The Day Shift - The Tree Swallow

There’s a fine line between “Wow! that’s cool!” and “Run for your lives!”

While I couldn’t be a bigger bat enthusiast and have spelunked, paddled and hiked to the remotest places in the continental United States to see swarms of bats, I recognize that there are still some out there that are squeamish about the night flyers. For some, the sight of thousands of bats flying overhead might provide the inspiration for nightmares for weeks. In fact I still recall my little sisters paddling in circles at dusk on a lake in upstate New York. Bats harmlessly swarmed about their heads. The nocturnal navigators sought the insects that hovered over the sisters’ heads and the poor creatures had the added obstacles of canoe paddles waving through the night sky and young girls screaming. I love that memory.

The swarm of creatures above me on this cold December day cascaded through unseen air currents and undulated and burst in all directions like a daytime Forth of July spectacle. By my estimation there were over 10,000 of them and if they had purpose I could not discern it. Shifted to daylight hours and set on a cold Florida day, this loose formation of Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) strikes fear in few. They serve a similar purpose in the grand scheme of things. They feed on aerial insects as bats do, but you can see them in the sunlight. They have no teeth or leathery wings and thus do not suffer the prejudices of their nocturnal mammalian counterparts.

As benign as they may seem, it is absolutely imperative to keep your mouth shut during such air shows. It’s not that speaking would frighten a flock of thousands. They make enough peeps, chirps and squawks to rival an airboat. It’s the “precipitation” that rains down on me on this cloudless day.

I could care less. It’s worth it to see such a display. I only wish my sisters were here to see it as well.

2010 - The Year in Scat

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The same can be said for poop in a sense. Call it scat, droppings, excrement, dung, feces, manure, guano. It’s still poop. Calling it sweet might be a stretch.

I’m fascinated by animal scat. Absent of the animal, it tells us who passed by, when they passed by and what they ate. It comes in many telling shapes and sizes and sometimes it’s downright artistic. Here are my favorites in descending order.

10) The armadillo is my holy grail of scat – I know they poop. I’ve just never found any.

9) Most of the time I can make an educated guess. Sometimes it remains a mystery. This large pile was found just north of the Everglades. Coarse black hairs suggest a feral pig was eaten. I’m thinking Florida Panther.

8) Scat names can be species specific. If it came from a bat it’s called guano. In most parts of North America it’s easy to differentiate from rodent droppings of the same size. Bats eat insects with chitinous exoskeletons which do not get completely digested when passed in droppings. Under a bright flashlight the insect pieces sparkle.

7) American Black Bears range all throughout North America and as omnivores, have the luxury of feasting on whatever is on the outdoor buffet. A fresh crop of acorns from the Florida oaks have helped fatten up the bears for winter. A large pile of poop adorned with bits of acorn is the tell tail sign.

6) Turkeys enjoy a wide range of foods as well, including acorns and insects. This lovely arrangement of comma shaped droppings has evidence of an abundance of plant matter.

5) Domestic and wild cats have the good grace to cover up their scats with varying results. This bobcat scrapped some grass together to cover a bone and fur amalgam of poop.

4) Manatees are herbivores that feed on up to 100 lbs of vegetation a day. They’re gassy and they poop a lot. Manatees are rare and endangered and the sea is their toilet bowl. Finding a Manatee scat is a treasure.

3) Insects poop too as evidenced by the droppings from this juvenile Eastern Lubber grasshopper.

2) I believe Shakespeare was referring to otter poop when he noted “all that glitters is not gold”. Otters are from the mustelid family and have droppings that range from sweet smelling to rotten fish. They feast primarily on fish and their scat is uniquely filled with sparkling, undigested fish scales.

1) What do you get when you mix American Beauty Berry with a Raccoon? Art. You’re welcome. Happy New Year. 

Poop and Pea

I wash the Everglades van after every tour. So when I went to pick it up at Flamingo Gardens in Davie, Fl for the next day's tour I noticed brown streaks running down the sides. I cleaned it, went out on tour and returned the van after washing it.

The next morning I arrived at Flamingo Gardens just before dawn and found the same brown streaks. I also found the locals roosting on top of the van - becoming my number one suspect in the fouling of the sides of the van.

