The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

Stowaway bird

Red-tailed tropicbirds are aces of tropical Pacific skies. They're big white birds with striking black eye markings. Each has two ridiculously long red tail feathers in the midst of its normal white tail feathers (thus Phaethon rubricauda). They catch fish by plunging into the sea from a height and grabbing them. Also squid.

The tropicbird is one of those seabirds that usually doesn't bother with land. They fly or rest on the water. But that doesn't work when a bird is in that awkward egg stage, so they breed on islands. They like to nest colonially, let's say on a nice coral atoll, tucked under a bush, or in a niche between hunks of coral.

Sometimes, apparently, a bird looking for a nice flat atoll lands on the nice flat deck of a ship, and tucks itself into a niche between cargo containers, and sits there peaceably waiting for the rest of the gang to show up, unfussed that the island it has selected is moving, like Spidermonkey Island in The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.

Recently a tropicbird was found sitting zazen on a Korean cargo ship. When the ship arrived in southern California, the bird was brought to International Bird Rescue's San Pedro center, where she was found to be in good health. On a recent visit, I saw her there, resting on a mesh haul-out in a small private pool. She looked at us cheerfully. It seems that tropicbirds are among the island birds that have no fear of land animals such as humans.

Her pool was too small for plunge-feeding. IBR's blog has video of the tropicbird being fed fish. “Ah, they are grabbing my head. Yes, they are prying open my bill and inserting a fish. Ooh, there's a fish in my bill. Sweet.” The tropicbird swallows, sometimes with a little throat massage to urge the fish along, and sits placidly. It does not occur to her to reach a few inches forward and take another fish. That's not how she rolls.

Tropicbirds are aerialists but not distance fliers, so after tests came up negative for contagious diseases, and USFWS permission was received, the bird was put on a plane to Hawaii and then on another to Midway Island. There they put her in the water and off she flew.

Red-tailed tropicbirds breed on Midway, so with any luck she'll find a mate, and a nest site that doesn't shift coordinates, and will not depend on the kindness of Korean sailors, bird rescuers, and government agencies. Island tameness can be a disastrous feature for wild animals, but in this bird's case it worked out nicely.

Urban sophisticates

Pier 39 on the San Francisco waterfront is an open mall, with music, performers, a merry-go-round, people who will do a caricature of you-with-an-enormous-head, and stores for the left-handed or sock-mad. There's an aquarium and a marina. You can catch a ferry.

The pier was originally for commercial shipping. Then it was redeveloped as a tourist attraction. There was an opening ceremony in 1978, at which then-mayor Dianne Feinstein wore a “discreet but attractive swimsuit because of a bet with the developer,” according to the New York Times of that era. (Sadly, I can't find a photo.)

In 1989, some small boat docks on the north side of the pier were vacant during repair work. Unexpectedly, sea lions started hauling out on these docks. They napped. They grunted. They barked.
 

Business owners and boat owners complained. Noisy! Stinky! Unsanitary! Bad for business. A permit was requested to scare them away by detonating explosive charges. Others objected to the request. The controversy made it into the newspapers. This alerted residents who didn't ordinarily go to Pier 39 about the easy-to-view sea lions. We rushed to the spot to view the pinnipeds (Zalophus californianus). It was a great angle, and the sea lions were very close, and delightfully blasé about being viewed.

Since we were there, we drank lemonade, bought left-handed scissors and gala hosiery, and were manifestly good for business. We made plans to bring our out-of-town visitors.

The permit request was hastily dropped. Pier 39 began promoting the sea lions.

Most of the sea lions leave in the summer, to catch breeding season in the Channel Islands, and return in the fall.

What are the sea lions doing here? Resting. It is said that the sea lions who hang out at Pier 39 used to hang out at Seal Rock, but moved for some reason. How mysterious. Why on earth would they do that? Why wouldn't a wild animal prefer to hang out in a wild place? Look how great Seal Rock is:


The two places aren't that far apart, but Seal Rock is outside the Bay, and Pier 39 is inside. It's  speculated that there are fewer predators inside the Bay. Fewer predators makes it easier for scrumptious types to relax.

San Franciscans pay close attention to the doings of the sea lions. Earlier this year, almost all of them vanished from Pier 39 and there was much worry and much press coverage. Were they starving? Had a shark or a killer whale scared them away? Was that them up in Oregon?

