London Calling at the Pole Farm

On any given summer day, an 800-acre expanse of grasslands and forested tract on Lawrence Township’s Cold Soil Road is alive with buzzing insects and chirping birds. Ninety years ago the tract was alive with state-of-the-art radio technology that transmitted telephone calls to Europe, South America and the Caribbean. 

Locals dubbed it the Pole Farm for the ever-increasing number of oversized telephone poles that sprouted up to meet increasing demand for international telecommunications service. Today the poles are gone and the site is part of Mercer Meadows, a unit of the Mercer County Park System.

The Pole Farm’s quaint appellation belies the magnitude of its stature as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Long Lines Overseas Telephone Radio Transmitting Station. More than two dozen steel towers, and then hundreds of towering poles were erected between 1929 and the 1960s to support antennae that transmitted telephone calls via shortwave radio to points across the Atlantic.

These days, we take international telephone service for granted; with the advent of web-based services, many of us skip the phone for video anyway. In the early 20^th century, however, telecommunication was limited to places that had been physically wired into the system. Thus, North America could talk to North America, and Europe could talk to Europe, but there was no way for people in the Eastern Hemisphere to talk with those in the Western Hemisphere.

Enter the wonders of radio, which was becoming commercially viable for voice signals in the early 1920s. Bell Labs engineers first devised a way to transmit converted phone signals to London and back via long-wave radio signals, but that was on an expensive single circuit. If AT&T had any hope of selling international telephone service to the public, it had to be both cost effective and available on demand.

The answer came in shortwave radio, which overcame the issues of long-wave but brought its own limitations. (Big science alert here!) To beam powerful signals long distances, specialized radio antennas would have to be located precisely, built under exacting conditions and suspended by large arrays of towers. Bell Labs engineers again got to work, determining what kind of equipment the service would need and where it would need to be located to operate optimally. Their solution also had to address the very real problem that the wavelengths of shortwave vary in how well they work, depending on the time of day. If the service were to be reliable, engineers would have to overcome the limitation with a better antenna.

Beyond the knotty radio transmission challenges, AT&T needed two pieces of land - one to build a transmitter and another to build a receiver - far enough away from each other to assure that the arriving and departing signals didn't interfere with each other. Building them in sparsely populated areas would assure that there wouldn't be much if any other radio traffic to interfere. The transmitting station needed to be relatively close to U.S. Route 1, where the primary East Coast telephone system trunk line was located.

Netcong in hilly, rural western Morris County proved to be a suitable location for the receiving station, narrowing the possibilities for a transmitting station to the south. Lawrence and Hopewell Townships proved to be just the spot, with appropriately level farmland that was largely cleared. AT&T’s land acquisition team quietly began negotiating with 14 farmers in 1928, moving quickly in the hopes that deals would close before local chatter would prompt property owners to raise their prices. Word got out in the local newspaper, and while AT&T initially denied being in the market for farmland, it eventually admitted the transactions and closed the deals.

Following the purchases, AT&T quickly got to work on the infrastructure, both here in New Jersey and the first two international locations, London and Buenos Aires.

The Lawrence Township facility included two radio transmission buildings complete with an innovative water cooling system for the powerful vacuum tubes that generated the necessary shortwaves. To the outside world, the most remarkable feature of the facility was the v-shaped configuration of 180-foot-high steel towers – 26 in all – which supported a series of wire-mesh antennas. Placed about 250 feet apart, the lines of towers extended about a mile in each direction, aimed to beam signals to London and Buenos Aires. Somewhat like shades that could be rolled up and down, the mesh curtain antennas were precisely tuned to accommodate the complexities of shortwave technology at a given time of day or night. Machinery hoisted the various curtains on Roebling cable at the appointed hours to ensure reliable telephone service 24 hours a day.

Work was completed in Lawrence and London in 1929, right on schedule, with Buenos Aires coming online in 1930. Technological advancements soon improved efficiency and capacity, enabling the site to handle more calls on a single radio channel and bringing the cost of a call to $30 for three minutes. Meanwhile, some of the farmers who once owned the land had made deals to lease it back, and continued to raise crops in the shadows of the towers. One could say the property was bearing fruit for everyone.

An example of the layout of a single rhomboid antenna,
illustrated on the Pole Farm's concrete map. 

