Sting City

Ever wonder what it would feel like to hold a five-foot animate chicken cutlet? Curious about what an animal with a kisser like vacuum might look like? Want a little magic in your life? Fear no danger? Like getting mobbed by moving pancakes underwater? Appreciate flatness? Then I highly recommend you find a boat and make a sojourn to Stingray City, where the sea puppies live, and all your weirdo dreams can come true. I know mine did.

Southern stingrays (Dasyatis americana) can be found elegantly gliding around the ocean floor in tropical and subtropical waters from Jersey to Brazil. Their pectorals fins stretch out like stealth wings, trailing long, barbed tails behind. Diamond-shaped, their dorsal side is olive-hued and rough like a fleshy sandpaper, while their underbellies are a smooth, soft white. Their namesake stinger barb is tucked in about half way down their slim tails, and while its venom is not fatal to humans, a poke would sting like all hell. (Incidentally, Steven Irwin's fatal heart-sting freak accident was not at the fins of a southern ray.) 

 

This genial lot of wild rays hangs out at a large, naturally-occurring sandbar within a huge salt-water lagoon on the island's northwestern end, walled in by the barrier reef that rings the whole island. Apparently these usually solitary creatures cued in to a free meal years ago when they realized fisherfolk came to these shallow waters to clean their fish and toss the delicious guts overboard. And before you knew it hungry rays were coming out to the sound of boat engines like a flock of pancakes looking of syrup. Shortly there after, industrious humans realized they could make a buck by bringing animal-crazed tourists out to feed (mmm, calamari), pet, and generally love up on the now quite tame rays, and in the process make my decade.

 

Some of the rays have been coming around for years, like Rebecca, the biggest, oldest female, and Stumpy, who lost her tail, and Scarface of the distinct features... And when these gentle creatures whimple by, grazing your knee-backs and ruffling over your shoulders to hoover at the fish in your hand, you will not be able to cease laughing like a happy maniac, and you will fervently wish you were a mermaid just so you could keep one as a friend.

Terrapin Station

Well, technically you wouldn't call a sea turtle a terrapin, but tell that to Jerry. One of the best things we did on Grand Cayman was visit The Cayman Turtle Farm, a premiere breeding center for endangered green sea turtles. Chelonia mydas are dubbed green not for their outer color, but rather because the fat layer beneath their shell is green. For my part, let the record state I am uncertain if that means sort of a dull mossy green, or a bright, ectoplasm-type hue. Their range circles the globe in tropical and sub-tropical waters.

The breeding center is home to a number large, 500+ pound adult turtles who share a large saltwater lagoon equipped with a lounge studded with lava lamps, beaded curtains, soft lighting, and Barry White background music. No, that is a lie... but they are packed into a lagoon to facilitate orgies, I mean mating, but the lounge area is mostly just a sandy beach perfect for egg-laying. Mamas can lay 100-200 eggs in a go, and in the wild some may migrate as far as 1,6000 miles to reach their breeding grounds.

After incubating for a couple of months, tiny, adorable, bite-sized little baby turtles hatch in their sand pits and crawl their way to the sea. They are, as you may expect, extremely vulnerable to predators during the first several months of their lives, and get no help from mama, because she hit the road as soon as she buried her clutch. It is sad, but no surprise then, that only about one percent of the little turtlets make it to adulthood. This fact, combined with shoreline development (habitat loss), fishing net interference, predation (human and non-human), and the ill-effects of chemical pollution has served in securing the green sea turtle a spot on the Endangered Species list. In 2007 the green was also granted international protection under CITES.

Since its inception in 1968, the Cayman Turtle Farm has bred and released over 31,000 yearling turtles into the wild, and is the first facility to successfully release second generation greens (those bred, laid, hatched, and reared in captivity). Last year the center released the first of its satellite-tagged turtles, and now monitors individual movements via space technology and wizardry.

                           

It is an incredible feeling to take a yearling in hand. Their shell pattern is delicate and unbelievable bright and crisp, a sunburst or seed husk painted on with a thin brush. Their front flippers are surprisingly strong, and tug at fingers hooked in armpits. You can soothe them with a gentle stroke of the chin. Mostly they casually drift around through the water, but are capable of zooming off at 30mph when they want a change of scenery. 

They are impossible not to root for.

