Previously on “The Secret History of Vermont”

Introduction
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Obverse: In Vermont Ira Allen is best known for being Ethan Allen’s brother. Reverse: Commemorating the official extinction of the catamount.

Chapter 7: Vermont Wildlife

Vermont is inhabited by noteworthy wildlife in addition to the Vermont Fresh Water Plesiosaur mentioned in Chapter 4.

The Vermont Quantum Moose

It’s practically impossible to travel a single stretch of the interstate in Vermont without seeing a sign saying something like, “Moose Next 5000 Feet.” It’s just as impossible to see a moose. What’s going on here?

Being large animals moose had a particularly difficult time of it when the Burlington Free Press started publishing daily weather forecasts and making everything uphill both ways. After putting up with it for a few years the moose population in Vermont decided to take advantage of the new environment in a particularly elegant manner. I am pleased to reveal their discovery which is a breakthrough in modern physics: The Unified Quantum Moose Theory.

Moose have always been very quantum animals. Either there’s a moose in front of you or there isn’t. No doubt about it. When the quantum fabric of Vermont was weakened by the Free Press’ weather forecasts, individual moose discovered that they could teleport themselves by shifting into quantum phase space. Once you understand how it works teleportation is really very easy. All you have to do is reduce the probability of being in your current location to zero while simultaneously increasing the probability of being somewhere else to a certainty. Moose seem to have a knack for it.

Moose also discovered that it’s possible to live in quantum phase space which turns out to be handy during difficult times like hunting season. Eventually the entire moose population in Vermont emigrated to quantum phase space, returning to our reality only occasionally for a “vacation in the old country” or when accidentally precipitated by an observer.

Remember that the role of an observer is very important in quantum matters. Nothing can be said to have really happened until it’s been observed. This is a minor nuisance for moose because an intent observer in Vermont can force a moose to appear out of quantum phase space just by being really observant.

Of course it’s extremely unlikely that a 180 pound person will precipitate a 2000 pound moose even under the best conditions. The rare times one sees a moose along the interstate it’s certainly because several people in different cars were all looking at the same patch of ground at the same time and their combined observational power forced the moose to appear.

So if moose can be said to hardly exist in Vermont any more, what’s with all those signs on the interstate? Blame the Montpelier Legislature. When the Vermont Department of Moose Management was made aware of the Unified Quantum Moose Theory it reasoned that a moose in quantum phase space could be thought of as occupying the entire State because no matter where you point, the probability, however low, of the moose being there, is the same. Therefore, if a moose is everywhere then it could be anywhere, and if a moose is anywhere then the VDMM might as well put up all of its Moose signs on the interstate where they’re highly visible and, as a gesture of solidarity with the Vermont Department of Interstate Management, it’ll inconvenience the maximum number of commuters when the signs are installed and maintained.

The Vermont Libertarian Mountain Lion

Unlike moose, which are officially everywhere, mountain lions officially don’t exist. There hasn’t been a proved sighting of a mountain lion by a certified official for over a hundred years. Occasionally someone will claim they’ve seen a mountain lion, or catamount as they’re sometimes called by Native Vermonters, but the evidence is never enough to survive the so-called trial by immersion in a Montpelier manure pit.

Reported sightings are rare not because sightings are rare, but because people don’t bother. Reporting seeing a catamount in Vermont is like reporting seeing an ATV. If you reported every one you saw you’d never get any work done. Certain woodlands in Vermont are crawling with mountain lions yet when someone discovers a partially eaten deer in the woods or a downed cow, wild dogs always end up with the official blame.

A hundred years ago the common Vermont Mountain Lion was subjected to some intense evolutionary pressure by virtue of Montpelier’s policy of paying a generous bounty for every one shot. When the bounty money ran out the Montpelier Legislature reasoned that the mountain lion must have become extinct and declared it a retroactively endangered species, making shooting one a felony.

