Spring | New England Numbers

What are the numbers behind spring in New England? The ounces of blood a blackfly will draw, the number of strolling heifers in Brattleboro, VT, lupine in Acadia National Park…

0.00007 ounce: blood drawn before a blackfly says, “I’m stuffed.”

$2.00 price of “WE BREED ‘EM, YOU FEED ‘EM” bumper sticker from the Maine Blackfly Breeders Association (maineblackfly.org)

107 number of times lupine is mentioned in Acadia National Park’s management plan for invasive plant control

100 number of flower-bedecked bovines ambling through downtown Brattleboro, VT, during June’s “Strolling of the Heifers”

21 orchid species cataloged around Concord, MA, by Henry David Thoreau 1851-58

7 orchid species cataloged around Concord, MA, by contemporary botanists

100 minimum age you must be (or turning in 2009) to attend the Rhode Island Governor’s Centenarians Brunch the first week of May

1791 year that Atlantic salmon started disappearing from the Connecticut River Basin (first dam built at Turners Falls, MA)

4.5 million average number of salmon fry now stocked annually in the Conn. River Basin