Just three years after the massive towers were erected, AT&T introduced the rhombic antenna – a five acre-wide diamond-shaped array of eight poles, each 80 feet high, holding up the antenna wire. These smaller, less expensive arrays spelled the end for the giant curtain antennae, which were dismantled in 1939. Further advancements brought the twin rhombic antenna (think one diamond next to another). It’s the proliferation of those, over time, that led locals to dub the tract the Pole Farm. With farming still going on around and amid the antennae, it probably didn’t take much imagination for an onlooker to conclude that the tract’s big crop was oversized telephone poles.

By the mid 1950’s, the site was the largest facility of its type in the world, handling more than a million calls a year. The site’s remaining woodlots and orchards were cleared to erect even more antennas, totaling more than 2000 poles by the 1960s. Old farmhouses, previously converted to housing for AT&T workers, were either moved offsite or demolished to create more space.

In the end, the technological progress that had given birth to the Pole Farm was what ultimately what created its demise. The successful introduction of transatlantic telephone cables and then satellite telecommunication proved to offer more reliable, less costly service. AT&T relegated the Pole Farm to backup status in the 1960s, removing antennae as they were taken out of service. In the final years, the facility that once provided groundbreaking voice communications to world capitals was now left to serve small markets in countries most Americans couldn’t easily locate on a map.

AT&T fully decommissioned the Lawrence Overseas Telephone Radio Transmitting Station on December 31, 1975. By the end of 1977, virtually every standing structure on the Pole Farm had been demolished – everything but a single pole from the Tel Aviv rhombic. Farmer Charlie Bryan had requested that it remain standing as a lightning rod to protect his home and barn nearby.

Other traces of the Pole Farm’s infrastructure are largely gone, through you might find the stray cable or concrete footing among the ground foliage as you stroll along the wooded paths. The county has memorialized the two transmitter buildings with steel arches that approximate where their entrances would have been. The site of Building Two, not far from the parking lot, includes a large concrete map of the antenna configurations that once stood on the grounds. One can walk from Bogota to Berlin, to Moscow, to London, to Willemstad, to Bermuda, imagining the conversations that flowed through those radio waves.

Turns out, too, that the Pole Farm is a remarkably lovely place to visit on a summer afternoon. In the two decades since Mercer County bought the property, 435 acres of the former farmland has been converted to native grasslands. It’s great habitat for Short-eared Owls and Harriers in winter, and Grasshopper Sparrow, Bobolink and Meadowlark in summer. The Washington Crossing Audubon has pegged the fields as outstanding for butterflies if the county leaves the grasses and wildflowers unmowed for the summer.

Level gravel paths make the entire place very welcoming to anyone on foot, bicycle, stroller or wheelchair. As you walk or roll or run, consider that some of the very routes you’re taking are the service roads that linemen once used as they maintained the antennae that connected the world’s voices. Stop to look closely in the woods, and you might even see vestiges of the poles, guy lines and concrete footings that stabilized the antennae. Interpretive signage along the paths offer photos of the structures that once stood there, along with portraits of some of the people who kept the station humming. A leisurely visit will leave you marveling at what once stood there.

While I’ve covered a lot, there’s so much more to the Pole Farm, from nature to history to technology. Lawrence Township historian Dennis Waters’ very informative presentation for the Mercer County Park Commission, available on YouTube, dives a bit deeper into the technology, the people who worked at the site, and the post AT&T history. It’s definitely worth watching.

Owl be seeing you in all the old, familiar places...

Our recent report on duck spotting at Barnegat Light indicated that winter birding is not for the faint of heart. Persistent (and well-insulated) explorers should discover, though, that hanging around in the cold and wind (and even snow) can have its reward in the sighting of species that reliably return to certain spots, year after year.

Take, for example, the Short-eared owl. Habitues of open grasslands, some of these moderate sized raptors spend their winters at the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge in Sussex County. A viewing deck at the state border with New York provides a good spot to gather with other hearty souls late on a January afternoon, waiting for the sun to drop below the surrounding hills so the show can begin.

