Dick Oehlenschlager

Last night I went to a chapter meeting of the Master Naturalist group. Our speaker was Dick Oehlenschlager, the curator at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  He was an entertaining speaker from the get go.  As I came in, I was asking another master naturalist friend of mine who lives in my neighborhood if she would let me know if she heard any barred or great horned owls hooting in her neighborhood.  I wanted the information for the breeding bird survey.  She said she wasn't sure of the difference between the owl calls.  Before I could get out my version of "Who Cooks for You?" Dick Oehlenschlager hooted out the barred, the great horned, the screech and the saw-whet owl calls so perfectly you would think there were owls in the room.  I hadn't met him yet.  My mouth hung open and I said, "Dude.  You are good at that."  This guy is amazing.  The things he knows are incredible.  As he spoke, he talked about growing up in the small town of Nimrod.  Oddly enough, I know where that town is.  Before my brother was born my parents told us he would be named Nimrod if he was a boy. I believed them. So that name has been stuck in my head for a long time.  I'm glad the parents were just kidding about the name Nimrod.  In Nimrod the town, Dick paid attention to nature.  As a child he practiced taxidermy.  Some of the birds and mammals he shot but many were caught by the barn cat.  As he milked the cows by hand, if the cat brought in a vole or a bird, he would squirt the cat in the face with fresh warm milk.  The cat would drop the prize to lick it's whiskers and Dick would scoop up the treasure.  Now he can stuff a bird or a mammal in about 15 minutes.  The Science Museum has drawers and drawers of preserved specimens. Dick is a gifted taxidermist, ornithologist, bird bander, biologist, botanist, hunter, angler, environmentalist, and scientist. He brought in a bunch of stuffed birds and rodents.  He had herbarium samples by the dozens.  He has spent a lot of time in Wadena County studying the plants and animals.  He has written a couple books and portions of several other books.  He has found many new species over his lifetime in science.  He talked about the difficulty in determining the species of blackberries.  Wadena County alone has seven species.  Taxonomy can be really difficult.  Some species of damselflies cannot be distinguished without surgical exploration of the genitals.  Who wants to put that on your resume?  As Dick talked about various animals (skunk, possum, coyote, wolf, sheepshead fish, gopher, porcupine, etc), he would often mention how good they were to eat.  Seriously, he has tasted all those animals.  He's interesting to talk to but I don't think I'd go to his house for dinner.  He mentioned how a person, if they were so inclined, could spend a lifetime studying their back yard.  You could spend years determining the exact species of every bird, bug, moth, grass, tree, weed, and mammal.  You could keep track of how each species grows, matures, reproduces, and dies.  You could track their behaviors over the years and determine for yourself if global warming is making a difference.  He was an inspiring speaker.