New England stone walls house many creatures
Excerpted/edited from an ecoRI News article by Colleen Cronin
LITTLE COMPTON, R.I.
A look at a stone wall on Roger and Gail Greene’s property — they guessed the structure dates back to the early 1800s or even late 1700s — suggests that every rock and cranny is a world unto its own.
A black cherry tree stretched its way up and out from underneath — a gift likely planted by a bird who had perched on its stones decades ago, Roger said. Minty green lichen made splotches on gray rocks. A pickerel frog with skin like a snake hopped its way through leaf litter and low grasses to a hiding space before an ecoRI News reporter could get a good photo.
Stone walls originally marked the boundaries of farms, but now they have become homes to many different types of creatures.