The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

Big-nosed heroes

On remote islands where they breed, some small seabirds come and go at night. Thus they evade big daytime killers like skuas and gulls. Their secret nests are in burrows or under rocks.

Leach's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) is one of these furtive little birds. They are smaller than robins, though with longer wings. It's said they don't even venture out if the moonlight is too bright.

Visiting Gull Island in Newfoundland, Franklin Russell, author of a moody 1965 book The Secret Islands: An Exploration ran across a petrel in trouble.

She had gotten snared in tangled grass as she sneaked out before dawn with the other petrels. Russell picked her up. She screamed. He untangled her and tried to get her to go back down any burrow, but she darted away. She flew at top speed, away from the island – and instantly 50-odd gulls were after her with intent to catch and eat. These would have been big Herring Gulls or Black-backed Gulls.


“The petrel was so well ringed by her enemies that to escape she would have had to run among at least ten gulls in any direction she tried to break out. This seemed impossible; but the petrel was not concerned with possibility or reason. Never for a moment was there any relaxation of the thrust and parry of the hunt. All the creatures were absorbed,” writes Russell.

The chase hurtled through the air above a raft of thousands of puffins floating on the sea. Suddenly the puffins rose off the water. “...something alarmed them. Perhaps it was the intensity of the gull attacks; perhaps the petrel screamed her anguish.” Russell saw the petrel veer toward the cloud of flying puffins and vanish into their midst.

Huh? The gulls hung around where the puffin had been before giving up.

Russell writes that he watched the departing flock of puffins with binoculars and “saw, finally, a tiny shape twist away from their mass.”

A happy ending for the petrel. Russell says puffins (Fratercula arctica) aren't afraid of gulls. Puffins go to and from their nest burrows in daylight. But gulls are serious predators on puffins, though not when the puffins are going around in crowds thousands strong.

Probably the puffins weren't deliberately rescuing the petrel. Probably some of the puffins were freaked out by the gulls pursuing the frantic out-of-place petrel, and decided to leave and go some place less creepy, right now. The other thousands of puffins didn't intend to be left behind if something was wrong, so they all took off, forming a screen into which the petrel shook her pursuers. Good deal.

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.

Mama could use a little downtime

Researchers in the Serengeti were quantifying the hunting behavior of female cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus). They measured the proportion of the day spent hunting, hunts started per hour, proportion of hunts which were successful, and time to complete a hunt. They recorded the age of the cheetahs' cubs if any, and how her hunting behavior changed with the age of the cubs.

Cheetahs with no cubs don't have to spend as much time hunting. Once they have cubs in the lair or just out of the lair, they have to spend more time hunting to feed those children.

But there's another factor that goes into time spent hunting. I will remind you that cheetahs don't pair up, so these female cheetahs are single ladies with no babysitters and they can't even get their own mothers to help.

The cheetahs whose behavior confounded the measurement of hunting time had young cubs, nursing but out of the lair. Fluffy, playful, delightful cubs full of nonstop energy, with exciting new teeth.

When their mothers hunted these cubs either stayed behind or followed her for a short distance. Then they would sit and watch their mother advancing toward the prey, not coming forward unless she called them (to share the gazelle she'd just caught, say). Cubs know how to do this. They watch carefully as their mother stalks the prey.

A cat stalking its prey often creeps forward, stops and crouches in place for a while, creeps forward some more when the prey isn't looking, stops again, and so forth. The researchers timed all this. To their surprise, the mother cheetahs were also taking naps. Creep, creep, crouch, snooze, creep, creep, crouch, snooze. Sometimes they'd sleep for ten minutes at a time in the middle of a stalk. Presumably, the cubs, lacking binoculars, just thought their mother was being extra sneaky.

I think the researchers sympathized. “Freed of nursing attempts and being played upon, a mother had a chance to close her eyes,” wrote T. M. Caro in Cheetahs of the Serengeti. “Prey often wandered off as a consequence...”

Any caretaker of youth can guess how those cheetahs feel. “I would kill for a nap. A nap and a glass of wine. A nap and a glass of wine without being chewed on and FIVE MINUTES CONVERSATION ABOUT SOMETHING BESIDES MR. IMPALAHEAD.”

Me next! Me next!

Doug Bertran, a filmmaker who made Orca Killing School, told a story after the showing at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City. This is the film about which the program cautions, “Warning: violent animal scenes.”

He was at Peninsula Valdez, Argentina, filming some orcas who've perfected a trick of lurking offshore at high tide and then suddenly shooting up onto the beach to grab a sea lion. In order to take the sea lions by surprise, the orcas don't echolocate (which creates tell-tale clicking sounds). They rely on hearing to detect their prey. Bertran's assistant was setting up a heavy piece of photographic equipment in the shallows. It occurred to no one that the sound of the eighty-pound device scraping against the beach pebbles might be a lot like the sound of a tasty sea lion pup scraping against the beach pebbles. Suddenly the assistant looked up into the faces of five orcas. They'd hurtled up for a look.

