The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

What shall I do with this prehensile tail?

I had heard that the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans was a really great zoo. The people who told me this (not zoo aficionados) were never able to say what was great about it. They didn't mention rare species, successful breeding programs, or brilliant enrichment schemes.

It was just really great.

I recently got to go for the first time, and I think I know the reason for their enthusiasm.

Frozen daiquiris.

They sell these along with the usual fast food available at American zoos. I asked the server what was in them, thinking maybe it was some sort of lime soda. She found the question strange. “Rum?” she said.

I shouldn't have been surprised. New Orleans is the wettest town I know, one that could have a banner at the airport reading WELCOME SLOPPY DRUNKS. It just hadn't occurred to me that this spirit extended to the zoo.

Shocked, I purchased a daiquiri and set out to see some animals.

I am interested in zoos. I loved the giant anteaters, who were milling around madly, awaiting their chance to go back into their night quarters.
 

The humans were like zoo visitors everywhere, inclined to stand next to a large sign that explains that orangutans are not monkeys but apes and say “Look at the monkey, Jesse!” Yet they were less frenetic than usual, maybe because of the heat. In the languid humid air, people swanned dreamily along the paths. Some were clasping icy beverages. Perhaps the slow aimless pace of the visitors is less jangling to the animals.

While walking around the pond in the South American Pampas exhibit, I heard a splash. I turned to see a rhea hastily climbing out of the water. The other rheas seemed  fascinated and started following the damp one. (What was it like? Was it fun? Was it cool? Did you float? Are you gonna go in again? Go in again! You should go in  again!)



Was the rhea imitating the ducks in the pond? No. Later investigation revealed that rheas are known to swim. Darwin saw rheas swim across the Santa Cruz River in Argentina. So this zoo-born rhea was experimenting with a skill used by its wild relatives. That was interesting.

Finally I arrived at the spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). 
The large exhibit, modeled on Central American ruins, was good to look at and, more importantly, full of things  a monkey can do with a prehensile tail.

If you had such a tail, you could hook it over something.  Or twine it along something.
   

You could use it for balance, like an outrigger,  or for artistic emphasis.


You could use it to carry things, even if all you have to tote is a bunch of grass.

  In a vision I now imagine the Audubon zoo extending its hospitality to its occupants. I behold anteaters even more avid to get into their evening quarters, where frosty beverages are served. I suppose that an individual with a prehensile tail is perfectly fitted to stroll a slack rope while holding a daiquiri. Dreamily, I even wonder if this policy hasn't already been implemented. Unscheduled swimming is the sort of thing alcohol often inspires in young creatures.

What a great zoo.

Tough fishy story

Once upon a time there was a giant diving ocean goose – wait, no, maybe a giant diving ocean duck – so specialized for diving after fish it couldn't fly. It was as big as a Canada goose – anyway, a small Canada goose – okay, probably as big as nine pounds.

Maybe it was tasty, too, because its bones are found abundantly in old kitchen middens on the California Channel Islands and along the coast. Although with all that diving it must have been tough. Tough and fishy. (Plenty of tough fishy meat for the whole gang!)

This extinct diver is called Chendytes lawii. (I'm saying chen DIE teez.)  Here's a picture made by Stanton F. Fink, who likes to portray extinct creatures.
 
I wouldn't have expected it to be so blue, but who knows? (I also like Fink's shastasaurs.)

Chendytes only went extinct around 2,500-3,000 years ago. We just missed it.

A Chendytes bone 10,000 years old was found in a cave on San Miguel Island. Maybe a duck-eating person left it there, or maybe it was some other duck-eating animal. Yeah, yeah, or maybe it tottered in there to be alone.

Chendytes is material for arguments about human-caused extinction. This charming big duck (imagine if you were hungry and this enormous creature popped up to the water surface within easy clubbing distance – you'd be totally charmed) became extinct before the arrival of Europeans, so we can't blame so-called Western civilization. (Actually, I bet netting was a more likely technique than clubbing, but clubbing sounds cartoonier.)

It's generally thought that an earlier Western civilization, that of the coastal Indians of California, drove or helped drive Chendytes to extinction. Climate changes may have contributed. But there is debate about whether it can be considered a late, outlying part of a hypothesized Pleistocene Overkill in North America, or whether its demise is actually evidence against an overkill “blitzkrieg.”

