Sun, 04/01/2018 - 12:15am

Eva Murray

I was in possession of a good-sized pile of newspapers, mostly the Bangor Daily News, from earlier this year. Many of the January and February papers were still untouched, and I could not bring myself to carry them to recycling without going through the pile, in case I had missed something urgent. I sat down beside the wood stove and began a small trip back in time.

Of course, there was serious reporting on Donald Trump, bomb cyclones, Russians, mudslides, other sugary cocktails, Donald Trump’s relatives, North Korea, South Korea, and Tom Brady. There were also several photographs of Maine people who had caught very large fish, or actually, photographs of the fish. I love the Bangor paper, with its mix of local and worldwide content, although much of that is from other news sources such as the Washington Post and the Associated Press. Give me the local reporting any day. It was primarily the stuff I hadn’t seen on the evening news that caught my attention.

We read in the papers that smelts, eels, Canada lynx, and leatherback sea turtles are up; ticks on moose are down, and lobsters are not to be boiled alive in Switzerland. That last one is the only bit I’m sure I can believe.

Raccoons have evidently been a problem, and rabies is no joke, but citizens are fighting back. There were several articles describing creative ways people have found to dispatch suspect raccoons. In one, a man shot a one-eyed rabid raccoon, who, he said, “was talkative and walking around.” We've got to do something about those jabbermouth raccoons. In another, a “Mainer uses bread knife to kill raccoon attacking dog.” Specifically, a “dull, 10 inch bread knife.”

Most stories about raccoons lately also mention the intrepid Rachel Borch of Hope, Maine, who was bitten by a rabid raccoon last summer and who drowned said raccoon in a puddle. As it turns out, I've met Rachel Borch. When she was a kid, my children and she and her brother used to go swimming in the same hotel pool. Small world; I am grateful she is safe, and likewise, the other two fellows, and the dog.

“Clammers, wormers can coexist,” an op-ed by former state Senator Jill Goldthwait, was more about National Park policy than mud-loving invertebrates. She writes in support of traditional harvesters doing cold and backbreaking work rather than reporting an out-and-out clam-digger vs. worm-digger battle. I suppose that means the headline was borderline sensationalist, but it was probably written by an editor, not by Jill Goldthwait. It often works that way (I have discovered). We expect a tale of mudflat mayhem; we get policy stuff. Oh, well; that's still important.

I remember back when I was in college and there was a worm-digger’s strike. It made the papers, so I clipped out the article and taped it to the outside of my dorm room door. Since then, I have paid a lot more attention to the worm digging industry; Maine coast pride, don’t you know. (There were mostly overprotected suburban preppies at Bates in those days, and some of them needed a little dose of the real world in my opinion, like maybe hearing about a worm-digger’s strike. They just rolled their eyes and went back to ironing their golf shirts.)

Another story about our National Park turned up in the BDN, “Park Service cutting free entrance days at Acadia.” My husband and I get all kinds of free days because we usually go to Acadia in the winter. Everybody knows that’s the time to enjoy Bar Harbor. This year we walked to the top of Cadillac Mountain at the end of February, and we could see forever. We do appreciate our local National Park.

There were several stories in that pile of newspapers concerning eels, including “Panels considers elver quota increase,” in which we learn about the existence of the American Eel Management Board, and “Fishermen hopeful for higher eel quota,” in which we read about 13 new eel licenses up for grabs. A piece with the headline “Two men sentenced for trafficking baby eels” references an “interstate baby eel trafficking ring.” That certainly explains the need for an eel management board.

I just can’t read enough about eels.

Or owls. In “Skiers warned of dive-bombing owl” we learn of an aggressive barred owl harassing Nordic skiers at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester. A few days later we read in a column by Bob Duchesne, an actual bird expert, that this is probably all wrong. It was much more likely a great horned owl. Barred owls don’t tend to dive-bomb skiers so much. You have to read more than just the first article on a subject if you want to become really knowledgeable.

There is a lot going on in the world we may not realize, living here on the quiet coast of Maine, where most of the news is about rabid raccoons and eels. Under the headline, “After grounding peacock, airline tightens rules for support animals” we read how, “United’s announcement came shortly after the airline’s decision to bar an emotional support peacock named Dexter from a flight leaving Newark.”

