The Bournedale Wall

Cape Cod is all about Welcome! We rely on our tourists, and go to great lengths to draw them in to us. Without visitors, we'd be in a mess of trouble. We white people were once visitors ourselves, and we may have perished without the hospitality of the incumbent residents.

There have been times, however, where we sought to limit that access. Granted, the visitors in question had a habit of killing both livestock and perhaps the occasional Pilgrim-era child. They also were rather noisy at night, especially when the moon shone brightly. You couldn't go out safely without a gun. Things got bad enough that we once considered building a fence, right here in Bourne.

That seems sort of Donald Trumpish, but we're not talking about Muslims, Mexicans or even a Mohegan. We're speaking about wolves. Pilgrims and Sachems may have viewed the wolf differently, but both would agree that life is generally much happier when a hungry one isn't walking around the neighborhood.

Man has only been on Cape Cod for a hot minute when compared with the overall natural history of the region, but our time here has seen us be Impact Players to the point where you can divide the whole of Cape Cod's natural history into two parts. One part would be Since Man Arrived, and the other would be Everything Else.

Wolves were chased off Cape Cod by the time of the Industrial Revolution. The chief culprit was Habitat Destruction, and they were also heavily hunted once the Europeans arrived. The native Americans lived in harmony with nature, but their English cousins cleared out the forests. The wolves were gone soon after. However, during the process, there was a period- almost two centuries- where it was not unusual to lose livestock to the Big Bad Wolf.

Massachusetts was not even remotely urban outside of some bustling villages for a while, and they were almost 100% dependent on localized farming and livestock raising. Wolves love themselves a good steak dinner if they can get it, and they don't really care if it hurts the people who are stealing their land. This set the stage for conflict.

A coyote, but a coyote that may be 25% wolf (Scituate, taken by Matthew Loveitt)

In 1713, the town of Eastham decreed that they would pay out 3 pounds for a wolf, payable when you show up at the constable's place with an adult wolf head. Since our little Cape wasn't the millionaire haven it is now, you know that anything worth a bounty was at least somewhat of a serious problem.

A person could make a fairly nice 1713 living by helping to rid the Cape of this toothy difficulty, if your definition of "nice" includes "hunting multiple apex predators in a dark, uncharted Algonquin forest with a single-shot-per-minute musket."

There were even bounties issued on individual wolves, with payment going to "any individual who shall kill the wolf who has of late been prowling through the township."

In 1717, the town of Sandwich came upon a unique idea. Why not build a fence to block Cape Cod off from wolves?

There are several famous walls, all built to keep something Bad out of (or in) a town. Hadrian's Wall was built to stop barbarians. The Great Wall of China was built to repel Mongols. The Berlin Wall was built to keep the Communists from leaving. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" made for a fine movie, but is completely unrelated to the topic.

The wall would have run roughly along the same path of the present Cape Cod Canal. I presume it would have been made of wood, and maybe stone. I don't know if they planned to extend it out into the ocean a bit, as a wolf who is determined to get to Hyannis Port can always swim out past the fence.

Whether this fence would hold up if the wolf huffed and puffed, we'll never know.

As near as I can tell, it would have started at Peaked Cliff (extreme north Sagamore Beach), worked along the line of the Herring River into and though Bournedale, before finishing up at Buttermilk Bay. Remember that the western/southern end of what is now the Canal was back then a swampy area where several small rivers emptied.

The Bournedale wolf wall was met with something less than enthusiasm by the townspeople, and the idea was shelved permanently. Aside from the obvious cost and effort, there was a sentiment about town that the wall, while keeping wolves out, would also keep wolves we already had in.

It was instead decided to wage an environmental holocaust, deforest an entire region, and chase the fauna into New Hampshire. Ironically, about 200 years later, they decided to instead dig a moat and float oil tankers and container vessels through the same area. The Cape Cod Canal had pretty much the exact effect that Sammich voters were asked to consider in 1717. The Canal became a stopping point for most animal migration, and it is fairly amazing that we somehow got a bear to Truro recently.

We may never get wolves again, although they are advancing south and east from Canada. Once they get to New Hampshire, it becomes only a matter of time before one of them ponders a swim across the Canal. Lesser predators such as fishers and coyote have already made the Hop.

In fact, the wolves may already be here. They got here via the ol' "gradually mate and hybridize (not real science kids, I just made the word up) and then come back disguised as coyote" trick. The local Eastern Coyote has a lot of Grey Wolf in his DNA. A study in Maine showed 22/100 coyotes studied had wolf DNA, with one "coyote" having 89% wolf DNA. 