They're beautiful. So I'll forgive them. Especially this cute little Peacock chick.

What's In the Box? - Mean Louise Edition

I was asked to pick up a package yesterday in Fort Lauderdale and when I arrived I was asked "Are you here for the box?"

"I guess I am"

I've had issues with boxes in the past.

See - What's in the Box?  

or Don't Open the Box.

Knowing what was inside - I carried it around all day and everywhere I went people asked what was in the box. I don't ask what's in their purses. I don't ask what's on their laptop. I don't ask them what's in their trunk or their medicine bag - but for some reason everyone thinks they have a right to know what's in my box. 

I could have anything in the box and if I tell people what's in the box that usually placates their curiosity. They don't actually need to see in the box. 

Obviously it was an alligator. I mean everyone with a head-sized box either has a baby alligator in it or a head. I don't have a permit for a head but I do have a permit for a gator. 

Since I had to stay in Fort Lauderdale I needed a place to keep the poor thing until we can get her to our facility where she'll be united with Chomp-Chomp. 

She's not a pet but for identification purposes she has a name - Mean Louise. She's feisty, shows her teeth and hisses but is gentle - for now. She may look cute but some day she'll be able to do some damage. And what's in the box? How about what's in the tub.

Armadillo Poop

Do you have any idea what Armadillo poop looks like? Depending on the species, the age, the size and even the gender of an animal - scat can be varied but there are certain ways to identify who pooped and I'm fairly good at it, but I've never considered Armadillo poop.

A night hike in the western cypress swamps of the Everglades turned up a few interesting piles on Saturday night and a walk across one of the levees that stretches into the Everglades on the east coast from Miami on Monday revealed a few more droppings. Coyotes are making their way into southern Florida and their scat can be identified by the relatively large size of the poop.

This one was about 4 inches long and full of hair and bones. They usually leave it right in the middle of the trail for others to find. Marked with their unique scent - it's essentially a coyote's e-mail - butt mail as it were. That's how they communicate with other coyotes. There are about 400 or so Black Bears in the Big Cypress area of the Everglades (SW corner). They do poop in the woods but also on the trails like this massive pile we found while hiking at night. It probably could have filled my baseball hat. It was full of saw palmetto berries and other vegetation which makes up a good portion of their omnivorous diet.

Otter poop is so unique it gets its own name. They call it spraint and it has a very musky odor. I actually got down on hands and knees to take a whiff, which I don't think is as odd as someone coming up with a word for otter poop. The other easy identifier is the circular bits in the poop. Fish scales. Otters eat crabs and fish for the most part but the fish scales are not digested and get left behind. Fantastic. Another easy way to identify scat is if you actually see it coming out of the animal. Had the Raccoon not just pooped, I might have startled it enough to do so. I was alone on this walk so there is no need to admit that the startled raccoon leaping off the levee into the sawgrass caused any such reaction in me.

This Raccoon scat is full of palmetto and other berries. Nowhere near as much in the pile as the Bear but just as ornate and textured. And then there is the Nine-banded Armadillo. First let me point out that you should pronounce it Arm-uh-dee-yo. Few say it right if you ask me. Next time you go to a Mexican restaurant ask for tor-till-uh chips. You wouldn't. You'd say tor-tee-ya. So say Arm-uh-dee-ya. But I digress.
My hike brought me one and a half miles from pavement where I was the only human being within 3 square miles. Staring down at my GPS - I ambled along and nearly kicked this Armadillo. They have terrible eye sight, horrible hearing and a fairly good sense of smell. When this one was within 2 feet of me - it sniffed the air, snorted and popped a foot in the air before darting off into the scrub. Unlike other Armadillos - the Nine-banded flees as opposed to curling up into a ball.

It surprised me to see it out here. They eat grubs, ants and other insects but this area seemed too desolate of a landscape for the Armadillo to find enough food and yet here it was. I knew there were raccoons and otters out here. I saw their scat. But I hadn't seen any signs of Armadillos and I wondered - "What does Armadillo poop look like?"

Weirdos

I'm watching. The more I write, the more words Google has to search on the blog and that means more random searches bring people here. I use Statcounter and can see what people are searching for. I'm endlessly amused by the bizarre and often inexplicable things people are looking to find.

