Arachnids – Enchanted Habitat

34.7º N 92.2º W. Little Rock, in Central Arkansas, in the United States

4/28/17 – 5/3/17

Pictograph Writing Lives Again. Thanks iPhone!

My friend who lives in Mexico is the sister of my friend who lives in Enchanted Habitat.

Mexico Friend emailed to her sister, “There was a long #*&@^$# scorpion in my mop this afternoon. Stomped it when it fell out. Horrid thing. UGH!!” Local Friend replied by emailing the affirming dual pictogram, finger-drawn on her iPhone, shown here. Sisters have their own ways of communicating. Now we know the origin of prehistoric drawings: sisters leaving messages for each other. How nice to be able to write this way again.

Thanks to both sisters for letting me share this.

Enchanted Habitat does not have long #*&@^$# scorpions. We have wee little ones and I think they are cute, but I know I’m in the minority. Local Friend told me, “The one time I saw a scorpion, it came out of my flower bed onto the sidewalk, which was flooded. It. Was. Pissed. It was not cute. I was taken aback. The idea that it had been living in my hostas did not sit well with me.”

Ours are the Striped Bark Scorpion, the most common kind in the U.S., and the only kind in Arkansas. They are indeed small, about 2″ to 3″ long. Image by Charles and Clint via Wikipedia.

Their sting hurts ‘way worse than a bee’s, I can vouch for that. I was eight. I was barefoot. I was at summer camp. It was as if lightning struck my big toe and stayed there for twenty minutes. But their venom is not deadly unless you are supersensitive and/or allergic. I didn’t tell my camp counselor because I thought she might keep me from the boat ride. Over the years I came up with the theory that the unforgettable sting was somehow good for me, body and soul.

Our scorpions don’t go out of their way to sting. They are brave and stick up for themselves, but are not warlike. Living here all my life, much of that outdoors, I’ve been stung only the once. They eat insects, smaller arachnids and babies of their own kind, and are eaten by birds, reptiles, some mammals and large spiders.

The Local Turkey Vulture

Our subdivision of the city has a resident turkey vulture. In the daytime we do. At night, the references say, they congregate together in safe areas for sleep, and daytimes they go out individually on their own. Hunting, but not in the ordinary sense, you know. Let’s say they neaten the neighborhood.

I first noticed him or her last year. I was driving home, and there it was in the middle of a street beside a small dead thing. I thought, Dang, a chicken! . . . No, a buzzard! After that I’d see it once in a while in the nearby streets, unhurriedly eating, and cooperatively lurching out of the street if I needed to get by. If I was away from the neighborhood and driving back, sometimes I noticed it up to the sky over our location, soaring around, waiting.

(Thanks to Steve Creek, wildlife photographer of the Ouachitas, for the reference photo for the drawing above. Do view his blog, it’s wonderful!)

Our vulture has returned this spring, I saw it down the street. A crow was there with it. The two of them were about ten feet apart, with a small dead thing between them, and each was hunkered down motionless with its head retracted into its shoulders. They were carefully not looking at each other. Stubborn was written all over both of them. I can’t tell you who won, because spending the afternoon waiting to see which one of them got to eat carrion isn’t my idea of a good time.

After the first sighting last year, I gathered some facts about turkey vultures. First, I had been ignorant, they are not buzzards and don’t appreciate being called buzzards. It’s vulture. When soaring, they can both see and smell their food below. Their amazing olfactory ability gives them advantage over the black vultures, who also live here and have to rely on their eyesight. Black vultures seem to be aware that that turkey vultures have this superior food finding sense, and sometimes follow them to the food. And of course, the easiest way to distinguish between the two, turkey and black, is that the turkey vulture has the red head. They don’t vocalize except for grunts and hisses; they typically raise two chicks a year; they have few natural predators; their range extends from the Canadian border all the way down through South America. It is illegal to kill them, thank heaven.

What Tree Is This?

If you took a fast look and said Oak, you can join me in the Erroneous Botanist Society. It’s a pecan tree, a young volunteer tree in a front yard in my neighborhood. It is “in tassel” now; I don’t know the terminology for that. Last fall it bore its first crop, two or three pounds of nuts, most of which the squirrels got. Whether it–or any pecan tree–will bear this year is complex question, and for that go to experts. University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture

I didn’t know until recently that the pecan is a species of hickory, or that it can live and bear upwards of 300 years. I did pretty much know it’s native to the south central and south eastern United States and part of Mexico. Pecan trees like the climate in Enchanted Habitat. They grow cheerfully here individually and there are pecan farms here.

My personal experience at pecan orcharding didn’t last long. Years ago I bought some acreage, and someone gave me a dozen six-foot Stuart pecan trees. This person had always wanted a pecan orchard and was living vicariously, and did not offer to help with the planting. I already had a full list of manual work to do, to turn the acreage into a farm, but I stopped everything to plant the trees. I interrupted the fencing project that would have kept my new little herd of goats contained. If you know goats, you know what happened next. If you don’t know goats (obviously I didn’t know them well enough) I will tell you that I worked hard to excavate twelve deep wide holes in that rocky soil, and hauled in half a truckload of good topsoil, so that the saplings would have a good start. And as soon as I got the trees in the ground and went to the house, the goats tiptoed over and silently ate them every one. I have only myself to blame.