Here's the deal. A whole bunch of very large North American mammals went extinct right about the time humans (from the Clovis culture) showed up, about 11,000-13,000 years ago. Mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, 8-foot long beavers, the stag-moose, a large camel – there must have been thundering herds everywhere you turned. As these species vanished, other species that preyed upon them or scavenged their carcasses, like saber-toothed cats (gone) or like condors (barely hanging on) were affected too.
 
Did they vanish because we killed them off, or because of climate change or other factors, or some of each? And if we killed them off, did it happen so fast because we indulged in “overkill”? The idea is that people killed far more than they could eat. The classic – and often repeated – example of this is the buffalo jump, in which a big herd of buffalo is chased off a cliff. (It doesn't seem like it's so easy to stage a buffalo jump, but I admit I've never tried.)

There's fierce debate about this. Some people would include Chendytes as an example of big animals wiped out. (See Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples.) Others cite Chendytes as a counter-example – the species co-existed with people for thousands of years before it went extinct. Some say that's because they were relatively safe on the islands.

But Jones, et al. (T. L. Jones, J. F. Porcasi, J. M. Erlandson, H. Dallas, Jr., T. A. Wake, and R. Schwaderer) say that people seem to have been in the Channel Islands for about 11,500 years, so it took about 8,000 years to eat the last Chendytes. In “The protracted Holocene extinction of California’s flightless sea duck (Chendytes lawi) and its implications for the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis” Jones et al. argue that if it took so long for humans to hunt out Chendytes, it should have taken them a comparable time to eliminate other species. So maybe it was something else that happened to the megafauna.

Opinions differ on when Native Californians had boats that enabled them to get to the nesting islands that were probably Chendytes's last stronghold. (I say: right away. People always turn out to have been boating longer than we thought.)

Thus some say we co-existed with Chendytes for millennia. Others say we wiped Chendytes out practically the minute we got the seafaring equipment to get out to the nesting places and gorge ourselves (on tough fishy meat).

Occasionally I think about a Pleistocene Revival event, in which a little DNA cut-and-paste work would bring back cool megafauna. I'd love to see mastodons and mammoths and those giant beavers. (Did they make huge dams?) But if you didn't bring back giant predators the giant herbivores would multiply crazily. I'm not ready for dire wolves and saber-toothed cats. I'm not even sure how we would manage with the herbivores. Mastodons in the arboretum would not be popular. If you don't like gophers in your garden, you're gonna hate ground sloths. People skipping to the fruit stand for the beginning of cherry season would be upset to learn that giant camels had beaten them to it.
 
I was thinking that Chendytes might be easier to get along with. What if we could re-create them and let them hang out on the Channel Islands again? With our effete modern eating habits, most of us would readily agree not to eat those tough fishy types. Huge diving ducks! What could be bad?

Oh no. Unless they went after our shellfish.

That fish can read you like a book

My sister had a fire eel (Mastacembelus erythrotaenia), Thomas, living in an aquarium near the refrigerator in which his food was kept. The food was tasty live tubifex worms.

Thomas spent most of his time lurking under and behind rocks. Some predators like Thomas find this a useful default activity, since you might be thinking about nothing at all when, Oho! prey wanders by, and because you are under the rock, they suspect nothing.

When Thomas detected my sister heading for the refrigerator he truly shone as a wily predator. If she was going for “a glass of milk and a salami sandwich” Thomas took no action. But if her intent was to take out tubifex worms for the eel, Thomas was somehow able to tell. He swam out of the rocks and wriggled back and forth enthusiastically just below the surface. (It is not clear to me whether fire eels salivate, but if they do, Thomas may have been drooling.)

We can't figure out how Thomas knew when my sister was after human food and when she was after fish food. This was not a matter of timing, since Thomas was fed irregularly, at any hour of the day, and not on all days. It will probably remain a mystery, since it is no longer possible to do experiments (on my sister, not on the fire eel) under the same conditions. (Was she walking differently? Was she wearing tubifex gloves? Was she glancing at the tank? She says not.)

Perhaps you wonder why Thomas was not offered salami. Salami is fatty and salty, and probably not particularly good for little fire eels. Unlike many fire eels, Thomas was a good neighbor who did not eat the other denizens of the aquarium. On his salami-free regimen he waxed mighty, getting to be over a foot long before he perished in a reckless expedition to travel outside the aquarium. He was found in a desiccated condition on the keyboard of a nearby computer.

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

Smarter than the average bear

The Monterey county inn offered a special rate. The deal included a “breakfast basket.” Around 8:30 am someone would knock. On the step they would leave a basket with packaged  pastries, juice, fruit, yogurt, and hardboiled eggs, which you could draw inside and consume at leisure.

