A memory of jitterbug perfume

A saw my first live spotted skunk in the middle of highway 45 in Chihuahua, Mexico in August,1965.

Highway 45 was a two lane road at the time, and for all I know it may still be.

It was a strange vision on a lonely road in the middle of the night.

In the headlights of our WW2 Dodge Power Wagon it looked like a powder puff doing the jitterbug.

As we slowed down we saw that a very animated spotted skunk was trying to catch a large moth on the asphalt.

It was an enchanting sight I never forgot.

I still find these spunky little guys to be real charmers, so here are a couple shots from a recent camera trap set in Butte Creek Canyon.

Nelson and Goldman in Mexico

[Edward Alphonso Goldman in mid career,
photo credit: Biological Survey Unit, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center]

Biological Investigations in Mexico was Edward Alphonso Goldman’s magnum opus.

476 pages of itinerary, habitat descriptions, species lists, black and white photos, and a folding map riddled with travel routes.

I discovered the book when I was an undergraduate restless to cross the border and savor field work.

It’s not a travelogue you’d find in a bookstore, but a snapshot of rural Mexico.

“Nahuatzen (8700 feet) October 8-15, 1892. . . . A notable resident of the pine forest was the imperial ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis), which appeared to be common.

“Santa Rosa (San Pedro Martir Mountains) (7000 feet): July 24-25, 1905. . . . During our stay the carcass of a burro in Santa Rosa Valley attracted about a dozen California Condors, and we were able to obtain a specimen in addition to one taken in La Grulla. Others of these great birds were seen, and they appeared to be rather common in that part of the mountains.”

It all started in 1891 when naturalist Edward Nelson, then 36 years, hired the 18-year-old Goldman.

[Photo credit: Biological Survey Unit, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center]

Nelson needed an assistant to collect zoological specimens for the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, the forerunner of the US Biological Survey.

Their charge was “to traverse a central section of the Republic” of Mexico.

They landed at the Pacific port of Manzanillo in January 24, 1892, and two days later they trapped a large narrow-headed tree-climbing rat in the tropical deciduous forest skirting the port.

Hodomys alleni was their first new species.

If it was that easy to discover new species, to hell with limiting themselves to central Mexico.

They recommended expanding the geographical scope. Ah, sweet youth and ambition.

For the next 8 years they immersed themselves in Old Mexico.

Conveyed by rail, steamer, schooner, mule train, or horse car they went up and down and back and forth across the country. They trekked the highlands of Guatemala.

They ate beans and tortillas, as well as the game they shot.

There were periodic returns to the States and the occasional rendezvous with colleagues, but when they weren’t on the move they were collecting and preparing scientific specimens. Over 30,000.

Field people tell really good stories. A host of cross-cultural phenomena punctuate travel abroad. Ten years would supply you with a lifetime of outrageously hairy tales.

So it makes you wonder.

Why didn't Nelson and Goldman share their adventures with a wider readership?

Was the US government interested only in Mexico’s wildlife? Or was zoological collecting a cover for gathering intelligence?

In other words, was their expanded geographic scope of interest driven by more than specimens?

However you look at it, the benefits had to outweigh the risks, which were considerable when the two young naturalists arrived.

Banditry, for example, was a way of life. The Rurales – Mexico’s version of the Texas Rangers were thinly spread across the country, but doing their best to knock the heads of banditos together.

[Pancho Villa, Wikipedia]

The Mexican revolution was brewing, and Doroteo Arango Arámbula, otherwise known as Pancho Villa was beginning his notorious career. Only two years earlier he had been arrested for theft of mules and arms. 

Despite letters of introduction, itinerant naturalists like Nelson and Goldman have a way of raising the eyebrows of public officials and the military. 

When I think of them I hear faint mariachi music, and rippling in the heat waves I see mounted men in sombreros and panchos -- interrogating Nelson and Goldman . . .

”Trapping ratones!” Chuckles the Comandante as he turns to the troops.

“Ai muchachos”, he announces lustily, “did you hear that? The Greeengos want our ratonnnnnes.”

Wild laughter and stirring horses.

“Ahora, mi amigo, how about you tell el comandante why you are really here?“

Unfortunately, we don't know the stories, and if ever they were recorded, they might be stamped Top Secret -- and  forgotten in a vault somewhere in Washington D.C. 