The basic idea here is that, as wolves were chased from a region, they mated with coyote in the regions they fled to. Through kicking it as wolves and coyotes do, the hybridized DNA would spread through the coyote population. The resulting hybrid (a "coywolf") which is migrating back into Massachusetts is the basic current design of that coyote you see in your back yard. If you want to guess at how much Wolf DNA they have, look for pack behavior. Coyotes generally hunt in pairs, while wolf/coyotes work in larger groups.

Mother Nature, who is inexorable, tends to get the last laugh. She no doubt had a solid session watching us ponder and build fences and canals which in the end failed to keep the wild dogs away. 

Either way, it may make normally boring Bournedale a little more exciting if you know that it was almost a Checkpoint Charlie for Cape Cod wildlife.

"Ah-rooooooooooooooo!!"

How To Deal With Coyote In Eastern Massachusetts

This website likes to explore some of the more dangerous wildlife in the region. We've had articles up on Sharks, Fisher Cats, Giant Turtles, Seagull Attacks and God knows what other stuff is either in the area or in our archives.

Today, we'll be discussing the Coyote.

Eastern Massachusetts has a substantial coyote presence. Every town and even every city has them. If you drive at night enough, you'll see them around.

Coyote are not native to Massachusetts, at least as recently as when White People started coming. The canid feared by Myles Standish was the Wolf. You could kill a wolf for a bounty in Plymouth by 1630, and Cape Cod actually considered putting up a wall to keep wolves away.

Trapping, poisoning and habitat destruction drove the Wolf out of Massachusetts and even New England. The wolf was extinct in New England by 1840. We then had a Pax Lycan of wolf-free living. Meanwhile, east-to-west settlement of America drove the wolves west, where they began to breed with the smaller and more adaptable western coyote.

This newly-created hybrid- the coywolf- then began to push east as former farmland reverted back into forest. Before long, they started making appearances in in northern New York and northern New England in the 1930s-1940s. From there, they began to bleed into southern and then southeastern New England. They were all over SE Massachusetts and even Cape Cod by the time the century turned over.

As of 2016, anyone living in any town who might be reading this most likely has a coyote in their neighborhood. What does that mean for them?

Again, the "coyote" we have are actually coywolves. To be fair, "coyote" sampled around here (specimens were taken from Barnstable and closer to Boston) turned up an odd mix... they were about 25% wolf and 10% domestic dog. A four-way mix, a menage a quatre, exists, and differing levels of Coyote, Eastern Wolf, Western Wolf and Domestic Dog is what is walking around in our neighborhoods.

A coywolf is larger and more suited to suburban/urban life, perhaps because or perhaps not because of the dog DNA. It may weigh 50 pounds more than a classic coyote.

A coywolf is bad enough to kill a human if enough of them get in on it. A gang of them killed a Canadian folk singer a few years ago. It most likely won't go down that way if you see coyote around, but that's the worst-case scenario.

What you can do to lower your chances of a coyote fight is to follow a few guidelines. These guidelines are from the Massachusetts Divison of Fisheries and Wildlife, just in case you thought that the guy making the MILF jokes last month in this column has now decided to offer his own untested thoughts on protecting yourself from a predator.

To Avoid A Coyote...

- Secure your garbage.

A coyote is a fine hunter, able to bring down a deer with the right numbers. However, like most everything, they'll take an easy meal if they can get at it. If you have your leftovers from the week in a thin Hefty bag on the side of our house, that's like a Golden Corral to a coyote.

While a coyote can eventually knock over a trash can and force off the lid, animals are cunning, and a great part of cunning involves choosing the path of least resistance for your task accomplishment. Once the coyote moves along from your house to the point where the house is out of his range, he's an SEP... Someone Else's Problem.


- Don't feed a coyote.

Take this as 1A with "secure your garbage," or take the garbage one as "don't indirectly feed the coyote."

Feeding a coyote does triple damage. It keeps him coming back to Freemealistan, it takes away his fear of humans, who he will then associate with food.

I knew a guy in Duxbury who lived on a meadow. He began to see a fox around his house. He soon was able to throw hot dogs to it and have the fox eat them. One night, he made a trail of hot dogs that led right onto his porch, where he was watching the Red Sox. About around inning 7, the fox came up on the porch and ate the stash he had left there. He stuck around for a few innings, not quite begging but still with a 100% food-focus. We were able to pull this stunt at will for a whole summer, enough that, if you added up the innings, the fox probably watched two or three full Red Sox games.