This was just fine with the mountain lions who had in the meantime evolved into a new species that instinctively avoids being seen by members of the Montpelier Legislature, members of the Vermont Department of Mountain Lion Management (still going on strong despite its officially extinct subject matter), game wardens, UVM zoology professors, and anyone else who might be in a position to officially recognize one.

Occasionally a kind-hearted person tries to restore to the catamount some kind of official existence in under the theory the species can only benefit from the protection and management of the wise inhabitants of Montpelier, but the Libertarian Mountain Lion is having none of it. Mountain Lions are practically the only living entities in Vermont who don’t pay taxes.

The Vermont Tin Pecker

The absence of the usual clue, warmer weather, makes it difficult to tell when spring is coming to Vermont. Nevertheless there are a few signs well known to all Vermonters. When people all over the State are awakened half an hour before the alarm clock by the vigorous percussion of a diamond-hard beak on chimney pipe or roof flashing then you can tell that the springtime mating season of the Vermont Tin Pecker has begun.

Thought to be an evolutionary offshoot of the common woodpecker, the tinpecker is adapted to survive in climates where the frozen trees are harder than locally available metal artifacts. Very little is actually known about the tinpecker, like what they eat, what they make their nests out of, and the composition of their eggshells. The only interaction so far between Vermont ornithologists and tinpeckers is when the former swear at the latter at 4:30 in the morning.

The Vermont Common Porcupine

Foreign visitors to Vermont (mostly people from other states) are often aghast at what they see. “How can these people live when all they own is a large 150 year old farmhouse in good repair, fertile fields, lush healthy forest, unparalleled views, and unlimited fresh air?”

It is true that one does not generally see great displays of mundane wealth in Vermont. That doesn’t mean that such wealth doesn’t exist, it just means that it’s well invested and not obvious. Vermont has a boom-bust cycle that has served for centuries as a reliable and comforting source of income for those who are wise and disciplined enough to take advantage of it. The cycle depends on two critical components:

  1. Not appearing to be wealthy.
  2. Porcupines.

Here’s how it works. Remember this is a cycle so the “starting point” here is arbitrary:

  1. Vermont appears to be largely unoccupied. There are a lot of fields with incredible scenic vistas and no buildings. The natives appear not to have very much money.
  2. Foreigners visit and say to themselves, “Wouldn’t this be a wonderful spot on which to build a log cabin for a summer vacation home? And I bet we could do it quite reasonably.”
  3. Negotiations take place and the foreigners borrow money from their foreign banks to buy fields and build log cabins. The price of the land is relatively low, the price of the structures is (in comparison) relatively high. Vermonters get all this money in return for deeds, logs, and labor. The money is carefully invested.
  4. At this point the population of the Vermont Common Porcupine (Consumium Logcabinae Profitablus) is at its cyclic minimum. The favorite food of the porcupine is dry spruce and balsam wood which is, entirely coincidentally, the cheapest bulk material for cabin logs. Absent human intervention the natural supply of dry spruce and balsam is limited to what gets blown over by strong winds in the woods.
  5. A few log cabins are built but there are too few porcupines to be noticeable. The delighted foreigners invite their friends to visit and some of them buy land and build their own log cabins. As the number of cabins and the supply of food grows so does the porcupine population, exponentially.
  6. In the classic boom-bust tradition the last generation of porcupines devour all the foreigners’ log cabins in a single season and then have a massive die-off for lack of food. (Vermonters’ log cabins aren’t made of cheap logs and are left alone.) The foreigners discover that they can’t afford to rebuild with good logs from their insurance settlement (the damn natives are asking outrageous prices) and so they put their lots up for sale, quite reasonably as they didn’t cost that much in the first place. Vermonters buy back the land.
  7. Go to step 1.

(Author’s note: Unlike the rest of the Secret History of Vermont which was revealed to the author by real Native Vermonters, the author, who lives in a log cabin made from logs of spruce and balsam, figured this part out for himself.)