The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Biosphere. Chapter 1: Squirrels

(Note:This is a submitted Crossroads Chronicle article, a Cashiers, NC paper. The column is entitled Living Green. We'll see if they publish it. Its just slightly ridiculous, by design.)

All around us, there are all kinds of critters. God only knows what some of them are, but most of us can at least identify the common ones by at least their common names.

In this first installment of this probably much unanticipated and also unsolicited series, The Complete Idiot's Guild to the Biosphere, we examine the critter known as squirrels (also called tree rats), their role on the planet, and their propensity to venture out of their habitat and onto the gasoline tax supported roads of this nation. Finally, we will conclude with a theory as to why squirrels is sooo dumb.

By way of disclosure, it should be noted that the author is not an ecologist, or even an evolutionary biologist. However, it seems that a lack of knowledge or appropriate background is not currently preventing anyone from opining on any subject with 100% absolute confidence. So it is in this absolutely-anything-goes environment that the scope of this column can be both justifiably and reasonably expanded into subject areas about which the author knows absolutely nothing.

Now, and with the foregoing, the author did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

According to Wikipedia, a squirrel is one of the many small or medium-sized rodents in the family Sciuridae, whereas rats are various medium sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus. However, when a squirrel tail is Photo Shopped onto a rat picture, the resemblance is completely uncanny. Is it a squirrel, or a rat with a puffy tail? Impossible to tell.

The relationship among the members of an ecological web is complex and interdependent. While squirrels eat insects and other critters which are considered pests, there is one service which these jittery-friends provide which is of paramount importance. Squirrels, in all their endearing busyness,
in and of the eating and burying of nuts, often forget the location of some of these buried treasures. These nuts, so carefully and lovingly planted, go on to become fully grown trees, minimizing erosion and restarting forests on slopes clear-cut by man.

Partially offsetting this benefit to humanity is squirrels annoying propensity to venture outside of their designated habitat and fritter about in the road system. The boundary between our road system and wilderness is clearly identified with a solid white line. Only the dumbest of animals would not recognize this visual barrier and maintain the balance in the Force.

This petroleum based game of “chicken” is no doubt a very familiar occurrence with the reader. The squirrel goes left, we go right. The squirrel goes right, we go left. The squirrel screams. The animals in the forest look on in a kind of paralyzed trance. Spllattcrunchbumpbump. We reassure ourselves with that common refrain,'there's a million of them.' We feel better. They don't make X Box games like this. Besides, we pay road taxes when we fill up, darn it all. Squirrels don't. So.

The loss of any one individual in an interconnected ecosystem is not the end of the ecosystem. One animals loss may be another's gain, in a circle of life kind of way. Natural systems work best, and there is no waste in nature; as crows, 'possums, and the Lord knows what else flies, crawls or squiggles over to partake of the recently departed.

In defense of squirrels, there is no natural situation comparable to this modern game of chicken. No animal in the ecosystem weighing 7000 pounds bears down at 50 miles per hour on a squirrel. There is no natural situation to serve as preparation in the form of either instinct or adolescent training.

If bears weighed this much and ran that fast, they would not be eligible for the tax credit as SUVs are anyways, so what would be the point in expending so much energy on a little squirrel? Perhaps if bears started a lobbying group, they could receive credits or even a bailout.

In addition, petroleum powered vehicles have only been around for a hundred years or so. And critters like our protagonist have been around for millions, so the modern marvels are relatively new. Already, squirrels seem to be getting better at it.

If squirrels can hold out for just a few more decades, their greatest road borne threat will be reduced to bicycles, light electric cars, horse drawn buggies or the shoes of the bipeds. If squirrels can adapt to climate change, they may very well outlast the bipeds entirely in just a century or two. However, one or two hundred years is far outside the scope of a 30 second attention span. What were we talking about?

Some groups are very fond of pointing out that everything works in cycles. In the case of modes of transportation, they are probably absolutely right. You know, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while.

It all makes you wonder... who is it that is really so dumb?

A Tale of Two Toads

(Published July 30, 2008 Crossroads Chronicle, Cashiers, NC)

On the July 4^th weekend, we saved a toad. Please allow me to explain.

Like so many critters, it had gotten caught by a human made structure. It had hopped into the window well of our basement condo, and it couldn’t get out. In a way, it had fallen; and it couldn’t get up. We all get that way sometimes.

Now, the author is no herpetologist, but the toad looked to be an American Toad. I believe it to be of the genus kisseous americanus. At this point, the reader is probably thinking… “Gross. Who cares about some stupid toad? Besides, it could have been a Fowlers’ toad.”

To the first point, toads are important because of the vast quantities of insects they consume. By eating insects that destroy crops, American toads can save farmers, horticulturists and consumers substantial amounts of money. Also, they are part of nature. Besides, the American toad may be distinguished from the closely related Fowler’s toad by the presence of enlarged warts on the lower section of each leg (tibia).

Reluctantly, I picked up the toad.

It was dry to the touch, and had probably been down there some time. It could just barely move its eyes.

We put it in a bowl of water, and it sunk down underwater for some time. I reported to my wife at one point that our patient would probably not make it.

But toads are hardy. The next time we checked, the toad was standing up in the bowl, on watch like some noble creature.

I found a beetle and a cave cricket, and set them next to our toad. When I returned, the bugs were gone, and our toad was enroute towards the woods.

You can probably imagine how I felt. You know; you give someone shoes, and they just walk away. Sometimes, I wonder if some princess isn’t holding him, going, “Maybe, this is the one?”

We know, not all stories can have a fairy tale ending. For the Golden Toad (Bufo periglenes), the story is different.

The golden toad was only discovered and named in 1966. It lived in Costa Rica, in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve.

True to its name, the males are a brilliant gold, lighting up the forest floor beneath the canopy above. The females are a mottled black, yellow and scarlet.

For much of the year, its a secretive creature, spending its time underground in burrows among the root masses of the woodland. As dry season gives way to the wet in April and May, it appears above ground en masse, for just a few days or weeks.

The last mating season of the golden toad was chronicled in detail by amphibian expert Marty Crump, a researcher working with the Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation.

In April of 1987, Crump noted that with the dry weather, the pools containing the eggs had dried completely. The toads tried to breed again in May. Of the 43,500 eggs in the ten pools she studied, only 29 tadpoles survived longer than a week, for the pools again dried quickly.

The following year at Monteverde, Crump found only a single male after a long search. On May 15, of 1989, a solitary male was again sighted. He was almost certainly the same one seen the previous year, sitting only ten feet from the previous sighting. He was, as far as we know, the last of his species, as the golden toad has not been seen since.

The golden toad, along with 122 other amphibians since 1980, has vanished forever. They are today’s canary in the coalmine.

Numerous studies and papers have been written about this disturbing trend, and most come to the same conclusion. The amphibians are dying from a fungal infection, and the disease is likely spreading, or exacerbated by, global climate change.

“Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger,” says Alan Pounds, an ecologist at the preserve in Costa Rica.

No bulldozer is responsible for killing these amphibians in their pristine habitat, but rather it is coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, and cars in China, that are responsible. And a bowl of water and a couple of bugs, will not change any of that, so intractable is the problem.

http://www.nature.com

http://www.herpsofnc.org

Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers, pp 114-122