AdventuresInNature

It’s time to do a thinning job on the cormorant population.

These large fish-eating birds – called black geese around the Chesapeake Bay – are as efficient at decimating a fish population as a redneck with a stick of dynamite.

The non-native birds are “reproducing and spreading exponentially,” says Bob Duncan, chief of the wildlife division of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

What that means is they’re multiplying faster than Mickey’s brooms in “Fantasia.”

Most rivers and lakes in Tennessee and Virginia – not to mention much of the Mid-Atlantic region – are seeing an explosion of the fish eaters. There are hundreds on some lakes. Thousands on others. The huge boulders in the James River at Richmond, Va., have been transformed in color from the voracious birds’ whitewash.

Things can only get worse. Sooner rather than later the fish population will plunge faster than Nasdaq stock during the dot.com crash.

Cormorants are fast fliers and equally fast underwater swimmers. In overwhelming numbers, they cannot help but do a murderous job on smallmouth bass, sunfish, small catfish – everything that swims in our waterways.

Here’s a simple and reasonable solution.

Get the states most affected to declare a season on cormorants.

Cormorants have all the requisites of a game bird. They’re plentiful (an understatement). They’re elusive and fast, thus presenting a challenging target.

But in the overall scheme of things, these non-native, destructive and prolific black geese pose a real threat to the natural balance of the ecosystem.

A hunting period that coincided with Canada goose season would do wonders to “thin the herd,” so to speak. Such a new season would also provide hunters in fall and winter with a genuine opportunity to practice much-needed conservation.

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Maybe the critics are right.

Maybe fishing has gone south on the North Fork of the Holston River in Virginia and Tennessee.

Let me put it this way. I’ve caught more fish in a bathtub while playing with my Rubber Duckie than I’ve been able to catch recently on the North Fork.

And this from what was one of the finest smallmouth rivers in two states just a few short years ago.

Locals blame river otters and cormorants.

From Hiltons through Wadlow Gap and Weber City, downriver past the Tennessee state line at Cloud’s Ford, residents have developed a hatred for otters and cormorants similar to that of the Devil for holy water.

Otters, once native to the area but trapped out a century ago, have been restocked in the river system by TVA and Virginia game department biologists. The 30-pound animals are cute as buttons and cavort as if trying out for a Disney movie. But they live on fish.

Cormorants are black, slender, goose-size birds that can dive and swim underwater like … well, like an otter. They aren’t native to Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, but know a good thing when they find it. So they settle in and invite all their relatives.

These fish-gulpers are called “black geese” along the Chesapeake Bay, and are so good at chasing down and catching fish that the Japanese have been using the birds for centuries to fill fish baskets.

The method is simplicity itself: Tie a string to the cormorant’s leg. Send him diving after a fish. When he nails one, hand-line him in and take it away before he can eat it.

Personally, I prefer a fly rod or Shimano spinning reel in my hand over a large bird with a string on its leg. Yet such bold innovation may be the wave of the future. It’s suddenly difficult – at least in the past couple of years -- to catch smallmouth bass, channel catfish and sunfish using traditional methods in the North Fork.

Otters and cormorants. Cormorants and otters.

My brother Tosh (Glen, to his Eastman buddies) lives on the North Fork and has watched the annual decline in good fishing.

“If I have to make a choice between watching otters play and going fishing,” he grumbles, “I’ll take fishing every time.” Such, he believes, is closer to the natural order of things.

As we all know, younger brothers are seldom right about anything.

But this time, Tosh nailed it.

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This is the time of the snake.

Black snake. Garter snake. Diamond-back rattlehead.

You name it. Snakes are out and about these hot summer days, doing the things snakes do, which is mostly scaring humans into issuing primal screams.

I have a theory. Snake venom doesn’t kill animals as large as humans. Not often, anyway. But pure, unadulterated fear and loathing can douse your lights quicker than you can yell “Snake!,” then make a normally impossible flat-footed jump of 90 degrees.

Once, I was already coming down with my weight on my right foot along a path through the Great Dismal Swamp when I spied a huge cottonmouth moccasin in the exact spot I was about to step. Coiled he was. Ready for business.

The next thing I knew, I was 10 feet to the right of the path, entangled in some bayberry bushes but with no clear recollection of how I got there. I’ve always assumed I levitated out of harm’s way.

The point is: Now, if ever, is the time to be on alert for snakes. Dog Days are coming, which is the time my grandma said snakes go blind and will bite anything, although they seem to have a propensity for sandaled feet and bare ankles.

This is a busy time for snakes. Many are laying eggs in old tree stumps and piles of rubbish and rocks. And because a snake is cold-blooded, he feels best and is most active when the weather is hottest.

Just last week, an acquaintance lost one of the family dogs -- a rat terrier -- when the little animal tackled a copperhead. And lost big time. Bitten several times, the poor dog died within 12 hours.

On another occasion, about this time of year, a park-ranger friend at Shenandoah National Park walked out the back door of her cabin one night to take laundry to the basement. She was barefooted when she stepped on a copperhead in the dark. “I knew better,” she said. “I should have had shoes or boots on, and carrying a flashlight.”

Two years later, her foot remained so swollen that she couldn’t lace her regulation ranger clod-hoppers all the way.

If it’s any consolation (and it won’t be; I know that), there are only four poisonous snakes in the United States. Those four are the rattlesnake, the copperhead, the coral snake (in Florida mostly) and the cottonmouth moccasin.

Better yet, only two of those (the copperhead and the rattler) are found with regularity in Virginia and Tennessee. (There’s one tiny exception. Cottonmouths live in the Great Dismal Swamp in the southeast corner of Virginia, but only an idiot would be prowling around in that steaming jungle in summer. I rest the case against my own idiocy.)

If you’re fishing, hiking, camping or in any way spending time outdoors in July and August, chances are you will encounter an occasional snake. If it’s a blacksnake or any other “common” breed, let him go his own way while you take the opposite route. Should make both of you feel better.

It is only the venom-packers – the rattlers and copperheads – that you need worry about. Don’t turn over rocks or logs or stick your hand in any place such a woodpile where a snake could hide.

And as always, if you’re about to step on one in your path that you didn’t know was there until too late, immediately levitate up, across, backward or forward.

Just do it without thinking. You can always change underwear after you get back to the car.


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