They warned that birds might steal from your basket if you left it out too long. True.

The first morning I didn't retrieve the basket for several minutes. I came out to find that a crow had seized an egg, and was attacking it  with powerful blows of its large black beak. I rescued the egg. The crow had barely started, cracking the shell, exposing the yolk, but eating only a teaspoon's worth.

The second morning I lurked. I had angled the shutter slats so I could see without being seen. At the knock, I rushed to peer. Already a crow was striding up the path with long confident steps of its shiny black legs.

I think not. I opened the door and the crow wheeled and fled. I enjoyed that. I refrained from shouting a lecture after the crow about how it should be foraging on wild foods. Or asking how it would like it if someone ate its egg.

Once I stayed at a place in Mendocino County, in much wilder country, with fancier breakfasts (frittata! cobbler!), where the competition was so severe that they enclosed the baskets in heavy lidded wooden boxes. That time I didn't have to fight wildlife to eat.

If I go again, maybe I'll wait and see who tries for the food, and how. I could leave tools around and see if they select any. Perhaps that's entrapment, legally, but since I have no plans to prosecute, evidence doesn't have to be admissible. No plans at present – if they get the cobbler, that could change.

DDWESQ
 

A secret ingredient in a Brunswick stew

Modoc County Road 1 runs through the long, narrow Surprise Valley in high desert of northeastern California. It's in a narrow band between mountains and alkaline lakebeds in the valley bottom. In this narrow band irrigation allows agriculture. Sagebrush has been replaced by grain crops.

Ground squirrels feel the need to dash across this road constantly. Agriculture has let their numbers boom. In spring these exuberant rodents (Spermophilus beldingi) are bulbous with health. When I visited in April, the huge ground squirrels looked to me like young marmots. To hawks and eagles they look delicious and convenient.

Since there aren't many trees in Surprise Valley, the abundant raptors don't have many places to perch. Power poles by the road are decked with birds of prey, including bald eagles.

To ranchers the ground squirrels look neither amusing nor tasty. They look destructive. Squirrels churn and pile the soil, making harvest harder. They eat crops. They excavate holes perfect for snapping the legs of livestock. They puncture drainage ditches with their burrows. They clear large areas around their burrows, endeavoring to turn alfalfa fields into Spermophilus subdivisions.

Ranchers used to poison them with sodium fluoroacetate, also called Compound 1080, until that was banned. They turned to guns. In March the Surprise Valley Chamber of Commerce holds a Squirrel Roundup. This doesn't involve actual rounding up but simply shooting as many as possible. Out-of-towners pay to participate. It's possible to shoot 300-400 in a day.  Hawks and eagles enthusiastically scavenge carcasses. “The fields... were...  swarmed by bald eagles, falcons and hawks... enjoying an evening meal,” wrote Jean Bilodeaux for the Klamath Falls Herald and News.

Judging by the number of squirrels frisking about in April, there are many ground squirrels left unscathed and unhumbled. I called the Chamber of Commerce to ask what kind of ammunition is used in the Squirrel Roundup, hoping to be told that lead is forbidden. They did not return my call.

Another source told me that squirrel hunters use lead. That narrow band of the Surprise Valley must be intensely pocked with the stuff. It probably doesn't hurt squirrels that aren't actually shot.

But birds of prey are gobblers of gravel. Lacking teeth, they grind food in their gizzards, which they stock with little pebbles. They swallow chips of bone, glass, or metal, anything hard that seems to them like it would make cool false teeth. When a hawk finds shot in a carcass, it's like getting take-out Chinese food with free chopsticks. Lead can also flake, tainting a carcass.

Lead poisoning kills an unknown number of raptors every year. Most deaths occur in the wild and aren't reported. But some birds end up in wildlife rescue centers, where the problem is diagnosed. Sometimes it can be successfully treated, sometimes not. (Other birds can get lead poisoning too. Birds of prey simply encounter more due to their gourmet interest in dead bodies.)

Lead poisoning is such a serious problem for California condors that self-supporting birds living wild lives must regularly be captured so blood lead levels can be tested and they can undergo chelation therapy if necessary. Biologists climb up or rappel down to nests to cleanse them of unsalubrious items chicks will swallow. The use of lead shot is banned in an exclusion zone covering about 20% of the state to lessen the amount of lead in condor habitat. The Surprise Valley is not in that zone.

Reader, if this report has inspired you to sign up for next year's Squirrel Roundup, please don't use lead ammunition. Use steel, copper, tungsten, unicorn horn. Lead is cheaper, but you're spending hundreds of dollars to shoot hundreds of squirrels. You can afford it!

