Ant Buffet

For a moment the corpse moves and thinking it’s still alive, I shift backward from my seat on the ground. The insect that is being consumed by an army of ants has long since expired, but the communal efforts of the tiny insects to break the hopper into pieces have caused it to list. I, with my macabre fascination with the grisly side of nature have spun the scene into an imaginary Zombietown of arthropods. In fact it’s a simple scavenge site and underneath the roiling cloak of ants is a spiny-legged, flightless Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (Romalea microptera). Chances are the lack of useful wings led to death by wheel – and its present state.

How the mouse met its end is a mystery, as is the curious rubble pile surrounding it. Based on the reddish pelage on top and the white below I would say this is a Cotton Deermouse (Peromyscus gossypinus) that once lived in the swamps of the Picayune State Forest east of Naples, FL.

Considering the masses of formic foes piled upon the remains of the snake, you’d think it would be hard to identify the creature beneath. The telltale marking is a yellow band around the neck which makes it easy to identify as a Ring-necked Snake (Diadophis punctatus). I often find this secretive snake under logs or debris on the ground. When threatened they will expose their brightly colored dorsal side to warn would be predators away.

From a distance, the ant traffic was so heavy that it could have been mistaken for a slender snake. The sinuous band of ants ended at a well-picked apart Pig Frog (Lithobates (Rana) grylio). Similar in size and shape to the American Bullfrog (Lithobates (Rana) catesbeiana), only the Pig Frog is found in South Florida as this one was. Both species are sought after for their edible legs. This one kept them but little good that did.

Death is unkind. I certainly have sympathy for all of the creatures that meet with an untimely end, especially those that are victims of human carelessness. In the end, their deaths are not in vain. A colony of ants will feast. 

Exclamation Points!!!

I'll spare you the year end in review. For New Year's Eve I like to clean out my desk, get rid of junk in the closet, remove animal bones from the back of my car and check for belly lint. It's my way of starting fresh. So for your amusement and to continue my tradition - here is the clean up post where I offer a few photos I've taken during the year that I had no idea where to put throughout the year. Fort Myers Beach (Feb 08) - I called and tried to explain that I was worried about the economy. They didn't listen either.

Manatee Park, Fort Myers - No crabs, no diving, but falling backwards into the alligator inhabited water is fine.

Fort Lauderdale

Fort Myers Beach - This was all the wife's idea.

Coral Springs - What kind of monster forbids kites?!?

Cligman's Dome, North Carolina - It was cold. And no one was looking.

Cherokee, North Carolina - Tempting....

I don't know why I find this amusing.

Regional Southwest Airport, Fort Myers - Something's not right? Yeah I flew on Jet Blue. Never again.

Montreal, Quebec - The old man is faking it. He has his cane backwards.

Montreal, Quebec - Amusing to me. I imagined the artist desperately trying to convey a scene of violence with stick figures.

Fort Myers - I was cold. And no one was looking.

Fort Myers Beach - Sister Mandy...my sister...she's not a nun...obviously - poses with the Photo-Op-Cop.

Home - This happens more often than you would think in my line of work.

This post didn't end well. Thankfully 2008 did. Here's to a fantastic 2009.

New Year's Resolution - Use less exclamation points in my writing and live more exclamation points. I think I can do that! hmmm.

Don't Open the Box

Remember the mysterious box I carried on a plane? Do you remember what was in it? Do you remember the toads that kept me up at night. Night after night?

On my last Everglades tour I was handed a box and told not to open it. The box was about 12"x 12" and when I picked it up it shook. What's in it? A giant toad! How big could it be? I opened the box. The toad was huge.Cane Toads (Bufo marinus) were introduced into the Everglades in 1955 to help control grubs and other pests in the sugar cane fields. They range from the Rio Grande down into South America but are a nuisance not only here in the swamps and farms but throughout the world, most notably in Australia.

