Return of the Monarchs
RD: Earlier this year I submitted an article and some pictures of Monarch caterpillars and butterflies here at our home in Eastern Passage, taken last year (RD April, Letters, pg.10). I have attached two pictures of the caterpillars taken four days apart this year (July 17 and July 20), demonstrating how fast they grow.
In two weeks’ time they will be about five centimetres long, ready to go to the chrysalis stage (2017 picture). Still haven’t seen the butterfly but it has to be around for the eggs to have been laid.
Sandy Hickey
Eastern Passage, N.S.

Double down – claptrap included
RD: So some think that RD has become full of left-wing liberal claptrap (RD July-Aug., Letters, pg. 12). I thought that’s what we signed up for ...
    I love your Double Ds ... um, you know, Dirk and Dave. Hopefully that gives the boys a new nickname. I think RD is my favourite publication after Atlantic Forestry Review. My 44 years in the forest industry has become rather depressing with the current state of affairs, low prices to producers, and younger and younger stands being clearcut. Ecologically sound practices, we’re told.
    That Dean Butterfield is quite a cat. That photo of him with the long bar and big stump (RD July-Aug., Letters, pg. 10) almost gave me a sore back looking at it! Gary Saunders gives us too much to think about with the plastics story (pg. 42). I was in Newfoundland in 1991 and was overwhelmed with the debris along the coastline and in the water. Looking overboard, in the crystal clear water at about 20 feet deep were two plastic bleach bottles on the bottom, with untold other litter. And now it looks like the “science” says we can put a pipe into the Northumberland Strait from the pulp mill in Pictou County with little ill effect.
    What’s wrong with us, that continuing to pollute our environment to keep a rather questionable economy going is okay? At some point, we’ll have to “pay the piper.” Better sooner than later.
    Keep up the good claptrap.
Tom Miller
Green Hill, N.S.

Enjoyable and helpful
RD: We have a small hobby farm – growing vegetables, raising beef cattle and poultry. Your articles have provided much helpful information. I look for the recipe page first in Rural Delivery. Thanks for these enjoyable and helpful magazines.
Gary Lutes
McKees Mills, N.B.

Ain’t no mountain high enough
RD: Thank-you to Zack Metcalfe for his article about the decline of the Atlantic Caribou herds of Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and New Brunswick, and their last holdout on the rocky peaks of the Gaspésie (“Antlers of the East — Tracking the
Decline of the Atlantic Caribou,” RD July-Aug., pg.32). What an enlightening and pleasurable read! Mt. Albert and Mt. Jacques Cartier are now on my mental list of Maritime pilgrimage destinations. And the living caribou of the Gaspé have become part of my concern as a Maritimer. I am grateful to writers like Metcalfe who will dial any number and climb any mountain to bring something truly fresh and engaging and necessary to RD readers.
David Boehm
Truro, N.S.