Afield With Ranger Mac

For schools, one in an experimental series designed to test techniques and materials in the supplementary use of television as a teaching aid in the elementary grades.

Hello, girls and boys.

My name is Mike Curry.

Do you know what this is?

I found it out in the woods the other day, as I looked it over a lot of questions occurred to me.

First I wondered, is this made out of paper?

Then I wondered, is it a wasp nest or is it a hornet's nest?

Or just what kind of thing is this?

Well, I know the gentleman who knows the answers to these questions.

How about you're coming along with me and let's ask Ranger Mac.

[Pause] Let's ask Ranger Mac, a nature study program for boys and girls.

We're going to visit with Wakeland McNeil, former state 4-H club leader and supervisor of the Up and Woods project.

Many of you know Ranger Mac through his radio series.

Now you'll meet him in person with Myron Curry.

Let's join Myron to find out about that nest.

So Ranger Mac, I brought this along to ask you about it because I knew you could tell us the answers to all the questions that came up in my mind when I saw it.

And I brought along all these boys and girls to meet you.

Girls and boys meet Ranger Mac.

Hello girls and boys.

We're glad that you're going to be with us this afternoon.

Now let's see what it was you found out in the woods.

Ma'am?

Well, perhaps the first question I should ask you Ranger Mac is what is it?

Is it a bees nest or a hornet's nest or just what?

Well, it's not a bees nest.

Not a bee nest.

A bee builds in a hive which man provides or in the hollow of a tree.

This is a wasp's nest or a you could call it a hornet's nest because the terms are used interchangeably.

I see.

Now I have never had any firsthand experiences with wasps just what do they do to a person if you get too close to them?

Well, I'm surprised to learn that you've never had a firsthand experience with wasps and as long as you have lived.

Just a city doler perhaps.

That is the trouble.

These wasps are fireballs.

They have a deep sense of responsibility and that sense of responsibility is to take care to defend, to protect the nest.

Now how does this building process get started?

I won't tell you first though my first experience with wasps.

I learned the hard way.

I went out with a boy older than I and I think he took advantage of my youth.

He bet me an ice cream soda which is always a very tantalizing invitation.

A boy will endure a great deal to get one.

I wouldn't dare destroy this the wasps nest that we had found over the stick.

So what?

I did it.

I paid a high price for that ice cream soda.

When I got home that night my mother didn't recognize me.

What did you look like?

Well, my face was about twice the normal size.

Wow, is the wasps sting that poisonous?

Well, unfortunately when boys and girls think of wasps they think of the sting and the pain that the wasps can inflict.

But that's unfortunate because a wasp is a is a creature is a miraculous creature.

It's a marvel.

And so I'd like to have the boys and girls know that that is so.

If they would leave the wasps alone they wouldn't bother them.

Well, that's good to know you leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.

That's right.

Well, now tell me what is this made of Ranger Mack?

It looks as if it's made of mud but it doesn't feel like mud.

Well, it looks a little, it has the color of mud and that's a little deceiving.

This is made out of wood pulp.

Wood pulp?

You mean it's paper?

It's paper.

It's the first paper and the wasps with the first paper makers.

Long before man appeared on this earth millions of years ago the wasps were making paper.

And it isn't until recent times that man learned how to do it.

And the interesting thing is they learned how to make paper from the wasps.

What is that?

The fact is most of our improvements, the great things in our lives, the inventions, the discovery come directly from nature.

Well, now how does this building process get started Ranger Mack?

Well, this is quite an interesting story.

The queen or the mother wasp is the only one that lives throughout the winter.

She finds a snug place in which to hibernate and when the spring brings back blue days and fair she revives and starts about what she knows she must accomplish in life.

And that is to raise a race of law of wasps.

So she goes out and spends some time to find a good twig or a branch.

And having found that she goes out and looks for pulp.

She uses a few roots down there.

And she uses such things as this almost completely decomposed bit of pulp or she scales off little particles from rotten wood such as I have in my hand here.

And she mixes a saliva fluid from her body with that material.

