CONDON’S CORNER

On Mother’s Day: Lessons from A Mama Raccoon 

[Published May 10, 2025, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia. Published May 11, 2025, by the Daily News-Record, the daily newspaper of Harrisonburg, Virginia.] 

© 2025 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved 

“On Mother’s Day: Lessons from A Mama Raccoon”

 

My mother, who is now deceased, was always there for her children. She didn’t excuse or condone anyone’s bad behavior or the poor choices they made in life, but she didn’t nag about it and was always right there to help us when needed.

 

Her behavior represents to me the true meaning of a mother’s love.  You could do something stupid, such as when one of my older brothers totaled his car by speeding and losing control of it (thank goodness he wasn’t seriously injured), but he knew he could call home and my mother would come to get him and help him to deal with the situation.     

 

On this Mother’s Day, I’d like to offer a tribute to all moms, whether they be human, or not!  I’ve amassed fascinating accounts of wildlife behavior that I feel can provide valuable, insightful lessons for folks. Herewith, a couple of those accounts that might guide you on your own journey through life.

 

Tough love.

 

When people have children, they sometimes find it difficult to make responsible adults out of them. When your heart is full of love, it can be emotionally painful to take the steps necessary to, for example, push your children “out of the nest” to make their own way in life.

 

Yet, it’s vitally important that you practice “tough love”, when necessary, to accomplish this goal as it’s the whole point of parenting. A mama raccoon can illustrate how it’s done and why it’s so essential for her kits (and your children) to “grow up” when the time is right.

 

Young raccoons are born helpless (like human babies) in spring and are completely dependent upon “mom” for survival (the dads, like some human ones, are absentee fathers not involved in raising their young because, unlike with humans, they needn’t assist). She provides them with warmth, mother’s milk, and protection from harm.

 

At about three months of age, they begin to be weaned from her milk and to learn crucial survival skills by accompanying her as she travels around seeking food and shelter. It takes many months for the kits to master these activities, but (in our area of Virginia), they have grown enough and are ready enough by the following spring to become independent.

Contrary to popular belief, animals most active at night do sometimes come out in the daytime if it’s hot and they’re thirsty, or because they didn’t find enough to eat overnight. Here two young raccoons get a drink from the “birdbath” pan on the author’s deck.

However, like some human children, they don’t feel confident to leave their mother. They continue to follow her, but she is pregnant and knows she can’t continue to take care of this older brood along with a new one. Consequently, she’s forced to employ tough love. As the kits try to share food or be close to her, she angrily barks or snaps at them.

 

Yes, you can recognize emotion in animal voices. After all, the mama raccoon needs to make clear that the kits are no longer welcome and must move away. How else to convey that message other than by the very same emotional tones we humans employ?

 

This heartbreaking scenario is difficult to witness; you feel sorry for the young animals that so obviously do not want to leave their mom. But you know intellectually that those kits are ready to behave as adults so life can be perpetuated.

 

Love in its purest form.

 

While you might feel the mama raccoon in this story is cruel or heartless, I can say I’ve witnessed a mother raccoon exhibiting great patience and love for her baby.

 

Years ago, I had a Chimney Swift box placed on a tall radio tower in my yard. My hope was this species would use the box for nesting. That situation never happened, but a female raccoon decided one year to use the box as a den for her babies.

This “Chimney Swift” box (never used by that bird species) on the radio tower by the author’s driveway served as a raccoon den one year. 

One day I heard a plaintive cry (I have microphones outside my house for research) that indicated an animal in distress. I immediately looked out and saw a small, young raccoon running around in circles at the base of the tower, obviously quite distraught. I realized it must have fallen from the box and I felt helpless. I couldn’t possibly catch it nor get it back to the box (about 20 feet off the ground), even if I could!

 

But not to worry. I noticed the mother raccoon calmly climbing down the tower to retrieve her baby. Just as you see a mother cat do, she picked up the young-un by the scruff of its neck and made the arduous journey back up the tower—a vertical climb made quite difficult by the force of gravity—carrying that baby by her teeth.

A mama raccoon carries her kit back to the den box it had fallen from, 20 feet straight up a radio tower in the author’s yard. 