Thanks.

Wild Chefs!

A chic dark-phase red-tailed hawk (deep brown except for her brick-colored tail), was demonstrating ground squirrel prep on a power pole by the side of the Surprise Valley Road in Modoc County:

    Place your ground squirrel on top of the central pole.
    Remove portions of the squirrel and place them on either arm of the crossbar for more precise work.
    Stand on a crossbar arm, hold squirrel portion down with one talon, and shred squirrel with your beak.
    Eat squirrel bits. From time to time, pause and glare.
    To get from one arm of the crossbar to the other, spread your wings a little, and hop.
    Continue until you have eaten everything raptorially possible.
    When you are done, perch above the sign that says HIGH VOLTAGE and look noble.

Sparrow, Butterfly, Butterfly, Tomato

In late summer successful gardeners become superbly generous, even pushy. The fields of California burst with extra tomatoes. All over the Central Valley, tomato trucks bomb along blazing hot roads. You know they are tomato trucks because they have open tops and spill tomatoes, especially on bumps and curves. Roads with tomato-spangled corners mean the end of summer.

                                                              you can spot summer[Carl McCabe http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/]

These tomatoes aren't meant to be sold by the each. They'll be pounded, concentrated, and purified into sauce and catsup, so if they get smashed on the ride to the plant or a few hundred get lost, it doesn't matter. Abundance brings carelessness.

Last weekend we were driving through the Valley. It was hot, hot, hot. On a back road we slowed when a flight of sparrows rose from a scatter of spilled tomatoes. Suddenly the air was full of yellow butterflies.

They were Orange Sulphur butterflies (Colias eurytheme). As butterflies they drink nectar, but when they're children (caterpillars), they eat plants in the pea family, especially alfalfa. They're a native species that hit a bonanza when humans started planting alfalfa. In a paper about exotic crops that please local butterflies, Graves & Shapiro write that you can spot summer alfalfa fields from a long way away by the yellow clouds of butterflies.

Singly and in revolving pairs, they fluttered across the road, heedless of cars and trucks. We expected this to be a passing thing, but as we kept driving, they kept swooping over the road, through the burning air, crashing against windshields and grilles.

With so many butterflies, the number killed by cars is unimportant to the species. But we couldn't bear the havoc, so we turned back to another road, more traveled by people, less traveled by butterflies.

Red and yellow scatters, on the ground, in the air. An explosion of abundance and abandon, and summer's over.

We're back! We're starving!

In the summer wildfires, what would the condors do? When flames and smoke tore through their Ventana Wilderness sanctuary, how many would survive?

These California condors were raised in captivity. Some grew up in large aviaries with two-parent families, and others were fed by condor puppets and raised in condor playgroups (most unnatural for a species in which every child is an only child and neighbors never drop by for a cup of carrion). All were introduced into the wild without the benefits of the ancient condor culture, passing through release pens, decked with electronic transmitters, monitored by worried biologists.

When fire hit, the Coast Guard airlifted out seven teenaged birds and their guidance counselor (a somewhat older and more experienced bird) who were in an aviary on the sanctuary awaiting release. But 43 birds were on the loose, and no one knew how they were doing. Nor could the biologists get in to the sanctuary. Usually the birds' wild food is supplemented by government handouts of roadkilled deer and stillborn calves, but in this time of trial they had to go without. (They get dead rats too. For all I know they get government cheese.)

No venison, no beef? No worries. Instead of sticking around and hosing down their homes in a desperate attempt to save their dwellings, the condors went to the coast and had the seafood platter. They flew to Big Sur and lunched on a decayed sea lion and a dead whale. They didn't go home until the fires were out and the yellow tape was down.

They knew the terrain, because this wasn't the first time they'd been to the coast. The sanctuary is inland, but ever since the condors were reintroduced, “we noticed the birds starting to really home in on the coast more and more,” senior biologist Joe Burnett said recently at the SF Zoo. “We didn't realize the historical significance of it till we started looking thorough the notes.” There hadn't been condors in Big Sur for more than a hundred years.

The excellent to-hell-with-this-let's-go-to-the-beach survival tactics adopted by these condors show the value of exploration. These birds knew their options.

If you are ever basking on a sandy beach, or lying on the cliff at Esalen, and you are lucky enough to see a condor drifting above, looking down at you thoughtfully, think of this inspirational tale. Do not focus on the idea that a giant vulture has you in its sights. Remember, they only eat dead things. Be supportive; be safe. Wave!