Category Archives: Natural history

Snakes on a road

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I saw this little garter snake Thursday morning as the dogs and I came back up Fouche Gap Road from our walk.

garter

I was happy to see this one still alive, because I had just seen one like it a few feet away that had been run over by a car. This one seemed content to stay at the side of the road, so I didn’t disturb it, if you ignore leaning down to get the picture. The snake stuck out its tongue at me.

A few days earlier as I was driving down the mountain I found a beautiful black racer lying in the middle of the road. I put on my emergency blinkers and stopped to try to get it to move off the road. It was about three feet long and very thin. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to get a picture because I had stopped at a curve and couldn’t linger.

The snake reared its head as I approached. I nudged its tail, but it didn’t want to move. I kept nudging it until it finally got the message and raced off into the woods.

People around here tend to run over snakes when they see them, whether they are venomous or not. That makes cool mornings and sunlit asphalt a dangerous combination. So far I haven’t found either the garter snake or the black racer dead on the road, so maybe they’ll make it.

 

The spider and the ant

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I found this little vignette on the screen of our living room sliding glass door.

spider and ant2

In case you’re having trouble telling, this is a spider eating an ant. I am pretty sure the ant is a carpenter ant. It’s nearly a quarter of an inch long. I’m not sure what the spider is, but I think some type of jumping spider, possibly a tan jumping spider. It’s pretty obvious that it’s not a spider that captures its food in a web.

Here it has turned the ant around.

spider and ant1

The ant was moving a little in an earlier shot, so I think it must have been caught close to the time I saw it.

I have seen a couple of carpenter ants around the house, so I was happy to see something preying on one.

Turtle twice seen

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We seldom see turtles up here on the mountain, but last week I had two sightings, and I am pretty sure it was the same turtle. That’s the first time I have been able to identify the same turtle on two separate occasions.

Here he (she? I didn’t check) is on Fouche Gap Road.

turtle thursday

 

Lucy’s snout is in the picture for size reference (I guess I need another reference so you can tell how big she is; not big.) This turtle was facing the edge of the road, so I wasn’t too worried about leaving it where I found it.

Two days later we found a turtle at the same place, but heading into the road.

turtle saturday

I don’t know for sure that it was the same turtle. Here’s a somewhat closer shot.

saturday turtle 2

There is some glare on the shell, but it seems to me that the patterns on shell are the same on both occasions, so I assume it is the same turtle. I took this picture with my iPhone, so it won’t bear any more enlargement.

This section of the road is just past and on the inside of a fairly sharp curve, so it would be a dangerous place for a turtle to spend much time. I moved it just off the pavement and faced it away from the road. Of course if the turtle knew where it wanted to go, that might not have done much good.

Now that I know where to look, I’ll check this area Monday when I take that path for the dogs’ walk.

Red dirt hog

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A few days ago Leah and I were privileged to sight one of the rarest animals in this area. It is so rare that most scientists insist that it does not exist today, if it ever did. Confirmed sightings in its what is considered to be its normal range are next to nonexistent. There have been only a handful of unconfirmed sightings on the mountain, and even locals dismiss those as hoaxes or misidentifications. But we saw one, and we took its picture: the Lavender Mountain red dirt hog (sus erymanthus enluvius).

Red dirt hog surfacing to breathe

Red dirt hog surfacing to breathe

While most people are aware that hogs like to wallow in mud because of a lack of sweat glands and a disposition generally disinclined to excessive concern with personal grooming, few know that many millennia ago, an isolated group of surface hogs living in the Mississippi River Valley slowly evolved so that they could burrow deep into the sediments of that region. Over the following eons, they developed the sharp digging claws and streamlined physiques necessary for spending most of their time diving deep into the earth searching for their prey, the dirt krill. Most fundamentalists deny that surface hogs could have evolved into the dirt hog and insist on a special creation, possibly by the devil, since dirt hogs were historically known to cause extensive damage to crop fields as they surfaced and dived.

Early settlers moving west across the Appalachians confused the dirt hog with the groundhog, attempting to pet them when they surfaced. That resulted in the loss of quite a few fingers and was largely responsible for the dirt hog’s reputation for viciousness. However, it is thought today that the dirt hogs in these cases actually thought they were grabbing earthworms due to their poor eyesight. Nevertheless, it is not advisable to try to pet a dirt hog.