After viewing him, the orcas hurled themselves back into deeper water.

“I shot it,” said Bertran happily. It wasn't in the film, though. Is it because the sight of a photographer's assistant not being eaten lacks drama? No, according to an interview Bertran gave to The Union, it's because local authorities don't want ecotourists to get ideas.

Nature is greenish in mandible and tarsus

In turbulent times, I may turn to the garden for solace and calm, as on a recent afternoon.

Fondly I gazed on the gigantic rose bush. (An old Cecile Brunner, with small fragrant flowers: it needs no fertilizer, no insecticides, no watering; it simply goes about growing, blooming, and taking over the block. Occasionally enraged neighbors lop thorny branches that Cece has thrust through or over fences, and toss them back into our yard. Cece shrugs them off and continues struggling for conquest.)

More glumly, I noted infestation. Here and there were clusters of green aphids at the tips of young branches or on buds. Although the bush thrives, I disapprove of these sapsuckers. I surveyed nearby branches to see how many clusters were there.

I saw a ladybug and brightened. Ornamental! Widely mentioned in children's verse and literature! Sign of a healthy food web! I dollied in for a better look.

Shockingly, the ladybug had an aphid in its jaws. Long ago I was instructed that ladybugs eat aphids and that ecologically-minded gardeners encourage—even buy and release—ladybugs to control them, but never had I actually witnessed the predatory act.

The aphid waved its legs and feelers wildly. The ladybug had it firmly by the abdomen, and the aphid's head and front legs were free. I was glad I could not hear it shriek for help.

(A larger aphid at the tip of the bud turned. It headed toward where the lesser aphid was being eaten alive. It could not possibly be going to the rescue, though that's what it looked like. Suddenly it halted. Whether there were significant antenna gestures or expressions I'm not nearsighted enough to say, but the large aphid turned on its heels and marched back to the tip of the bud.)

To see something like this, a thing I have known about for so long, have told others about, have never questioned, but never seen—is startling. There's a little jolt at the moment when life as experienced matches up with as-told-to life. A pleasing jolt.

It's as if I was walking down Market and the guy at the table pushing Free Personality Tests was Tom Cruise. Superimposed, the image from movies and the face before my eyes would click together. The often-read information that Cruise is a Scientologist would slot into my personally-gleaned knowledge that such personality quizzes are Scientology recruitment bait. That would be cool.

But since I consider such recruitment a lower activity than sapsucking, or slowly consuming a suffering sapsucker, it's fortunate that I looked in the garden and not downtown for solace and calm.

A killer advances...

Downtime for Beasts

To attract wildlife, we've historically offered water, food, and salty snacks. Hunters and ecotourists can both be found hanging around waterholes. Some people put out bird feeders to watch birds. Others put out cheap corn to attract deer year-round so they'll be available in hunting season. Animals have always been drawn to salt licks. That draws people, which is why there were all those early settlements called French Lick, Boone's Lick, Blue Lick, etc. So some people put out salt blocks.

I propose a new way of attracting animals: spa weekends.

Okay, animals don't much observe the work week, so let's just say spa vacations. Spas. Places animals could visit for food, water, salty snacks – and a nice back-scratch, mudbath, massage, or pedicure.

Animals are always trying to get their backs scratched, rubbing against trees, fences, and one another in the attempt. They'd flock to a spot where toothed surfaces were mounted at convenient heights and angles. There'd be rubbing, and groaning, and clouds of fur, and great happiness.

It might take a little more ingenuity to get animals to make pedicure and massage appointments, but a nicely-scratched back ought to lower their sales resistance, to say nothing of a good hot soak.

Most animals love a nice bath, and while they are typically envisioned frolicking in a crystalline lake or a mountain stream, they gladly take hot water when they can get it. The famous Japanese snow monkeys (a species of macaque) appear to spend most of the winter in hot springs.

In the mid-90s, a cinnamon bear (a black bear with natural auburn coloring) was raiding garbage cans and fruit trees in Monrovia, California. While on the prowl he discovered the pleasures of jacuzzis. After he ate, he'd relax in a hot tub. Some people didn't like a scum of coarse black hair and bear grease in their tubs, but Connie and Gary Potter took advantage of the photo-op and videotaped the bear, called Samson, luxuriating in their tub.

One day the Potters saw Samson rolling in agony on their lawn. Concerned, they called Fish & Game to help. By the time the wardens came, Samson, who had incautiously eaten a plastic bag, felt better. Because he was a known “nuisance bear,” they trapped him. They found that he was an old bear, with worn-down teeth, who wouldn't be able to support himself in the wild.

Fish & Game has views on the unwisdom of people feeding formidable wild animals. (F&G would get the blame if Samson gummed a Chihuahua.) They have experience with relocating garbage-eating bears (who return to favored garbage dumps with lightning speed). They also know that zoos are full up with black bears. They announced that they would euthanize Samson. Horrified, the Potters took their videos of Samson bathing to the television news. The public was appalled, as anyone would be who can identify with an innocent woodland creature lolling in a hot tub after a satisfying meal of garbage. The governor issued a stay of execution.

