Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac; 1

Hello boys and girls and welcome to the first broadcast of the Wisconsin School of the air's 21st year. Yesterday we began our 21st consecutive year and we plan to make it the biggest and best ever. More about that later. But now let's begin the new year by putting on our hiking boots to take our first trip to a field with Ranger Mack. He's going to lead us on radio nature hike to the Dunbar thousands of boys and girls for the past 18 years. Now here's our guide. Ranger Mack. Hello boys and girls. This is your day so all up. I'm away. This is the familiar greeting that welcomes all traders only new to hit the trail that leads over hill and dale with the ranger Mack. Each Monday morning. You have not been in school very long not long enough to become accustomed to the hardness of the seats and the freedom of the summer months is still keen in your memory. Ranger Mack can recall how difficult it was for a

redheaded prickled faced boy to buckle down to the business of school band discipline after the swimming fishing gardening tramping days of summer. So he has a fellow feeling for outdoor loving boys. The first couple weeks of school. First of all he hopes you are returning to school hale and hearty firm in your resolution to make this year the best you have lived so far. For after all the school trail that leads to manhood and womanhood it is the most important trail for you to follow for that from the days that the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth Rock down to the present day the purse stand. Most important task of the government has been that of providing every boy and girl the chance to get a good schooling. The

future of our country depends upon it. There's always adventure as we pick up the trail now. Nature is performing the third act in the gorgeous drama of the seasons. We're going to watch that drama be a part of it and find adventure in it. Before we take the next trip afield the sun will have crossed the equator and autumn will be on its way to the northern half of this ball upon which we lay of the earth is beginning to dip away from the sun. The days are getting shorter and the nights longer by over a minute a day and that the sun's rays have less and less of heat and energy. Nature's pulse is beating more and more slowly the progs are returning to the pond.

Other birds have pointed their sights south where the crickets are tuning up their fiddles. The spiders are busy at their threads spinning the groundhog has already stored up fat for his long long winter sleep. The little elf ones are beginning to paint the leaves on trees. The area is dotted with parachutes of flying sea black birds in large flocks can be seen descending in graceful curves on a cornfield. The weird melancholy voice of the screech owl of a voice loved by all who love nature's voice can be heard in apple orchards. The monarch butterflies have felt the chill of the autumn air and have started their wondering flight to a butterfly tree somewhere

in the south land at the distant here covered with a haze of blue the blue haze that covers those distant hills makes those hills look higher than we ever knew them to be. This is a part of the drama of the autumn season that you one day I will witness. There is always adventure more than 2000 years ago old one of the most famous of the prosectors of ancient Greece wrote this statement in every natural object. There is something to excite our wonder. Most of us do not realize what a lot is to be seen in the way of nature even at our very doorstep. The trouble with many of us is that we do not take time to poke around and about DOWN AND WHAT WHAT WHAT.

During the day you know it is the way to find out the secret of things. Inventors are people. People filled with curiosity. And we have what we have in the comforts and conveniences of modern life. Because some people were curious. We know what we know about nature because some people were driven by curiosity to find out. Children are naturally curious. Nature provided curiosity and children in order to help them grow in knowledge. That's why they ask so many questions. That's why the conservation corner seems to fit well into children's lives. It is a curiosity corner a discovery corner a chance for pupils to use the natural gift of curiosity.

We hope now that many schools will have conservation corners again this year. All of the needed information about them can be found in the teacher manual for this year. And then Ranger will give some helpful suggestions all along the trail. Doesn't the name Doodlebug arouse your curiosity. It is a name for an insect in the larval stage. The insect is about as peculiar as the name is. Most people who know anything about it call it the ant lion because it lives by sucking the blood from ants and has a very clever way of trapping them. It is quite common in the lighter soil areas of our state where it can set its trap and where its trap will work.