We named him "Redd," and he really wasn't a problem until he got a credit card and started ordering out of the ACME catalog. We were fools to do as we did, but it does go to show you how food association works.


- Be smart with those pets!

A coyote will view a small dog or cat as prey. It will view a large dog as competition. They have unfortunately aggressive reactions to both stimuli.

Your pet is far more likely to be killed by a car than by a wild animal. The threat all across the board is raised, however, if your pet is free-roaming. That's a free-range chicken to a coyote.

Feeding pets indoors is also important, as something which eats carrion and roadkill like a coyote does is going to view a big bowl of Gravy Train on your porch (or even a pile of spilled bird seed in your yard) as you or I might view an ice cream sundae giveaway.

I did find a stat that said "the most common food items were small rodents (42%), fruit (23%), deer (22%), and rabbit (18%)." Only about 2 percent of the (coyote) scats had human garbage and just 1.3 percent showed evidence of cats. "

I my be wrong, but the totals they listed (42+23+22+18) add up to 105%. Either way, cats and rubbish are a minor part of the coyote diet.

- Close off potential dens or areas that provide cover.

If you have an open crawl space under your house, you also have a coyote Holiday Inn. There's shelter, ambient heat, nearby food, and a perfect place to issue forth and nurse a litter of the furry fuc*ers.

If you have a bunch of thick brush in your yard, you also are providing a perfect place for the coyote to hide in and strike from. His main targets will be your pets and your trash.

You want to sort of seal your property off from a coyote, rather than make him want to hang around.


- Avoid going into areas that a coyote might favor.

This is especially true during spring and summer, when they are bearing and raising pups.

Of course a coyote can be anywhere. However, you can avoid areas where sightings are frequent, and you can use social media to pick up on sightings.

Ooops, there's a coyote! Now what?

- Remember who runs the f*cking planet.

You, as a human, are more dangerous than a coyote is. Both of you know it. That's why he hasn't attacked yet. He's alive because we have not yet decided to exterminate him.

If you remember that, it will add to your confidence. That will show in your body language, and that could deter an attack.

Like the author said, “Walk tall, kick ass.... and never forget that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.”


- Try a domestic dog command on it.

Who knows? It may work.

If it does, you have a circus act. Try to teach him hockey next, I saw some gypsies in eastern Europe do that with bears once

OK... it probably won't work, but if you do it with some authority, the tone of your voice may deter the beast.


- Try to scare it off.

None of us are Hitchcock, but you can make an attempt to scare off an approaching coyote.

Maintain eye contact, don't show it your back, and don't run. Running will activate the chase instinct.

Screaming, performing mock charges, spreading out your coat to make yourself look 7 feet tall or 4 feet wide, throwing rocks, playing some NWA aloud... make sure ol' Wild E. knows that he'll be in for a squabble if he goes down Messing With You Boulevard.


- Bear arms and fight like Iron Mike.

If you live in an open-carry state, congratz! Shooting an aggressive coyote is one of those good reasons for having a gun.

If you can't or don't walk the b-lock with the G-lock c-ocked, there are other means by which to drive off or even kill a coyote. A good walking stick can deter a nosy coyote. Pepper spray or some sort of bear repellent spray will make them think twice about having themselves some people food. An air horn will both scare them away and summon attention from people who can help you. If the coyote gets in close on you, a good knife will go a long way.

Either way, fight to the death. It probably won't come to that, and the coyote will probably run off before sustaining crippling injuries, but don't let your own Lack Of Intensity be the reason for that.

You may feel badly about beating down a coyote with a lead pipe, but you're actually doing him a favor. A coyote who doesn't fear humans is a coyote who will eventually have to be euthanized.

Be The Dominant Primordial Beast.

If a pack of them come up on you and if you can't avoid it, fu*k up the meanest looking one first.

Dogs of any sort live by a dominance hierarchy, and it's easier to have one brutal fight with the top dog than it is to have a half dozen fights where the opponent keeps getting better.

Look at it this way... if a pack of celebrity dogs rushes you and you smack Cujo in the face hard enough to make him run away, you're probably not going to get much of an argument from Lassie afterwards.


Notify Authorities When A Coyote Becomes Aggressive.

An aggressive coyote is just the reason to have an Animal Control Officer on the payroll.

Here's how the Commonwealth views it.

"Coyotes are naturally afraid of people and their presence alone is not a cause for concern, though depending on human-related sources of food, coyotes can become habituated.

A habituated coyote may exhibit an escalation in bold behavior around people. The coyote has lost its fear of people when it exhibits one or more of the following behaviors. 

