Check out the size of those cones!

Good morning! Here's another picture of some trees in parking lot b. If you look closely, you can see all the swelling cones on this pair of gorgeous firs!

When I was about eight years old I took a field trip to a local park where we walked along trails with a guide. As usual, I drifted into my own thoughts, preferring to slip among the trees when no one was looking.

I did listen up long enough to hear the guide tell a couple folk tales about fir cones (seems as though she was trying to kill time). I remember somehow thinking that her stories were rather unconvincing (not the first time for me), but strangely, I’ve never quite forgotten the telling.

I can’t seem to find these stories online (at least not quickly), so here’s what I remember:

Back in the days of fairy tales the owl was the wisest in the forest. One day, a massive fire swept through the wood, and the frightened mice cried out, “Owl! What should we do?!” Owl told them to get the heck out of Dodge, and as usual, the mice didn’t listen. Instead, they climbed the nearest fir trees and hid inside the fir cones, hoping that the fire would pass them by. Their failure is evidenced by looking at a fir cone, where you’ll notice the bottom half of the mice hanging out from under the cone plates.

The second story had to do with deer… if you crack off the little cone plates, you can see deer tracks on the underside. Perhaps I half-heard the second bit on some other field trip during which I was lost in my own thoughts…

Was anyone else paying attention?