My first visit to Wallkill a few years ago set an unrealistic expectation of the relative difficulty of spotting owls. Ivan took me to see the owls just after we'd met, telling me that the odds were good that we'd see at least one in the field, and I came away thinking that either it was pretty easy, or he was some sort of bird conjurer. Basically, we drove up, he set up a viewing scope on the platform, and within 10 minutes, he found the owl in question perched on a slim stump about 50 yards away. He invited me to take a look, and not only was the bird there, but as if on cue, it turned to look directly at me. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought Ivan had stopped by earlier to plant a mechanical decoy in the field.

Most of the time, spotting the birds isn't as easy as that. It takes time, patience and a touch of fortitude.

• Time and patience: like most members of its taxonomic family, the short-eared owl hunts largely in darkness. The key is to get to the appropriate viewing site just before dusk, wait and hope they decide to show.
• Fortitude: well, try standing in an open grassland field at dusk in January. It's windy, and you're often left to stand on snow pack whose chill permeates the thickest of boot soles. Before long, no matter how many layers you're already wearing, you start regretting not having the forethought for electric socks and that extra set of thermal underwear.

The Short-eared owl.

This time around, it was plenty cold, but the inevitable wait was tempered by the pre-game show. A sole adult Bald eagle scared up a massive flock of grounded Canada geese in the field across the road, the geese apparently not realizing that the chances of one eagle killing them all was rather remote.

Not long afterward, the show started on our side of the road as a host of Northern harriers glided effortlessly above the tall grass. A little longer yet less bulky than the Short-eared owl, the harrier's face is somewhat disc-shaped like an owl's, though the two aren't related. Among the many brown females we witnessed skimming and diving around the field, a striking "gray ghost" male harrier flew around the territory like a mysterious spectre.

As we stomped our feet to keep warm, local birders told us that during the week, when fewer people are there to observe, up to a dozen Short-eared owls were known to come out to hunt. They had good reason, too: according to management at Wallkill, conditions over the summer resulted in what's described as a bumper crop of rodents, the prey of choice for owls and harriers alike.

The evening we were there, they started a little later than their customary 4:45 flight time. Suddenly, as light was draining from the sky, we noticed other forms among the many harriers patrolling the field. The new visitors had stiffer wingbeats and bulkier wings. It took a few minutes, but I started to be able to differentiate the two types of birds from their flight patterns and relative size. I didn't get a firm count of owls, but it was clear that several had felt comfortable enough to fly within view of us humans. The show was definitely on!

Chilled to the bone and satisfied we'd met our goal for the trip, we started toward the car to warm up, but one owl seemed not quite ready for us to leave. It approached, soaring higher as if to get a view of us from above, and maybe to confirm to us that we had, indeed, seen what we thought we'd seen. Even in the waning light, we could see its distinctive under-wing pattern as it flew directly overhead. With that parting adieu, we left, happy that our frigid vigil had paid off.

Sunbathing on the beach in November? In New Jersey?

Apparently the tundra-like atmosphere that makes our beaches appealing to only a hearty few New Jerseyans in November also makes them a favorable sunbathing spot for rare visitors from the north.

No, I'm not talking about the Benny, the much-maligned city dweller come to give the Jersey Shore a bad name. I'm referring to a much more refined creature, the snowy owl. Two were reported to be in various spots on Sandy Hook last week, and Ivan and I made our way there to check them out.

Owling -- as birding for owls is known -- is generally a distinctly different art than the search for, say, songbirds. It's got its own traditions and etiquette, and birders rarely report the exact location of one of these iconic raptors, for the owls' safety. Active largely at night, most owls obscure themselves during the day to avoid attack from predators. If they feel harassed by individuals or groups of people standing within a certain range of their roosting spot, they're likely to attempt to find another secluded perch to rest on, and in the process, reveal themselves to predators.

Snowy owls differ in that they tend to be 'out' during the day, often roosting on the ground or a low perch. The only other one I've seen was actually on some distant riprap at Round Valley Reservoir a few years ago. Thing is, if they've gotten as far south as New Jersey, there's a good chance they're exhausted from their long journey from the Arctic and deserve a good, solid rest without being hassled by a bunch of people. Thus, while general locations are often shared, birders generally know to give the owls a wide berth, observing from a hundred feet or more away.

The snowys at Sandy Hook had been reported from several locations along the ocean beach, from just north of the park's entrance gate, to the most currently accessible northern end of the hook at Fisherman's Trail. We figured we'd scope for birders from the hawk watch platform at Battery Peck and adjust plans from there.