It was a stupendous feat, illustrating a mother’s love, devotion, and concern for her offspring. I see my own mother in this raccoon’s dedication to her family, as the raccoon seemed to simply do what she knew had to be done. That’s love in its purest form.

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 CONDON’S CORNER

No-mow May 

[Published April 29, 2025 by the Daily News-Record, the daily newspaper of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and published May 1, 2025, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.] 

© 2025 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved 

Many entities (Virginia Tech campus is seen here) endeavor to grow so-called native plants that are actually not native at all to their area, such as these Purple Coneflowers that are only native to the southeastern and mid-western sections of the United States.

No-mow May started as a movement in the United Kingdom (where lawns as typical landscaping originated) to get people to allow flowers to grow that could feed pollinators, such as bees. Many folks in the United States have thought it such a great idea that they are now pushing back against local “tall grass and weed” ordinances that don’t allow non-cutting of lawns for a full month.

 

Considering that many government entities love to tout how environmentally friendly they are, it’s surprising to think citizens in some localities can incur penalties if they participate in No-mow May. The problem is that many folks don’t want to view tall grass and “weeds” (i.e., wildflowers) growing next door, not even for a limited amount of time.

 

The broader purpose is to make folks aware of the necessities of wildlife, with the hope that they will start to landscape in a more sustainable manner that helps all wildlife—and people, too. Unfortunately, as with any new idea about how the environment should look, naysayers abound.

 

The main argument that pops up concerns “management”, because this word is synonymous with “aesthetics”.  In a blog post, Benjamin Vogt, a landscape designer who makes money informing people what plants they should be growing in the western part of our country where he wants people to recreate prairie, writes that, “Just letting your lawn go will not result in a lovely meadow that neighbors or wildlife will admire.” (Needless to say, Mr. Vogt wants you to pay him to plant your meadow.)

 

He goes on to say that, “What you WILL get are a host of plants with marginal to little benefit to wildlife, and several that will be terribly aggressive: crabgrass, creeping charlie, barnyard grass. And of course [sic] invasive species placed on most city's [sic] noxious weed list, like musk thistle or garlic mustard.”  

 

https://www.monarchgard.com/thedeepmiddle/just-say-no-to-no-mow-may

 

These arguments against No-mow May strike me as an attempt to instill fear and anxiety in homeowners about a supposed chaos that will overspread their yards should they participate. It’s certainly true that many people see natural areas as “messy” and feel the need to create “gardens”—organized plantings of one’s choosing that require continual work fighting Mother Nature.

 

However, my observations have shown me that gardens comprising a few specimen plants neatly arranged in rows, rather than the “chaotic” (i.e., natural) form that Mother Nature employs, are of limited value to wildlife. For one thing, they are not at all akin to genuine habitat, and when every gardener is told to grow the identical plant species, they are hardly creating a biodiverse environment.

 

Additionally, I’ve yet to see an artificially created “meadow” that persists beyond a few years. Some of the plant species might reproduce successfully, but most just disappear very quickly. 

 

The folks who denigrate “weeds”, such as Creeping Charlie, crabgrass, and so-called invasive plants, demonstrate how little they actually know about these plants. Creeping Charlie (more often known as Ground-ivy in the East) feeds a host of early pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. Crabgrass seeds are eagerly taken by wintering birds, such as Dark-eyed Juncos.

 

And “invasive” plants are, in reality, extremely useful to wildlife; it’s simply environmental dogma to posit they are not. Musk Thistle is in the Aster Family, which means it is every bit as useful to wildlife as any US-native plant in that family. I’ve no doubt its flowers feed loads of pollinators. Even Garlic Mustard blooms feed tiny pollinators in early spring.    

 

Mr. Vogt writes, “If we're not working smartly with a plan and a management/design goal [which is how he makes money], then we're just being lazy and ideologically polarizing for no reason. That's not helpful or neighborly.”

 

I would argue that plans and management are about what people desire, not what wildlife urgently must have. I would also argue that it’s not helpful or neighborly to inflict noise pollution from mowing upon one’s neighbors, nor to ignore the requirements of wildlife when all of us are dependent upon the properly running environment these critters provide for us.

