Of Butterflies, Bigfoot, and Toads

Gray's River Almanac, Number 2

By Robert Michael Pyle - Lecturer

In his poem "Blue Butterfly Day," describing Spring Azure butterflies, Robert Frost wrote:  

It is blue butterfly day here in spring 

And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry 

There is more unmixed color on the wing 

Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.  

                  Some years our "blue butterfly day" has come in February, and with our pale-pink pioneer camellias in full flush almost a month early, the first blues could  be out any day.  So far, in the fitful sunshine, two kinds of  little inchworm moths flutter around first-bloomers such as spiraea and heather in the garden and native coltsfoot in the hills.  One sort is warm cocoa brown, the other black and white with blue and chestnut highlights if you look closely.  I call them "honorary butterflies" because they fly by day and look like tiny butterflies, though they emerge a few weeks earlier.   You'll know it when the first real butterflies come out: the brilliant sky-blue of our  Echo Azures is unmistakable. 

                  But it is bigger game that I'd like to talk about here for a moment.  Many people know my interest in the great Northwest Native American tradition commonly known as Sasquatch, or Bigfoot.  I have often been asked whether there have been any reports of sightings, or stories of encounter, here in the Willapa Hills.  Well, yes, there have been some; not nearly as many as in the Cascades or the Olympics, but now and then one does hear Bigfoot stories coming from these maritime hills.  There was a striking report from North River a few years ago, and another up by Ryderwood.  Three or four years back a Puget Island logger reported seeing an upright hairy giant near K-M Pass on SR4.  But on the whole, Bigfoot lore is much scarcer on the ground here than in Washington's southern Cascades, or just north of Willapa in the southern parts of Olympic National Forest and Park.  Of course, logging has been heavier and more thorough here in the Willapa Hills, which have no federal forest reservations.  Some  believers think Bigfoot favors a mix of old-growth and managed forests, and we have mostly the latter.

                  The second most frequent question I hear concerns the animal's ability to remain mostly hidden.  Many people want Bigfoot to exist in flesh and blood, but they have a hard time accepting  that it wouldn't turn up now and then just as other rare species, such as mountain lions, eventually do.  And it is a good question.  Without going into it in any detail here, I'll just mention that I was camping a couple of nights ago deep in the Dark Divide, between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams, a wild area where I have studied the Bigfoot lore in some detail.  In the morning, having hiked into a remote spot high above Yellowjacket Creek where the elk lie up among sword ferns, I asked myself the same question:  even though this wildland is rich in tales of encounter with Bigfoot, both Indian and white, if they are really out there, how is it that they aren't seen more often?  But then, gazing about me into the miles and miles of thick forest, much of it well beyond roads and trails, I knew part of the answer: put a smart, physically adept creature into big, tangled territory like this, and add a degree of awareness about humans and their often destructive ways, and you can begin to imagine how it could stay out of sight.

                  But there is another aspect of this question that is just as interesting.  In order to see what's around us, one needs to be open to it.  Mind you, lots of folks are a little too open to Bigfoot, such that they see it in every shadow and boulder, behind every tree.   But just as common is the totally closed mind: "so and so can't exist, because I've never seen it!"  Surprisingly, one finds that attitude among many scientists, whereas science is supposed to be driven by fully open minds.  And this brings us back to Gray's River, and the question of toads.

                  The WesternToad, Bufo boreas, was once common in much of western Washington.  In recent decades, it has dramatically declined, especially in the lowlands. It has long been considered "absent" from the Lower Columbia region.  Some biologists suspect toads were eradicated by heavy DDT-spraying in the nineteen-fifties for hemlock loopers, while others point to the loss of seasonal breeding pools due to flood control by Columbia River dams.  In thirty years of looking I've never been able to find a single toad in Willapa; only the common chorus (or tree) frogs, red-legged frogs, and some introduced bullfrogs--but no toads.  I have heard some old-timers speak of seeing toads here in former times, and the late fisheries manager Ed Maxwell once or twice found toads stuck in pools at the Naselle Hatchery.  But that's it.  So the prevailing opinion among biologists has been that there are no longer  toads in Willapa, and I must say, I'd come pretty close to accepting that view myself.

                  So, imagine Thea's surprise one torrid day last August when she took our grandson Francis down to Gray's River to swim and splash--and found the pebble beach hopping with scores of toadlets!  I went back with her a few days later, and they were still there.  "Wow!" I exclaimed, "Toads in Willapa--at last!"  You'd think I'd found Bigfoot, it was almost that exciting.  We later came upon a huge, utterly flat female toad nearby in the road, impressed into the hot asphalt by tractor or truck.  Dr. Louis LaPierre of Lower Columbia College confirmed our identification, curated the important specimen, and plans to seek the toads' breeding location this spring. 

                  Which goes to show that we should never be too quick to close our minds to what might be around us.  In fact, Louis has found two kinds of butterflies in recent seasons that I have been seeking in these hills for decades without success.  They both fly in a small riparian habitat very near Longview!  And these are not subtle little things, like the inch-worm moths I mentioned above.   Little, yes, but hardly drab--one is bright green and the other, shining blue.  So now we know that we have Bramble Hairstreaks and Acmon Blues in the Willapa Hills after all--not to mention Western Toads!  All of these managed to remain concealed for many years, in spite of enthusiastic searching by experienced naturalists.  Who knows what else might be lurking in our own backyards, if we only go out there and look, with truly open minds?

                  I can't promise that you'll see bigfoot in Willapa, or that it even exists outside our imaginations.  But I can almost guarantee that you will see blue butterflies flitting about in the next few weeks--Robert Frost's " sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry"--if you will take the trouble to have a look.  Blue butterflies: imagine that!

Comments

[Carol A. Ervest]

Great post, enjoyed reading it with my Sunday morning coffee.