The Orange County Zoo, with a sharper eye to public relations than F&G, announced that it would take Samson in. They built him a big enclosure with a waterfall and a pool. (But no hot tub, and I am betting no salty snacks.) He lived there for years, until he got so sick he really did have to be euthanized.

So if we already have wildlife trying to sign up for the spa treatment without encouragement, think of the business we could do if we were trying. Spas where they didn't have to dodge wardens, where the salty snacks were laid out on buffets, where dogs wouldn't bark at them.

We'd need to be clever. We'd need to be sure that a rabbit coming out of the massage room (blissfully relaxed), didn't encounter a coyote (invigorated by a back-scratching session), back into a bobcat exiting a meditation class, jump sideways and bump into a moose heading for the jacuzzi, and startle a bear into swallowing a loofah. Since none of these animals really want to meet humans either, we'd do it by monitoring video cameras and not opening gates that would let predator and prey or any kind of enemies into the same space.

(It wouldn't be right to use spas to attract animals for hunting purposes. What if the custom spread? What if manicurists and masseurs went Sweeney Todd on their clientele? Think about it.)

Why on earth would we do this? It's not like animals can pay. We would do it because it would be cool, because we like animals, because it would be interesting to see what happened, and mostly, as the story of Samson shows, because we would get Such. Cool. Video.

Brother Wolf, You're Not Eating. Aren't You Hungry?

The Italian wolf, Canis lupus italicus, is doing better than it was before. In the 1970s there were guessed to be only about 100 wolves surviving in the mountainous parts of Italy. Now there are more like 500 or 600 and they're fanning out into France and Switzerland

An Italian wolf likes to hunt medium-sized prey like deer, boar, and chamois. If those aren't available, sure, rabbit is fine. And Wikipedia says of the Italian wolf  that it has “adapted well in some urbanised areas and as such, will usually not ignore refuse or domestic animals.”

This is clearly accurate, not only because St. Francis of Assisi made a deal with the sheep-killing, man-eating Wolf of Gubbio that it would stop its destructive ways if the townspeople of Gubbio would give it food instead, but in light of an observation I found in a paper about Italian wolves and foxes in the Abruzzo. The authors were remarking that the foxes seemed to be nervous around wolves. “Uneasy.”

They gave as an example an account of a wolf, a fox, and a cat all eating at a garbage dump outside the village of Caramanico one November day. The cat carefully stayed out of the way of the fox and the wolf. The fox carefully stayed out of the way of the wolf. The wolf, one gathers, strolled calmly wherever it chose, despot of the dump. The fox was jumpy, constantly looking up to see what the wolf was doing. Whenever the wolf moved, the fox rushed over to the place where the wolf had been, to see what it had been eating.

Eventually the wolf, the fox, and presumably even the cat went away, and the researchers inspected the dump, seeking dietary data. They found that all three predators had been eating from a giant heap of discarded spaghetti.

Okay, I like spaghetti, but that is sad. I figure those Italian wolves invading France and Switzerland are young wolves looking for better territories, asking themselves where the vast ancient forests are (the ones full of deer), and grumbling that pasta is good, pasta is great, but you know what? After a while you don't want to eat pasta for every. single. meal.

Let's Lurk Behind these Ecotourists

It's hard work being high on the food chain, and predators are always looking for labor-saving ways to catch prey. In national parks in Kenya, the lions have not only gotten blasé about trucks full of ecotourists, they've started to use them as cover. They'll sneak around behind a vehicle and then rush out to lunge at a wildebeest. Imagine you're the wildebeest – one minute you're making sure they get your good profile, and the next minute you're running for your life.

In the Canadian Pacific, biologist Alexandra Morton was observing killer whales. She was disconcerted by the way one of them, Kwatsi, kept surfacing directly behind her boat. “No matter how I tried to alter my course, his 5-foot fin stayed right behind my engine. After a while I realized what he was doing: Kwatsi was using my boat and its engine noise as a moving hunting blind.”

Great minds think alike. “These humans mean me no harm. They are friendly! Friends help friends catch dinner.”

I performed a similar function once, without actually being a human shield. Driving across Florida, I pulled over to eat lunch at a picnic table, and tossed crumbs from my sandwich to minnow-sized fish in the waterway next to the road. The tiny fish were thrilled with the crumbs and mobbed them enthusiastically. As I gazed at them I heard a small clomp! and then another clomp! Two minuscule alligators had cruised up, disguised as minuscule floating logs, and were snapping up the fish I had lured to their doom. Oh yeah, they call this road Alligator Alley.

To be fair, I should have thrown the fish an alligator purse. They could have nibbled on it after it decayed a bit. But I didn't have an alligator purse. That's how it is. You try to pack everything, and you pack all this stuff you never use, and then the one thing you don't pack, you wish you had. It's hard to be a responsible ecotourist.