Enough of the bittersweet, here is the sweet. This is my pecan pie, and my preference in how to alter the recipe on the Karo Dark Corn Syrup bottle: Add about 1/3 more butter than called for, and add a double-pinch of salt; subtract about 1/4 the sugar.

34.7º N 92.2º W. Little Rock, in Central Arkansas, in the United States

4/15/17 – 4/18/17

This was orientation day for Jury Duty
By 9 AM about 50 of us had made it past the Pulaski County Courthouse security scanners and gathered in the assigned room, where our judge, who is a woman about my age unless I’m flattering myself, addressed us. She calmed our jitters by explaining that maybe none of us would actually be called to duty because hers is a civil, not criminal, court, and most civil cases are settled before they reach the trial stage. She also said she forbids lawyers to wait until court day and then settle cases on the courthouse steps, with the jury assembled unnecessarily. By this time I was sitting on my hands to keep from applauding. This is somebody I really like! Next an uncle-like man with a deep voice who is the main bailiff taught us how to get in touch with him if we had a problem, and I liked him too.
As they were about to dismiss us, the door opened and a ditz came in. She said, in the way that only ditzes do, that it wasn’t her fault she was late. The bailiff took her under his wing and did not make the rest of us stay.

Photo above of Courthouse is from
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Pulaski_county_arkansas_courthouse.jpg

Outside the room I took my first good look around the inside of the Courthouse, which has been there since 1887, and where I have been several times before in my adult life without noticing its opulence. Today I was blown away. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and my lame excuse is, I guess I just hadn’t been ready to behold this ’til now. I wonder how many other people have been in there too busy and/or too stressed to look up and around. Starting from the top, here is its fabulous stained glass dome, and some of the marble statuary. There is more to it, of course, that I’m leaving out. I am in love with this building that was designed in an era when beauty could prevail over efficiency.
I do have one suggestion, though: Could they not put handrails on the outside front steps? I can’t trust my knees. My solution going in was to grab with both hands to one of the huge concrete pillars encasing the steps and plaster the front of myself to it, fingers searching out crevices, and crawl up sideways, using my hands and arms as much as my feet and legs. Coming out, same thing only downward. The pedestrians in front of and across the street from the courthouse were treated to the sighting of an aged female rock climber.

Let’s Propagate at Ruth’s Place!
It isn’t just that the robins are contesting me to build their nest and raise their babies under the patio roof, it’s that the rest of creation would also like to reproduce in my yard.
I can’t even go to the compost bin. Last fall I opened it to put something in, and a mama wolf spider so big she was on the way to being a tarantula had dragged her egg sac in there and told me I was unwelcome.
I know they aren’t poisonous, but they will bite if they think they have to. I also know first hand they are athletic as hell. My thought at the time–after I got hold of myself–was that the weather was coming on to cold and she needed to be there for the sake of her kids. I haven’t been back there since. I admire wolf spiders and would like them if my brain stem would let me. Here is more about them.
http://www.livescience.com/41467-wolf-spider.html

Chinaberry Trees – Melia azedarach
These are blooming all over town. Wikipedia says some people also call them Persian Lilac. If so, that’s probably to inflate how beautiful they are, which they’re not really. In bloom they have a vague purplish color, and sort of ornamental silhouettes. Here, people (especially those my age or older) don’t tend to be euphemistic about nuisance plants. Plain old “Chinaberry” is it. They are one of the trees I find it hard to favor. Photo below and other references are from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melia_azedarach

Here is the roster of Chinaberry trees’ bad behaviors. First, beware, their leaves and berries are toxic to dogs, cats, horses, humans, and probably lots of other creatures. Supposedly they can kill. But not birds. Birds can and do eat them and excrete the seeds (see, none of this is pleasant), and the trees are hardy and bad to spring up everywhere, and they grow fast. Third, each tree then bears thousands upon thousands of green berries that stay on the tree until they turn yellow and mushy and yucky and then fall off, and that makes a huge mess, and when I was a girl . . . well, I’ll just tell you the worst of the story: When I was a girl there were no adult-planned entertainments for children. We shuffled around the yard and entertained ourselves. It was a challenge. My little brother, when he was about five, entertained himself by stuffing his bluejeans pockets with over-ripe yellow mushy Chinaberries. I was the oldest child, and a girl to boot, and guess whose job it was to prep the laundry and empty the boys’ pockets. In my whole life it was the worst job ever.

Yea Bunnies!
I do like the rabbits. They appear in the open from about twilight to who knows what time in the morning. I’ve never gone out and looked after 1:00 AM. But now we come again to the subject of the compost bin. If The Dog knows what she’s talking about, a rabbit has dug under the bin and either has or is making a nest there. The good news is, The Dog is not gifted in physical skills and has never caught anything. (Bird, squirrel, chipmunk. Rabbit.) I suspect she doesn’t think of creatures as prey. She thinks it’s a game that ends when whatever-it-is is gone. In her eyes there does not come that fire of maniacal intent. So I’m holding hope in my heart. But somebody tell me, who is the patron saint of baby bunnies?

Category: Arachnids

Pecans and Pictographs

Opulence in Arkansas