Then they came back. There was much rejoicing, especially among the merchants.

Things don't seem normal among the sea lions this year. Mothers are giving birth to pups early, and in unusual places. Five were actually born at Pier 39.

El Nino may have something to do with it, or domoic acid, or declining fish stocks. The species isn't endangered, but it's not having a good year. If there's anything I can do to help, just say the word. And I know I speak for the small-business community when I say so.

Ugh, paparazzi

Sometimes you see a barn and you know it has owls. 

This one is airy, with many escape  routes. As we walked to the door, a barn owl (Tyto alba) silently flew out.

A helpful person had put up an owl box. Owls had accepted it. Not recently, judging by the size of the charnel scatter of debris below, full of fragile white bones of rodents.

An owlet looked out. I think it was worried, maybe horrified. But it wasn't too frightened to stare.

Not all barns are suitable for owl nesting. When a barn is otherwise good but has no owl box, owls may nest on a corner between rafters.

This old barn is so great that I think it would have an owl nest even without the box. It's made of solid beams and planks, strongly joined.

Before there were barns, these owls nested in natural places like holes in trees. Humans have reduced the number of trees (and many humans object to trees with holes in them, with the notion that such trees are diseased, unsound, and liable to drop heavy limbs onto humans including small beloved children running through the park to raise awareness for kidney disease).
 

However, we have put up barns which can be nested in. Barns attract rodents, useful to barn owls, since an owl family may eat more than a thousand in a year.

Barn owls evolved hunting in meadows and along forest edges and nesting in trees. Some still do so, but others hunt on agricultural land and nest in agricultural buildings. We're not completely useless to owls.
  

Even if we give them the creeps. 

Three hacks

The experimenters were trying to enliven the lives of zoo animals while simultaneously gathering data. As often happens, not all the data they gathered was in the categories expected.

As Hal Markowitz recounts in Behavioral Enrichment in the Zoo, date (1981), he was trying to set up a game for mandrills (Papio sphinx) in a Hawaiian zoo. It was a button-pushing game. Fast reflexes won. The goal for the mandrill was to push a lighted button on a console before a zoo visitor could push the button on a matching console on the other side of the barrier. This game had been a big success with Blue, a mandrill in another zoo. Blue was fast, he knew it, and he enjoyed proving it.

But the arrival of mandrills at the zoo was delayed, and Markowitz was asked to adapt the equipment for spider monkeys (Ateles ater). Spider monkeys spend most of their lives up in trees. Their hands are less well suited to pushing buttons. (That's why your spider monkey friends never text you.)

Markowitz's team hung a rope next to the apparatus, so a spider monkey climbing on the rope could reach a hand over to push the button. Only one spider monkey was interested, and her technique was to dangle, and push the button with her nose. She was fast enough to beat lots of hand-using humans.
  
At the Portland Zoo, another experimenter decided to study “ratio strain” in camels. Since camels have no hands, it was thought in this case that the nose was the appropriate thing for the animals to use. When a panel lit up, camels were to push it with their nose to get a delicious pellet. (No competition with visitors was involved.)

The idea was to see how seldom you could reward the camel before you reached “ratio strain,” the point at which the animal stops responding so often or at all, and perhaps shows “an increase in emotional behavior.” If an animal will push a button if it's rewarded every other time, what if it's only rewarded one time in ten? One time in a hundred? In other words, unseen powers move the goal posts, and the players get visibly peeved. 

The camel Adolph monopolized the equipment. As the ratio became less favorable, Adolph devised a new tactic. He'd stick out his chin   and vibrate it rapidly, pushing the button with great frequency. With this fast fighting technique he was willing to play even when he got a pellet only once for every 150 chin wiggles.

Markowitz wanted to make an apparatus that could be used by all kinds of animals. All they had to do was touch one of two steel plates situated below two lights. “I envisioned that snakes could sidle up alongside the detector and trigger it off, that elephants might choose to touch it with their trunk or rub against it with one of their legs, and so forth.”

The first player was to be Gabriel, a charming young elephant living in the children's zoo. Perhaps my predictable narrative method has tipped you off that things did not go as expected. Gabriel solved the  problem by squirting water from his trunk between the response panels. This shorted them out electrically, “so that a response on either side paid off.”
 
