The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

Shared food, shared beds

Trying to get close to deer is one thing. There were some animals in that forest that it was wiser not to get close to, and others who thought it might be good to get close to us. Bears were in the first category – we were afraid of them – and luckily not in the second category.

 One camper went off by himself, and just about bumped into a bear. Terrified, he ran away. Terrified, the bear ran the other way. When the kid stopped running he was seriously lost. When the camp noticed he was gone, there was a huge search. There was even a helicopter. He was located and rescued the next day. (How this played out for the bear we never knew. But definitely no helicopter.)

 I didn't see bears there myself, but sometimes we saw bear signs. Once when we went on an overnight hike, a bear dropped by, removed a locked cabinet from a tree where it had been hung, tore it open, and ate our cornflakes. I was astonished, since I had a low opinion of cornflakes. Why bother?

Other animals were more willing to get close to campers. A certain chipmunk commandeered a camper's sleeping bag, probably because the camper was storing quasi-illicit candy and snacks in there. The stuffing also pulled out well and quickly made up into a splendid chipmunk bed.

 When the camper got in her bag and discovered the chipmunk, the chipmunk did not flee. It was willing to share. But when the camper attempted to evict the chipmunk, the chipmunk was annoyed, and bit, and we all found out about the whole sordid story, and rabies shots were insisted on. 

Have I mentioned what a great camp this was? There were wild animals, and there was drama.

 

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 Sagebrush has been replaced by grain crops.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.

Mice with Money

Five representatives were ranting and frothing in Congress the other day about how the economic recovery bill included a $30 million earmark for San Francisco mice. Representative Jackie Speier, who represents San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was surprised. She looked into it and wrote something on her findings for the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper to which I subscribe.

The short version: it's a deliberate lie. Slightly longer version: a staffer said someone said $30 million might go to wetlands recovery, and since the wetlands in San Francisco Bay contain an endangered species of mouse, and “mouse” sounds sillier than the names of other endangered wildlife that live there, not to mention the other reasons to restore wetlands, let's just say the mouse gets $30 million. Let's blow up a picture of a mouse into a poster and wave it around at a press conference. Forget the economy, let's grandstand!

(Speier points out that while the mouse in question, the salt marsh harvest mouse, does live in wetlands around San Francisco Bay, none are actually found in San Francisco itself. Odd—it's as if we had mislaid all the city's wetlands over the years. Somehow.)

Do I have to tell you what political party people pretending to be outraged about alleged money for mice belong to?

I don't feel like it. I bet you know. If you don't, you can read the newspaper story, but I bet you just know. Hint: they're not big on protecting endangered animals and they don't like San Francisco. (Although the fact that these legislators chose to pretend wetlands restoration was just a mouse boondoggle suggests that they're afraid many members of their party might actually like the idea of wetlands restoration. They want to be the party of hunters, for example, yet ducks like wetlands too.)

Suppose there was actually going to be $30 million just for the salt marsh harvest mouse. Suppose a powerful harvest-mouse identity-politics organization wrested control of the money away from the bureaucrats. What would these sly little featherbedders spend it on? I only hope they wouldn't get flimflammed into spending it all on lobbyists.

Would they buy a controlling interest in Habitrail? Would they order trucks full of sunflower seeds and instruct them to back up to the Bay and dump their cargoes? I doubt they have the imagination. I fear they'd go the obvious route. For their own selfish, greedy, short-sighted, personal gratification, they'd spend it on wetlands restoration.

                                     

The Not Precisely Lone Prairie

While visiting Santa Fe recently, I read an interesting story in The New Mexican, the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi. Some visiting Tibetan monks had been asked to bless the prairie dogs in Frenchy's Field, a large city park.

A colony of 50—100 prairie dogs lives in Frenchy's Field. An organization called People for Native Ecosystems looks out for their welfare, opposing negligent trenching activity at the park, and stopping incautious grading at a film shoot site.

(The film is Beer for My Horses, starring Willie Nelson, Toby Keith, and Ted Nugent. This spring, when told there were prairie dogs hibernating at the grading site, the film crew stopped grading and moved the equipment, expressing the hope that the “poor little fellows” would be okay. I feel sure Willie Nelson wouldn't knowingly hurt a prairie dog. And if Ted Nugent were to go after prairie dogs, his hostility would probably take a form more personal than reckless grading.)

Melinda Ewell of People for Native Ecosystems issued a press release saying that when the monks blessed them two years earlier, the prairie dogs reacted by “coming to the surface, moving closer to the monks and adding their voices to the chanting and prayers.”

Ah yes. Adding their voices.  

It happens that prairie dogs have a variety of specific calls that some people call language. They have distinct calls, or “words,” for “coyote,” “deer,” “red-tailed hawk,” “tall human in yellow shirt,” “short human in green shirt,” and, I suspect, “it's the biologist from Northern Arizona University again.” So I imagine that during the blessing two years ago the prairie dogs may have had quite specific things to add in their adorable little voices. Such as: “OMG! What is that noise? Who are those guys? What's going on? Look out! Monks! Monks to the north! Monks to the south! Monks peering down the burrow! Monks everywhere! Hide the kids!”

