Howdy Herpers, 07/31/13
Thank you cards are slugging their way toward the nine
kind souls who gave our fiscal situation a jump start. Thanks to their efforts,
we can not only keep the animals in the game that we have, but also add a few
more. I do not wish to embarrass anybody by mentioning names here. Just know
that when the acks are presented, your names will be enshrined. And that ought
to add numerous zeros to your paychecks, open the gates of heaven for you and
yours, and massively improve your love lives.
As for the rest of you--see what you missed? But it's
never too late!
Ok, enough with the BS.
On the evening of 3 July, Typing Boy here was
tracking our pregnant female CM17. This
was one of those rare nights when Marty Feldner was at my side, instead of
being on the other side of the hills mowing down a line of snakes. Whenever we
track together, Marty lets me track. There is no sense in him doing the
tracking, as he'll leave me in his dust. So he happily weaves a herpetological
tapestry around me as we move. Typing Boy was following the path of least
resistance, following the cattle trails that line the berm of an arroyo that
flows from the bowels of a slot canyon. Marty was a couple climate zones above
me, when he yells down to me: "Got a hatchling tortoise."
Tortoises of any size will cause a break from tracking,
but all the more so for hatchlings. Sluggo made his way upslope to view the
find.
Sure enough, once I gave pause to forcibly eject some
black lung tissue shaken loose from the arduous climb, I saw Marty's hatchling
tortoise.
Its head was up, one foreleg poised as if to take the
next step. We both took several photos, marveling over how cooperative the
little gogger was being. At some point later, Marty morphed into a poopsock by
proclaiming "I think it's dead." Inspired by this statement, I gave
it a poke with my walking stick. This did nothing to disturb the status quo,
not to mention the tortoise. The poopsock was correct, the little gogger was
quite dead.
A couple of strands of spider web were strung across its
head, and one of the strands had also snagged its right forelimb. We eventually
broke the hapless thing out of the web, noting that the strands had the tensile
strength of thin steel wire. There is only one spider that spins webs like that
in these parts--the black widow.
The most likely cause of death is that it was merely stuck,
and baked its brains out in the sun. There were some signs of trauma to the
head, which could have been from a bite. In any case, this event has stumped
many a tortoise Jedi. There is more info that could be shared--but I won't.
Marty and I WILL go Hollywood with this observation, and
reveal the rest therein. (If I do it here, all chance of a natural history note
dies. Why publish it here--where people will actually read it?)
That, my friends, is what image 1 is all about.
Cool--huh?
As most of the images are labeled, it makes no sense for
me to beat them to death with lengthy descriptions. A few highlights include
our newest male tiger CT16 with rain drops on his coiled form, the shed skin of
an atrox that looks very much like a living snake, one of the neonate tigers
shown in our last missive at its release site, and the face of God closes this
missive.
Best to all, roger