 

The conversation shouldn’t revolve around aesthetics or other supposed negatives of No-mow May, but instead the reality that people must change their attitudes towards wildlife and landscaping in general. Back when folks had better things to do than spend time creating manicured surroundings, no one complained about overgrown fence lines or yards that didn’t emulate the cookie-cutter look of compliance so obvious in suburbia today. And—please note—there was far more wildlife back then.

 

People’s opinions of what constitutes a healthy environment require a makeover; they must be made aware of the full extent of harm their self-imposed neatness has inflicted upon our natural world. Nature by design isn’t natural; it’s a garden—and they are not one and the same.

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 CONDON’S CORNER

Learn from Nature on Earth Day

[Published April 22, 2025, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.] 

© 2025 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved 

I was born with a love of nature. My very earliest memories consist solely of outdoor experiences, such as seeing a Red Fox and nearby areas of wildflowers when visiting my grandparents’ farm, as well as finding a lovely blue robin’s egg in my yard and trying not to step on the large red-and-black ants traveling the city sidewalks near my home.

As a young child, I simply observed the natural world unobtrusively and committed to memory what I saw; I didn’t think about the whys and wherefores of what I witnessed. That activity came later, when, as a scientifically minded young adult wanting to learn as much as possible about the natural world, I started writing notes to document my observations. Then came the wildlife photography—all of these activities being done for my own learning and enjoyment.

Now, many decades later, I’ve amassed a huge amount of data and thousands of photographs, slides, and electronic pictures. Consequently, I am well able to recognize when inaccurate information is published about the natural world.

For example, some years ago I watched an interesting video online that showed, by use of fluorescent light, the chemical response inside a plant being eaten by a caterpillar. The scientist performing the experiment considered the reaction to tissue damage to be a “defense response” to help the plant deter insects from further feeding upon it.

Apparently, plant scientists have been doing these types of experiments for so many years now that this scientific explanation for this phenomenon is accepted without question as true—except, in my experience, it isn’t.

If it were true, gardeners wouldn’t experience defoliation (loss of leaves) of their plants, which is quite common. Nor would scientists have needed to worry so much about forest defoliation in the last decades of of the 20^th century by Lymantria dispar dispar, the Spongey (formerly known known as Gypsy) moth caterpillars. 

Consider the following situations that have occurred in my yard and elsewhere, but would be unlikely if the scientific “defense” explanation above was, indeed, valid. 

In the summer of 2018, a volunteer Common Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) came up and grew tall at a corner of my house, where I walked by it every day on my way to the compost bin. By August, that plant held nary a leaf because caterpillars had fed upon every last one.

Every single leaf of this Common Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) in the author’s yard was eaten by caterpillars, but as seen here, the plant simply began to re-leaf, none-the-worse for the supposed “injury” it had endured.

And every year, my Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) is fed upon by caterpillars of the Silvery Checkerspot butterfly, and—of course—Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) feeds Monarch “cats”. Both plants are often defoliated if enough caterpillars manage to avoid predation long enough.

Silvery Checkerspot butterfly caterpillars have been feeding upon this Wingstem plant (Verbesina alternifolia) outside the author’s greenhouse for years. A perennial plant that is often defoliated, it has survived and come back in a healthy state in each successive year.

Away from my yard, I have walked many times on the Waynesboro (Virginia) Greenway, where I’ve witnessed defoliation of Northern Catalpa trees (Catalpa speciosa) by caterpillars of the Catalpa Sphinx moth (Ceratomia catalpa) in September. In spring (other than the past few years because tent caterpillar numbers are down), Black Cherry trees (Prunus serotina) are usually defoliated by the larvae of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar moth (Malacosoma americanum).

It’s so easy to see plants defoliated by insects that one has to wonder how the idea of plant defensiveness against herbivory could ever take hold in scientific circles. I contacted the scientist who made the video mentioned at the beginning of this column. He felt confident providing this explanation for his own experiment because it was “built on a large body of research from a lot of other labs” that purportedly have shown that wounding (by a caterpillar, or just by cutting a leaf) triggers a suite of responses that deter insects from feeding on a plant.