They tried to prevent this by emptying Gabriel's water trough before the experimental session. Then long before the session. Then long, long before the session. But crafty Gabriel stored water in his trunk. No matter how long they kept the trough dry, he was always ready to tamper with the equipment.

So much for the Universal Device.

 

Dog on a train

 

La Dolce Vita di Lampo

Lampo slept in the station at Campiglia Marittima, a busy railway junction. In the morning he'd jump on the train to Piombino and walk Mirna Barlettani to school. Then he'd take the train back to Campiglia.

When the Turin or Rome Express stopped in Campiglia, Lampo would gaze meaningfully at the kitchen window of the dining car, barking if necessary. The cook would toss bones and meat out.

In the afternoon, Lampo took the train to Piombino and walked Mirna home from school. Then he returned to Campiglia.

From Campiglia, Lampo might catch a train anywhere. He'd hop onto any passenger train (never a freight) and ride calmly until he heard the conductor coming, when he'd hide under a seat. Lampo visited every station within 200 miles of Campiglia, becoming a well-known personality.

He was back in Campiglia by 9:00 pm, to catch the train to Piombino with assistant stationmaster Elvio Barlettani, Mirna's father. He'd spend the evening with the family. He was grossly favored over their dog Tiger – Tiger got bread and macaroni, but Lampo got meat, because that was the standard he was accustomed to. Then Lampo caught the last train back to Campiglia.

If it was very hot, Lampo might stoop to the bus. Having gone to a beach on the Tyrrhenian coast with the Barlettanis, Lampo knew the way. He'd go to the bus terminal and mingle with beach-goers getting on the bus so he could spend the day there.
 


Storia di Lampo

When Lampo jumped off a freight train in August 1953, and started living at Campiglia station, he already seemed used to solo train travel.

Talking with other railroaders, Barlettani concluded this was the same dog who had been mooching around the Livorno (aka “Leghorn”) station. When the Livorno stationmaster called the dogcatcher, railway workers shouted to warn the dog, and flung him into a freight car pulling out.

When the dog made Campiglia his base, the staff named him Lampo (Lightning). At first he traveled locally, but then he got ambitious, traveling for miles wherever trains went.

Lampo became famous among railroaders, who recognized him and exchanged stories of his travels. Then journalists, scum that they are, wrote about him and his fame spread.

Naturally there were authorities who thought poorly of this. Barlettani was told to make Lampo play it cool for a while. He took Lampo home to Piombino (a small spur station), and enlisted station staff there to keep him from getting on the train. Lampo busied himself defending the Barlettani home from deliveries, and from their friends and relations. He kept trying to catch a train. Every night, when the whistling and clatter of the outbound train could be heard, he'd fling himself at the door.

They let him ride the trains again, but one day he got caught in a door. The train was stopped so the doors would open and release him. This irregularity was witnessed by an inspector. Higher-ups ordered that the dog must go.

Barlettani conferred with station staff. They decided to put Lampo on a freight, not let him off till it was far to the south, and eject him in open country far from a station.

Of course he came back. When Lampo stepped off the Rome train five months later, he looked terrible. He had been tied with wire and string before getting free. He was gaunt and sick. A vet said he would die in hours. However, after a night's sleep in Campiglia station (his choice), Lampo felt much better.

He was far more famous now. “The station echoed with cries of joy.” The authorities relented; conductors pretended not to notice any dog; crowds came to see him. Lampo resumed traveling. Journalists, jackals that they are, filmed him for TV (alas, none of this seems to be on YouTube). He was known all over Italy, and in France. Word even got to San Francisco where Barlettani's aunt lived.

Lampo carried on his career for eight years. In 1961, age unknown, he was killed by a train in Campiglia station. Elvio Barlettani wrote a book, the 1963 Lampo: the Traveling Dog.

Perché viaggiate, Lampo?

When Lampo first appeared, no one was startled. In Italy in those days, when people had excess dogs or cats – which was often, for neutering and spaying was not commonly done – they frequently put the animals on freight trains to take their chances elsewhere.