It is thought that the dirt hog slowly colonized eastward from the Mississippi River Valley, following tributaries, until they reached the Appalachian Mountain Range. At that point they advanced southward until they reached the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains. That then allowed them to proceed up rivers in those regions, eventually landing them as far north as this area.

However, according to the best-known and most reputable cryptozoologists, they should be confined to areas of deep sedimentary deposits, like the flood plains around larger streams and rivers. Conventional science predicts that the dirt hog cannot tunnel through rocky areas, and since they cannot survive long on the surface, they should not be able to reach the top of the mountain. This finding conclusively refutes that position.

We plan to report this sighting to the investigative branch of the National Dirt Hog Association.

Solenopsis invicta (or wagneri)

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The first time I heard about fire ants was about 50 years ago when I was in junior high. It was in Mr. Dorsey’s sixth or seventh grade science class. He was scornful of a state program to eradicate fire ants in south Georgia by aerial spraying of insecticides. He said it would never work; what they needed to do was inject poison into each fire ant nest individually.

That would have been a more ecologically sound approach, since aerial spraying would kill lots of other potentially beneficial bugs and would have killed very few fire ants. Mound-by-mound poisoning might have provided some control in limited locations, but it would have been impossible to find every nest.

For the next couple of decades I didn’t think once about fire ants. And then, one day when I was in graduate school in the early ‘80’s I took at run out into the country behind my parents’ house. For some reason at about the two-mile point I stopped, maybe to take a breather or to let a car pass. I happened to stand in tall grass right on top of a fire ant mound. It was only a matter of seconds before at least one fire ant made it over my shoe and sock to my ankle, where it stung me.

At that point I started noticing fire ant mounds, and once I started noticing them, they seemed to be everywhere. Most sources say they were originally introduced into North America at the port of Mobile around 1940. For a while it seemed like the invasion of fire ants was unstoppable, and they were going to spread and overwhelm everything. The limit to their range seems to be low temperatures and dry conditions.

This is a USDA map that shows the potential range of fire ants. The lightest blue indicates areas where expansion of the range is unlikely. The red is areas with confirmed populations.

fireantrange

This is a USDA map on a University of Texas site showing the history of the fire ants’  expansion:

ifaustdist

If I’m reading the map correctly, Floyd County, where we live, is in the 1975-1984 expansion, which is consistent with my impress of when they started showing up around here.

If you don’t have fire ants, you can consider yourself lucky. They are extremely aggressive when defending their nests. If the nest is disturbed, they swarm out in masses and, if you happen to be in the way, they swarm up your feet until they find flesh, and then they latch onto your skin with their pinchers and swing their abdomens around as they sting repeatedly.

I have read at least one Web site that compared the pain intensity of various stings. This site gives a fairly low ranking to the fire ant sting, below a yellowjacket. It’s hard to remember pain levels from 30 years ago, but my impression at the time was not consistent with that. I would have ranked it about the same as a yellowjacket sting, but with longer-lasting effects.

These days my overall impression is that fire ants seem to have reached some kind of equilibrium population. I don’t seem to see as many mounds along the side of the road as I used to. That’s far from a scientific observation, though, and my impression may be wrong. The extension service mentions a pathogen (among other natural enemies) that attacks fire ants. Maybe that has something to do with it.

This is a fire ant nest behind our house. It’s a foot away from an existing nest which I disturbed about a month ago when I borrowed some dirt to use in another place in the yard. You may have trouble reading the tape measure; the mound is about a foot in its widest dimension. It’s a relatively small nest at this point.

fireantnest

The nests are quite deep. It’s easy to drive a stick six inches into such a nest, which I did.

closerviewofants

I tried to manipulate the image so the ants are more visible. These ants are darker than the typical red fire ants I most often see around here. I keep my distance when I do something like this. This nest is in line for a dose of fire ant poison, which seems to either kill the nest or drive the ants to some other place.

If you have ants you think might be fire ants, I suggest that you not stick a finger into the mound to test it. Instead, try identifying them by pictures like these.

The title shows the popular scientific name Solenopsis invicta. However, these fire ants were first identified and named wagneri. At this point I’m not sure which name will win.