Spider pics

I stopped by to say howdy to my friend fstorch, intrepid urban wildlife photographer, the other day and found him crouched in some shrubbery behind his workshop.

He had a camera in his hand, so I tried not to make any noise until he stood up. I didn't want to frighten any timid wildlife.

By the time he was done and I walked over to see what he was photographing, it was already gone. While he watched, this tiny spider had tossed out strands of silk into the breeze and then when it caught somewhere, the spider took off -- whoosh! You can see the first strand of silk here, and then multiple strands here, and what I think is a pre-launch shot here.

There's fungus among us. And slime mold

No, I'm not talking about politics.

It's that time of year again. Occasional commenter Fstorch sent me this photo he took the other day of a field full of mushrooms just down the street a ways.

He was driving by and saw all these mushrooms that had sprouted up practically overnight. Huge mushrooms, all over the whole field. Intrepid nature photographer that he is, he immediately circled back and got his camera and documented the event. And of course sent it to me, because, well, I asked him to. They do spring up all over the place here this time of year -- and not just mushrooms. All kinds of fungi.

Also slime mold, which as it turns out, isn't really a fungus, technically. It just sort of looks like it must be fungal in nature, and it usually appears in the same kinds of places, and under the same general conditions: hot, humid, dark, dank, yucky. Decaying wood chip mulch, yum.

In fact, slime molds (Kingdom: Protista; Phylum: Amoebozoa Class: Mycetozoa) were classified with the fungi for a long time, at least by the mycologists, who called them Myxomycetes ("slime fungi"). The zoologists also claimed them, however, and classified them as Mycetozoa, or "fungus animals," which I think is charming. The zoologists appear to have prevailed in some respects.

These photos are from late last summer, and also from Fstorch; I'm not sure why I didn't post them here at the time, but I think it was at the beginning of that blogging and writing and thinking slump that I had going for a while there. Slime mold is more interesting than politics, as you can see.

Anyway, these photos show a slime colony in two of its several life cycle manifestations. Seriously cool looking stuff, I think, although apparently it's sometimes mistaken for dog vomit. It's even referred to sometimes as Dog Vomit Mold. I'm not making that up. This one was in the little garden right outside our neighborhood pub. And yes! it really does move! Kind of. You can sort of see it when you compare these two pictures, even accounting for the difference in scale. They were taken maybe a day apart.

And this from the wikipedia entry on slime molds:

"In the DVD release of "This is Spinal Tap" there is an outtake of an interview with David St. Hubbins where he speaks of slime moulds, saying "They are both plant AND animal...it's like they can't make up their mind...but if they ever did, they can take us over just like that!"

Think about it. But not too hard.

Enough of cute?

"It's like he's coming out of the fog to rescue me from some bender that has gone so badly that I think it's going well. He'll nurse me back to sobriety and sanity. This time's for real."

Occasional commenter fstorch, rescuer of turtles and baby owls and suchlike, sent me this link, and, well, it's a blog full of pictures of fossas and rusty spotted genets and tapirs and the degu pictured here. No cute puppies or kitties, just lots of pygmy lorises and javelinas and lemurs. And so much more. Plus some seriously weird comments. As the proprieter over there says, it's "puppy dog eyes without all the puppy dog." The blog is called JustALittleGuy. The proprieter of the blog goes by the name Awwwww.

Baby owls & a mockingbird

These two juvenile barred owls fell out of a tree during a recent storm, and my friend (the same one who rescued the turtle last fall) found out about them so we went and got Stella's old crate and pick them up and he ended up keeping them for a couple of days waiting for the wild bird rescue people to pick them up.

It took quite a few phone calls, and he got a lot of conflicting advice, but all ended well for the birds as far as we can tell. One of the places my friend called told him to try to feed them dry cat food, but they were not particularly interested in it. They did, however, respond pretty enthusiastically to the takeout mice offered by another friend who keeps them on hand for his snakes. They may look like adorable little puffballs, but those beaks and talons are the tools of highly efficient predators.

I feel lucky to have crossed paths with them briefly. They are beautiful birds. Unlike the mockingbird in the tree outside my window. I don't feel lucky at all at 4 a.m. every day to wake up to hear him do his car alarm imitation. You can tell it's a bird making the noise, but the resemblance to one of those awful car alarms that cycle through about seven different annoying sounds is uncanny.

Urban wildlife

Stella & I missed all the excitement at the neighborhood pub the other day. A friend of mine was there with his camera, though, & sent these photos of the box turtle he found in the parking lot. A beautiful specimen and apparently on some kind of mission, traveling obliviously across lawns and pavement and a gravel parking lot. A death-defying mission, you could say. After posing for these photos, the turtle submitted to the relocation efforts of kind-hearted pub patrons.

I've been thinking a lot about this turtle, and all the other turtles I've known. I'm afraid I've become a little bit numb with my rage at all the senseless death going on everywhere, and it did my heart good to know that somebody had bothered to try to keep this turtle off the road. Their beautiful and durable shells give them a perfect refuge from all but the most wily and persistent predators, but they are no match for cars. Plus they don't move very fast.

Looking at these pictures reminds me of a box turtle I once knew by the name of Fred; when I last saw Fred about ten or twelve years ago, he had been living for almost 30 years with this guy in my revolutionary knitting group. I think my friend felt a little bad about keeping him captive, but he was worried that Fred would end up dead on the pavement.

So Fred had his own aquarium with the kind of light he needed to keep his shell in shape and keep warm. There was a pool in it, and some plants and pretty rocks, and on one side there was a whole gallery of turtle-themed art taped to the outside of the glass for him to enjoy. He ate mostly cat kibble, with occasional bugs & stuff. He spent a few hours each day in the aquarium but was otherwise given free run of the house, much to the amusement of the cats. They loved to follow him around, but when they got too curious, he'd of course just pull inside his shell and freak the cats out.

I went over there one day to see the litter of kittens that a stray cat had showed up to deliver. They were all in a cardboard box being cute in that helpless newborn mammal kind of way. Several of us were standing around staring at them when someone said, "Hey, look at Fred!" He was moving pretty briskly, for a turtle, circumambulating the box (there's just no other word to describe what he was doing), stopping every now and again, craning his neck to try to see into the box. He seemed agitated. Worried? How to tell? My friend sat down on the floor and held Fred so he could see inside. He stared for quite a long time at the kittens. Finally he looked up at my friend, who put him down. Fred sat calmly near the box for quite a long time after that.

Visitor

I guess this is going to be an all-bug blog for a while. I'm too tired of looking at words all day to write anything, so here's another nifty bug.

You can click on the picture for a closer look, should you want one. It's not a very big specimen, but I think it's kind of pretty against the peeling paint and the oxidized metal. Not a great place for a bug to be, what with people going in & out & closing the door, so my friend transported it across the parking lot & into a nice leafy tree. It stayed there for a while but was gone by the time I arrived, alas.

Glad I got to see the pictures, anyway.

Fish or cut bait

This is a catalpa (or catawba) worm. It's the caterpillar stage in the life cycle of the Catalpa sphinx moth. The moths lay zillions of eggs on the leaves of catalpa trees, and when they hatch, they (very swiftly!) eat all the leaves & climb down to the ground to pupate in the dirt. I think you'll get a larger picture if you click on that one, & you can sort of see the bare twigs where there used to be leaves. Apparently these make excellent fish bait, but I'll probably never confirm this myself. I'm also told that there is a species of hunting wasp that lays its eggs on these particular caterpillars; haven't seen any of them yet, though.