 

This scientist was so assured of the accuracy of this interpretation that when I asked, “Did you subsequently confirm that a cabbage butterfly caterpillar [the species he was working with] would not eat the section of plant that showed the response?”, he honestly replied that he had not bothered to do so. And perhaps therein lies the reason for the discrepancy I see between reality and lab results. Scientists in the biological sciences often do not use the real world as their laboratory, and they do not verify that their lab results correspond to it.

 

However, it’s also puzzling that scientists do not give thought (apparently) to the evolutionary consequences of their assumptions. In this case, the accepted explanation is fatally flawed.

 

As I’ve written countless times before, plants exist to feed animals. Therefore, it makes no sense that plants would need to defend themselves against being eaten. If they prevented animals from feeding upon them, how would animals survive to perpetuate their species? Therefore, the whole notion of plant “defensiveness” lacks logic.

 

It also lacks merit because the real world doesn’t behave in the manner suggested by the scientific explanation for the chemical response seen under florescent lighting. And that’s perfectly reasonable because plants don’t need to act defensively; they can survive defoliation quite well. People don’t realize it because they never allow it to happen. But in my yard, and in the natural world, the only deterrence necessary is accomplished by way of predators that naturally limit the numbers of caterpillars feeding upon a given plant.

 

That Common Boneset at the corner of my house, and the Wingstem and Common Milkweed plants in my yard all regrow. I can guarantee it because I’ve seen it happen year after year as I don’t interfere with natural processes.

 

The catalpa trees will leaf out just fine next spring in Waynesboro, and although people pay attention to the tents in Black Cherry trees every spring, they tend not to notice that the trees survive the early-spring feeding of caterpillars, fully leafing out again as soon as the caterpillars have grown beyond their feeding stage.

 

It’s unfortunate that people, even scientists, do not really understand how the natural world works. The overconcern with animals harming plants has resulted in much unnecessary poisoning of the Earth with pesticides, and the killing of wildlife in unwarranted efforts to “save” plants that, in fact, don’t need saving.

 

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CONDON’S CORNER

December Clearing of Butterfly Greenway Left Birds without Shelter, Food in Overnight Sub-freezing Temperatures

(Published April 5, 2025, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia, and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.)

© 2025 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved

Imagine the public outcry if Charlottesville City Government suddenly removed shelter and food for homeless folks, leaving them outdoors in overnight subfreezing temperatures. This scenario is exactly what happened to our resident and visiting birds at the beginning of December 2024, along the Butterfly Greenway.

 Charlottesville Parks & Rec announced near the end of November the closing of this trail for removal of “invasive” species—trees, vines, and shrubs that are unwanted only because they are of alien origin and, as pioneer plants (the first species able to colonize a barren ecosystem to revitalize it), have grown well in the disturbed soil alongside the trail.

The numerous Bradford Pear trees lying on the ground that were removed from the bank supporting the John Warner Parkway could have been feeding an abundance of pollinators in early spring. Instead, the barren slope supports no wildlife at all and is a complete waste of a limited valuable resource: land.  

A United States Department of Agriculture 1937 map of the greenway area shows open land that had probably been farmland. Otherwise, it would have been forested (the climax community of this area).

Farmland can always be described in terms of nutrient-poor soil that’s been disturbed and compacted. Whether dirt-moving plows disrupting it or half-ton-plus cows plodding over it, the soil is necessarily degraded. And the continuing removal of organic matter—whether by harvesting crops or the feeding of cattle upon plants—results in further impoverishment.

The “invasive-plant” narrative has always employed anthropomorphically based terminology (the interpretation of something nonhuman in terms of human characteristics) to denigrate organisms that are simply behaving naturally. Rather than being invaders, these helpful plants survive in damaged ecosystems—such as farmland—where they refurbish the soil so plant species with higher-level nutritional needs (natives) can eventually inhabit the area.

In fact, native species, such as Tulip Poplar and American Sycamore, were already cohabiting alongside the Butterfly Greenway with the alien trees, shrubs, and vines targeted by Parks & Rec for removal with an extremely ruinous forestry mulcher.

