Another Day in Paradise

In addition to the cold (for us anyway) and the recurring torrential rains, our county is on the list for Governor Skeletor's emergency declaration after two cases of Zika virus (out of 9 or 10 statewide) were reported here. Not sure what that entails since we already have a very robust anti-mosquito program in our county although its current effectiveness may be negated by all the rain. It does mean that the disease may now spread locally since the most common transmission vector is for the mosquitoes to pick up the virus by biting an infected person and then transmit it by biting uninfected folk.

We are, of course, home to 80(!) different species of mosquitoes, 33 of which think people and/or their pets are tasty, of which 13 can spread diseases among us including Aedes aegyptii, which spreads Zika and Aedes albopictus, which could if it wanted to.

Also, the red tide's back—with a vengeance. Thanks to all the rain (see above), the Corps of Engineers has been releasing torrents of water from an overflowing Lake Okeechobee into our main river washing tons of farm runoff nutrients downstream and into the Gulf (note the concentration of red dots) to feed the algae. The algae then overbreed, their vast numbers causing the red color, using up the available oxygen in the water suffocating the fish. Wave action also causes some algal cells to go airborne where they can cause respiratory problems in people.

The good news is the water has probably been cold enough to discourage the brain eating amoeba and flesh eating bacteria.

Meanwhile, back on land, while avoiding the bears and wild hogs and pythons and nile monitor lizards and tegus, it might be wise to note the discovery of a crocodile in town just visiting the beach. Which, for the record, makes us the only area in the world to have both alligators and crocodiles wandering around.

But, what the heck, come on down for a visit. If the wildlife doesn't kill you a tornado or sinkhole just might!

Suburban Zooarcheology

I came home yesterday evening to find my brother had lopped off more than a dozen fronds from the pineapple palm out front. It is now possible for a full-size adult human to walk around the tree without ducking. (He did a similar chop job with the orange tree by the driveway last week that went even further. I'm not sure whether he got carried away with the pruning or he was cutting it down and just stopped part way through. See: Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution.)

There's a good view of those nasty spikes

I discovered two things as I gathered up the fronds and placed them by the side of the road for trash pick up.*

First: Pineapple palm fronds have long, thin, spiky and incredibly sharp stiletto-like leaves at their base which are quite capable of stabbing one in the hand, thigh, calf or anywhere else that gets too close and they will draw blood.

Second (and less painful but much more interesting): A 'possum up and died under the pineapple palm. I found parts of its disarticulated skeleton pressed into the ground. I have the skull, both halves of the mandible, both femurs, and several vertabrae (probably lumbar, but I can't be sure without others to compare them with). No ribs, no tail bones, no other leg or foot bones although I may just have missed them since they would be very small and it was getting dark.

The bones I do have are in perfect condition. No breakage, no scratches, no teeth missing. And clean. The animal must have died a while ago because there was no soft matter anywhere. (There was the very faintest odor which was sufficient to intrigue Paribanour when I went inside and presented my hands to her but it was faint enough that the other cats were totally uninterested.) skullsunlimited.com is asking $50 for just a skull (of course) and mine is every bit as good and I have the other bits, too.

These are from washington.edu and not mine, but mine look just like this

They're all laid out right now on a fertilizer bag by the front door until I can find a proper way to display them. Some sort of shadow box or something. In the meantime, I'll go back out under the tree and see if I can find any more pieces.

UPDATE: I went back out last evening while it was still light and found the pelvis, more long bones (not sure which), some more vertabrae including tail bones, and several ribs. Still haven't seen any of the very small foot bones.

* We get three trucks coming through on trash day. One automated truck for recyclables in their designated container, another automated truck for non-recyclables in their separate container, and one truck with humans attached picking up "yard waste," basically anything plantish larger than lawn clippings that used to be growing on the property.

Further Blurring the Distinction Between Here and There

It was a slightly less humid than normal evening last night, so when my brother went out to the bar to watch his Red Sox play (the local TV only carries their games regularly during Spring Training when they play right across the river, besides it's a good excuse to get out for a while) he let the cats out onto the foyer. Mittens wasn't interested but Jasmine and Paribanour took up the invitation.

