These wild cherry branches were near the bottom of the woodpile, where little rodents have cached collections of cherry pits and other edibles. I've never seen anything quite like this, but apparently the deer mice (chipmunks? voles?) find something in the aromatic cherry bark attractive.
When I saw the intricate tooth marks (if that is what they are), I thought about the cryptic heiroglyphs I used to see in tater bug pronota. What message do the deer mice send me?
The marks reminded me of images of the compulsive writings of hypergraphia sufferers. I searched in vain for an Internet example, although I learned that many bloggers like to imagine they have hypergraphia. Here are a few references addressing the compulsive urge to write among humans. There are no references to rodent writing.
- Hypergraphia
- The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, a publicity page for The Midnight Disease by Alice Weaver Flaherty
- The brains behind writer's block: New views of the museby William J. Cromie, an article about Alice Flaherty and her book from the Harvard Gazette.
5 comments:
Interesting texture and abstract design, but alas, no translation available from here.
isn't cherry wood bark used to make an extract that is still used (as flavor-but it was a traditional home remedy) in cough medicine?
if the bark has a flavor and anti oxydent property (and i am pretty sure it does) it seem smart for the little guys to eat it!
Interesting patterns, Rebecca! If you're lucky perhaps you will catch one of these rodents in the act someday...
No references to rodent writing?? You're so funny.
do you think that if you set 1 million rodents in front of 1 million cherry branches, eventually they would create the Mona Lisa? No?
Cherry bark is very bitter, to my taste. (That taste is one way to recognize cherry trees in winter.) Perhaps it tastes different to mice, or perhaps he had a craving.
There are so many things I'd like to get translated.
Reya, I think the million rodent art project sounds interesting, but they probably wouldn't paint that lady. I'd like to se what they would create!
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