And goes back to the place that she had selected for her nursery and she paces that pellet against the bottom of the twig.

And that makes it sort of a hanger for it then.

Well, that's the starter of a hanger.

Then she goes out and makes another pellet and pushes that up against that foundation.

And goes out and gets another one till she has a hanger that is probably in the neighborhood of all a half to three quarters of an inch long.

And you would be surprised to know how strong that hanger is.

Oh, my tell.

Men have well, men have tested it out with scales and they have found that it takes six pounds to pull that hanger from its foundation.

So it's not that the wasps have built up layers inside here.

I didn't notice that before.

Yes, but first after she has done that, she lays an egg, one egg, two eggs, three eggs, mathematically against the platform that she has constructed on that hanger.

I see.

Then she builds the cell.

She builds the cell over each egg.

And having done that, she builds some more cells because she must develop workers.

She can't do all this worker self of constructing this nest.

She must have workers.

And so she builds these cells by the time that she gets submarried or ten cells made, the eggs have hatched and become grubs.

Then she turns to be a mother and she goes out and finds insects and choose those insects and predigest them and comes back and feeds those ugly looking grubs.

And you wouldn't think that any possibility of developing into such a wonderful thing as a wasp.

And when the grubs hatch, or when the grubs become large enough or about eight days, they go through a transformation into the pupper stage and then change to be the adults, such as do this stingy.

And the life cycle takes somewhere around about 20 days all together.

That's right.

Then these are workers.

And they immediately start because it told you that they are born educated.

They know how to do their job without any instructions, nature has given that to them in that little pin, little brain, pin-sized brain, you know, about the size of pinhead.

And they go about and construct cells and she lays eggs.

She becomes a leg-ing machine now from that time on.

And so the work goes on in just that way until we have a structure such as you see here.

Now, let me have that one right there.

I'll show you.

This is the one that I found last fall before winter had worked upon it.

And here it is.

That is a very good shape.

Conical shape.

And down at the end you find the entrance.

The workers are not only for feeding the young, nursing the young, sanitation of the nursery, but also down here are some guard ones.

Oh, now that sounds as if the wasp is quite a social insect with organizations within its colony.

That is a social insect.

It is a... it is the communism in the purist form.

Each works for the wasp state.

Even the food in the stomach of the wasp belongs to the state, you see, belongs to the young.

That is her job.

Now, I want you to look at those cells, Bern, account the number of signs.

Let's see, let me get my pencil out here.

I'll lose track of them.

See, one, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, six.

Yeah, six.

Same thing all over.

Six.

The man has discovered that the strongest form of structure that can be made is the six-sided cell.

You mean we use that in construction work and human engineering?

That's right.

We use it in human engineering.

And I want to show you how it is used.

How you...

I hear.

What is this for?

This is paper.

The man learned how to make from the wasp.

And it is put in the form of the six-sided cells, as you see here.

And it's used for... with a facing over it, a veneer facing over it, it's used for walls, partitions and houses.

And someday they'll learn how to... they'll learn how to provide ventilation for it.

The only difficulty they have now is the moisture collects in it.

I see, man.

I see that right there.

Yes, take a look at it.

Wow, that is strong, isn't it?

That's very strong.

That's six-sided cells.

Well, now this affair over here looks a lot like paper.

Is it really paper?

And if it is paper, as you said it was, a kind of paper.

Why hasn't it been destroyed by all the weather?

The workers develop another kind of a fluid.

This fluid is a waxy fluid.

And with those little tongues of theirs, they spread it over, spread this wax over the entire surface of the nursery.

And it sheds the water, it sheds the rain, wards the helps reduce the resistance of the wind, and it lasts a long time.

Well, now let me ask you another question about the wasp.

We talked about the wasp being a social kind of insect.

Now, are there other kinds of wasps then?

Oh, yes.

There are 10,000 kinds of wasps and hornets.

10,000?

10,000 different kinds.

The wasps in Cilam make a nest that is far more remarkable than this.

The wasps nest in Cilam is six feet high.