The coyote:
* Does not run off when harassed or chased
* Approaches pets on a leash
* Approaches and follows people

When wildlife exhibit these behaviors, corrective measures can be taken.

If an immediate threat exists to human life and limb, public safety officials including ACOs, police departments, and the Massachusetts Environmental Police, have the authority to respond to and dispatch the animal as stipulated in the Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR) 2.14 that pertain to handling problem animals . This includes animals exhibiting clear signs of rabies. 

If possible, MassWildlife should first be contacted to authorize the lethal taking of a coyote.

Coyotes taking pets are not considered an immediate threat to human safety, therefore ACO's and municipal police departments are not authorized to remove these wild animals."

Archives: Duxbury Beach Storm Photos

We've been shifting our photo storage sites around, and have been unearthing various Duxbury Beach storm photos. We'll be sharing them out now and then until we exhaust the supply.

Photographers include Sheila Spellman, Joe Deady, Deborah Deady, Sara Flynn, Pauline Flynn and Samantha Spellman. The girl who owns/used to own the Fairview may also be in the mix.

Almost all of these shot were taken from Ocean Road North on Duxbury Beach.

Almost all of them, you see... this one is on Gurnet Road, approaching Duxbury Beach Park. The Powder Point Bridge is that lack line on the horizon.

Someone who has never seen this picture just rebuilt this cottage into a $1 million house.

Tearing out the storm-damaged back wall on Ocean Road North. 

Heading down the road a bit, to the Brant Rock Esplanade.

A lot of these were published on some Cape Cod rag that we used to write for, and they had less-then-manly photo dimension specifics. When we blow them up so you can actually see them, they get a bit blurry. We apologize, and the fault is ours rather than that of the shutterbugs.

More to come...

90 Foot US Flag On Display In Halifax This Sunday

UPDATE: EXHIBIT CANCELLED DUE TO HIGH WINDS

National Flag Exhibit
Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Corner of Routes 106 and 58

There will be a showing of the 90 foot American Flag which was recently raised at Mount Rushmore on Sunday, June 12 from 4 PM to 6 PM at the intersection of Routes 106 and 58.

You won't have trouble finding it... as I recall, the flag needs to be lifted with a crane. It should be easy to spot.

Music provided by Delyte DJ Services. There is also an antique car show going on at the same time.

You can't get much more 'Merica than checking out a 90 foot Old Glory, player. No one will ever be able to question your patriotism.

The flag will be considerably better than the ones pictured here. I'm just emptying the Photobucket.

The Top Ten Places To Get Attacked By A Shark In Massachusetts

Before we start the discussion, we want you understand a few facts about the likelihood of suffering a shark attack.

You're significantly more likely to win the Powerball than you are to suffer a shark attack.... shoot, like 30-45 people win the Powerball every year, which is about 50 years worth of American shark attack deaths. More people have put Lindsay Lohan on the D Train to Pound Town than have been killed by a shark this century.

If you're worrying about a shark attack, stop. You need to instead prepare for the lightning bolt strike which- however unlikely as it may be- is much more likely to kill you than a shark is.

This "Top Ten Places" list goes to 10 even though we have had less than 10 shark attacks in Massachusetts white-guy history.

If you ignore reputations and just crunch the actual numbers, I would not be at all surprised to find that the shark which has killed the most Americans is the Loan Shark.

That said, being devoured out of nowhere by a station wagon-sized monster with 250 teeth is nothing that you want to experience. If it can happen, and even if the odds are as slight as can be, there must be steps you can take which will lower those odds in your favor.

One step we can give you, beyond obvious ones like "Never swim if you have just been stabbed," "Do nothing at all seal-like" and "Get out of the water if you hear alternating tuba notes start playing" are simple ones that you probably already know. If you don't know those rules already, there isn't much that we can do for you.

What we can do for you is tell you which beaches to avoid, and why.

1) Monomoy Island, Chatham

If you need the Why for this one, just do a Google Map of the area and zoom in. You'll soon see little black marks all along the shoreline, thousands of them. Those are seals.

Seals are shark food, and everywhere the seal went, the shark was shore sure to go.

This is the gold mine if you like Great White Sharks. It's also a rotten place to swim, especially if you have even one seal-like trait.

Chatham in general is very lucky that sharks don't like People Food. It remains the only viable location on Cape Cod for a sharknado to happen.


2)  Ballston Beach, Truro

In spite of her fearsome reputation, the only recent shark attack on Cape Cod was a 2012 attack on a boogie boarder off of this Truro sandspot.

