Oracular Breastbones

Squirrels are scurrying to gather up an inordinate number of nuts. Geese and other birds are heading south as much as a month earlier than usual. To add to the forbidding configuration, the forward end of the woolly bear caterpillar is ominously darker this season. For legions of hunters, woodsmen and students of weather arcana, the evidence is plain--a harsh winter lies ahead. The omens, they warn, are all but unanimous: animal fur is thicker, the perch are running deeper, and the pine tree is unusually laden with seeds. Linwood Rideout of Bowdoinham, Me., a hunting guide for 40 years, gauges the se verity of the winter to come by the relative whiteness of a wild goose's breastbone after the bird has been roasted and eaten. He last week reported the bone "as white as river ice. That means heavy snows and a hard winter for sure."

Science, as might be expected, decries such prognosticators as unreliable. Weathermen at Washington's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration point out that squirrels are hoarding nuts mostly because nuts are more plentiful. For its forecasts, the NOAA turns to an array of computers, and they indicate--well, guess what? The "chances are 14 to 1 that this winter will be colder than that of 1973." One meteorologist with the National Weather Service, his tongue wrapped warmly in his cheek, was less confident: "I talk to the squirrels in my backyard every morning, and they don't know any more about the weather than I do."

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