That would be something to run into in the dark, wouldn't it?

Yes, sir.

I wouldn't want to do that.

Now, this is the nest of a solitary wasp, and you can see the cells right here.

This is done all by one wasp that makes it out of mud.

Now, you mentioned that the social wasp, we might say, is the kind of insect that builds and cones, and very much like bees and ants.

Is it a cousin of the ant because it is a social insect?

No, no.

It doesn't belong to the same category, it's well there.

There are good many different kinds of, even among birds, there are social birds.

And you said the one that builds this nest is the bald-faced wasp.

This is the bald-faced wasp.

You might want to know the place of this wasp in nature.

I was just going to ask you that.

I wouldn't want this little interview to close without you knowing that.

We just have to guess at that, but because all the workers, all of the drones, die in the fall of the year when the severe frost comes, only the queen lives.

And you say, isn't that a great waste of energy and a great waste of life?

This is the only justification that we can find for it.

That each worker must feed the young.

And in feeding the young goes out and collects insects, choose those insects into a pulp, pre-digested and feeds it to the young.

And so they help restore and keep the balance among insects in nature.

Oh, I see.

It's a control over the balance of nature.

That's right.

Ranger Mack.

Well now, could you tell me one more thing, Ranger Mack?

Where are the wasps that lived in this nest?

Haven't we stolen their home?

Would they be returning to it again?

No, they never used the same nest twice.

Oh, I see.

As I often find, sometimes the mice beat them to it too, and they use it in their nest.

They never use the same nest twice.

I see.

Then they're not going to be coming back to this part of this nest.

No, it's no violation of nature at all to take a nest that has been used.

Well now, let's see if I can recite the major points that you told us here, Ranger Mack, and take them back to my boy who was along with me the day I found that nest.

First, you told us that the wasp that build this nest is a social insect, lives in groups, and it's a very highly organized colony.

That's right.

It has its guards, and it has its workers, and what else does it have?

It's nursemaids, it's housekeepers that keep the wasps placed sanitary.

Sometimes the wasps die in their cells.

They have to be removed and taken away.

You see what I mean by the sanitation there?

I see.

Then the second major group of this kind of insect is the solitary insect, social and solitary.

Then you said that they build nest which have basis for our human activities.

We use a great many engineering principles that are based on the wasps nest construction.

That's right.

Then finally you said that the wasp is a natural control to maintain the balance of nature.

That's right.

Is that correct?

That's right.

They feed entirely upon, or almost entirely upon insects, go to some plants to give the, so that they'll have the proper kind of a diet, they know by being educated.

Born educated.

That's right.

Well, Ranger Mack, I certainly appreciate your answering our questions for us, but there's one more thing that I wish you do for us.

You know the boys and girls and I too have heard you give the Indian farewell on the radio a great many times, but not all of us have had a chance to see you do that.

I wonder if you give us the Indian farewell.

I'll be glad to do it, Baron.

All right, sir.

After this fine meeting with you.

The Indian farewell is not said.

It is done.

It is done by means of kind of mining.

And each little gesture has its meaning.

Of course that we were, that I am at the brow of the hill and my comrades who were at the end of the trail, where the trail goes over the brow of the hill or makes a turn.

And then we would say goodbye to each other over the distance that separated us.

Sort of a television, you know, long before these television instruments were invented.

And this is the way they said goodbye.

And it means may the great spirit put sunshine in your heart.

Today, forevermore, keep much.

Let's ask Ranger Mack, a nature study program for boys and girls with Wakeland McNeil, former state 4-H club leader and supervisor of the Uppinwoods project.

Ranger Mack was assisted by myron Curry.

Remember boys and girls we'd like to know how you like the program.

Send your comments to let's ask Ranger Mack, W-H-A-T-V Madison.

This has been the last in a series of experimental programs for boys and girls in the elementary grades.

But we'll resume telecasting for in-school viewing in the fall.

Teachers, watch for an announcement of our school television schedule in the September issue of the Wisconsin Journal of Education.

This is the Wisconsin School of Air.

The prison.