The victim was 400 yards offshore, near where the seals hang out, and paddling around in a manner that he had no way of knowing would register as "injured seal" to the monster shark swimming under him.

He managed to kick it away before it killed him. He described kicking it as akin to kicking "an underwater refrigerator, with skin." It maimed his leg.


3) South Beach, Edgarton

One of... no, scratch that... THE most famous shark attack of all time went down here. The victim was Chrissy Watkins. She was torn to pieces by Bruce, who is the world's most famous shark.

The fact that the attack which I'm referencing is the opening scene from Jaws will in no way prevent us from ranking this beach right near the top.

Joseph Sylvia State Beach in Oak Bluffs is where the Alex Kintner attack went down, but that one didn't have a nude 1970's chick.

4) Nauset Light Beach, Eastham

The whole run of the Outer Cape is a high risk area, as the sharks who get bored of Chatham can head up the coast for a little variety.

This is one of those beaches that you see mentioned on the news with "was closed after a 15 foot shark was spotted offshore" following it.



5) Manomet Point, Plymouth

This is where the (current) most recent shark attack went down. A porker rose up out of the water and chomped on a kayak, dumping the two pretty kayakers into the water. Concluding that humans taste like a kayak, the shark swam away and left the girls unharmed.

That's a pretty impressive resume line, which is why beaches in Chatham and Wellfleet are looking up at America's Hometown.



6) South Beach, Chatham

When you get attacked by a shark here, he's usually not pleased. When he got his rooming assignment, he was like "Yeah! South Beach! Miami, here I come!" Some older shark then has to take him aside and tell him "You're thinking of South Beach, Miami. You're actually going to South Beach, Massachusetts."

When he arrives, he's pissed. "Hangry," as the kids say.

7) Marconi Beach, Wellfleet

When a shark gets a taste for People Food, you have to start worrying about extenuating circumstances.

In this case, the two areas of concern are 1) "Marconi" looks like "Macaroni." Sharks are unique in that they can make American Chop Suey with actual Americans if they have access to lots of macaroni.

Also, 2) is that "Marconi" implies Italian food. It is safe to imply that he is a picky eater, as he travels up the entire East Coast via tail propulsion to sup on a particular sort of Seal. Developing a taste for Italian food isn't really much of a stretch compared to that.


8) Hollywood Beach, Mattapoisett

Holly Wood (aka Hollywood) Beach is where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts went down, in 1936. A boy swimming out to meet a boat had most of his leg bitten off by a juvenile Great White Shark.

Holly Wood should be #2 or #3, maybe even #1A.... but we're going on 80 years there, and you can't live on your past in my magazine, folks.

No, sharks aren't afraid of New Bedford and Fall River. You can just shush....


9) Duxbury Beach, Duxbury

Duxbury seems to have a very lively and burgeoning shark population. She has an impressive stretch of uninhabited beach for seals to crash out on, and the bleedover of seals (and, following the seals, sharks) from Cape Cod looks to up their numbers.

If you're a shark hanging around at Race Point and you decide to see how the seal action is if you swim west for a while, the first beach you'll come to will be Duxbury Beach.

Added bonus: Duxbury Bay is a breeding ground for Sand Tiger Sharks. They're just the friendliest 8 foot flesh-eating shark (with a look which belies the fact that they are not physically equipped to hunt or eat humans) that you'll ever see.


10) Egypt Beach, Scituate

Scituate had the second most recent fatal shark attack in Massachusetts history. It was about 5 miles offshore, I chose Egypt Beach at random. The attack went down in the 1800s, which is why they are ranked #10 instead of #1.

In a story that really should be a movie, a shark swamped a smaller boat and devoured the occupant. The victim's brother returned the next day and caught what is believed to be the same shark. He then put it on display in Boston, and charged people a dime to see it.

Honorable Mention:

- Boston Harbor (home of the first shark attack in colonized New England history)

- Rockport (a fisherman was bitten by a shark here, but he survived)

- West Island, Fairhaven (beaches were closed after a fisherman spotted a shark 50 yards away from swimmers)

- Fall River (one of the two fatal Rhode Island attacks went down in Bristol Harbor, about a mile from her nearest Massachusetts neighbor)

- Nahant (a fisherman was bitten in 1922)

- Cold Storage Beach, Truro (James Orlowski had his leg mauled by a shark in 1996. No one believed him at the time, saying "Shark attacks don't happen on Cape Cod," and intimating that he might have crossed a really ornery bluefish. He got the last word when his attacker was listed as a shark in the Shark Attack Database.