None of the others took up regular train travel. However, Barlettani's macaroni-fed dog Tiger, an unambitious German Shepherd, was terrified of thunderstorms. One evening a storm hit just as Lampo was catching the train back to Campiglia, and panicky Tiger hopped on after him. Another day, in  another storm, Tiger took the train by himself, having apparently learned to escape the horror this way. But the dimwit had not learned discretion, and passengers were terrified to see this huge Alsatian.

Barlettani writes that Lampo “wished to travel, not only to get to know a little about the great world, but also to learn about the life and reactions of men.”

Very philosophical, and in my opinion not wrong, but not the whole story. The book does not touch on canine sexuality. But Lampo was male, and apparently not neutered. Dogs usually weren't. One photograph in the informative book seems to show an intact male. And a blog post mentions that at Campiglia station today there is a statue of Lampo and some newspaper clippings, one of which says Lampo's daughter will play him in an Italian TV movie. Either it's a very old clipping or “daughter” means some more distant descendant -- but if he had descendants he wasn't neutered.

Male dogs often like to range large territories. Part of the incentive is the chance to meet as many interested females as possible. Using the Italian rails, Lampo had the biggest territory of any dog in Italy. Maybe in the world. Unlike dogs belonging to most travelers, Lampo set his own agenda. If he met a ravishing bitch in Siena, no one would rush him away to Pisa.

He surely had many daughters and sons. They don't seem to have inherited his methods, since I see no indication that Italy teems with independent rail-riding dogs.

Update: I have now learned of an Australian dog who traveled about by bus in the 1970s in the Pilbara region. Variously called Bluey, Dog of the Northwest, The Pilbara Wanderer, Red Dog, and Tally Ho, he had a transport workers union card and a bank account. In the film about him, he was played by Koko. If only he and Lampo could have met....

Dancing with the birds, part two

Here's another stellar dancer, a little corella or bare-eyed cockatoo, Cacatua sanguinea, dancing to Ray Charles's Shake Your Tailfeather. He does everything except shake his tailfeather and lift his feet.

Brilliant dancers that Frostie and Snowball are, their performances may not be the most we can expect from cockatoos. As discussed in Becoming A Tiger, wild palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) of Queensland, Australia, love to perform. Males perch on top of snags (making sure everyone gets a good view), spread their wings, scream, and pirouette. At the same time they drum on the tree with a stick they hold in one foot. It is believed by many humans that this impresses female cockatoos, so perhaps male cockatoos believe it too. It impresses me.


Female palm cockatoos have also been known to do this. A journal article describes both parents in a cockatoo pair drumming like fiends on the day before their baby left the nest for the first time. (I believe this is the “Dance Party (Empty Nest) Mix.")

These cockatoos craft their own drumsticks, snapping off branches and trimming them to a suitable size and shape.

Some people collect abandoned cockatoo drumsticks. (This is the highest musical expertise I aspire to: creeping around under dead trees collecting bird discards. But I haven't been to Queensland, so even this ambition is thwarted.)

You can buy a palm cockatoo for a pet. Please don't.

In light of what palm cockatoos can do, it is my view that Snowball should be offered a drum set. Those who live with Snowball should be offered really good ear protection.

As for wild palm cockatoos, it is the usual dilemma with out-of-the-way cultures. One doesn't want to short-circuit their timeless artistic tradition by leaving corrupting tradegoods lying around the forests of Queensland. But shouldn't artists have their choice of tools? Shouldn't they be the ones to decide whether we offer them drum sets and xylophones? How about a simple tambourine? Would it be so bad to give a bird a tambourine?

In addition to singing, dancing, and drumming (and crafting drumsticks), palm cockatoos also have a call that sounds kind of like “Hello.”

If you get to go to Queensland, and you are walking through the forests of Cape York, and you hear a cockatoo calling “Hello...” do not think of it as being short for “Hello, wouldn't I make an adorable prisoner?” Think of it as being short for, “Hello, do you have a delivery for me from Percussion Mart?”

Ten goats in an igloo

It's one of those igloo-shaped doghouses. The pioneer brand is Dogloo. (Naturally, it was an aerospace industry spinoff.)

It's the time of year for baby goats – kids – at my sister's farm.  They popcorn all over the place, all day, and at night they like to sleep in a heap. In the igloo. My sister happened to have a second-hand igloo-shaped plastic dog lair standing about. The kids sleep there every night. Their idea.

