Cooper’s hawks have nested and raised their young in our neighbors’ woods. Our martins have experienced numerous hawk attacks. Last year I saw a hawk snag a female martin off the top of the house and fly off with her in its talons.
Purple martins and Cooper’s hawks have coexisted as natural enemies for millennia. Cooper’s hawks are bold and aggressive, and use a strategy of speed, ambush, and surprise to capture their winged prey. Fast as they are, they can’t outfly a healthy purple martin in the open sky.
Struggles for survival remind us that spring, the season of new life and new growth, also brings lightning, thunder, pillage, and plunder. I encountered spring’s harshness this morning when I nearly stepped on the delicate, fractured shell of a speckled egg. Traces of fresh yolk and a visible puncture told me this egg had been stolen from the nest, possibly by a gray squirrel or a blue jay.
Our dead Kentucky coffee tree was selected as a nest site by a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers. Male and female woodpecker chiseled and drilled a deep cavity with a round entrance hole near the top of the dead trunk. After the woodpeckers finished their work, a pair of European starlings commandeered the nest hole and evicted the woodpeckers. The starlings are currently feeding a second brood of youngsters there. A woodpecker sometimes returns to peer inside but is quickly shooed away by the protective starlings.
A black rat snake has also claimed this dead tree as its headquarters. Last month, our dog discovered a newly shed snakeskin among the fallen shards of bark at the base of the trunk. As the young starlings grow bigger and ready to fledge, the flickering tongue of the snake will pick up their scent. I thought the snake would climb up the tree and into the nest hole to swallow the baby birds, which it did last year. But yesterday, the cries of newly fledged starlings in the adjacent tulip tree proved me wrong. The nestlings survived this time.
A delicate dance between predator and prey keeps the prey strong and the predator on top of its game. Such drama is the centerpiece of nature.Illustration by Doug Pifer courtesy Pennsylvania Game Commission.
By Samantha Pigott
No matter where you are born and where you live, the first 18 years of life are filled with growth, change, and excitement. Kaylynn Chapman Browne has certainly had her share. When Kaylynn arrived in Berryville 12 years ago, it started with a weeklong summer visit with her Great Aunt Beth and Uncle Ellis Chapman.
A week turned into a month and month into the summer, and by the end of the summer it was obvious Clarke County was where Kaylynn belonged. Guardianship was granted to Beth and Ellis. They were thrilled to have a daughter after the youngest of their four boys had just graduated high school. That nest wasn’t empty for long.
Kaylynn was a great student. She always achieved straight As, and school seemed to come easy for her. Soon her Aunt and Uncle had her enrolled in Tae Kwon Do. Jumping all in, they signed the Black Belt contract, and Kaylynn earned her Black Belt by age 13.
In the summer following her freshman year at Clarke County High School, Kaylynn decided she would try tennis the following spring. She worked hard learning the sport over the summer and fall. After a lot of hard work, she made the team as a sophomore.
The end of that school year Kaylynn applied to the very competitive Mountain Ridge Governor’s School and was accepted. That added a very new and demanding level of academic rigor.
Fast forward to senior year and Kaylynn started in the Number 2 spot on the tennis team. This season has been a remarkable one. For the first time in Coach Schulhoff’s 30-year tenure, the team qualified for regionals. At the time of this writing, they are preparing to play for the state championship.
Kaylynn applied to several colleges, and was accepted by most of them. However, since entering Governor’s School, her interests have changed considerably. Four years ago she “knew” she was going to be a dermatologist; now has done a 180-degree swing to an engineering path. Her change in academic focus, along with calculating the costs involved in a traditional education, left her with some pretty strong second thoughts about entering college. Her Aunt (being from a military family) took her to meet with military recruiters. After talking to the Air Force and the Army, the Navy won out. Kaylynn realized that serving her country was where she was being called. She has been recruited to the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion training program and is currently waiting for MEPS date.
By Douglas Kennedy
Fourteen-year-old freshman Emmerson Kennedy is the starting catcher on the Clarke County High School varsity softball team and for the ShenVal Swarm 18U black travel softball team. Her younger brother Douglas Kennedy, a 4th grade student at Cooley Elementary, is very proud of her.
Douglas was teaching me about the rules of baseball and softball, explaining terms like RBIs (runs batted in) when the subject of his sister’s skill in the sport came up. Ever on the search for future writers for our hometown publication, I suggested he share her story with our readers by interviewing his sister for Clarke Monthly (with permission from his parents’ of course.) Following is Douglas’s unedited interview with Emmerson.
— Jennifer Welliver
Douglas: What started your softball career?
Emmerson: Playing tee ball when I was in first grade.
Douglas: Who are your top three influences in softball?
Emmerson: Casey Kennedy (my dad), Scott Rhinehardt (my hitting coach), and Aubrey Monroe (Team USA’s catcher)
Douglas: What college do you want to go to?
Emmerson: I have not yet decided, but Virginia Tech, University of North Carolina, and Oklahoma State are on the top of my list.
Douglas: Why did you pick [those] colleges?
Emmerson: Because they have the major I am interested in, and their competitive softball program.
Douglas: What is your favorite subject in school?
Emmerson: Art and marketing. I get to use creativity in my work!
Douglas: What is your favorite professional sports team?
Emmerson: The Minnesota Vikings.
Douglas: What is your favorite meal?
Emmerson: A Philadelphia sushi roll with white rice
Douglas: Do you have any pets?
Emmerson: Yes, three cats, one dog, two horses, and two fish.
Douglas: What are your parents’ names?
Emmerson: Margret and Casey Kennedy.
Douglas: Do you have any siblings, and what are their names?
Emmerson: Yes, I have one brother, named Douglas. [LOL]Thank you Douglas for sharing Emmerson’s skills and achievements with our Clarke Monthly readers. And thank you for contributing to your community paper! We know you will both continue to achieve great things.