- Dartmouth (another guy who says a shark bit him, but everyone was telling him it was a seal... notable in that the victim didn't go to the hospital until infection set in... which is why St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton, who treated this victim, has had more shark attack experience than more likelier places like Falmouth Hospital or Jordan Hospital)

- Gloucester (sharks follow fishing boats)

- New Bedford (see above, plus they have had shark sightings/beach closings)

- Horse Neck Beach (Westport (has been closed after shark sightings)

- Brant Rock, Marshfield (seal-friendly rockpile offshore)

- Buttermilk/Little Buttermilk Bay, Bourne (a 9 foot shark entered this bay and hung out a while in the 1990s)

Cape Cod Baseball League Super Special!

There are three kinds of baseball games. You have the pro game, with the millionaires and the urban settings. You have Little League style, pretty much anywhere with grass. You also have high-level amateur ball.

Little League is good if one of your kids is in the game or if Walter Matthau is the coach. Major League ball is good if you don't mind spending $300 to watch a game with your kids. Otherwise, you can keep that ish.

I prefer driving 3 minutes across a small town (update to 175 minutes if the game is on a summer Friday night, as I live in Bourne) and still watching high-level ball. I have this option on the table because Cape Cod hosts the world famous Cape Cod Baseball League.

You can catch a game on Cape Cod pretty much every night, from Wareham to Orleans. The games are played in a series of charming parks scattered around a coastal resort region.

Admission is free, the hot dogs are cheap and the kids have a great time. The league is supported via donations, vendor sales and fundraising. The players live with locals, and usually take jobs in the community. Jeff Bagwell may have painted your house, and Albert Belle may have mowed your lawn.

You may even see a future great player. Jeff Bagwell, "The Big Hurt" Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, crazy ol' Albert Belle, Chuck Knoblauch, Craig Biggio, Aaron friggin' Boone, Jacoby Ellsbury, Scott Erickson, John Farrell, Carlton Fisk, Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Kent, Tim Lincecum, Evan Longoria, Tino Martinez, Mike Lowell, Thurman Munson,  Pie Traynor (the first Cape League guy to make it to the MLB Hall Of Fame), Jeff Reardon, Mo Vaughn and both Mel and Todd Stottlemyer have played in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Freddie Prinze-Gellar also played here, in Summer Catch.

You get to see the players before they get rich/arrogant and start schlepping Cameron Diaz. Most and maybe all players on the teams are college kids who stay at homes in the community of whatever team they play for. Carlton Fisk, who hit the iconic 1975 home run in the World Series, slummed it on someone's couch in Orleans for a summer in 1966.

I'd host one of the kids, but they're going to have to pass a drug test at some point. Nomar Garciaparra, who earned $100 million dollars in his career and married Mia Hamm, would have failed a drug test and would be washing dishes at the Trowbridge Tavern if he stayed with me instead of whoever he lived with as a relative unknown in 1993.

Divisional Breakdown, which I cut-n-pasted from Wikipedia.

Division Team Town/ Village Home Field Most Recent Championship

West

Bourne Braves  Bourne    Doran Park (at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School) 2009
Cotuit Kettleers Cotuit Lowell Park 2013
Falmouth Commodores Falmouth    Guv Fuller Field 1980
Hyannis Harbor Hawks Hyannis   McKeon Park (PJP II High School) 1991
Wareham Gatemen Wareham   Clem Spillane Field (Wareham High School) 2012

East

Brewster Whitecaps Brewster Stony Brook Field  2000
Chatham Anglers Chatham Veteran's Field   1998
Harwich Mariners  Harwich Whitehouse Field (Monomoy High School) 2011
Orleans Firebirds  Orleans Eldredge Park (Nauset Middle School) 2005
Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox Yarmouth  Red Wilson Field (D-Y High School) 2015

Some Cape League Trivia and Associated Tangents

- The Cape Cod Baseball League was founded in 1885. 2016 is season #131.

- For many years, military personnel made up much of the talent on any given team.

- In 1963, the NCAA got involved, and it was all college players from then on.

-  Former teams include "Orleans Pants Factory," "Cottage Club," "Barnstable Townies," "Sagamore Clouters," "Sandwich Athletics," "North Truro Blue Sox," "Bourne Canalmen," and "Provincetown Longpointers."

- The 2016 season runs from June 10th through August 3rd. The final game of the playoffs is tentatively scheduled for August 13th.

- The Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox are rolling on back-to-back Cape League championships.