A few examples of Keywords, Search Words or Queries that people have entered to reach my site:

• picture of monkeys in diapers
• milking a rat
• pooping at festivals
• snakes on a roller coaster
• slap the monkey on the butt
• cupcakes guayaquil ecuador (ok this one makes sense)
• monkeys throw poop zoologist
• what was in the box in Indiana Jones 4 (i'm guessing a poop flinging monkey with a cupcake?)
• red sox taco
• kicking a rabbit
• hovercraft tours of the everglades
• Larry Kritcher (Larry....who's looking for you?)
• Florida 2000 ballot boxes thrown away everglades
• cucaracha island florida

Maybe I'm just bored now that the election is over. Maybe I'm just easily amused. Clearly I write too much about poop, monkeys, cupcakes and Larry Kritcher.

Bad Behavior of Hurricanes and Senators

Hurricane names are like Senators. If the hurricane doesn't make much of a commotion they get to come back every six years. But do something disastrous and they get retired, leaving us to talk for years to come about the damage they've done and the billions they have cost us.

Hurricane Arlene is the Daniel Inouye (D-HI 1963-Present) of storm names. Every 6 years she has a chance to wreak some havoc but she never seems to cause much trouble. She first appeared in 1959 as a tropical storm and returned as a hurricane in 1963, 1967 and as a tropical storm again in 1971. She took a decade off before welling up again in 1981. In 1979, a list of 21 names went into circulation, followed in the next 5 years by 5 distinct sets of names which would rotate from year to year. So Arlene returned again in 1987, 1993, 1999 and again in 2005. Being the first of the storms named and often early in the season, she rarely has a chance to be anything special but she's tried 9 times.

Initially storms were only given names if they were horribly destructive like the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the Great Miami Hurricane in 1926. From 1950-1952 storms were named based on the army alphabet - Able, Baker, Charlie, etc.

In 1953, The National Hurricane Center began using women's names. The feminine touch softened the blow of having your community razed and flooded by an act of God.

Names were reflective of the times - Gilda, Hazel, Mabel, Norma, Roxie, Edith, Flora. The didn't push it and Harriet never made the list. They went so far as to schedule the X, Y and Z. Although they were never used, if they needed to, no one would have forgotten Hurricane Xmay, Yurith or Zorna.

A four year rotation of women's names was used from 1960-1978. And the 6 year cycle began in 1979 and included men's names.

The World Meteorological Organization allows for the retirement of storm names if they are particularly deadly, costly or silly sounding. The country affected can request the retirement and the name is stricken from the rotation if the WMO deems it worthy. Hazel was the first of the naughty storms and she was retired in 1954, followed by 39 other storms. The last being Noel in 2007 who ironically hit the North Pole.

The only exception to the rule was when Fern was dropped and replaced by Frieda for no particular reason. Possibly because Fern is a type of plant. Significant of nothing, I once had a hamster named Fern.

Senators are retired in a similar fashion. Do bad things and your retirement will be arranged for you. Affairs, financial scandals and "pooping" in airport bathrooms are the equivalent of flooding, 150 mph winds and hitting Greenland.

But if the worst thing you've ever done is rain in the middle of the Atlantic or filibuster a Republican majority you'll be hangin' 10 year after year on the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

Although "only" a tropical storm, Fay has proven to be the Larry Craig of storms, causing persistent trouble and won't seem to go away.

Langerado Music Festival - Pooping on the Everglades

This weekend, 20,000 people will descend on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation - IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EVERGLADES - to attend the annual Langerado Music Festival. The festival was inspired by the Phish Millennium Concert that attracted 75,000 thoughtless concert goers to the center of the most imperiled wetland in the United States.

Langerado concert promoters have a GREENING link on the official website that presents shallow, benign suggestions that would make the festival seem environmentally friendly. It's not.

"Langerado Music Festival aspires to be as clean and as green as the tropics that surround Big Cypress." Huh?

"Looking at the pristine land that hosts Langerado with the Atlantic Ocean on the horizon, this is naturally the only choice." Maybe I'm splitting hairs but the Atlantic is 50 miles away. And choose Arkansas.

