I’ve seen a few memes around the internet lately where people have shown off a really good stick they’ve found. Most of them have been shaped like weapons. The kind of stick you’d have loved to find as a kid to play games based on your cultural conflict of choice. This stick is maybe a better meme for naturalists of any age. I found it on the beach and it’s quite sea worn so the data potential is pretty useless but it’s still a good stick. It’s covered in the ordered scribblings of the bark beetle larvae that probably brought about the demise of the branch. A real piece of natural artwork.
If you hike in the Southwest U.S. desert, a dried Sotol (Dasilyrion) stalk makes a pretty good hiking staff. I had one for years that rode around in my truck.
Dogs are the experts on what constitutes a really good stick, whether for chasing or some relaxed chewing. I can’t speak to their criteria for selecting one.
I collected various pieces of eastern red cedar roots in the hopes of someday turning it into a bonsai by fastening a pine or juniper whip to it. it’s really dense wood and doesn’t rot, quite unlike every other conifer species in Tennessee, but oddly enough it’s the only conifer in TN not suitable for bonsai. (edit: I forgot about bald cypress, they’re extremely rot resistant)
Something like this
Found this one on my farm under power transmission lines.
I have two theories how it came to be that shape.
Someone had practiced music next to a small tree and over time, caused it to grow into the shape of a treble clef.
The power company was mowing vegetation under the powerline and a slasher twisted a small tree in to a knot. The sapling kept growing after that until a later slashing chopped it up.
They don’t reuse old nests, so I was rather disappointed last year when the next generation decided that the replacement stick I had found was too chewy and left in search of something slightly more rotten.
This year I tried something else and put out a shelf fungi for them, which has proved to be quite a success – sawdust all over the place, and after some initial chasing they seemed to have worked out a space-sharing arrangement allowing for multiple occupants.
(For those of you who might be wondering whether it is a good idea to deliberately attract carpenter bees to nest on a residential structure – the apartment building is made of concrete, so unless they evolve steel-tipped mandibles, the building itself is not at any risk of structural damage.)