Our view from the deck yielded some success, but not the kind we really wanted. A large group of birders was on the trail, but headed back toward the parking lot, having not seen either owl. We continued scanning for a few minutes from our elevated perch but saw no signs of the birds.

The next stop, on North Beach, was the spot, as we could tell from the many cars in the nearby lot. As we walked along the sandy path toward the beach, we started seeing small clutches of binocular-toting people in various areas, all facing in the same direction, some with spotting scopes, a few with cameras.

One of the Sandy Hook snowy owls, perhaps trying to
catch a little nap on the beach. A big thank you to
 Lisa Fanning, This Great Planet, for this digiscoped
and cropped photo

"Looks like the owl is here," Ivan said. More or less in the center of the rough circle was what, by bare eye, appeared to be a white and gray lump or small sand dune. Focusing through binoculars brought a clearer view of a relatively dark snowy owl, head turned away from us. Occasionally it would shift position slightly, or turn its head to face us before looking away once more. The other reported snowy was nowhere to be found.

By day's end, we heard that there were two other snowy owls spotted in New Jersey -- one near Barnegat Light and another in National Park, along the Delaware. Why are they here, and so many? Opinions vary. It's possible that there's a shortage of their normal prey of lemmings in their traditional wintering grounds in Canada. Or perhaps so many owlets were born this spring that adults are forcing the newcomers south to find winter territory. In either case, snowys are rare but not unheard of in New Jersey, so we can enjoy them, from a distance, for a brief period of time.

And apparently Sandy Hook's Canadian visitors are learning the pleasures of visiting our shores without the frustrations of having to purchase a parking pass or, farther south, a beach badge. They'll be long gone and home before anyone stops to check.

Forget the first robin: Woodcocks announce spring at the Great Swamp

I've talked before about the surprising amount of life it's possible to find in the depths of winter, even as it seems the weather will never get warm again. Walking around with open eyes and ears can clue you in to the ways nature is preparing to renew itself as the days get longer. Check out your own neighborhood, and you'll see that in some ways, spring is already here.

And as I discovered last weekend, there's a lot going on in other places, too. With sunset approaching last Saturday evening, Ivan and I met up with about a dozen folks from the Fyke Nature Association to watch for woodcocks at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. These long-billed shorebirds prefer damp grassy marshland, and one spot at the refuge is well-known as a mating season hotspot.

What makes the American woodcock so fascinating that a bunch of people will stand around in a swamp at dusk waiting for it? Well, it's always interesting to witness courtship behavior, but the woodcock's routine is pretty distinct for birds that nest in New Jersey. If you were to relate it to that of young humans, we were about to see the avian version of a nightclub in a college town: pick-up lines and a bit of dancing, with the males hoping to impress the ladies. The dance, in particular, is an improvement over what most other local birds tend to do: stand around and sing their version of "hey baby, hey baby, hey baby."

The male woodcock announces the start of the ritual with a short, adenoidal buzzing noise that is usually described with the mneumonic "peent" (or, for others, electronic flatulence). If you didn't know better, you might confuse it for an odd out-of-season cricket, or maybe a frog of some sort. He will continue "peent"ing from his well-obscured spot on the ground until he takes flight. Rising 40 feet up in the air, he performs an aerial display of dips and climbs, his wings whistling all the while. For a sampling of these sounds, check out Cornell University's All About Birds page on the woodcock.

The woodcock: big eyes, long bill, short legs.

We waited patiently for twilight to settle, noticing that early-season moths were beginning to come out for the evening. In the waning moments of light, we started to hear the buzzing calls in a brushy area. One brave individual started a series of calls, a little erratically spaced. He was totally obscured on the ground among the taller grasses and shrubbiness, so it would be harder to see as he rose in flight. With so many eyes on the lookout, chances were that at least some of us would get a glimpse. Soon a few other individuals started making noise from other areas, giving our guy a little competition.

Patience is your friend when birding, and waiting for woodcock is a prime example. You can't hurry them up, and when they do rise, you're sometimes following the sound overhead more than a visible body. After a bit of peenting, our guy ascended and flew around like a stunt pilot on adrenaline, his wings twittering the path of his speedy and looped flight. He dropped back to the ground as quickly as he'd risen, and there was silence for a few moments until we heard....