Dexter?

Leaving the animal news for a moment, as a once-upon-a-time school drummer I was pleased to read that “Maine drumstick maker to add 14 jobs.” That’s more than the 13-job uptick in eel harvesters.

Also, the “Criminal underworld is dropping bitcoin.” I am certainly relieved.

A man was charged after he “led police on a chase in a stolen U-Haul.” The best part was reading to the end of the story, to discover that this was not the perpetrator's first high-speed U-Haul police chase. I know a thing or two about U-Hauls, renting one regularly for our town’s recycling program. They do not go that fast.

I enjoyed reading a few of the obituaries, some of which made for good articles in their own right. “Surgeon who treated both sides in Falkland War dies” was interesting. Dr. Rick Jolly, a British Navy surgeon, was honored by “both his country and his former enemy” for “saving hundreds of British and Argentine lives” in 1982. Naomi Parker Fraley, a former machinist at naval Air Station Alameda and the real woman from the Rosie the Riveter poster, died at 96. Cartoonist Mort Walker, who drew Beetle Bailey died, and the founder of IKEA died.

Speaking of IKEA, in what I might call the “too much information” category, from the Washington Post (who got it from Ad Week) “Ikea has a new advertisement that’s running in a Swedish magazine and asks women to pee on the page in order to learn about a discount.” It’s a pregnancy test. Get a positive result and you get a deal on a crib.

This is not a graceful segue, but let’s move to the food beat. I found a useful and informative article listing places to buy doughnuts in Bangor, “The only boiled egg recipe you’ll ever need,” a piece about how a sale on Nutella resulted in brawls — even riots — in French supermarkets, and a story about how a couple from Hermon who helped make a Dysart’s commercial about chicken pot pie ended up inspiring a Saturday Night Live skit. Somehow, I missed that one.

I had also missed “Butcher trapped in freezer uses sausage to bash way out.” Now, that is real news. We read in the later paragraphs that it was “a 3.3 pound black pudding, a form of blood sausage” which he used to batter the frozen safety exit button. The butcher figured the sausage saved his life as the freezer was set at -4 degrees F.

Also in local news we had, “Man punches self to avoid OUI test” In the piece, a local detective explained that “after he failed a field sobriety test, they brought (the man) to the jail…and explained the (Breathalyzer) testing process and his choices, which included the option to decline to take the test. Then (he) punched himself in the face multiple times, according to police, who observed, “That wasn’t one of the options we gave him….”

“No one has been killed by Bigfoot, so we should thank Donald Trump” was a guest column about the President taking credit for aviation safety. The columnist writes, “Speaking of Trump’s greatness, did you know he has made it so nobody dies in commercial airline crashes anymore?” The President is quoted as saying, “Since taking office I have been very strict on commercial aviation. Good news—it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!” In the next paragraph we learn that in this country we went from Zero commercial aviation deaths in 2014, 2015, and 2016 “to an even more impressive Zero in 2017!”

Note to my own editor: it was not my idea to capitalize Zero.

In another story about that 2017 safety record, an airline safety consultant and retired pilot, describing how safety is the result of the work of thousands of people, is quoted as saying that the most dangerous part of flying is often driving to the airport.

On the other hand, there was story out of London with the headline “Airport cancels flights after WWII bomb found.” An unexploded bomb was found “in the muck in the River Thames near the end of a runway.” “Scotland Yard said, essentially, that is it a very big, very old bomb...” Aviation safety in 2017 may be all thanks to Donald Trump, but in 2018 we will thank Scotland Yard.

Sometimes, it’s all about a good headline. “Counting of deer dung one of biologist's odder jobs” must have been a slow news day. I draw the same conclusion when I read, “Women’s hands really are colder than men’s,” “Alien life could thrive in a place like Saturn’s icy moon,” and “Woman fell asleep with headache, woke up with British accent.” I swear, this was all in the Bangor paper, most of it picked up from the Washington Post.

They’ve got nothing on the local news, though, which recently alerted us that “Vinalhaven man threatens king of Sweden.” Hmph; yeah, right. He wasn’t really from Vinalhaven.

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