"Langerado chooses to promote what is best for the preservation of the environment just like we choose to promote the finest and freshest musicians." The best for the environment would be to hold this at a stadium. Not in the middle of a wetland. And the Beastie Boys and R.E.M. may by good bands, but they ain't fresh.

They say they promote sustainability and they will attract 20,000+ people to the middle of the state! No amount of car pooling will offset that waste.

They are offering "Park City Icewater - Water the Way Nature Intended it" which apparently comes from a melted glacier over a mile underground in Utah. What the hell are they talking about? They shipped thousands of gallons of water across the country in unrecycleable plastic packages to promote eco-friendly practices in a place where salt water is intruding upon the landscape from rising sea levels and fresh water supplies have been depleted from the aquifers? Good thinking!

They are also building the Greenerado Sustainability Village where concert goers can learn about how they are presently destroying the environment. THIS VERY MINUTE!

One of their goals is to increase the amount of recycling. Last year they recycled 15,000 pounds. This year they want to recycle more. How about using less?

They claim this is a "Leave No Trace" event. Carry in what you carry out. Unless they don't poop for three days -this thing could get awful messy.

One of the downsides to the "green" movement is that people will use the principles of greening more for promotional advantages than for genuine care for the environment. This is called greenwashing. We can only hope that this crowd, like crowds at most festivals will save water by not actually washing.


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The Tortoise and the Scare: Scream Like a Girl

All animals have some warning system that protects them from harm. Rattlesnakes rattle. Bees Buzz. Dogs growl. Monkeys throw poop. If you're fast you can run away. If you're slow you can curl into a ball and use your specialized hairs to fend off an attacker like a porcupine does. And if you're a turtle you can pull yourself inside your shell and hide right? I went hiking after work in the Estero Aquatic Preserve and was walking while fiddling with my GPS when I heard a HHHSSSSSTTT - so I screamed like a girl. I was alone. I don't need to admit this, but my honesty has been called into question (I did yell at the pig - the macaw did call me a cracker. 99% of what I relay here is the truth) but for the sake of candor I offer all details here now. I screamed like a girl. It surprised me. It surprised the massive Gopher Tortoise who thought better of his simple hiss and hold your ground strategy and he pulled himself inside his shell.

I'd never heard one hiss that loud and that long and the fact that I almost stepped on this huge turtle didn't help. This place is known for a nice population of the endangered turtles. Their preferred habitat of sandy, palmetto/pine flatwoods is perpetually under attack which almost always ends up as a cookie cutter housing development.
They love to dig 5-10 foot deep burrows in the ground where they spend much of their time.


The rest is spent foraging for grasses, berries and the occasional flower or dead animal if it's rotten enough. They can't exactly chase it down and kill it.

Although they are on the Endangered Species List, they will most likely be removed soon along with Wood Storks and Manatee. This is not because their populations are increasing since each is suffering the opposite. Instead, the Bush Administration argues that the Endangered Species Act has not provided each species with sufficient protection and therefore should be downgraded to threatened to which they also argue offers the same protection. Confused? It's like removing a "School Zone" because cars aren't slowing down anyway. Basically developers will not have to concern themselves with hissing turtles and nesting birds and boaters can go back to speeding through the gulf.

So every tortoise I see is exciting and through my and MaLe's adventures we've seen a few.

(Kids - don't do this) This in on the Florida Turnpike. Speed limit 70 MPH. We passed it and I realized it was a tortoise. By the time we slowed and backed up an 18-wheeler had hit it.

This one chose a back road in Punta Gorda and enjoyed a better fate. I stopped and made sure he made it before I let anyone pass.

On my way out of the preserve today - I spooked a Marsh Rabbit who bolted into the palmettos. I didn't scream.

Pig Chicken

There are few things that I fear. Dropping my keys down a storm drain is one. Clowns including mimes. Stumbling into a beehive is another. For anti-phalactic reasons. But my greatest fear is unpredictable animal behavior and there are few as unpredictable as pigs.

My latest adventure brought me to Alligator Creek at the Port Charlotte Environmental Center. It's unstaffed presently because no one in their right mind would slog through the flooded trails and mosquito inhabited salt marshes of this park in September. But flowers bloom, mushrooms grow and you never know what you'll see unless you get out and experience it and so I did.