An hour or so later, having put food in their dishes, I opened the door to collect them only to find both cats hyper-intensely poking at the base of the wall. I thought at first I might have to take another lizard away from them (all three of them had found one in my room a few days ago, sans tail (no idea if that was their doing), causing me to lock them out when it disappeared under the desk where I couldn't find it until I caught Jasmine with a tailless lizard corpse after I suspect it tried to get out of my room on its own) but I was wrong.

They had cornered a baby snake.

It couldn't have been more than a foot long and looked more like a really energetic worm. How it got inside? The same way the lizards do, I'm sure, probably even easier without legs sticking out. Why it came in FSM only knows. I confess to dancing out of the way when it wriggled too close; my excuse is I was barefoot.

I had to physically toss the cats back in the house (Jasmine twice) to get them to leave the poor thing alone and by the time I succeeded it had managed to hide itself off in some nook or cranny and I couldn't find it again. If it's smart it will figure out how to get back out in the garden where it belongs.

The Extremely Flat Lizard Learning Curve

Dear Lizard:

Stay out of the house. Cats live here. You know this. I am not always around to rescue your stupid (now truncated) ass from them, either. You know this, also.

The only reason I even knew you were inside and in danger is when Jasmine started growling at her daughters because she was afraid they'd snatch you away from her. Unfortunately, I couldn't snatch you out of her mouth either. You're lucky her grip wasn't any tighter or I wouldn't be writing this to you now.

I have no idea where your tail is. It was still attached to you when Jasmine carried you into my brother's room. It was not on you when you escaped and I found the kids playing with you in the living room. Either she ate it or it's still in my brother's room where it will stay forever unless he finally cleans out from under his bed and discovers it all shriveled and mummified. In any event, it's not yours any longer; grow a new one.

And I repeat: Stay outside! You're much safer out there where all you have to face is the larger birds, the black snake that lives in the woodpile, the Cuban tree frogs, the feral cat that keeps coming around because the kids haven't been fixed yet and the hormones and pheromones and such, the raccoon, the opossum and the phantom coyote someone claimed to have seen on the other side of the peninsula. It's not even cold out there anymore.

That's much safer than taking on three bored indoor cats with nothing better to do.

Sincerely,
The Human

Critterman Redux

My brother claimed something was scuttling around in his wall again over the weekend, the same spot the 'possum was pulled out of recently.

I didn't hear it and the cats were not acting any more weirdly than usual (it was Jasmine's turn to sneak outside when no one was looking and when we did the headcount and realized she was AWOL my brother let her back in but she'd picked up some strange smell or something only the kids could notice and she hissed and snarled at them whenever they got close to the point where they were ready to forgo dinner rather than share the plate with her) although as just noted they were not acting any less weirdly than usual either. My brother scheduled the Critterman to come back today.

He was up in the attic for a half hour or so banging around and pulled at least one juvenile opossum from the same wall space the first one had occupied. He and my brother are now touring around the outside of the house identifying all the possible entry points after which Critterman will block them up as cheaply as possible.

I suspect this is merely a skirmish. The war may last all winter.

Another Monster For the Menagerie

Behold the "Pink Meanie."

(Attaching a radio transponder. To a jelly fish!)

It's a jelly fish. A jelly fish large enough to be tagged. They grow over 3 feet in diameter with tentacles over 100 feet long. And they're suddenly all throughout our coastal water. Again.

(Pink Meanie way too close to shore)

(Supposedly yummy Blue Moons)

Hundreds of them have been spotted in the Gulf. Apparently, they "blossom" in response to the presence in the water of their favorite food, the much smaller but even more stingier "Blue Moon" jelly which they eat literally by the dozens at a time.

There's been a bloom of Blue Moons this summer and so the Pink Meanies, which otherwise exist as inconspicuous bottom feeding polyps, have responded for the first time in about five years.

Between these guys and the lion fish, I'm surprised we get any tourists at all.

Paribanour's Might've-Been Excellent Adventure

The cats were "out" last evening when my brother came home. He informed me later that he'd let Jasmine and Mittens in but Paribanour was too comfortable where she was and didn't want to move. As I was getting ready to quit for the night, I opened the door to let her in.

No Paribanour.

I searched around in the house in case she had changed her mind at the last moment (they do that frequently) and slipped in behind my brother as he was closing the door. (Mittens is a master at sneaking into my bedroom or bathroom without me noticing and then dashing behind/under the bookcase, the easy chair or the commode where I can not reach her. The solution is always to leave the room and close the door behind me. Within a couple of minutes, she invariably wants to get out again and will sit by the door until I reopen it.) My search turned up only two cats.

