What's in the Cave?!? WHAT'S IN THE CAVE!?!

Don't come down here. There's something in the cave! It's rattling. I think it's a Rattlesnake. Everybody stay where you are! It sounds weird. More like a hisssssssssssssss. Are there Rattlesnakes in New York?

For the Labor Day Weekend we drove up from Florida (yes drove) to Glass Lake, New York for a family reunion.

We used to spend our summers here and one of the big adventures was to climb Bearshead Mountain to the lookout and look down at Glass Lake (pictured below with Albany, NY in the distance).

Once most of the mobile family tree had wandered back down, I asked some of the more limber and daring in the crowd if they had ever been to the "boulders" below the cliff. It's a good 100 foot drop from the lookout but if you carefully navigate the foot-wide rock ledge you can shimmy down with relative ease.

When we were kids there was a porcupine den under the boulders and we would snag quills if the den was vacant.

When I hopped down to check it out we all heard a very loud hissssssssss which cousin Sam had also heard moments before my jump. My first thought was rattlesnake and although the noise persisted it didn't sound right. One of the stupidest things you can do is antagonize a rattlesnake but boys will be boys (which accounts for most of the rattlesnake bites each year) and Sam, Will and I continued to poke and prod around the area.

Hey look - bird poop on the rock. Hey - downy white feathers near the cave entrance. Hey! A broken egg a bit bigger than a chicken egg.

Well if it's not a snake we can stick a camera right in there! I see some feathers and a foot.

It is a Vulture. A juvenile Turkey Vulture! Doing what vultures do. Hanging out in caves while mom and dad are out pulling roadkill off the road to bring back and regurgitate for junior. Having taken a picture and solved the mystery, we didn't want to upset the puker any further so we left him to his boulder cave.

Turkey Vultures disappear from Florida in the summer so it was fun to see one up North. They nest on cliffs or in caves with the parents taking care of them for nearly 3 months after their 30 day incubation. The young are born nearly all white but this one is probably about two months old. In a few more weeks it'll fly down south with mom and pop and start feeding on delicious Florida roadkill.

The hissing? When alarmed the adults will vomit or play dead but the young will vomit or hiss. Lovely considering what they eat. Since vultures have no larynx, they can only makes a raspy hissing sound that sounds to a Florida Jungle Boy like a Rattlesnake or at least Sir Hiss from Disney's Robin Hood. Ah the fun of a mystery. Turns out there are no known Timber Rattlesnakes in this part of NY anyway.

I wonder what ever happened to the Porcupine.....

Puke Breath

"Let me warn you about Vultures" the woman on the phone at the animal rehab center said. "It's ok - I know where you're going with this. They're pukers."

While on tour on Friday we spotted a juvenile vulture sitting on the ground under a palm tree. Unusual. It hopped about and clearly could not fly. So after a quick call to C.R.O.W (Center for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife) out on Sanibel I confirmed that the Vulture had most likely fallen from the nest and was in need of rescue.

Vultures eat carrion. Dead stuff. On occasion the Black Vulture will help a sick or injured animal into the next world but fresh road kill is always the chef's choice for our roadside clean up crew.

Vultures don't seem to have much in the way of a defense system considering their weak talons but it might be a toss up if I had to rescue an injured owl vs a vulture. Vultures puke. They vomit when stressed. They barf if you get too close. So the idea of rescuing an injured vulture requires considering this consequence.

I prepped myself by climbing into a stinky dumpster to get a cardboard box big enough to transport the bird to CROW, grabbed a towel from the Lake Trafford Marina and headed down the road to wrangle the bird.

I know it's a juvenile because it still has feathers on the head. Adults go bald which is a great benefit when you spend your days with it stuck in a dead animal carcass.

Upon approaching the bird - it hopped about and tried to get lift off. I followed it around the Marina sign. I followed it around a Sabal Palm. There was no way I was going to catch this bird. It was healthy. It just had no idea it could fly. So I made one mad dash towards the potential puker and it leaped skyward, landing 6 feet up on a chain link fence. I approached again and the bird hopped down and headed towards the canal - I followed and when the bird ran out of space and was cornered by me, my box and my barf-shield, it leaped again, soaring a few feet down into the canal. Just before splashing into the gator-filled water, it flapped with several heavy wing beats, soared skyward and landed on a branch where it looked back at me as if to say "I had no idea I could do that". The vulture could finally fly. Good luck my new vulture friend and may the cars and roads bring you good fortune.

Maddogs and Englishmen

As Bill said to me afterwords, "Only maddogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun" and yet there I was on Sunday, 95 degrees and relatively high humidity and I'm trekking through the wilderness of the Fakahatchee Strand State Park in search of alligator babies.

The jungle! (click for larger view)

String Lily

The Park is 64, 000 acres of sawgrass prairie and cypress swamps and although the water level is usually high and the mosquitoes offer their daily blood drive, the rains have not come as they usually do and without water, the mosquitoes have no place to lay eggs. So water and bugs aside, the only thing I had to contend with was the heat. My plan was to head up a remote trail in search of a gator hole where mother and pups might be found. The walk would be just over 2 miles, but as I approached the "trailhead", a flock of Black Vultures stood their ground. They were resilient and I was concerned I'd find a rotting feast of some sort, but as I slowly drove on, they scattered and revealed a simple puddle of water.

No sooner had I passed, the flock returned to the road and with my eyes trained ahead on the narrow, pothole riddled road, I spotted what I first thought to be the biggest dog I had ever seen. It stopped in the middle of the road, look towards me and continued on.

It was a Florida Black Bear!

or bigfoot?

As I got closer to the spot where the bear entered the woods, I grabbed my camera and followed, but like a big fuzzy brown ghost, it disappeared without a sound into the thicket.

There are an estimated 400 bears in this part of the state. They have long legs for ease in walking through the swamp. It was amazing to see and surprising considering the heat and time of the day. They may be active at any time of the day, but I figured they would have more sense than a maddog.