"Peent."

"Well, I guess that didn't work," someone said, and we all laughed. All that work and the woodcock had come up short in the new girlfriend category. Time to start from scratch again.

Our first woodcock flight seen, more sounds began to emerge. You expect a lot of nature noises on a warm summer night, but early March has its songs in the swamp, too. Now that I wasn't so focused on hearing every peent, my ears opened to the rushing sounds of ducks (and geese) flying to their nighttime settling places. Ivan even spied the sound of what might have been a bullfrog croaking in a pond several yards away.

Peenting became more frequent and from other quarters, and we were startled when two separate woodcocks flew past us, just a few feet overhead. With their large, dark eyes, it was surely easier for them to see us in the darkness than the other way around. Things were livening up, for sure!

Then we had an even bigger surprise visitor -- two, actually. The larger bird coming toward us had a much deeper wingstroke and more substantial body, flying purposefully past us toward a wooded area, its partner not far behind. Heard calling earlier by a few in our group, the great horned owls were out for the night, no doubt looking for a meal. Seeing them was a nice little bonus, unexpected but not out of place.

Birding at dusk has its limitations, of course: you can only watch so long before natural light is extinguished, and artificial light won't help your cause. Nature had been good to us that evening, and the only thing left to do was find our way to our cars without incident.

Palmyra Cove? It's a hoot!

We've already established that it's near impossible to find owls, even when you look really hard. Fog doesn't help much. So, then, why did we head to Palmyra Cove Nature Park on an afternoon when it was shrouded in mist so thick we couldn't see the adjacent Delaware River?

To look for owls, of course. The park is a known wintering site for saw-whet owls, which nestle within the honeysuckle canopies in the wooded areas. Given our lack of success seeing short-eared owls at Manahawkin the evening before, I think Ivan was looking for some redemption.

Palmyra Cove is easy enough to find: it's on Route 73, right at the foot of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge leading to Philadelphia. The Burlington County Bridge Commission has reverted this former dredge-dumping site to a largely natural state, with trails extending through wooded areas, a tidal cove and a couple of small ponds. While some of the foliage consists of invasive species that typically capitalize on disturbed soil, the park attracts a nice variety of bird life, including up to 25 species of warbler during migration.

Our first stop was the visitor center to pick up a trail map and check out the exhibits, which focus on the nearby bridge and community as much as the natural environment. I was rather tickled to see that the display on the town of Palmyra included a photo of local man-who-made-good Lena Blackburn, without explanation of his contributions to baseball (one wonders whether the secret location of his baseball rubbing mud source is somewhere within the Nature Park!). There's also a pair of monitors showing a live feed of the bridge's Falcon Cam: a pair of peregrines has nested on the structure for several years. They were away from the roost while we were in the VC, but visitors are encouraged to log their sightings in a book nearby.

That exploring done, we hit the trails. Given low visibility and our desire to find owls, we chose not to take the riverside Cove Trail, favoring the path system that courses through the woods. After we passed the shallowly-filled dredge retention basin, the trail began to wind and split off at points. It didn't take long until I lost my sense of direction and got all turned around.

"I'd turn back if I were you." Fog in the woods
of Palmyra Cove.

If that wasn't enough to get me disoriented, there was the fog. It wasn't all-enveloping, but it added a certain spookiness to the whole venture. As we both scanned random vine tangles for signs of saw-whets, I couldn't help but think of the haunted forest scene from The Wizard of Oz. You know the one I'm talking about: lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I knew that the worst thing we'd come upon was a deer, but still. It was late afternoon in January, with murky weather and declining daylight.

We wandered for a good half hour, finding very little bird activity, let alone owls. I spotted a flicker high up in a bare tree, but we identified it from shape and behavior because it was little more than a silhouette to us in that light. If there were any saw-whets in the tangles of vines, they weren't letting themselves be seen.

And then... hooo! Ivan found an owl, but it wasn't the species we were looking for. Whatever it was was high up in a distant tree, far higher than a saw-whet would venture. It was something neither of us had expected to see: a great horned owl. A bit of jockeying and guidance got me onto the bird, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it even if I'd been looking that far up the tree. Perched very close to the trunk and further obscured by the fog and waning light, the owl stood motionless. I thought I could make out the pattern of its feathers, but the best identifying points were its size and the ears which stood out from its head.

