NATCHEZ NATURALIST
NEWSLETTER:
June 17, 2001
ARMADILLOS
At dawn one day this week I was jogging down a forest path near my trailer when I came
upon a family of Armadillos -- a mother with 3 half-grown young. You can see a picture of
an earlier Armadillo in my backyard at http://www.backyardnature.net/mammals.htm.
If I hadn't stopped jogging I would have actually tripped over these critters, but that
wouldn't have been extraordinary, since Armadillos behave as if they were practically
blind. Often you can walk right up to them and they will be looking exactly at you,
but they will behave as if they don't see you.
On the other hand, if you get upwind from them, instantly their nose pokes into the air,
they get a horrified look in their face, and they waddle off as if the Hounds of Hell were
after them. My impression is that their eyes are OK, but they are attached to the
armadillos' brains only very loosely, while their noses have superhighway access directly
to their brains.
Armadillos have given me a lot of grief in the gardens. They burrow beneath my
deer-fences, then during the night dig up enormous areas of the garden. Mostly they are
carnivores, eating insects, grubs, worms and such, though sometimes they also eat a few
berries, fruits and bird eggs. In the garden they couldn't care less about a cabbage plant
or a tomato vine. In the gardens they are looking for earthworms and grubs, which in my
highly organic soil are huge and juicy. The damage they do to my plants is purely
incidental to their quest for earthworms.
You don't need to worry about being bitten by an Armadillo because their teeth are small,
knobby things made for crunching bugs and worms, not for tearing flesh. On the other hand,
if you pick one up by the tail their powerful digging claws can give nasty scratches.
You often see cartoons of Armadillos rolling themselves into
cannonball-like spheres, leaving nothing but their bands of armor exposed to enemies. I've
never seen an Armadillo do this. I've certainly yelled at them, jumped all around them and
even poked at them with my toes trying to get them to do so, but my impression is that
ball-rolling is a rare thing with them, if they do it at all.
Around Natchez, maybe 80% of roadkill consists of Armadillos. Nonetheless, they are
common as sin.
*****
MORE MUSHROOMS
Last week I mentioned how the rains accompanying Tropical Depression Alison had caused an
incredible outbreak of mushrooms in the forest. Well, this week there were even more. It's
simply mind-boggling. And the most common ones are the best ones for eating, too.
The most abundant species is the Chanterelle, Cantherellus lateritius, which
you can see at http://www.backyardnature.net/eat_mush.htm.
When I am working in Germany, my German friends regard this as the best of all eating, and
on certain summer weekends the landscape is busy with entire families, baskets in hand,
looking for Chanterelles, which they call Pfifferlings.
The second-most common species now also is a delight to eat, the Caesar's Mushroom, Amanita
caesarea, a 10-inch-tall beauty with a bright red cap. This species remains good only
for a day. Our plantation's manager, Kathy Moody, the only other person I am likely to see
on an average week, is a mushroom fanatic. A while back when she heard on the late news
that a rain was coming on the very day the Caesar's Mushrooms were coming up, she feared
the rain might beat them down and actually went out at midnight with a flashlight to
collect at least one good crop. This year there is no such need, for they can be picked by
the bathtub-full.
*****
BLACKBERRIES, MOSQUITOES & BATS
Blackberries are just getting ripe and in the gardens finally we have all the ripe
tomatoes we can eat. Alison's rains not only spawned abundant mushrooms this week, but
also lots of mosquitoes. However now the bats who live in my cistern seem to have brought
them under control. This last full week of spring has been a beautiful one.
Jim |