References

Goldman, E.A. 1951. Biological investigations in Mexico. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 115 (Publication 4017), 476 pp.

Howell, Jeff. Pancho Villa, Outlaw, Hero, Patriot, Cutthroat: Evaluating the Many Faces of 

(a fascinating article)

Acknowledgement
Thanks to Dr. Al ("Alfredo") Gardner, a well-seasoned naturalist-traveler with many tales to tell, for providing the US Biological Survey (USFWS) photos.

Beautiful diggers

Gardening season has ended, but take note, good gardeners: the pocket gophers are gearing up for next year. That's right, the breeding season of our most abundant gopher -- Botta's pocket gopher -- is beginning right now.

Gopher is an emotionally charged word. In turf wars between man and gopher the reviled rodent always wins. The gardener may remove a few trespassers now and then, but victory is shortlived. What it boils down to is that gophers are far better at making a living than most gardeners are at circumventing gophers.

There are at least 3 dozen species of gophers (family Geomyidae) in North and Central America. They vary in size and coat characteristics from silky coated 5-inchers to burly bristle-coated bruisers the size of guinea pigs (like the one I trapped on Mt. Orizaba, Mexico, above). But all share the bauplan of subterranean root grazers, a thick-necked meaty forebody with powerful digging claws and beautifully enamaled orange incisors that can grow a millimeter a day. All of this makes them beautiful diggers. They dig with teeth and claws, and they don't gag on the dirt, because they can close their lips behind their incisors. If they were bigger, they could literally "eat corn through a picket fence".

As male gophers seek brief cohabitation rights the normally quarrelsome females become more approachable. Three weeks hence the mated females bring forth litters of 4 or 5 altricial young, which they nurse and later provide with fresh plant clippings. When five weeks have passed the mothers banish their offspring from their burrows.

Above ground and under cover of night the little beggars strike out for unoccupied turf. That's when aerial night vision predators get them. In the California foothills gophers have been calculated to account for 70% of barn owl prey by weight. The survivors settle on average about 240 meters from their mothers' burrows, but have been known to move as far as a kilometer. A gopher-free garden is a perfect place for a homeless gopher to settle.

There are a lot of gopher control products on the market, and if they reward the gardener with an occasional trapped gopher, the more consistent benefit is the workout in digging burrows. After setting a trap you normally wait several days before discovering the burrow is inactive, or you are lured to set another trap when a new mound materializes.

It goes without saying that if you want to catch gophers you had better understand how they think.

When the late raconteur naturalist Loye Miller, met Gumicindo Romero in Baja California in 1896 he had found such a man.

Romero, who owned one pair of clothes and a single shot Sharps rifle, was in Miller's words, "a really remarkable specimen, tall, rawhide tough, with a chest on him like a greyhound's."

Miller continues . . . .
"He had an interesting method of catching gophers. Coolidge offered him ten cents each for them since the trapping was slow. At the end of the first day he came back with a dollars worth of live gophers, each tied by a string around the middle and dangling from a long pole at an interval sufficient to keep it away from its neighbors. He spoke no English, but my Spanish, along with pantomime, worked out the story. The first animal had to be dug out live and tied around the waist. The next gopher hole was opened up and the captive was allowed to start down the tunnel. Then its tail was pinched to make it squeak. The rightful occupant would rush up to do battle. When their large front teeth were locked together in combat, both animals were yanked out by a jerk of the string."

With a little business training, Gumicindo would have been a rich man in Alta California.


References

Bandoli, J. 1987. Activity and plural occupancy of burrows in Botta's pocket gophers, Thomomys bottae. American Midland Naturalist, 118(1):10-14.

Fitch, H. 1947. Predation by owls in the Sierran foothills of California. Condor, 49(4):137-151.

Jones, C.A. and C.N. Baxter. 2004 Thomomys bottae. Mammalian Species, 742:1-14

Miller, L. 1950. Lifelong boyhood, recollections of a naturalist afield. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Patton, J.L. 1999. Botta's pocket gopher, Thomomys bottae. Pp 466-468 in The Smithsonian book of North American mammals (D.E. Wilson and S. Ruff, eds). Smithsonian Press, Washington, D.C.

Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language

"The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan mainly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and vile epithet evidently supplied a long felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe."
The Arctic Prairies, 1911, Ernest Thompson Seton

The need to use virile Saxon comes at a young age. We were highly amused when a friend's son, wrought with angst over a childhood vexation told his parents he wished he could swear. He made it quite clear that his limited English was simply unequal to the task of expressing his frustration. I always thought that Zachary might have already known of a few tangy words, and was discretely asking permission to use them.