The problem is the outer door latch no longer works. I purchased a new "universal" latch but our old latch apparently was not "universal" and so the screw holes for the new one do not match up. My brother claims to have a drill buried somewhere in the garage and has promised, in his redneck way, to find it for me but that's somewhere way down on his list of things to maybe get around to someday. And until last night it made no difference anyway since the cats were all perfectly content to just lie around in the foyer and watch the world go by.

Last night Paribanour figured out how to open the door.

I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I think she surprised herself. Nevertheless,  . . . curiosity and all that . . . out she went.

Being a house kitten, she has no concept of the big world out there and certainly no clue how to deal with the opossums, raccoons, dogs and cars we know are in the neighborhood let alone anything more exotic (coyote) that might come wandering by.

I don't know how long she was out. Fortunately, she either didn't go far or was just returning when I went out to find her because she was in the grass right at the edge of the walkway lights. Otherwise I would have been searching for an all-over dark gray cat in the night shadows. She made me chase her a little but wouldn't leave the walkway so that game didn't last long.

So all's well that ends well. And my brother promises to find the drill. Soon. He says.

A Visit From the Critterman

Last night the cats started acting weirder than usual. At first they were just tearing around the house with too much energy, racing each other (mom included) across the living room, sliding on the coffee table, over the couch, onto the recliner by way of the TV tray, into the kitchen and onto the window sill (or all the way up to the curtain rods). And then back again.

Suddenly, it became very still and quiet. When I looked around from where I was doing dishes I saw the kids trying to climb the front of the bookcase and mama all the way up on top, over six feet up where she had never gone before, and threatening one of Mom's ceramics. She backed as far away from the edge as she could and, although I could just reach her, I couldn't get the leverage to haul her down. There was a dull, rhythmic thumping behind her which I assumed was her tail against the wall.

I called my brother, who is taller, to help and when he came out of his room, which shares that wall, he took one look at Jasmine and said, "So that's what all the noise is about." He was wrong.

After we hauled the cat down, the noise continued. Jasmine, incensed at being forcibly removed from her discovery leapt from a side table to a small but slightly taller curio stand (knocking over a vaguely disturbing articulated painted wooden wizard/clown "doll" of unknown provenance) to the top of the old TV onto the bookcase, thus explaining how she got there the first time. Something was in the wall and she had dibs.

My brother, after yelling at all the cats sufficiently to keep them off the bookcase, spent the night listening to whatever it was skittering around.

First thing this morning he called an animal removal guy who came out, crawled into our attic and removed a smallish 'possum that had fallen inside the wall and couldn't climb out on its own. He also found and blocked up the hole that had allowed the 'possum to get into the attic in the first place although he warned that his fix will not prevent raccoons from gaining entry if they want because they have those nimble, tricksy fingers and can literally pull the patch apart.

The 'possum is now on its way to the local (semi-)wilderness where it will be set free to live happily away from people and near to the pythons and panthers and black bears and alligators and tegus and whatever else is hiding out there.

Good luck, little fella!

The Perils of Bartleby

I talked to my brother last night about insisting that Bartleby come inside and stay there. She really does enjoy just spending the entire day lying in the grass up against the trunk of the living oak but there's been a verified sighting of a coyote on the other side of our peninsula and, although it's several miles away, those beasts can travel far when they want/need to. Also, where there's one there's more.

And Bartleby, with her bum hip, can't climb a tree or run away and she certainly would never think of fighting back even if it might do any good, which it wouldn't. She doesn't even try to protect her food from the birds when they land four feet away from her and start eating out of her dish.

My brother said she would prefer not to come inside. Well, of course not! She's Bartleby. But I know he secretly wishes she would come back in. I think he likes her better than any of the other cats. She does have the sweetest disposition, matched, possibly, only by Paribanour who just loves being groomed and petted and fussed over.

Bartleby will come in. Neither my brother nor I could stand it if she were hurt.

But Don't Panic

It's that time of year when the local and state authorities issue their warnings about the dangers of the great outdoors. Hurricanes, floods (June is Flood Awareness Month), mosquitoes (Seriously, 48 different species?! Including eleven that are unique to here?), toxic algae, poisonous spiders and snakes, alligators and sharks.

And now the best of all: brain eating amoebas!