Two days later the paper covered the more recent blessing, running a photo of monks in snazzy golden yellow robes treading among golden yellow flowers. (The story had to compete with one about a plea for manure donations, but that had no photo.) Reporter Sarah Welliver did not question Ewell's description of the prairie dogs participating in the chanting, but observed, “This year, they were quiet during the ceremony.”

Yes, I think they stayed deep underground, so their subterranean chirping was inaudible.

“It's those Jehovah's Witnesses again – pretend we're not home.”

“I think they know we're here. And I don't think Jehovah's Witnesses wear orange.”

“Whatever. If I have to hear that verse about the little conies in the rocks again, I'll bite somebody. And then they'll say we're rabid.”

“That's from the Bible; that's Christians. I think these guys are Buddhists.”

“What, foot-washers?”

“No, no, no. Buddhists. Mom, you should listen to these guys. They're vegetarians like us. They might have a message of peace for all beings.”

“Like for owls and coyotes? I don't think so. You're not putting your nose above ground until they are gone. And I don't want to see you reading their literature, either.”

However, if this dialog took place, it was unreported, and the ceremony took place without disturbance.

 

On the way out of town I saw a prairie dog standing near the side of Highway 25, looking toward the passing traffic. Probably thinking about hitching a ride out of town, seeking freedom from religious persecution.

[photograph by Chin tin tin, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

The Horror at Arlington

The friends I was visiting in Massachusetts had a groundhog in their yard. They saw it regularly, usually grazing the rich growth of plants next to the gate between the driveway and the back yard. Where I live in California, we have no groundhogs, although I have seen their cousins the marmots in the Sierras. The groundhog, Marmota monax, is the same animal as a woodchuck.

My friends said it was very fat, appropriate for an animal that hibernates in the winter. If you say to a groundhog, “Wow, you're a real tub of lard!” it's a compliment. (But don't get addicted to saying this.)

One afternoon, while we were studying sangria in the yard, my friend said “Look! Groundhog! Quick!” I couldn't turn around in time to see it dash across the yard and dive under the toolshed. I did hear it, because it was very noisy. Pounding feet, rattling against plants -- we practically heard change rattling in its pockets. A bear makes less noise.

We went to the other side of the shed, and the groundhog put its nose out and looked at us thoughtfully. It had a nice face. With its body safely underground, or undershed, it wasn't worried by our regard. It wasn't all that interested, either.

That weekend there was a barbecue to celebrate the graduation of a son of the house. As soon as we went out to the yard, my friend asked “What is that horrible smell? Like sewer gas?” While I stood around with condiments saying “Where?” two quick-thinking guys spotted a heap of dung, carried it away on shovels, and covered the spot where it had been with leaves.

It had been a really dreadful smell, apparently, a foul smell, a disgusting smell, an H. P. Lovecraft smell (i.e., too awful for human vocabulary to describe). And it had been an enormous ghastly heap of dung. They said it must have been the groundhog. They said the groundhog had to go.

I said it didn't sound like the work of a groundhog, but since I hadn't actually viewed it, and since there was little enthusiasm in the crowd for a detailed description of the monstrosity, my comments lacked impact. My friends said they hadn't minded the groundhog before, but literal partypooping was intolerable. They would ask the city to trap it and take it far away. “It might not have been the groundhog,” I squeaked. But the conversation swept relentlessly to daintier matters.

When I got home, I did an internet search for “groundhog” and “scat.” I hoped to clear the groundhog's name and save it from captivity and exile. Just as I had suspected, groundhog scat consists of dry pellets of plant matter. It is not as big as The Thing that appeared at the party. And since groundhogs are vegetarians, it's not very stinky.

Anxious to avert injustice, I hastened to present this testimony I hoped would exonerate the groundhog. My friend was amused. She was glad to hear that the creature was innocent, but my argument was beside the point. That morning her husband had gotten up early and seen the groundhog in the yard – playing with a baby groundhog.

She had a baby. The groundhog was safe now, even if that had been groundhog poop at the party. She was safe even if she pooped in the yard every day. She would be safe even if she went out in the front yard and flung poop at passing cars.

The question of who the actual offender was could now be considered at leisure. What creature is big enough to create the heap described? No bears or moose currently roam the back yards of Arlington, as far as I know. So our current suspect is a raccoon. They're stinky omnivores. They're not large animals (except the one you saw that time), but they like to accumulate scat in one spot, a “latrine.” Perhaps it's a way of saying “This is my real estate!” Sort of like renting a porta-potty. Maybe they repel competitors with the sheer volume and stench of the thing.

This strategy is ineffective against people with shovels. If raccoons wish to be welcomed in Arlington, latrines won't work. The raccoons will need to invest in actual plumbing.