So, we were zero-for-two on the small and medium-sized owls that weekend, but we scored a big one.

On a road to nowhere in Manahawkin

We had a long day of ups and downs in the greater Cape May area on Saturday, looking for additions to our respective year lists and visiting the reported spots to see the more remarkable rarities that had been reported to be in the area.

As a quick update:

• A report of a king eider hen near a jetty in Cape May Point delivered a common eider for us. (That beach spot also yielded the rare bare-rumped jaybird, but that's another story.)
• A very yellow western tanager revealed himself after a very brief wait on a busy street corner in Cape May Court House.
• And... after what would have been deemed a wild goose chase in other circumstances, we caught a glimpse of a crested caracara (you might remember how rare these are in New Jersey, after our story of seeing one in West Windsor last year.)

All of the roaming around left us kind of spent and ready to call it a day, but Ivan suggested one more stop as we headed back up the Parkway. Dusk wasn't far off, making it a perfect time to stop in Manahawkin to visit the short-eared owls on the marsh.

A confession: whenever Ivan mentions owling, I do a mental eyeroll, especially in pine forests where they might be tucked in broad daylight. Don't get me wrong. I love owls. In fact, our first joint birding experience was a January visit to Wallkill WMA to visit the short-eared owls. He got one in the viewing scope within a few minutes, and it accommodatingly turned to face us just as I was getting my look. Since then, it's been a lot harder to tease them out, but in Ivan's defense, owls of any ilk do their best not to be seen. Finding them takes a certain amount of luck, regardless of how advanced your birding skills are.

This time around, when I started my usual jovial owl rant, Ivan simply said, "You'll like this place. It's the road to nowhere." Say no more. Let's check it out.

We got to Route 72 as twilight was descending. A few turns brought us away from the state highway hubbub and into marsh territory. One more right turn and we were on Stafford Avenue, a lightly-traveled road occasionally marked with a pothole. "This is better than I remembered it," Ivan told me, explaining that the road is rarely maintained and can get heavily rutted and uneven a mile or so in, when it turns to hard-packed sand and dirt.

The road goes first through a forest, adding a little spookiness to the trip, but then the horizon widens to accommodate marshgrass, with no trees to obstruct the view for acres. Harriers ordinarily would have been scouting for their last meals of the day, but we saw nothing in flight. Still, the terrain was incredibly cool, as was the feeling that absolutely nobody was within shouting distance. The only real sign of human progress was the utility poles on the side of the road, though four or five of them were tilted dangerously enough to take the whole system down into the brackish water with a good gust.

The bridge to nowhere. 

Then we got to the really cool part. The road ramped up a little before being blocked by a graffiti-laden Jersey barrier. Whoa. The car had barely stopped before I jumped out and walked up to the barrier to find remnants of an old wood bridge, its near end gone, making it impossible to walk across. It doesn't matter, anyway, as there's no road on the other side.

"Behold!" Ivan exclaimed as he stepped out of the car. "Nowhere!" He had that right. Marsh stretched out almost as far as the eye could see, and it was so quiet, well, so quiet that any of the usual analogies about quiet were useless. That, my friends, is Manahawkin Wildlife Management Area at dusk in January.

How was I not aware of this place? I pride myself on knowing these spots, and from what I can recall, our better-known friends who cover the odder parts of the state haven't featured this Road to Nowhere. It seems that perhaps it's a secret kept by sportsmen (the state DEP maps list the area as the Manahawkin Hunting and Fishing Grounds) and birders, with the occasional spray paint-wielding local teen for good measure. I could see where the hunters and fishing enthusiasts would value the area; the marsh was sparsely crossed by old mosquito-control channels they could use to get to a blind or favorite spot.

Gazing across the marsh from one of its few (maybe only) high spots, I was again reminded of the Meadowlands -- the rickety old abandoned bridges you can see as your train rumbles along to Newark or New York, the ditches dug in the futile hopes of keeping the skeeters at bay, the wisdom of letting a certain amount of marsh just be and be natural.

As for the owls, well, they were keeping to themselves during our visit. We saw none at all before daylight finally surrendered to darkness, though Ivan thought he might have heard a short-ear bark in the distance (some say they sound like terriers). Perhaps next time.