Mephitis Mephitis

Yesterday we were heading into the Park for a ski, when lo! my day was made by a special wildlife sighting. Naturally I have seen a savage number of poor roadkill skunks over the years, and even the sad and smelly remains of some in Yellowstone wolf scat, but surprisingly, I've only ever seen one live individual in the wild. Until yesterday... when we saw this little duffer loping over snowdrifts between lake shore and road.

Le Pew

My first thought, well, it wasn't so much a cohesive thought so much as a bombastic emotional reaction/squeal of pure glee, was look! A skunk! A skunk! So fuzzy! Look! Look! That bushy tail! Skunk! My second thought was more akin to, Must. Get. Out. Of. Truck. Must. Get. Close. To. That. Fuzzy. And soon enough I was out of the vehicle, jogging along next to the skunk for a few hundred meters, grinning in breathless delight. Some of you may question my judgement, but let me remind you that while they see and hear quite nicely, skunks have pretty terrible eyesight, and the little guy could barely see me. (This poor vision is partially to blame for all those fatal automobile encounters.)

Just look at those little pink slippers!

My third thought was that Walt Disney is a liar. Remember in Bambi, when Flower gets all sleepy and goes into hibernation for the winter? Yeah, well, that just wasn't jiving with Mr. Bushypants here. Striped skunks don't actually hibernate. They go into a state of torpor--a generally inactive, denned up period of rest, though they may come above ground a couple of times to poke around and empty their scent glands. Also, Walt, deer don't get twitterpated in spring, okay. They mate in the fall. Do your homework.

Make No Little Plans

Oh, Shedd Aquarium, how I've missed wandering among your wonders...

A little white whale on the go.

Hardly scaling back.

Not your typical sea monkey.

Sauron's got nothing on this one.

Peep show.

Flotsam or Jetsam?

Dude knows how to lurk. 

Check out the big brain on Brad!

Caimans can creepers.

Animated doilies?

Ruffle your bustle.

Medusa. Sea nettle. Jelly bonnet. Bloom.

Flapper fringe.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Faerie.

Roxanne, you don't have to wear that dress tonight.

Look familiar?

Do not disturb.

The Ice Queen Cometh

How sweet is Ice? It cools our gin in the summer. It gives us endless recreational opportunities in the winter. It graciously provides us with synonyms for Smirnoff's malted beverages, righteous bling, meth, murder, in case of emergency, and Ned Stark's justice-dealing greatsword, (which, when you think about it, fit together a bit too perfectly)... You just take water, cool it down, and boom! You've got yourself something to interpret. All summer long the hike to Glacier's Avalanche Lake is unbearably busy, but come late fall, it is your own private glittering little diamond trail of wonders...

Avalanche Creek: Curator of Icy Delights

Your Typical Icicle Action (See: Textbook, Jingle Bells)

The Labyrinth (See: David Bowie)

The Dust Ruffle (See: Car Wash, Classy Mud Flap Alternative to Naked Lady Silhouette )

The Trumpet Bell (See: Angels We Have Heard On High)

The Hand-Dipped Candle (See: Renaissance Festival, Rembrandt)

The Blorb (See: Cauliflower. Do Not See: Growths)

The Eruption (See: Death Spikes, Sea Urchin)

The Forest Ninja (See: Death Widow, Nakamura and Slavin)

The Vanilla (See: Flattop, Collaborate and Listen, Terrible Mistake)

Time To Be Koi, Roy

It is the eve of Election Day. Like so many others, I am anxious. I'd like to give my heart and brain a respite from their own constant buzzing. Brain, I say, chill out. Heart, stop thumpering so. Remember that you are full of hope, actually. Think about the least buzzy-est thing you can think of, and meditate on that. And stop rolling your eyes, and tightening your fists for a second, would you? Think of... hmmm... fish...?

Yes, think of those bright koi you saw last week at the St. Louis botanical gardens. Think of those fish, wimpling silently, brocading dark water. Whisper their names: Kumonryu, Nine Tattooed Dragons. Asagi, Spring Onion Color. Kikokuryu, Sparkle. Remember how their scales shimmered, how they glowed, mimicking the falling sycamore leaves. Think how brief the time is that a fish could hide among leaves; how brief any time is in the end. Remember how they came to you, a string of beacons, across the pond, to your very fingertips. And breathe again.

In Japanese, koi is a homophone--a word that is pronounced the same as another word, but has a different meaning--for love. Which I suppose is what I was talking about all along.

  

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
                                                                       --Cormac McCarthy, final paragraph from The Road

And also...
Koi to the world. All the boys and girls. Koi to the fishes in the deep blue sea. 
Koi to you and me...