O.K., they're very rare. But of the 128 known cases in the U.S. only one person has survived. They live in warm fresh water including possible drinking sources (3 people were infected using neti cups) and climb up through your nose into your brain where they feast on the gray goo behind your forehead.

I've never even heard of these things before this week.

Welcome to paradise.

What To Do If You See a Tegu

Forget the Cuban Tree Frogs. Forget the Burmese Pythons (1500 hunters could only find 50 of them over the course of a month). Behold the Tegu.

A four foot long, strong-jawed, sharp-toothed, burrowing, invasive, eating machine laying up to 35 eggs per year. Thanks Argentina!

Although they're mostly around Miami and St. Petersburg at this point, there's been at least one credible sighting right here in town.

So, what to do if you see a Tegu? According to FWC: 1. Take a picture, 2. Note the location, 3. Call it in.

I do love that the exotic species hotline is 1-800-IVE-GOT1 and the web address is ivegot1.org

Fauna, Successful and Otherwise

Something I did not know.

It seems the white ibis that flock all over the place around here (just this morning two dozen of them were walking across the street out front and caused more than one car to slow to a crawl to avoid them) are officially endangered. Now, after ten years and with a population estimated at 90,000, that may change.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission will be reviewing the entire list of threatened species and might remove protection from the ibis and and snowy egrets. While a local population of 90,000 doesn't sound "endangered," removal from the list could open up habitat to development starting the cycle all over again.

On the other hand, some of these beasties on the list are critically endangered. The Sanibel Island rice rat is so rare nobody could find one for three years and, now they know its not extinct, may need to have some whole new islands built specifically for it to populate. (They're small as rats go and, apparently, disease-free.)

The Everglades mink and Florida panther both live in the swamp and are equally threatened. There are probably fewer than 200 panthers and nobody knows how many mink.   Every year a dozen or so panthers are killed by cars or other panthers. Still, the population is ten times what it was 40 years ago, so that's something.

Meanwhile, the Great Python Hunt is coming to an end this weekend. Total estimated Burmese python population: anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000. Total kills in the GPH: 50 or so.

That'll help.

The Place Where I Live

A couple in this county but a few towns over recently had a safe stolen from their home. It contained $100,000 in gold and silver bars that they had just removed from a bank safe deposit box in order to buy a house. I'm thinking either first generation immigrants untrusting of banks due to experiences in the old country (although, why then use a bank's safe deposit box?), or drug dealers trying to keep income off the books (although, I can't imagine customers buying with gold and silver so somewhere along the line cash must have been paid for these bars so there's a record somewhere), or--and this seems most likely to me--idiots.

Considering all of the advertising on TV and in the paper pushing gold and silver hedges against a falling dollar, junk mail touting collectible coins and medallions and right-wing ranters extolling the virtues of hoarding hard metal for the end-times, I'm not surprised someone thought this was a good idea.
______________

On a totally unrelated note, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioners remind people that it's not just a bad idea to hunt alligators with a handgun, it's also illegal. Handguns are, apparently, perfectly legal when hunting Burmese pythons, as long as the coup de grace is administered correctly.

But do not share with bears. Or the feral hogs.

Miscellanea: Fauna, Aquatic, Aerial and Terrestrial

It looks like the Mohawk Reef has become a magnet for whale sharks. A second one was spotted there just this past week. It's also become a magnet for just about every other fish within twenty miles.

And it seemed the great turtle egg-laying season from earlier this year might have been compromised by Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Isaac but, then again, maybe not.

The sulphur butterflies are all over the yard, about the same size and color as the new lemons on the lemon tree. A few viceroys and some others I haven't been able to identify yet are also hanging about.

  

   

The abundance of lizards would seem to indicate that the Cuban Tree Frogs have not overwhelmed our little ecological niche.

And then, of course, there is the cat who has become sleek and fat and demanding, training us to her extremely large vocabulary of grunts, whistles, chirps and mewls as she explains that her food dish needs topping off and her water bowl requires freshening and the door needs to be held open right now while she decides whether to sit on the cushioned chair outside under the oak or remain sprawled on the living room carpet.

Happie Takes Manhattan

Local goat makes good!

Happie the three-year-old skateboarding Nigerian pygmy goat will be getting her fifteen minutes of fame on the Late Show with David Letterman next week.

She and her people are flying up to New York and taping the show to air on Tuesday, August 21.