American Beauty berries color the palmetto scrub lands purple and while they may be tasty treats to the raccoons, the cellulose seed coverings are not easily digested and make for nice crap adornments. It's the height of the rainy season. Everything is wet. Everything is rotting and decomposing.

Vestiges of a front lawn flower garden?

From beginning to end, the trail is under 3-12 inches of water. Here I had to ford across ankle deep, tanic-acid stained water. No worries except for the occasional raft of red ants that have become swamped and now float to dry refuge.

Mosquitoes I can deal with. But this scene concerns me. Not only do pigs, (which were introduced by the Spaniards 500 years ago) create an environmental mess as they dig for grubs, they have not standard practice for fleeing which I find unacceptable. When approached, they run in any direction and on occasion straight at me. No pigs sighted yet, but I know they are here.

A snort and a "wuuuuueeeeeee" followed by crashing through the palmettos makes me stop in my tracks. There's a big pig, nearly 2.5-3 feet tall, palm-brown fur providing excellent camo. If it has tusks I'll be even more nervous.The next one is obviously a female and I spook her from her resting spot. It's hot and they lie in the mud and this one darts up and runs away - stops and then charges through the palms. I grab a rotten oak branch, look for the nearest tree to climb and wait. She stops again when I scream an obscenity and she heads in the opposite direction.

There's a year round season on pigs here and as I get to the furthest point on the loop trail I hear a gun shot. Could I have entered a park where hunting is allowed and I ignored the signs? Now I'm really nervous and feeling stupid, so I slosh loudly through the flooded trail and shout more obscenities at the pigs. They leave me alone, but it reminds me of the differences between hiking in Vermont and here in Florida. Snakes, Pigs, Bugs, Gators - there's no shortage of things to keep aware of. But that's what makes it an adventure! It turns out that hunting is off limits in the park, thus the concentration of pigs along my route. They're not stupid! Neither am I, but I am a chicken when it comes to pigs.

Waterlogged: The Magic Toilet

One of the differences between Vermont and Florida other than the sun, the heat, the traffic, the development, the flat land, the beaches, the alligators and Walgreens on every corner is the fact you have to pay for water. Pardon my naivete if anyone pays for water in Vermont. I never did in the 10 years I lived there...

I'm fine with it. I think we should pay more for it. I think there will be a day when we have wars over fresh water as we already have annual droughts and severe water restrictions. But I figure the more people have to pay for it, the more likely they will conserve it.

• You can turn the water off when you brush your teeth
• You can wash the dishes by hand instead of running the dishwasher
• You can get in the shower and then turn the water on. (Don't try this in Vermont. or with clothes on)
• You can do as Ash & Kate do and not flush the toilet every time - "If it's yellow, let it mellow". Why flush three gallons every time you pee? Be grateful the famous credo of native Montanans has not left the outhouse state - "If it's brown, keep it around."

I've taken to the Mellow Yellow idea and when I moved here in January, I noticed that I had a magic toilet. Pee in it and it disappears after a few minutes. Magic! I tightened all of the valves. Checked for leaks. All was well. My water bill seemed normal until the second bill when the consumption had jumped from 40 gallons a day to 70! 40 seemed outrageous. I blamed my sister for a few of those gallons from when she came to visit (and I still do so, especially since she no longer reads the blog due to her impending childbirth. What is up with pregnant women....can't go to the Everglades at night, can't read my blog). So I checked with maintenance who said - no leak...I'm apparently just wasting water. So when the next bill arrived at it was 84 gallons a day I said no way. Come check the magic toilet again.

They came out again and apparently had not noticed the leaky flap. The maintenance guy told me most apartments have the faulty flap. No big deal. It's a huge deal! I made him change it and asked how many other apartments needed to be changed.

The landlords were still skeptical and had me wait 2 more months to see how the water bill would change. What do you know, I'm back down to 42 gallons a day. They made maintenance change hundreds of toilet flaps.

By my crude calculations, my apartment was responsible for the waste of 9600 gallons of water in 4 months time. If 200 people had the same issue (and there are 2000 people in this complex), than that is 1,920,000 gallons of water wasted during one of Florida's worst droughts. I can't say they would not have fixed the issue if I had not complained, but I'd like to think a little credit can be given to the magic toilet.