Chapter 17

Ten Crafty Critters

In This Chapter

Watching animals for signs of weather

P eople have wanted to know what the weather was going to be like long before there was any really good way of finding out. Weather was something people have always wondered about, in fact, and before there was weather science, they looked for ways to figure it out. Just imagine, the poor dears: no clock radio waking them up with a forecast, no last minute Weather Channel summary, and nothing on the subject in the newspaper. What was a person to do?

There were lots of ways to look at the weather before there was science. For a long time, in many parts of the world, the weather was said to be the work of the gods. If weather was good, the gods were happy, and when it was bad, they were angry — usually because of something the likes of you and I had done wrong.

Farmers and sailors came up with their own ways of looking at the sky and predicting what was going to happen next. Some of the old proverbs that Chapter 18 describes come down from this tradition. People looked for signs of changing weather everywhere — in the stars, the moon and Sun, the clouds in the sky, of course, and in the behavior of animals around them.

This chapter takes a look at this very old tradition of hand-me-down weather signs from the critters that share the house, the barnyard, and the wilderness with the likes of you and me. The idea was that these “lower forms” of animal life were more sensitive to weather changes than brutes like you and me. There may be something to that idea, in a way, but to be honest, as accurate predictors of weather, these “signs” don’t hold up too well under close scrutiny.

So don’t start bothering your cat for a weather forecast. Read these for the fun of it!

Cats

Some of the weirdest old animal signs of weather change have to do with cats around the house. My guess is they were thought up and passed around by people who spent too much time indoors.

When cats sneeze, for example, it was considered a sign of rain. It was also a sign of rain when a cat scratches itself or scratches a log or a tree. If a cat lies on its head with its mouth turned up, that meant a storm was on the way. A cat washing her head behind the ear was considered a sign of rain, although in other places, cats washing themselves were considered signs of fair weather.

Go figure. I don’t know about you, but if there is a bigger mystery in the world than tomorrow’s weather, it is understanding the behavior of my cats!

Dogs

Dogs haven’t done as well as cats in the weather prediction business. At least, that’s my explanation for the fact that there aren’t very many old weather signs around that give much forecasting credit to dogs. Like most animal weather signs, the behavior of dogs most often was described as signs of rain.

A dog digging a deep hole in the ground was a sign of rain, for example, and so was a dog eating grass in the morning. A dog howling when someone leaves the house was said to be a sign of rain, although, for the life of me, I don’t know why it wasn’t a sign that the dog wanted to go with them. A spaniel sleeping was considered a sign of rain. Imagine that. If my dog sleeping was a sign of rain, it would be raining cats and — well, he’s a good dog.

Frogs

A lot of frogs have spent a lot of time in jars doing duty as “poor man’s barometers” over the years. It was a long tradition in Europe, this idea that a green tree frog was especially sensitive to changes in air pressure and its behavior could predict changes in the weather. The jar was half-filled with water, and there was a little ladder. On bad-weather days, the frog stayed in the water, the thinking went, and when it was getting better, the frog climbed up the ladder out of the water.

This was just a myth, but it makes you wonder about frogs and toads and other amphibians in recent years. Their populations seem to be disappearing around the world. Are the frogs trying to tell us something?

Ants

For thousands of years, people have been looking at the industrious ants for signs that the colonies were able to foretell the weather. It seems like the Greeks had the idea first. (Then again, it seems like the Greeks had a lot of ideas first.)

“It is a sign of rain if ants in a hollow place carry their eggs up from the ant-hill to the high ground, and a sign of fair weather if they carry them down,” wrote Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle’s back in 350 B.C. The idea is that because they sense a storm on the way, the colony sets to work closing up the entrances and reinforcing their hills with new soil.

An American put the business to rhyme with the saying, “When ants their walls do frequent build, rain will from the clouds be spilled.” Ants aren’t the only insects busy at a change in the weather, it seems. Other old signs of coming rain: Gnats bite, crickets are lively, spiders come out of their nests and flies gather in houses.

Birds

Birds seem to have been relied on frequently as forecasters, as close as they are to the weather and all.

All kinds of weather signs related to birds of one feather or another have been passed down through the ages, although many of these are nothing to crow about.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb: “The call of the cuckoo heralds spring planting.” There is old American folklore about the singing of birds. When they stop singing, for example, rain and thunder could be on the way, and if they sing in the rain, it’s a sign that fair weather is coming.

In the barnyard, when chickens crow before sundown, it is a sign of rain the next day. If a rooster crows on the ground, rain is coming. If he crows on the fence, expect fair weather.

And the behavior of wild birds has been closely watched for signs of weather change at least since the time of the ancient Greeks. They thought it was a sign of rain when gulls or ducks plunged under water, and when they flapped their wings it was a sign of wind. And a heron screaming was a sign of wind. And the ancients watched for nesting activity as a sign of the seasons to come. If they flock together in moderate numbers on an island, it is a sign of good weather, but if the flock is big, drought could be on the way.

Caterpillars

The Wooly Bear Caterpillar is a standard of American weather folklore for some reason. The idea is that this caterpillar of the tiger moth is able to foretell how severe the coming winter will be.

Every autumn, the dense coat of fine hairs of the wooly bear gets a lot of press attention. The width of the brown band around its middle is carefully measured as an indication of what to expect of winter. And every spring, people look back at the predictions divined from the caterpillar’s wooly coat, and it’s almost never verified — a complete fantasy.

Squirrels

The scurrying little critters in the forests and the trees have done pretty well for themselves as subjects of seasonal weather forecasts.

Chipmunks were watched around the Great Lakes, for example. If they were tucked away for the winter by October, a cold and long one was on the way. If they were seen in the forest until December 1, winter would be short and mild.

And squirrels were popular signs of the coming winter. If they were seen laying away an especially large food supply, a long and severe winter could be expected. This widely held idea inspired a rhyme: “When he eats them on the tree, weather as warm as warm can be.”

Some killjoy did a 20-year study of the squirrels back in the 1880s and splashed cold water on the whole idea.

Groundhog

Who hasn’t heard the old one about Groundhog Day? This is evidently an ancient German tradition, but judging from all of the media attention every February 2, Americans just love the idea.

If the hibernating groundhog pokes his head out of his hole on that day and sees his shadow, he heads back into his burrow knowing that he faces another six weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow, winter will be over soon.

This date marks the halfway point between winter and spring, a time some years when just about anything good you can say about the weather is welcome.

Livestock

You’ve got to give those shepherds their due. Anybody who spends that much time looking at all of that livestock deserves to be listened to, and the tenders of the flocks have been considered experts on weather changes for centuries.

If sheep climb the hills and scatter, it means they’re expecting fair weather, and if they bleat and seek shelter, snow is on the way. Cows are the same way. If they refuse to go to pasture in the morning, it will rain before nightfall. If a cow stops and shakes her foot, there is bad weather coming behind her.

Watch the way they lick and scratch. It means rain is coming if cattle lick their forefeet, or lie on the right side, or scratch themselves more than usual against posts or other objects.

For some things, you just have to take the word of the shepherds.

Fish

Maybe you’ve noticed this: People who fish a lot have a certain amount of spare time on their hands. They certainly have time to think about the weather and to look for signs of change in the fish.

According to one tradition, fish bite readily and swim near the surface when rain is expected. But according to another, fish are inactive and won’t bite just before thunder showers. Some not only know bad weather is coming, but where it is coming from. The saying is that blue fish, pike, and others jump with their head “toward the point where a storm is frowning.”