- Falmouth has 7 championships. Bourne has 1. Orleans has 12. Sagamore, God rest their soul, won 5. Y-D has won 9, 2 as simply Yarmouth. Chatham has won 5. Wareham has won 7. Hyannis has won 3. Harwich has won 4. Brewster has won 1. Cotuit has won the most titles, bagging 16.

- Only two teams (the Boune Braves and the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox) still share names with major league teams. Everyone else made up their own name. Bourne and Y-D have to pay money to MLB for use of the team names.

- The Braves and the Red Sox are the two names associated with Boston's current or former big league teams.

- If Bourne and Y-D have to rename their teams, I favor "Bourne Buzzards" and "Y-D Because" as replacement names.

- Names abandoned after MLB started charging: Hyannis Mets, Chatham A's, and Orleans Cardinals.

- "Y-D" = "Yarmouth-Dennis." This is the opposite of what they do with the regional high school they share, which is known as "Dennis-Yarmouth" and/or "D-Y." This column is unaware if some sort of balancing arrangement was met.

- The Harwich Mariners were using "Mariners" before the Seattle Mariners were, so they don't have to pay. I don't know why Seattle isn't sending a fat check to Harwich, but so it goes...

- One of the better areas of side-entertainment at Cape League games is watching the pretty girls from each town try to score a potential-millionaire boyfriend. My other favorite things to people-watch there are the old people who have been to every game for 30 years and nag at the umpire with his first name, i.e. "Come on, Jimmy, you screw us every year!"

- This column personally favors a 16 team league with a August Apoplexy tournament to determine a champion. Doing so would bring about the need for 6 more teams.

- Those 6 teams would be gained by inviting the Plymouth Pilgrims, the Brockton Rox, the New Bedford Bay Sox, the Martha's Vineyard Sharks, the Newport Gulls and the North Shore (Lynn) Navigators from other local collegiate leagues. They'd be visiting teams only... the Cape League tournament doesn't leave Cape Cod, landlubber.

- The Cape League should use nothing but Barnstable Bat Company bats, IMHO.

Here's this weekend's schedule:

Friday, June 10th

ORL @ BRE
5:00 PM

WAR @ YD
5:00 PM

HYA @ BOU
6:00 PM

COT @ HAR
6:30 PM

FAL @ CHA
7:00 PM


Saturday June 11th

BRE @ COT
5:00 PM

FAL @ YD
5:00 PM

HYA @ HAR
5:30 PM

CHA @ BOU
6:00 PM

WAR @ ORL
7:00 PM


Sunday, June 12th

YD @ BRE
5:00 PM

HAR @ FAL
5:30 PM

COT @ WAR
5:30 PM

BOU @ HYA
6:00 PM

ORL @ CHA
7:00 PM

The entire summer's Cape League schedule can be found right here.

Naming Post-Secession Mainland Cape Cod

When the traffic gets bad enough and pols start talking about making residents pay tolls to cross a theoretical third bridge, people who live in the mainland areas of Bourne and Sandwich start getting angry. When that anger boils up enough, you even hear talk of secession.

"We lost any financial benefits from Cape traffic in 1985. Start our own town, demand financial concessions from Cape Cod for the traffic, and dump both bridges into the Canal if the Cape says no" is the general tone of secession talk.

I'm not going to support the "dump the bridges" talk, as it is terrorism and might kill someone. I'm also not here to push Secession. It's a fun conversation piece, and it might get me some site visits, but I'm simply not the man with the answers you'd need if you wanted to get the movement going. I'm not sure how it would be done, nor am I sure if it is even a good idea.

I'll leave those questions for a future article, most likely one written in August when I just took 90 minutes to get through the Belmont Circle rotary. Instead, I will take on something that I am completely capable of doing... naming the post-secession town.

We're going to work from a fictional scenario where Buzzards Bay, Bournedale, Sagamore Beach and Scusset Beach have all broken away from Bourne, Sandwich and perhaps even whatever parts of Wareham and Plymouth (why not go for everything east of Red Brook and all of the Great Herring Pond area?) we could get our hands on.

The resultant bow-tie shaped town would need many things, but the main thing it would need is a name. We've kicked around a few, and we'll share some of them with you now. There's no ranking, even if the staff have their own personal favorites.

- Gridlock

"Gridlock" would be a form of protest. It would speak of the new town's plight, while concurrently scaring away tourists who would otherwise clutter up our roads. It would be easy to remember, it would gain us amazing name-recognition value, and might invite investment.

"Gridock" was chosen from among several staff suggestions for traffic-related town names, edging out equally awesome but less serious contenders such as "Jam City, Massachusetts, " "Road Rage, Massachusetts," "Slow Lane, Massachusetts" and "Bumper-to-Bumper, Massachusetts."

