We humans think of dead things as useless. But in the wild world, many dead things have just begun to be valuable.

Dead wood is an example. You can use it in woodpiles for wildlife. I like a woodpile outside a window under a tree.

For a fast-rot woodpile, just make a stack like a pile of firewood. Fast-rotting species include sweet gum, elm and pine.

The wood next to the ground will rot fastest. It will make a home for snails, slugs, wood-eating beetles and the larvae of predatory insects like the eyed elater, a click beetle with big eye spots.

These delectable critters and their kin will attract predators like the brown snake and maybe the worm snake. Skinks may lay their eggs in the rotting wood. Kris Irwin found a slimy salamander under dead wood in his Athens backyard.

As the pile rots down into the earth, keep adding more wood to the top to keep your food chain supplied with raw materials.

Dead wood creates a kind of detritus food chain. Most people think of the grazing food chain as the foundation of life. Examples are the grass-cow-human or the oak leaf-caterpillar-warbler chains. Grazing food chains provide about half the food for the world's organisms. Detritus food chains provide the other half.

When a bird scratches in dead leaves looking for insects, it's feeding in the detritus food chain. Dead things are part of Mother Nature's bountiful provisions.

Cleaning wood from a backyard carries away useful elements (like carbon, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus) that fuel detritus-based food chains.

This same ecological principle applies to logged forests, hayfields and other croplands. Harvested environments have somewhat fewer raw materials to work with. The idea is to make a little piece of your yard function like a natural forest floor.

A second kind of woodpile for backyard wildlife is a slow-rot pile. Use slower-rotting woods like oaks. Make an elevated support of stones, bricks or other nonrotting material. This keeps termites out and keeps the wood dryer.

This pile makes a refuge for lizards, protected crannies for deer mouse nests and a feeding platform for chipmunks. Chipmunks like a lot of small crevices for quick escape.

Of course, these creatures will be just as well off in the upper, and not yet rotten, layers of your fast-rot pile. The advantage of a slow-rot pile is that it lasts longer.

A brush pile is a third kind of woodpile for wildlife. It makes a refuge for rabbits and lizards and a protected feeding area for certain ground-feeding birds.

Use small-diameter branches to make brush piles. Place a few large logs or rocks on the ground first to hold the branches above the ground.

For a finishing touch, place a couple of fat logs or flat rocks on the ground next to the brush pile. You can lift these up from time to time to view the creatures that burrow under them. It's like taking the roof off part of your little wildlife city to see what's going on.

Let the fallen dead leaves accumulate on the ground. These will provide a foraging ground for moles, shrews and other secretive wildlife.

Some people think woodpiles for wildlife are messy.

So what do they do? It seems so absurd --

They take all their dead branches out to the curb.

Then come the garbagemen. They take them away.

Off to a faraway landfill, they say.

There the stuff sits, for a lifetime or more,

While they buy new fertilizer straight from the store.

Those with the money say, "Hang the expense."

But Mother Nature thinks it doesn't make sense.