The problem with Cane Toads is that when threatened, they produce a nasty neurotoxin - a milky substance that they release from the paratoid gland at the back of their head. They may not give warts, but those bumps can secrete a liquid that will burn your eyes and cause a rash on your skin. Predators that eat them are poisoned which often kills them. This is an obvious problem for our native wildlife including other frogs and toads that unknowingly feed on smaller Cane Toads. Survival rate is not good. Cane Toads (AKA Giant Toad or arine Toad) also compete with our native amphibians for food. This one was huge. About the size of a cantelope. I didn't squeeze it for freshness. The largest recorded Cane Toad was 15 inches long and weighed nearly 6 pounds. This one was about 8 inches long. And I'm guessing 25 pounds. I didn't weigh it.

Eventually this one will end up as Boa Constrictor food. Boas are immune to the toxin.

Selfishly I take exception to their presence because they inhabit the pond outside the apartment and sing a deafening chorus during the breeding season. Imagine a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA at the same decibel as an 18 wheeler and you get the idea.

I'm not sure how to end this. But all is quiet outside tonight.

Frogger: A Night in the Everglades

Who wants to go to the Everglades at night? (Survivalman Mike might say no at this point). Wanna go on an airboat? Would you go on an airboat in the Everglades at night? That's exactly what I've proposed as a new addition to our Everglades tours and just a few nights ago we ventured out on a test run to assure we could do this safely.

I called the boss an hour before the trip and recommended that if we don't return to nix the plan. He agreed, wished us well and we set out for Sunset Airboat Tours on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation. Fellow guide (and stand up comedian) Dwayne Cunningham and I hatched this plan months ago, but before we unveil our new excursion we wanted to do a trial run - from the docks, across the sawgrass prairie and out to the Miccosukee Indian "hammock" (or island) and back. Airboat captain Regis, equipped with a headlamp similar to those used by the glades froggers, pushed us away from the dock and steered us off into the night.

30 miles east, the sky over Miami glowed orange and as we headed west into the darkness, an abundance of fireflies and click beetles used their bioluminescence to blink their photonic aphrodisiac to attract the opposite sex.

The ride was slower than usual and chillier than usual. Regis suggested the headlamps worked fine but we could have used a bit more light. I suggested doing the trip during the day.

But once we stepped off the boat and onto the Indian island, the airboat prop stuttered to a stop and the cacophony of Pickerel Frogs, Pig Frogs, Narrow-mouthed Toads, Green Tree Frogs and Mink Frogs provided a spectacular symphony that made the trip worthwhile. Walking the boardwalk, each few steps brings you to a new amphibian neighborhood where a new species dominates their tiny patch of swamp. With all of the noise you'd think it'd be easy to find them. We spotted one.

On our way out and back we caught the reflection of the orange-eyed alligators (which is simply a reflection of our lights off the reflective surface at the back of their eye called the tapetum lucidum). They feed at night on fish and whatever else they can easily chomp and swallow. We ain't on the menu.

In all it was a great trip and certainly one I hope we can start sooner than later. And you're welcome to come along.

The Anteater: A Hallucination Agreed Upon

If a lie agreed upon becomes the truth, than a shared hallucination must be reality. I know what I saw. It was 1 am. It was the middle of the Everglades on the famous Loop Road and Ash and I both saw a 5-foot, arch-bodied anteater scamper across the dirt road, illuminated only by the bouncing headlights of the truck as we raced down the road towards it.

Let me back up here. Ash is a Terrestrial Ecologist, on vacation from frog research in Maryland. I don't have a current photo, which is not true, so I had to go back to this picture from December 31st. Ash is the Giant Mr. T Smurf pictured with wife and Smurfette Kate, also on vacation. He's certainly qualified to verify our late-night and completely sober sighting.

The previous day we had an Everglades appetizer adventure; a quick trip into the National Park, stopping at the famous fruit stand "Robert is Here" for Key Lime and Guanaba Shakes and an up close Emu experience. Hardly worth it!

The plan had been to explore a bit more, but a nasty lightning storm rolled across the sawgrass prairie,

truncating our trip, but not before seeing a few sights including this gator, resting peacefully within biting range on the Anhinga Trail.

I was as close as it would appear, but took a cell call seconds later and did not hear someone yell "it's moving". Ash ran and jumped into his pregnant wife's arms just out of the picture. The gator moved all of 2 inches and I was not eaten.