My first awareness of virile Saxon came when I was in Kindergarten. My grandfather and father had a fascinating language of their own. They used special words whenever they worked together. I thought I was entitled to use "the man's language". I never knew my mother was capable of such swift and decisive movement until the morning I exclaimed, "You dumb bastard!" It was probably one of the rare instances of single trial learning in my youth.

Somewhere I heard that biologists, the earthiest variety of scientist-- are more prone to use expletives than say, physicists or geologists. Among biologists, they say zoologists use racier language than botanists.

I am not sure any of this is true, but I always assumed that Steinbeck sanitized his portrayal of Ed Ricketts as Doc in Cannery Row. If Ricketts was as "concupiscent as a rabbit" he must have seasoned his speech.

Now the flashbacks:

ca 1979: Yenching Palace (a Chinese restaurant), Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC
We are zoo staffers prepared to celebrate the kind of personnel change that makes you sing, "Ding dong the witch is dead". The management knows us and seats us on one side of the room among a few other diners. We order steamed dumplings and beer while our mentor, who opts for Wild Turkey begins his catharsis -- a one-man passion play of sweeping erudation, surreal outbursts, and brooding pathos -- richly seasoned with expletives. An hour passes before we order food. Three hours later we are burned out, and it's time to go. That's when we notice that all the other customers are dining at the farthest corner of the room.

And now the faux pas of learning a language.

August, 1965: a hut on the banks of Rio Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico
I am learning vernacular Spanish from the natives (mainly a working guy named Ruben), and am much taken with slang words, like cabron (billy goat). We refer to each other as cabrones. I know it means more than billy goat, but I'm clueless to its nuanced and vile usage. Reno, and Dave and I are dining at the home of a humble family of campesinos, when Ruben announces that I have taught myself Spanish. This is a cue to perform. I do my little routine (all in present tense) and then lightly refer to Ruben as "un cabron". I am on a roll, and fail to notice the family's mortified body language. Ruben apologizes and explains that I don't know what I am saying.
"No, no, no, no no!" I insist. "Es verdad. Ruben esta un cabron muy grande."
When I realize how furiously Ruben is backpeddling, the damage has been done, and the rest of the meal is as solemn as a wake. I now know that cabron is not a word of mixed company.

1980s: an airport following the annual conference of the American Society of Mammalogists
Recognizing two gals from the meetings, I buy them coffee as we wait for our flights.They are grad students from Louisiana State University, with field experience in Brazil. "What about language problems?", I ask. They tell of a fellow student studying bats who approached a young woman at an airport to practice his Portuguese. (Yeah, right). The turning point was when he told her, "There's a fly in your hair." The lady politely replied he was mistaken, and the conversation quickly fizzled. Later he learned there are two words for hair: pele (fur) and cabelo (hair). The young man understandably used the word for fur and pelt -- pele. It was just bad luck. It also means pubic hair.

December 1, 1982: Delhi Airport, Security Check line (RNAC flight to Kathmandu)
I strike up a conversation with a couple of young Indian architects boarding the same flight. At the body frisking stop, one of them has an altercation with the security officer. "What happened?", I ask afterwards. "He is a silly old bum." He explains that the customs inspector was obviously from Haryana, so he addressed him in Haryani as "friend". The customs inspector correctly identified the architect from the Punjab, and assumed the architect was being a smart ass by using the Punjabi word that sounds the same. "What does that word mean?" I innocently ask. "It means the '(mammary) glands of a prostitute'!"

January, 1990. Casino Hotel, Trichur, Kerala
"Can you tell me what he's saying?" the redhead (my wife) asks with an embarrassed look. Our Keralite friend smiles and patiently repeats "How was the bed wetching?" (His accent is Malayalam, not the Hindi we hear mimicked so often.) I translate. "He wants to know, 'How was the bird watching?'" Later she tells me she thought he was asking, "How was the bed wetting" I admit it sounded a lot like that.

April, 1998. Chatthin Wildlife Sactuary, Burma
The premonsoon heat is terrible, and the redhead is not having fun. When the boyish Aung Moe delivers the cool drinks and notices her forlorn look, he timidly asks. "Scuse me, are you boring"?