Some trappers learned about it when we were starting. Some campers learned about it when we were starting on a nature hike. It didn't prove to be much of a hike a very strenuous hike as you will see. We decided to hike to a nearby marsh where there was more life. Where there is water there you are sure to find a great variety of life but on attention was called to a number of little funnel shaped depressions in the ground right at our feet. They looked something like ice cream cones but not so deep. Some of them were hardly an inch across. Some as much as three. What do you suppose these are. I asked. Someone ventured and they were made by water dripping from the branches of the tree. One farmer said

I have seen these holes all my life and have wondered what they are. So we became curious a couple of boys were sent to find ants live ants. We dropped an amp along the sliding side of one of the holes. The ants struggled to get out but it made no progress. The harder the struggle the more the sand rolled down the center. Soon a volcano of sand was thrown up from the center of it at the bottom. Then another shower of sand that undermined the footing of the ant and it fell down into the fatal corner. Then a pair of sickle jaws appeared and were promptly thrust into the end and the end was pulled out of sight. That is a strange way poor a

creature to capture it isn't it. That conical shaped depression is a trap for ants just as truly as the spider's web is that trap for flies. We dug out one of the creatures and put it in a sand box of sand right away and dug into the sand a backwards put its legs are so arranged that it can walk backwards only and soon it was throwing up sand to make a conical shaped pit and we watched it. You never saw a creature built as this one is built unless you have seen this creature. It is built just right for carrying on the kind of light that bleeds just as all creatures are. It has a flat head for throwing out the sand at the front of the head are ugly. Sickle shaped jaw was built just right to grasp the

ants and to suck their blood it has no mouth and because it has no need for one foot it lives and tire leaves on the juices of ants. It is an ugly looking creature with its hump backed and vicious head and jaw. It builds around cocoon out of silk and sand which which it buries in the sand. And from this cocoon comes a rather beautiful creature that resembles a dragon fly as different from the ugly ogre we saw as any butterfly is different from its caterpillar. Well we didn't get to the marsh. We spent the entire time at the starting place examining the Doodlebug and watching its method of securing food. Have I ever told you of the story of the Indian guide. But a number of years he guarded a New York businessman who came West to get into the woods

and got in touch with nature and get his thinking cleared up. One day this businessman persuaded the Indian to come to New York for the visit and when he arrived he took him to one of New York's busiest streets where the noise was almost deafening. Suddenly the Indian stopped. This isn't he said. I hear a cricket. The businessman smiled. How could you possibly hear anything in the midst of all of this din and clamor. The Indian said nothing but stepped over to a large pile of bricks where men were repairing a building reached in his hand and drove out of cricket. His friend could hardly believe his eyes. How could you hear the cricket in the midst of this uproar. The Indian said nothing. But for an answer to a silver dollar out of his pocket and allowed it to pall on the sidewalk

immediately a dozen people stopped and began to look for the coin. See. Said the Indian. You hear what you are listening to our and they care. We prepare a manual so that you will know what to be listening for what to be looking for. We have prepared such a manual for this year. Our announcer will tell you about it now. And so we will close our first trip appeal for this year air will be permitted or Indian goodbye may the Great Spirit put sunshine in your heart today and forever more. Heap much. The familiar Indian farewell brings us to the end of our first trip afield with Ranger Mick. He'll be back next week at the same time with another nature story. Now here is a message for teachers. Ranger Max Emmanuel is a year round teaching aid for these broadcasts. This year the manual costs 25 cents to obtain

your copy. Send your order to the Wisconsin School of the Air Radio Hall Madison and six. Other programs available during his twenty first year of the Wisconsin School of the air. Our radio all men act at 1:30 this afternoon growing up at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Let's draw at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. On Wednesday morning at 9:30. It's a young experimenters. And on Wednesday afternoon at 1:30 Professor E.B. Gordon begins the 21st year of journeys in music land. Music enjoyment will be presented at 9:30 on Thursday mornings and on Thursday afternoon at 1:30. It's the news of the week. Mrs. Fanny speed will present rhythm and games on Friday mornings and book trails will be presented on Friday afternoon.