The mother goats are mildly concerned when their children vanish into the igloo. They peer and sniff, but they don't actually call the kids out.

“That's bizarre,” I said, when my sister showed me this.

“It's a den,” she said.

“Goats don't have dens,” I said.

“They do if they find one!” she said.

Apparently.

Go Photograph Your Own Beeswax

On Monterey Bay, a tour boat laden with wildlife photographers spotted a sea otter. The boat headed over. When they got close enough to point their cameras at the otter, the otter pointed a camera at them. Enrique Aguirre got the shot that shows the otter with the videocamera.

As Stephanie Pappas wrote in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, “Judging by the rust and seaweed adorning the camera, the otter probably wasn't getting much good footage.”

People seem to think that the otter was just curious about this peculiar object, presumably dropped overboard by some unlucky butterfingers. And was imitating the way people hold such objects. Cute! What a crazy picture.

When we see animals do things that are typically human, we tend to think they're copying us. Trying to be like us. I think it's more reasonable to guess that they're trying to figure out what motivates us – “what do humans get out of this?” Naturally, I like to toy with explanations which give the animals more credit—and which may be more sinister. There's a paranoiac and all too plausible possibility: They're making fun of us.

When an otter points a videocamera at people pointing videocameras, maybe what's going on is something like, “Okay, I'm the big guy in the blue windbreaker [stupid deep voice]: 'Wow, what do you think they weigh?' Now I'm the woman with the knitted hat [stupid squeaky voice]: 'My sister will be so jealous she didn't come when she sees these pictures!' Now I'm the kid [panicky voice]: 'I'M GONNA BE SICK!'” The otters all laugh so hard they submerge.

(Maybe that's not paranoid enough. Maybe they're spying on us. Maybe the seaweed on the camera is crafty camouflage. Maybe they're sneering at us right now in the Situation Room. Naah.)

There could be other instances where we suppose animals are copying us uncritically, but where we might be wrong. I'm thinking of an account I read of a satin bowerbird in a national park north of Brisbane (related by Greg Czechura of the Queensland Museum).

The males in this artistically gifted species not only build bowers, they sing, dance, and steal beautiful objects to decorate their bowers. (This keeps them too busy for tasks like building or defending nests or feeding fledglings. Freebird!) Their songs include mimicry of other birds' songs.

This particular bowerbird was putting on a show at his bower, observed by a fascinated crowd of birdwatchers. In the midst of his imitations of various local birds, a cell phone rang. All the birders started grabbing for their pockets and bags, looking for their phones.

Of course, the ringtone came from the bowerbird. Czechura thought it was pretty funny, and maybe the bird did too.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Uh huh. But what about ridicule?

Dancing with Bubbles

For  a story on a pit bull rescue organization, I was visiting Kim Ramirez. Kim has two dogs, and she was fostering a third, Spyder, a worried young dog who had been confiscated from the Michael Vick dog-fighting operation. I was there to meet Spyder, since the Vick dogs were celebrities. I also met the other two, Nala and Ross. Ross is a 60-pound pit bull mix, white with brindle spots, with a classic Hello-I-love-you pit bull bonhomie. Kim adopted him after the organization rescued him from the shelter. (Shelters overflow with unwanted pit bulls.)

In order to have a place for three big dogs, Kim and her daughter live in a mostly industrial neighborhood, on the outskirts of town.

After we talked about Spyder (who had retired to her crate to avoid stressful media attention), Kim showed me Ross's favorite game. We were in the kitchen, late afternoon sun leaning through the window. She got out a bottle of bubble-blowing liquid and blew a plume of bubbles. “Touch!” she said.

Ross was delighted. He leapt into the air, catching bubbles. He flung himself clear off the floor. He twisted, trying to grab more than one bubble per leap. He jumped again and again, leaving no bubble unpopped. He looked at Kim hopefully – more bubbles? More bubbles?

She blew more bubbles and Ross jumped for them, even the tiny ones.

The pit bull rescue story was fascinating to research. There was a lot to learn, about dog fighting, dog breeding, dog rescue, and dog politics. Some of it was very sad. Some of it was encouraging. There was no space in the article for Ross.

But the image that keeps coming back to me from that story is of Kim, and a big pit bull in a sunny kitchen jumping like a trout to catch bubbles.

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.