The next evening, the plan was to venture out to the Loop Road with Ash, Kate and family. But they went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Commerce first...and then we would go after that. But Kate's father Larry made a fantastic antipasto,

so we would eat and go after that. But someone brought an all-berry pie and by the time food was consumed, it was very late. But if we had not gone, we would have always wondered what we had missed.

Attrition plagued our crew and eventually just Ash and I headed out at 12 am. Pregnancy gets Kate off the hook....

As far as wildlife goes, sightings were slim, but the chorus of frogs, including Bull Frogs, Pig Frogs, Barking Tree Frogs, Green Tree Frogs, Narrow-mouthed Toads, Cricket Frogs and Chorus Frogs was like window shopping for the blind with every patch of grass or cypress revealing a new song from a new species. We saw maybe 5 frogs but heard thousands.

As we bounced down the remote dirt road, our eyes growing weary and desperately needing sleep, we both noticed something in the headlights hundreds of feet ahead. Dark, long, slender and arch-backed, it scrambled from the cypress, onto the road and slowed as it slunk into the grass on the other side. As we approached, both of us had the initial, nonsensical, farout thought....Anteater!

But it was an alligator. Standing up high on 4 legs, back arched, and in a hurry to avoid our intrusion. Funny what lack of sleep does. Odd we both considered an animal found thousands of miles away.

It may not have been an anteater, but to see a fast moving alligator out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was well worth being worn out the next morning. Thanks Ash and Kate for another fun adventure.

Noise Violation

The lease agreement for this apartment complex/hive is fairly strict when it comes to noise. After 9 pm you need to keep it down. No loud music, no barking dogs no use of jack hammers. I first heard the odd noise about two months ago. It was a distant, monotonous, mechanical trill that sounded as if they were doing road work out on US-41 about 1/2 mile away. I ignored it. It was the type of sustained, drone that I typically require to fall asleep. The noise continued for the next few weeks, occasionally becoming louder, sometimes occurring into the early hours of the morning before dawn. It occurred to us that it might be an animal. A treefrog? an owl? Try making a low, guttural "waaaaaaaaaaaaa" noise and that's pretty much it.

It wasn't an issue until my sister Tara, brother in-law Brian and baby Peyton came for a visit. It has rained all of 1/10th of an inch since I arrived in Fort Myers in January. No sooner did their plane touch down and the rain clouds rolled in, dumping over an inch of much needed rain across the area over the next three days. And then came the ungodly noise. As darkness fell two nights ago, the once unobtrusive noise rose to an unending cacophony of ever loudening, monotonous notes, bombarding every open window. Closing all windows dulled the ever present sound. It was time to find out who the culprit was.

With flashlight in hand, MaLe and I set out around the otter pond in the center of our hive where the sounds seemed to emanate from. The sounds radiated from dozens of points which seemed to be in the trees, in the water, on the buildings. The chorus was singing from every available vantage point and as we drew closer to each individual point, our well-cloaked, mysterious callers would cease, drawing our attention to more remote callers and making pinpointing the culprits all the more difficult. After encircling the pond and spooking a Yellow-crowned Night Heron (aka Quwak, because of the similar noise they make),we spotted one huge hopper along the water's edge. Mystery mostly solved. It's a toad! These softball-sized beasts apparently were taking advantage of the recent rains and calling to every Bufonid from here to the Everglades. The species in particular is the exotic Giant Toad Bufo marinus (aka Marine or Cane Toad). They can weigh more than three pounds and females can lay a string of up to 20,000 eggs. Males have a rudimentary ovary and have the ability to lay eggs if their testes are damaged. (stop giggling little sister) Eggs hatch between 2 and 7 days. Adults eat our native frogs and toads. They can also secrete (or "shoot") a fairly toxic liquid from their skin as a defense which can be fatal to small dogs....I should encourage the owners of the Pomeranian that barks all day to try one. I mean have the dog try one. Oh heck they should all try one.

The chorus had calmed last night to a normal decibel, but the pond monsters are still calling. (click here to hear one) Our little apartment pond is far more productive then I would have ever imagined. Who knows what we'll discover next out there.