An Important Lesson

If you've been following this blog, you know that Desert Boy loves to climb. He'll climb anything; I found him halfway up the piano yesterday. Earlier in the week he started climbing the fence above. I pulled him off and showed him what barbed wire is and made him touch it. Think he'll understand the significance of this lesson?

More Than You Wanted to Know about Scat

I have spent a lot of time looking at scat, and if you'd like to learn the basics of how to differentiate some common types of scat, see this post. Today we'll go into a little more details about some of the scat found in the area. I've gone to the trouble of trying to draw some of the scat, although these pictures are not to scale. Mouse scat is nowhere near as large as mountain lion scat. Really.

Let's start with some of the bigger scat. Bigger animals leave bigger scat, and the biggest one in our area is the mountain lion. Much of the information that follows was obtained from the excellent book Scats and Tracks of the Desert Southwest by James C. Halfpenny along with observations I've made over several years (do I really want to admit that?). 

Carnivore Scat

Mountain lion scat

Mountain lion scat is usually about 1.25 inches in diameter, with pieces up to 4 inches long. The ends are blunt as is common for cats, although a drier diet produces more tapered ends. Like house cats, mountain lions occasionally bury their scat, with dirt scrapings around the scat. Bones and hair are usually obvious in the scat.

Bobcat scat

Bobcat scat also usually has blunt ends, but it is much smaller than lion scat, with a diameter of only 0.8 inches. Pieces can be three inches long, and dry scat falls apart. Bobcats sometimes cover their scat with dirt and other debris.

Coyote scat

Coyote scat usually has tapered ends as is common in the dog family. The scat is often dark in color but may be brown or gray with lots of hair and bones depending on the diet. Coyotes occasionally scratch near their scat piles to mark territory. Diameter is 0.6 inches and length about 3 inches.

Gray fox scat

Gray fox scat is also tapered and can look very similar to coyote scat, with a diameter of 0.6 inches. Length is generally about two inches long. Scat color varies depending on diet, and may include more plant and berry material than coyote.

Skunk scat

Skunk scat also has blunt ends, but is smaller than mountain lion or bobcat scat, with a diameter of 0.25 to 0.75 inches. Length can extend from 1.5 to 5 inches. Insects are often a large part of a skunk diet and may be present in the scat, along with bird feathers, mouse fur, and carrion.

Weasel scat

Weasel scat is not easy to find. It's only 0.1 inches in diameter, but can be 1.5 inches long. It looks like a wavy, black cord with hair-like ends.

Herbivore Scat

Deer Scat

Elk are the largest herbivores in our area, followed by deer. Their scat is nearly identical in shape, but elk scat pellets are 0.5 inches in diameter and deer scat pellets are 0.3 inches in diameter. When the scat is moist, the pellets stick together. A drier diet allows the pellets to scatter when reaching the ground. The typical shape is called nipple-dimple, with a pointed end and a concave end, but drier scat is oval-shaped.

Rabbit scat

Rabbit scat is brown, round, and about 0.3 inches in diameter. Both the black-tailed jackrabbit and the desert cottontail also produce a black, semiliquid scat that they usually reingest for the remaining nutrients.

Porcupine scat

Porcupine scat can be pellets or strings of pellets that are connected by fibers. In the winter, scat is often redder from feeding on conifers, and in the summer, brown to black from eating herbs and shrubs.

Chipmunk scat

Squirrel and chipmunk scat is very similar, with small, unconnected ovals. Squirrel scat is 0.2 inches in diameter and chipmunk scat 0.1 inches in diameter.

Mouse scat

Mouse, pocket mouse, and vole scat all looks virtually identical: dark, small, oval, and unconnected. Voles have the distinction of leaving thousands of scat pellets in tennis-ball sized latrines. 

And that's it for today! But I'll be back again with more photos and info about the wonderful array of scat found in the desert southwest. I hope you'll be back again too!

Curious Cows

Yesterday afternoon we went for a little walk behind our house. The cows were out in the pasture and, as cows often are, were eager for a little entertainment. Not the Hollywood type of entertainment, but just something to make their day a little more interesting. Like a visit from Henry and Desert Boy.

Sometimes Henry chases cows, despite my attempts to make him stop, so I wasn't too certain how he'd act when he started approaching the cows. He paused and looked like he was going to be calmer. Maybe that's because I made him run two miles, chasing the truck to the babysitters and back. Perhaps I'll start running again soon, but in the meantime, I find the current exercise program for Henry very easy for me!

Back to the scene at hand. Henry and the lead cow assess each other.

They cautiously approach.

They reassess. I can only wonder what's going through their minds right now.

Henry takes a few more steps forward. The cow stares.

Henry makes a final few steps and then retreats. He's no working cow dog, after all.

Now we have the attention of the small herd, and they start approaching us as a whole. It takes a little getting used to to stare down a few tons of beef cattle.

Especially when they have some belligerent faces.

And drool. 

And give you a mean, intimidating stare. But I know better, these cows are just looking for some fun, and it is a little hard to take a cow seriously when she has hay hanging out of her mouth.

Still, though, when they lower their heads and take a few more steps closer, I have to take a deep breath and remember that with a shout and stomp of my feet I can make them all scattter.

Desert Boy stays pretty close to Mama, but he's very interested in these beefy bovines.

Hey, Ma, this is cool. Thanks for letting me take a walk!

And then Henry reappears, and Desert Boy gets distracted, as you can see in the video below. Notice how the cows just watch the whole thing. It's a good life.