"Bumper-to-Bumper" would have a sort of Stratford-upon-Avon sound to it, and would pair us with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" as the only town names in the state with hyphens in them. We'd also join them as the only town names with Prepositions in them.


- Ripton

"Ripton" was the name of a fictional Berkshires town that an awesome western Massachusetts pol (Editor's note: it was a UMass-Amherst professor) invented. He was able to apply for grants, and even got Ripton included in the state budget. He did Ripton's work so well, he was able to obtain state funds for the fictional community. He gave the money back, as he was less interested in Fraud and more interested in pointing out that the state government lacks Western Massachusetts awareness.

Anyhow, my financial adviser- who I will admit up front is in jail at the moment- tells me that he's "pretty sure" that state funds were collected and set aside for Ripton, and that if a Ripton should suddenly appear, they would be owed both the original sum of money and any interest accrued since Ripton's 1980s inclusion in the state budget.


- Capeside

Not a lot of TV shows were set on Cape Cod and the Islands (I can only think of one other one, Wings), but one of the best was Dawson's Creek. I don't think that I saw enough DC to tell you what it was actually about, but it launched the careers of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and that other kid.

If you were a child of the 1990s and didn't arc a few to Katie Holmes... nice restraint, brother.

The "Capeside" town scenes in Dawson's Creek were actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and any Massachusetts scenery used in the show was filmed in Oak Bluffs. However, why not steal the name? As you can see from the entries above and below this one in the article, it's not like we have any better ideas.

"Capeside" edges out several other fictional town names that we wished to steal from TV, movies or literature, including "Amity," "Crabapple Cove," "Dunwich, "Wallencamp," "Peyton Place," "Gotham City," "Atlantis," "Jerusalem's Lot," "Dudleyville" and "Quahog."

- Wutham

Pronounced what-ham, it would be a goof on neighboring Wareham. We'd spell it "Whatham," but we wish to avoid GPS errors with Waltham.

We'd need Marion to change their name to Whoham in order to complete the trinity.


- Sagamore

"Sagamore" is probably the logical choice, although it would be complicated in that the actual village of Sagamore is on the Cape side of the Canal.

We might have to name the town "Scusset Beach," which would force us to  negotiate something with what would most likely be a very hostile Sandwich town government.

The "Scusset Beach" thing would be unfair to the Buzzards Bay part of the new town, while a "Buzzards Bay" naming would be unfair to Sagamore Beach.


Shark City

Assuming that we are unable to cut a concession for traffic from Cape Cod, and assuming that we lack the testicular fortitude to destroy the Canal bridges.... well, not all fights are physical.

If we can't take the physical means of going to Cape Cod away, why not attack them through tourism?

There would be no way of driving a car to Cape Cod without going past the NOW ENTERING SHARK CITY signs which we would dot the highway with. I'd even post the population on town signs, and cross it out every time someone died... you know, like they do in bad towns from cowboy movies.

Sure, most of those deaths would be Old Age, Cancer and so forth....  but you won't be thinking that when you drive past the Shark City sign.

Double Bay

One thing that this fictional town would have on every other town in the state would be the fact that we would be the only town to touch two (Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay) bays.

If you count Buttermilk Bay, we could even be Triple Bay.

This one is here mostly because it would make a great Casino name. If we stole enough of Wareham's eastern and Plymouth's southern forests, we could build a mega-casino right off the highway.

Shoot, I'd leave the bridges up at that point. Who wants to go to Taunton or friggin' Everett when you can instead gamble all night in Double Bay, and then dip over to Cape Cod for some daylight beach time?

Bowtie

"Bowtie" would be a play on the shape of the new town. Yes, it sucks.

Keeping the theme, but changing the shape.... this (and the Casino) would be a big motivator for the Wareham and Pymouth land grabs. If we seize the Ponds sections of Wareham and Plymouth, we'd be shaped like a mini-Connecticut.

Squanto

"Squanto" beats out "Samoset," "Metacomet," and "Massasoit" for Algonquin tribute purposes.

Squanto has the best Q Rating, and would be the best tourist-drawing name.

I don't know how we could do it, but maybe Johnny Depp or the Farrelly Brothers could be convinced to re-invent Squanto as an action hero. Maybe he goes all Seagal on invading Mi'kmaq, or perhaps he even kills a Sasquatch that was menacing Priscilla Alden. Squanto's story is an amazing one, but it needs more kung-fu and dinosaurs if he's getting his own town

Have Any Better Ideas? Let us know in the Comments...