In a statement announcing the closure of the Butterfly Greenway, Parks & Rec stated that native trees and groundcovers “will be replanted in December 2024 and spring 2025 and managed for long term [sic] growth [to restore this natural area]”—except they won’t restore the natural area. They will be replacing it with a garden; cultivated land is in no way natural.

But what is the point of “restoration” if wildlife is evicted, the very organisms that keep the natural world running properly? With remaining undeveloped areas in short supply, where do these people expect wildlife to live while they replant the newly barren areas that will take a decade or more to become habitat, if indeed it ever does?

You probably wonder why so-called invasive plants are now considered the main environmental scourge, especially given the obviously far more impactful consequences of development (removing habitat, usually permanently); cats roaming around freely (killing millions of birds and other kinds of critters annually); an abundance of lights burning all night (causing the deaths of organisms attracted to them, such as moths and migrating birds); ever-increasing traffic hitting animals along the roads; buildings designed with an abundance of windows (usually killing birds that fly into them); etc.

A huge construction area just above the entrance to the Butterfly Trail illustrates the difference between a wild area of plants that support wildlife (in the foreground) and the barrenness created by people that does not. 

A Luna Moth remains near a light that burned all night and still burns in the light of day. Living only a week to mate and reproduce in its adult stage, this moth can’t afford to waste time at lights burning. Note the mass of dead insects inside the light fixture—a testament to why insects, especially moths, have declined so much in number.      

I would nominate Audubon New York 2024 conservation-award winner entomologist/activist/author Doug Tallamy as the primary cause of the damage now being inflicted upon the environment. My question is, why have scientists with Ph.D. following their names, and environmentalists who should possess a measure of outdoor experience, all been hoodwinked by this man?

He has persistently worked to convince the uninitiated that a dearth of native plants constitutes the primary reason for the declining numbers of insects and birds, starting with his first book, Bringing Nature Home. However, a wonderful aspect of nature is that it’s fully accessible to those who open their eyes sans prejudice to what’s happening out there.

You can verify for yourself how many talking points of this “invasive-plant” tale comprise pure fiction, beginning with the fact that plenty of native woody plants (the trees and shrubs Tallamy’s mainly referring to) still exist. Sometimes, however, you do require prior knowledge to spot deception by those trying to convince you alien plants are simply “bad” with no redeeming value.

From high above the ground in a balloon basket, one can view a green sea of native trees stretching from Charlottesville, Virginia, to the forested Blue Ridge Mountains far off to the west. Does this look like a dearth of native woody plants?

In Dr. Tallamy’s book, he brazenly asserts that “Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends.” Here we have quintessential Tallamy: He generalizes his statements to make folks think alien plants are a huge problem for all kinds of wildlife, but gardeners surely know how many nonnative fruits and vegetables are eaten by deer and rabbits—both of which are plant-eaters.

Strangely, this scientist who studies insects doesn’t tell his readers he is referring to insects, and more to the point, the caterpillars of moths. I suspect he misrepresents his actual concern because at the time his book was first published in 2007, most people saw insects, and especially caterpillars, as “pests”.

In my 2006 book, The Nature-friendly Garden, I encouraged people to accept all organisms because of the roles each played in keeping the natural world functioning properly, and some reviewers made fun of me for suggesting such a thing. Perhaps Tallamy realized people would never embrace the idea of helping caterpillars—once the most despised form of insect life by a majority of gardeners—so he shrewdly employed “wildlife” instead.

Sadly, his disingenuousness has worked well, even though the paucity of moth caterpillars is due to society burning an excessive number of lights that attract and cause the deaths of moths (and numerous other insect species) before they can reproduce.

This man’s perfidiousness appears again and again in his work so he can fool those without knowledge of the plant and animal world into believing that nonnative plants are useless, even though many of them provide nectar for pollinators and fruits for birds, along with cover from weather and predators with their ofttimes evergreen or early-growing leaves.

If you want to save wildlife, please speak out against this extremely destructive narrative so we don’t lose far more insects, birds, and other species of wildlife to “invasive”-plant hysteria.  

DISCLAIMER:

Ads appearing at the end of e-mail blog-post notifications are posted by follow.it as recompense for granting free usage of their software at the author's blog site. The author of this blog has no say in what ads are posted and receives no monetary compensation other than the use of the software.