The School Bus

We went down to the lower yard yesterday afternoon and discovered a couple school buses down there. What are school buses doing on a ranch? Nope, it wasn't a school field trip. And no, we don't use them to transport people around. A local school district was excessing old stuff, and the ranch decided that there were enough good parts on the school buses to make it worth the while to bid and haul them back.

It took a little work to unload this big school bus. It still looks good on the outside, but its engine and seats aren't the way they used to be.

Nevertheless, walking down the aisle of the school bus brought back so many memories. Band trips with wonderful friends and our "deep" conversations, singing on our way to swim meets, and school field trips that opened up a whole new world to kids from a small town. I also remembered the spit ball fights, singing '99 bottles of beer on the wall' to pass the time, and the silly jokes we played. The back of the bus was the coolest place to sit because it meant you were the furthest away from the adult, the bus driver. Nowadays, whenever I get on a bus I usually like to sit up front because it's not as bumpy. I guess that's another sign of getting old.

Desert Boy was with me, and of course he had to "drive" the school bus. He scrambled up on to the seat without any help from me and started the trip.

But with his short attention span, it wasn't long until he was looking out the window. 

Last week Desert Boy started saying the word bus. He loves to repeat it over and over and over. B-u-s. B-u-s. B-u-s. B-u-s. He even gets out a good "s" sound. He's so proud he can say it, he calls most every big vehicle he sees a B-u-s. Before long, he won't only be saying bus, he'll also be getting on the bus to go to school. 

He might have to grow a little more, though, so he doesn't have to sit down to get off the bus!

Caves in the United States

Caves are found in every state in the United States, with over 44,000 recorded caves in the 48 contiguous states (Culver et al. 1999). Where are these caves?

The map above shows the karst areas of the U.S. in green. Karst is a type of terrain that includes limestones, dolomites, and gypsum. These rocks are soluble, and caves, sinkholes, and underground drainages are common features. Nearly one-quarter of the U.S. is comprised of karst. Looking at the map above, you might guess that Florida has the most caves because it has the most karst. But just because karst is present does not mean that a cave is present. In many cases, the rock is soluble, but the water table is so high that the caves are flooded and can only be entered by highly trained cave divers, or the caves are still forming and are not large enough for humans to enter. 

This second map, made by Culver et al., shows a dot for every cave by county. So if a county has ten caves, there will be ten dots randomly placed in that county. These caves may be found in karst, but also could be lava tube caves, talus caves, or other types of caves. What is obvious in this map is that there are some sections of the country that are just filled with caves, like the middle part of Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and others. The desert southwest doesn't have as many caves, but it still has quite a few black dots.

When I headed to Kentucky last week, it was with the knowledge I was heading towards cave central. Kentucky is home to the longest cave in the world, Mammoth Cave, which stretches over 360 miles with more passageways still being found. My brother offered to take us to one of the smaller caves in the state, and I couldn't resist.

The trip to a cave almost always includes a hike to the entrance. Sometimes this hike can be grueling, involving many miles, rough terrain, poisonous plants, unpleasant weather, and obnoxious mosquitoes. Fortunately, on this fine fall day, the weather was great and we followed a trail most of the way.

The entrance was huge, with large boulders providing good perches as we looked off into the Kentucky woods. We put on our helmets and headlamps and got ready to enter the large, dark void.

This cave, called Wind Cave, is about 1.3 miles in length. It was formed by water dissolving the limestone rock. Water still flows through parts of the cave, but because Kentucky has had a drought this last year, my brother didn't think we would get too wet. I was skeptical. In my experience, I nearly always get wet and muddy in Midwest caves.

One of the first passages we went into was a canyon-like passage. The walls were fairly smooth and dry. I enjoyed the walking passage, because many of the caves in the area where I live are small and require lots of crawling.

Eventually the canyon passage got smaller and it was time to squeeze through a little hole. You can see some graffiti to the right of the hole. Unfortunately some people don't respect caves and leave trash or paint stupid things on the cave walls. They don't think about the cave being a home.

Caves are home to a variety of cave biota. Squeezing provides the opportunity to be very close to the cave surfaces, and then it's easier to see some of the creatures that make the cave their home, like this cave cricket. Notice the extremely long back legs and antennae, which help the cricket find its way around the totally dark cave. We saw lots of crickets--some cracks had about 15 together. 

In addition to crickets, we also saw this neat looking spider, along  with flies, moths, and millipedes. Water flowing into the cave provides nutrients for these cave creatures.

Back in the main passageway, we can see that the water has been flowing through the cave for a long time to dissolve away this much rock. 

Eventually the ceiling got lower and we had to stoop walk. We also came to mounds of sand, places where the water has slowed and deposited the finer sediments.

And then we got into another crawling passage. We found many side passages going off from the main trunk passage. Basically smaller drainages are emptying into a larger drainage, but instead of happening in rivulets and gullies up on the surface, it's occurring underground.

Some passages got even tighter, requiring some nearly contortionist moves to get past the ninety-degree turns. (Can you see the foot and leg in the photo?) To make things more complicated, water was flowing and bubbling up on the bottom of the passage. I was right about getting wet!

It was a fun trip, and it felt great to be underground again. I always enjoy the silence and mysterious nature of caves. Are there still more passageways to be found? How much bigger will the cave get over time as the water keeps dissolving away more rock? How is it connected to the surface, and will it be impacted by surface activities? What else lives in the cave? I always leave a cave with more questions than I went in with!

If you'd like to learn more about caves, a good place to start is the National Speleological Society website.