And that's not all. Apparently Happie is already on Animal Planet's "Wall of Fame," whatever that is, and will appear on a Nickleodeon game show sometime in the fall.

Nature, High and Low

Well, Mother Nature betrayed us again this past weekend.

The cat and I went out several times over three nights trying to spot meteors (O.K., I confess I have no idea what the cat was looking for but she insisted on joining me). The sky was just overcast enough to block anything interesting. Not complete cloud cover, we could see some stars, but enough to cause backscatter from the city lights across the river, graying out the darkness.

On the bright side, I just found out that our (relatively) local alligator farm over near Lake Okeechobee is in the middle of their hatching season and for $10 will allow you to hold a hatching egg and even help the little critter emerge.

Have to admire the single-minded determination

involved in biting the hand that helps to birth you.

(And, yes, that's a missing finger in the top photo!)

Happie Days

I was going to write about receiving in the mail my sample ballot for the upcoming primary election and noting how it has a space for the Democratic primary which absolutely no one has mentioned since there are umpty-gajiliion Republicans running against each other and only one challenger to the incumbent Democratic U.S. senator and how in some races independents and even Democrats can vote in the Republican primary because this is such a conservative area (despite Florida being an almost-evenly-balanced swing state) that, in some local races, there are no Democratic opponents thus making the primary effectively the general election but . . . hey! Happie, the local 3-year-old skateboarding Nigerian dwarf cross goat, just made the Guinness World Records!

The story itself is pretty cute (Happie does tricks like a dog, too) but what originally got my attention was the delightfully irrelevant caption which accompanied one of the photos in the newspaper article.

While teaching Happie to skateboard, Melody Cooke
was also accepted to the Wharton School of Business.
/ Lindsay Terry/news-press.com

Is Melody perhaps feeding Happie the remains of the acceptance letter?

Anyway, politics some other day. Today: Happie, the world record holder!



The Mohawk Reef Guest Book Gets A Big One

The new reef off Marco Island created by the sinking of the USCGC Mohawk has been very popular not just with divers but with fish of all kinds. Within days of the sinking, blackfin tuna, among many others, were reported in the area. On Sunday, divers from Fantasea Scuba saw (and photographed) the largest visitor of all, a whale shark, just hanging around.

Sun Sports, the local Fox sports channel, will be re-broadcasting a program by ScubaNation on diving the Mohawk reef this weekend. It should also be on-line at some point.

The Cuban Invasion

It came to my attention this morning, thanks to the regular short environmental piece on my local NPR station, that the large frogs that jump onto our window screens in the dark of night with a heavy thump and clunk reminiscent of someone trying to break in might be Cuban Tree Frogs, an invasive species that eats literally anything it can fit in its mouth including (but not limited to) insects, native frogs, lizards, other Cuban Tree Frogs and even baby birds(!).

The Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation of the University of Florida wants us to report and kill (sorry, "humanely euthanize") the invaders with benzocaine in a bag in the freezer.

I'll need to do a little more research to make sure our frogs are really Cuban Tree Frogs and not the besieged local good guys but, based on the size alone, I'm pretty sure we're under attack.

Dexterity . . . and Discretion

It appears Bartleby the Bad Penny is right-handed. Or right-pawed. She will eat her solid food from the bowl like a normal cat but prefers to scoop her water up with her paw. Apparently, enough liquid stays within the folds of her pads to be worth the effort. On the rare occasion when she does drink directly from the bowl she does so by parking her entire body over the bowl and licking up the far side pushing the water over the edge and onto the floor.

Bartleby also believes herself (mistakenly) to be a psychokinetic kitty. She will stare for long minutes and with ferocious intensity at the edge of the sliding door willing it, in vain, to open. She keeps trying at various distances and angles but with no success, at least so far. Eventually, she gives in and knocks. (She does, however, use her left paw to knock on the door.)


Actually, I am glad her ferociousness is limited to her staring contests with the sliding door. I've mentioned before that we leave the lanai screen door to the outside partially open so she can answer nature's call as she needs. Last night a 'possum noticed the opening and came in to steal her food right out of her dish while she was plonked in her chair directly above. I only noticed the critter as it was leaving. Bartleby, true to her namesake, did nothing. Which is just as well since the 'possum was bigger than she is and probably would have killed her in a fight.

Useless (but sensible) Beast.