Dac Crossley's Western Blog

The Funnels of Antonio Berlese

The Funnels of Antonio Berlese

Antonio Berlese was an Italian nobleman and an entomologist of note. He was an early specialist on insect pests of fruit trees. His Italian entomology textbook, Gli Insetti, rivaled those of our American authors – John Henry Comstock and Edward Oliver Essig.

But that’s not what he’s noted for.

Berlese got into a race with the Dutch biologist A. C. Oudemans, to provide names for all of the European species of mites. Berlese named, I don’t know, hundreds of them. I run into his name frequently in my studies of mites.

But that’s not what he’s noted for, either.

Berlese invented a tool for collecting small arthropods – insects, mites, spiders – that’s widely used today. The Berlese Funnel. You put a sample of moss, leaf litter, bird nest, whatever, into the funnel and turn on the light bulb. The heat will drive the little arthropods into the alcohol cup below. Antonio didn’t have electric lights – he used steam to heat his funnels. But same principle. And THAT'S how today’s entomologists know Antonio Berlese.

These Berlese funnels are set up at the Cabin on Freeman Ridge. Wonder what I’ll find? Maybe something I haven’t seen before.

By the way – that Dutch mite A. C. Oudemans, who named many more species of mites, is also noted for the book that he wrote – on sea serpents!

Ain't science fun?

Dac Crossley
August 27, 2014. Happy Birthday, Laurie F.!

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” – Earl Weaver.

Give A Man A Horse He Can Ride

My good old Honda Accord suffered an upset stomach; had to spend the night at the dealership. And I had an upset also. No car!

Funny how some of us depend on our cars. Just knowing that there was nothing sitting there in my garage made me nervous. Of course, I could call on friends or family if I really needed to go someplace, but it’s just not the same. Your car is your escape into the broad world.

And I wondered – is it because of my western upbringing, that I just feel that I must have access to a car? Back there in south Texas most everybody drove one. If you went to Corpus or San Antonio, or the grocery store, you drove. We weren’t city folks.

For my grandparent’s generation it wasn’t cars, it was horses. And they must have had that lost feeling when the horse wasn’t there. After all, being horseless was a serious difficulty in the Old West. Remember the penalty for horse theft?

None of my grandparents ever drove a car. It was all horse, or horse and buggy. Never an automobile. (Well, there was the time grandmother Baird decided to try the Buick…). My parents were the transitional generation. Both rode horses as children; both drove their cars everyplace as adults.

Is it a western phenomenon, this fear of being unhorsed – un-"autoed?" Here in the Southeast, in Georgia, maybe it’s pickup trucks. That’s what you see on the rural dealership lots.

Modern autos are a far cry from the cars of my youth. You don’t work on your own car, not any more. The dealership plugs in some kind of analyzer to diagnose your problem. I can’t even find the carburetor. So I’m dependent on a fate I cannot control – for my mechanical horse.

Here we are, Larry Cavazos and I, climbing into the 1934 Chevvy on our way to the Frio River. My brother Walter already in back seat.

I promise to give my Honda TLC.

Dac Crossley
April 19, 2014
Happy Birthday Moina Michael, the “Poppy Lady,” of Good Hope, Georgia.

“There are only two things that a child will share willingly: communicable diseases and his mother’s age.” – Benjamin Spock.

Stars of the Summer Night

Last night I drove to a spot I know that has a clear view of the heavens. Eastern skies tend to be hazy even when they aren’t clouded, but still I was able to pick out my favorite summer constellation – Scorpio, the scorpion.

When I was a child, way out on the fringes of little Kingsville, Texas, my bed on the back porch gave me a clear view of the sky. Each night I traced the Milky Way, and watched the play of the celestial seasons. My Grandmother Crossley introduced me Scorpio, as her grandfather did for her. It’s my favorite constellation. After all, my birth sign is – you guessed it.

Texas changes and Kingsville grows. My house is no longer there; my family, my childhood friends are scattered, lost in time’s march. And Mesquite brush conquers the plains. All seems unfamiliar. Yet Scorpio, that good old constellation, is still there.

I wonder – perhaps Cabeza de Vaca, the old Spanish castaway on his trek from Florida to Mexico – did he pass along the south Texas coast? Did his path take him along the beaches where offshore winds kept the mosquitoes at bay? Naked, with his two remaining companions – Esteban the Moor, no longer slave and Durantes the pretty body – did they navigate by stars? Alternately tormented and worshipped by strange savages in a land unfamiliar – were the heavens their touchstone? Did Cabeza de Vaca’s grandmother show him Scorpio?

The decades have been good to me. When I gaze at Scorpio I see an icon that seems to connect me with my carefree childhood. And my ancestors who saw the same stars. And the dim ages of magic and firelight. Scorpio looks down on the sweep of centuries, a constant in our mutable earth.

And summer flows swiftly away.

Dac Crossley
August 8, 2014

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau.