Okie Nature

Snake Brakes.

2011-09-08T22:12:00.000-05:00

The kids and I were out enjoying the cooler weather this evening. Fletch was riding his scooter down the hill when he suddenly ground to a halt and ran toward me screaming at the top of his lungs. It turns out that he had not braked to a stop, but the western pygmy rattlesnake under his rear wheel had done the job.

He was wearing a helmet, if that makes you feel any better.

A close look at some other photos revealed 5 rattles. We released it on some state land nearby. Except for being extremely pissed, the snake seemed otherwise unharmed.

Baby Katy

2011-06-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

Today's Turtle.

2011-06-05T12:35:00.000-05:00

Chloe spotted this rather large fellow on this morning's blackberry quest. He was unimpressed with our attentions.

Protein Conversion - the final step.

2011-02-14T13:23:00.000-06:00

Rabbit-Barley Stew with homemade bread and a few other accouterments

What made me post this process is that I have managed to reach 45 years of age without ever having dressed and prepared anything more ambitious than the occasional trout.

I imagine that my friends reading the last few posts have reactions that fall within this range:

Those that are repulsed at my barbarism.

-to-

Those that think that I must have some sort of learning disability not to have done this in my teens or earlier.

While I consider the butchering and preparing of this rabbit to be personal milestone for me, I did not take it's life. It was a gift from my dog. The hunt is for another day.

Further adventures of converting rabbit protein into human protein.

2011-02-13T19:57:00.000-06:00

I wasn't kidding.

A Gift from my Basset.

2011-02-12T19:22:00.000-06:00

Mike so loves me that he brought me a bunny. So show my appreciation for his gift, I am going to eat it.

Osage orange feast.

2010-11-24T12:11:00.000-06:00

Found this huge pile of scraps out at the lake. Porcupine?

More fish parts.

2010-11-24T12:06:00.001-06:00

Fish parts.

2010-11-24T12:04:00.000-06:00

Bird's Nest Fungus

2010-07-20T22:00:00.013-05:00

The Girl found this group of Crucibulum Bird's Nest Fungus in our backyard. To give you some idea of the scale, the jagged green in the upper right of the first image is the edge of a strawberry leaf.

Each little cup is filled with minuscule "eggs" - each attached to the cup by a slender cord.

Last year I found a single cup attached to a twig at the local park and showed it to her. She knew exactly what she had found. Sometimes she does listen.

The Orange-Painted Box Turtle.

2010-06-28T06:59:00.004-05:00

The other evening the Girl came across this Ornate Box Turtle crossing the road in our neighborhood.

This specimen was not ornate enough apparently, as someone felt that it needed a coat of orange paint. I could see that a Three-toed Turtle could use some sprucing up, but this guy? Shame! I suspect an OSU fan.

That would explain a lot.

It seemed pretty used to being handled. It chose to snap at us when our hands got in range rather than pull into its shell.

I wanted to help, so I chased it around with a belt-sander for a while. When it got beyond the extension cord I just let it go.

The Oklahoma Attic-dwelling Toad.

2010-06-09T17:03:00.014-05:00

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were having coffee on what we begrudgingly call our back porch, when we heard the telltale flopping sound that we have come to recognize as one of our denizen toads. Our porch is a haven for perhaps half a dozen of these dour and by all appearances perpetually bored creatures. In the cooler evening hours they emerge within a few minutes of each other and go about their toady business.

That we heard one moving about in the the morning was odd enough, but it was the persistence of the flopping finally drove me to investigate. (Sometimes when they manage to corner themselves, they decide that a dogged application of a frontal assault on the obstruction will win out over just turning around.)

After a few minutes of poking around amongst garden tools, toys, and other detritus, I came up empty. Unlikely as it seemed, the sound was coming from overhead. I spied some movement in one our homes many screened soffit vents. Fetching a ladder and a prybar, I investigated.

Sitting on the screen was a toad that was easily as large as my clenched fist. It glared at my balefully, then made a majestic leap towards the nearby porch roof. Preferring death over suffering the indignities of my touch, the leap was far short. It plummeted 8 feet to the concrete patio below where it landed with a pronounced "plok." Surprisingly, it suffered no ill effects from the fall and it soon ambled about seeking further shelter. ( I run into him most evenings now. He has a favorite perch on a piece of scrap wood that offers it a commanding view of the backyard.)

I have no idea how it came to be in our attic, or why it would motivated to do so. A survey of our homes exterior yielded no obvious path of entry. Even considering that our house is faced with brick, it would still be a pretty long trek for an animal not really known for it's climbing prowess.

The mystery deepens: The next day when I went to repair the soffit vent there was a different slightly smaller toad perched on the flap of screen. Was it waiting to be removed, or to be closed up?

Spring cleaning.

2010-05-30T14:40:00.011-05:00

While Deb cleaned the back porch the spider hung motionless, watching her hair. Loving it. Wondering what it would be like to luxuriate in the silken tresses. To unburden herself of the massive clutch of eggs. Waiting.

When I got home that afternoon, I saw the canopy of web. Thinking that it was another massive wolf spider that frequently set up shop, I took a closer look. (They are always fun to feed.) The architecture struck me as a bit different from the norm. Rather than a single sheet that the spider would run along on top of, it was a complex sparkling latticework that occupied a volume rather than a single plane. Also the "house" was underneath the web, instead of on top and tucked back in a crevice.

A peek into the round opening revealed the truth. Deb was thrilled to realize that she spent most of that morning unknowingly face-to-face with this splendor of nature. After taking some images of the beastie and showing the kids what to look out for, the creature was humanely dispatched with a judicious application of chemicals. Its twitching carcass then gently placed upon the lid of an old coal stove and beaten with a rock until reduced to a sub-quantum level. (It's OK - I have been buying arachnid offsets through a payroll deduction.)

The web is a curious material. Stronger than a steel wire of the same diameter, the web makes a distinctive crackling sound when torn. I harvested it by wrapping it around a pair of bamboo skewers. I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but I am hoping to collect enough to make a wristband or some-such thing.

If you are interested in Oklahoman critters like Black Widows and Brown Recluses, I highly recommend the book "The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators" by Gordon Grice. Especially if you have been planning on never setting foot outside your house, or raising your children in some sort of air-tight box.

Frog Girl.

2010-05-23T22:56:00.000-05:00

Painting the town red.

2010-04-27T22:26:00.001-05:00

Great year for Indian Paintbrush. I'd usually see patches here and there along the roads, but never a field completely choaked with the stuff.

Gorgeous.

First green.

2010-03-08T21:59:00.000-06:00

Not rolling stones.

2010-03-08T21:55:00.000-06:00

Breathe deep. Not.

2010-03-08T21:40:00.000-06:00

Spring is in the air. In this case in the form of the pollen off the red cedars. Doesn't affect me or the kids, though Deb seems to be having a time of it. I'm waiting for the Bradford pears to come into bloom. Then it will be my turn.

Traffic Jam.

2010-03-08T21:34:00.001-06:00

Raccoon. Deer. Skunk.

Hoarfrost.

2010-02-07T15:41:00.001-06:00

Earlier this week, the trees outside the musuem where I work had grown an layer of frost on top of the ice left by the freezing rain.

I suspect that it might have been created by the proximity of the building's climate control exhaust, but I have never been witness to the steam traveling that far.

The accumulation.

2010-01-29T18:44:00.000-06:00

Then came snow.

2010-01-29T18:19:00.001-06:00

First came ice.

2010-01-29T18:10:00.005-06:00

I didn't get around to posting the images of the X-Mas 2009 storm. Sorry.

Not going to make the same mistake this time around.

T

Somewhere over a rainbow.

2009-11-25T23:50:00.002-06:00

On a recent family trip to Beavers Bend, we took the scenic route through a portion of the Talimena drive (a stretch of road that connects Talihina OK and Mena AR). It was a pretty miserable day by the time we were driving on the Rte. 1 hogsback - grey and drizzly.

As we were getting to the top of the hill, we could see that the sun had managed to break through the clouds on the South side of the hill. The light just just passed over the summit to illuminate the land on the North side, casting a long shadow into the valley.

Through the trees we could see a vibrant band of colors below us. Luckily there was a turn-off just ahead where we could get a better look. The combination of the mist rain and the low angle of the sun shining down into the valley was creating rainbow in the valley beneath us. It was not the typical half-round most commonly associated with unicorns, but long and wide. Just as if the bottom 3/4 of the rainbow was buried in the ground.

Hairier than I thought.

2009-10-08T19:49:00.004-05:00

I took this picture out on our back porch one evening a few weeks ago. When I took a look at the image a few minutes later, I was surprised at how the flash made the individual hairs pop out in the image as compared to my observation.

The next morning I got an even better first-hand view when I walked out my back door and had it light on my face while wrapping it's web around my head. It loomed large in my LED headlamp for a split second before it made an audible "thud" against my nose.

I was able to dislodge it into a bush without harming either of us. Glad I found it before my wife. If she survived the encounter she would still be in therapy.

The Horror. . .

2009-10-08T19:47:00.002-05:00

This will be the last tadpole update for 2009. When we started the process back in August things seemed to proceed at an orderly pace: tadpoles grew legs, then arms, their tails finally shrinking to nothing before they decided that it was time to venture from the tank so they could eat something else besides boiled spinach.

Every morning for a number of weeks I would ferry 5 or so small frogs from our back porch down to a patch of ferns at the back edge of our property.

After a few weeks of no activity in the tank, it was time to clean up and put things away for next year. Much to my surprise I found the layer of oak leaves in the bottom of the tank was not completely vacant.

There were:
-3 tadpoles - one with legs stubs, and two without any at all.
-One very skinny frog with a weird shriveled tail.
-One frog with a bloated leg.
-The pictured example with entire-body-bloat.

I guess out of such a large sample the occurrence of some with less than desirable traits are to be expected. We all can't be winners.

Ambition.

2009-09-10T21:44:00.026-05:00

The other day I spied this on the screen of our back porch, and thought:

"That butterfly has one freaky-big head."

Upon closer inspection, the truth was revealed:

Note the position of the butterfly - the jumping spider has seemingly turned it around from how it would light on the screen. Either that, or it plucked the thing right out of the air. As I was clicking away, it got spooked and began to amble off with such vigor that it actually folded the wings shut.

Jumping spiders are perhaps my most favorite creature, and I welcome them in my home. They are imbued with a intelligence and personality not found amongst their kin.

The array of eyes give us a clue to their grasp of spatial relationships. When hunting, they have been observed to move away from their prey to get a better angle of attack. During this maneuver they may lose sight of their target entirely. This seems to be a trait unique to their species - in all others if the visual image of the prey is lost in their mind it has never existed.

Try this: The next time you happen to meet one, make your hand into a spider puppet and extend your index and middle fingers in different waving motions. If you are lucky enough to get the right combination of moves, the spider may fancy you to be a potential mate. It will rear up and sign back to you with a semaphore of leg-wags and mandible clicks saying "Hey there sailor."

I handle them at every encounter, and have never once been bit.

Beetle - Up close and personal.

2009-09-01T21:52:00.006-05:00

When my daughter was about a year old, I picked up a beautiful book on electron microscopy called Hidden Worlds. I knew that she was too young for it at the time, but we would pull it out now and again to look at the pictures. She seemed to think they were pretty, and that was about the extent of it.

A few months ago I came across it again and added it to the pile of books for the bedtime read. She flipped through the stack and stopped when she came across this volume. Grasping the book in two hands she intently stared at the cover image for long seconds.

Without taking her eyes of the book, she whispered:

"Tell me about these things."

I mentioned this to a colleague of mine at the museum who is our curator of micropaleontology and resident SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) wrangler. He graciously offered for us to bring in an insect to view with his scope.

When we arrived, he had us look at out collection using a binocular microscope so we might choose what we wanted to look at with the SEM. We had been amassing a collection of dead bugs in an old ice-cube tray, and had quite a rogues gallery to choose from. The Girl picked what I felt was one of our more lackluster specimens - a rather dull beetle of the june-buggish variety.

After determining tha the beetle was in fact dead and quite dry, the good doctor mounted the beetle to a small stage - a device similar in appearance to a fat pointless thumbtack. This was accomplished using a carbon-based electrically conductive double-sticky tape.

The mounted beetle was placed in a small glass chamber onto a mechanism of gears, rollers and chains. The vessel was sealed shut and a small vacuum pump energized. We waited long minutes while the air was evacuated from the chamber. When the air was sufficiently gone, a switch was flipped and the gears were set in motion, both rotating and tilting the beetle simultaneously. After a second switch was flipped a soft violet light appeared as electrons jumped from the top of the jar to the bottom, passing over the spinning insect. The electrode emitting the beam is made from a thin foil disk of Gold/Palladium alloy, which is slowly being vaporized in the process. The vaporized particles deposit on the beetle, eventually building up a shiny silvery layer a scant 10 atoms thick.

Once the plating of the insect is complete, the pump is turned off and the chamber is equalized to room pressure, allowing it to be opened. The small stage with it's metallic passenger is transferred to the SEM. It is placed upon a small device that will allow it to be rotated, tilted, and moved closer to the detector using a joystick. The door is shut, and another round of pumping begins.

After the specimen is under a vacuum, the electron beam is energized and we get our first look at the beetle. What was to our unaided eyes a drab lump of an insect is revealed to be a staggeringly complex multitude of plates, barbs, hairs and other features I could not begin to name.

We spent over an hour exploring this strange beast. What was once pedestrian was now surreal, and we could never look at a June Bug the same way again.

Emergence.

2009-08-26T22:25:00.001-05:00

Found these two brave souls this morning. As mentioned in the previous post, the most advanced are also the smallest. They have not chosen to leave the warm embrace of the tank as of yet - just exploring.

I think that I need to consider moving the tank to a new location that will allow the new frogs to exit the tank and make it to the trees without crossing what amounts to (on their scale) a walk across Rhode Island.

If not for them, then for me. When I was walking in the yard tonight a small frog (about the size of those pictured) jumped between my foot and the insole of my Birki. It is very dead.

I can just imagine what it will be like scraping off my shoes when the mass exodus comes.

Tadpole update - Week 2.

2009-08-26T21:28:00.002-05:00

The tads continue to develop, but at different paces - the larger the tadpole, generally the smaller the legs.

Much to my surprise I found this guy - probably the smallest tad of the all. The small ones seem to hide at the bottom of the tank amongst the oak leaves and lettuce and spinach that have sunk to the bottom. The larger ones feed at the surface of the water on whatever happens to be floating.

Back legs grow gradually, but the front legs seem to just suddenly appear.

Is there a purpose to the delayed development? If they all matured at the same rate and left the pond at roughly the same time, would the bulk of them fall to predation?

Weekly tadpole update.

2009-08-17T21:58:00.001-05:00

After a little more than a week, the tads have developed from 1/8" long yolk-suckers to +1" voracious feeders. Small leg nubs have appeared on their hindquarters.

They have eaten almost an entire head of lettuce and a package of frozen spinach. (chopped, boiled 5 minutes, placed on a tray in cookie- sized chunks and frozen. Makes for convenient feeding.) They much prefer the spinach over the lettuce. When that is gone they will nibble on the oak leaves and the algae that grows upon it.

Their appetite however, pales in comparison to the tadpoles of the endangered mountain chicken frog Leptodactylus fallax of Montserrat.

I do not recommend watching this video while eating or on a full stomach. Or if you plan on eating anytime this week. You may want to ask the children to leave the room.

Katydid din.

2009-08-13T21:20:00.003-05:00

The night sounds about our house this summer are truly astounding. It has been a good year for the True Katydid Pterophylla camellifolia - a large ungainly bug that mimics a green leaf. An imitation so perfect you can be a few yards away staring right at the source of this incredible noise and still fail to see it.

The chorus was was considerably more louder earlier this summer when everybody was out looking for mates. At this point only the guys that haven't got lucky are still singing. As the nights gets cooler and summer dwindles into fall, the last desperate crooning of the bachelors will also fade.

On the subject of flying: To say that the katydid is capable of flight is like saying that I am capable of piloting a helicopter. Off to a good start, but crashing into something just when it starts getting to be fun.

Giant Leopard on our back porch.

2009-08-12T21:23:00.003-05:00

Moth, actually. Hypercompe scribonia

A few months ago we found a large black furry caterpillar on what passes as our back porch. In addition to the spiky blackness, each segment was separated by a smooth orange ring that circled its body. The Girl and identified it using my old Golden Press "Butterflies and Moths" that I had as a kid.

I pulled up some handfuls of plantain (the weed, not the banana - we live South but not that far South) and took it in to the Education department at the museum where I work. It munched happily for a few days, then disappeared under a chunk of log, binding a mass of woodchips about it laced together with strands of silk.

More to our surprise, a few weeks later the moth appeared. It was not expected until it had overwintered. Our capture and observation had some effect on the the normal course of events.

Schrodinger's cat existed in a quantum state of half-live/half dead, the outcome unsure until the actual observation. Our moth emerged from it's vessel retaining that state of caterpillar/moth. The wings never fully expanding, the body retaining some essence of it's juvenile shape and color.

Sad and beautiful at the same time.

The side effects of deer.

2009-08-10T22:47:00.006-05:00

While taking a short hike at our local state park, we encountered this young deer coming up the trail towards us.

After it patiently let me take a few photos, it bounded off to its right to join half a dozen of it's brethren.

A few short moments later we determined that the deer was not fleeing from us, but rather the untold scores of minuscule seed ticks that festooned our ankles. It appeared that we were wearing brown socks. Socks that were being slowly pulled up our legs that would soon transform into a nice beige pair of pantyhose that rides up our arse.

The Girl had a run-in with these a few weeks before, so I knew the drill: copious amounts of DEET over the affected areas followed by careful scraping with a pocket knife.

Spray-Scrape-Repeat. Showers, VSE, and baboon-like grooming of each other when we got back home.

The Boy in his jogger remained immune to the parasites advances.

You"ll never hear it.

2009-08-10T21:59:00.004-05:00

My neighbor appeared at our back door on Friday bearing a gift. He was working in the yard when he came across this 11-5/8" long Western Pygmy Rattlesnake Sistrurus miliarius streckeri.

He was working in some low weeds when it struck his little finger. Luckily for him it hit right on hs fingernail and bounced off.

It is maybe a year old. If you look closely at its tail, you'll see 3 buttons on the rattler. They get a new one every time the molt, which can be 3-4 times a year. This snake is so small that it is a misnomer to call it a rattle. I had to press my ear against the jar to hear the tail's soft zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

While no humans have been recorded dying from it's bite, I would not recommend taunting it.

I let it go a few miles from the house. The other 2 found this year he dispatched with a shovel.

No barefootin' kids. Sorry.

Tadpole City.

2009-08-08T16:21:00.010-05:00

Last Friday I awoke to find that tree frogs has laid a mass of eggs in our wading pool. Luckily the chlorine level was at a low ebb, and I thought there was a good chance that these were going to be viable.

I scooped them into a small aquarium and headed to work. When I got home there were little tadpoles throughout the small tank. I pulled our 10 gallon tank our of storage, filled it with well water and waited until the temperatures of the two tanks matched. After placing some oak leaves and sticks in the tank, I made the transfer.

For the first few days the tadpole were fairly sessile. I added some boiled celery to the tank but they had no interest. They were still living on their yokes - hiding - only moving when disturbed.

By Wednesday they were beginning to move about and display hunger. By Saturday they are inch-long ravenous feeders

Updates to follow.

Don't even think about it.

2009-08-08T15:43:00.018-05:00

What you won't find on this blog is nuanced descriptions that will allow you to discern what an edible fungus is. I'll leave that to people more experienced and knowledgeable than myself.

Let's just say I believe that I have successfully identified Chlorophyllum molybdites and can tell you it is something you do not want to eat.

While not always fatal (pets and children are most at risk), the description of severe collicky abdominal pain, followed by explosive - perhaps bloody- diarrhea leads me to believe that it would be a less than ideal experience.

This fungus is the leading culprit in mushroom poisonings in North America for two reasons:

1) If you have a lawn, there is a good chance you have this large showy mushroom growing there - maybe in a fairy ring. It's everywhere, it's beautiful, what's not to like? It's a percentages thing.

2) It is uncannily similar to other varieties that are edible. Mistakes were made. Don't make the plunge after breezing through the Cliff Notes for "Good Eat'n Mushrooms" or viewing some grainy photos on rainbowfaeriesguidetoediblemushrooms.com. Be mentored by someone who has done this their entire life. Better yet - let that person eat a sumptuous meal of the fungus in question, lock them in a cage and observe them for a week or so. Just to be sure.

I think that given the severity of this mushroom's toxicity, it deserves a more appropriate moniker:

The Death's Pajamas.

Boring. Well, at least in the larval stage.

2009-08-02T23:01:00.001-05:00

Witness Plectrodera scalator, a long-horned beetle otherwise know as the Cottonwood Borer. Darn thing is about the length of my thumb, not counting the "horns."

The beetle lays its eggs at the base of a cottonwood or poplar. After hatching, the larvae boring into the tree for 2-3 years before the morph into the adult. Might even kill the tree. Yay.

This one is in the freezer, awaiting the the judicious application of a pin.

No Refrigeration Needed.

2009-08-01T17:11:00.000-05:00

Playing Possum-

Surprised this guy early one evening when I rounded the corner of the house. He just slowly rolled over onto his side, face contorting into this rictus grin.

Unresponsive to gentle prodding with stick.

And when I say stick, I mean the kind that fell off a tree.

I envision some sort of clockwork or wind-driven device on a tripod placed over the animal that would give it a poke at semi-random intervals. In this way the meat could be kept fresh indefinitely.