of Life
18 July 2015
Down to the river this morning at 7:30. Setting
out, I scanned the drainage ditch for the big box turtle, I’d seen there
two days ago. No show this morning. Along the jeep road of packed sand
and clay covered with a dry cracking algal crust,
the Johnson grass leans in, young elm too and poison ivy extends its
leaves.. the green perimeter seeking to gain the open growing space.
Stepping off the end of the road and onto the
jumbled barrier of cottonwood logs, I bent back fresh new leaves and
stems of willow and wild grape and poke. Contemplating one
stem of rough leaved dogwood I suddenly saw the
thin green snake perched at the height of my head, quietly retreating
down the stem a foot away.
Emerging from the path through the green hedge I
looked hopefully at the 40 foot diameter pool of water in the basin of brown
river silt. The surface was roiled with minnows, scores of them, cut
off from the flow of the river, doomed
to die if their pool dries before a heavy rain can sweep them back down
the braided delta into the river. Movement at the near edge of the pool
drew my eye to two good-sized crayfish emerging from the water’s edge.
One propped itself up on its front chelipeds
as though looking around in the dry air. The other, slightly more
cautious, remained barely submerged ..but either would have been easy
prey for a bird or quick raccoon.
I walked out onto the clean white
sand of the levee and left my sandals there. A small
pencil-width hole led down into the sand with strange tracks across open nothingness of sand two feet to
the only blade of grass within 2 m in any direction. Perched on
the grass, was the shed exoskeleton of the small cicada that had emerged from the hole.
Further along the sand levee a large Bembex sand wasp swooped around me twice. I watched it as it
returned to a burrow in the sand and hovered at the entrance as I
counted to 60. Then it settled and dug a little sand like a dog digging
sand between its legs at the beach.. all the while, the wasp was tapping
with its antennae up and down. After 45 seconds it walked into the
burrow and disappeared. I waited a few seconds and then tapped the
ground by the burrow with my hiking stick a couple of times. After a
short few seconds the wasp emerged and swooped around me again, then
returned to its burrow, hovered there for 60 seconds, landed and paused
at the entrance for 45 seconds doing its antennal movements, then
disappeared into the burrow. I tapped again. The wasp re-emerged, chased
off a large robber fly then hovered at the burrow for 60 seconds,
landed and paused for 45 seconds etc. I repeated this once more with
the same result, except this last time a male velvet ant flew in and landed two feet from the nest. Its hoped-for female mate has no wings but will march into the sand wasp's nest without fear, and parasitize the sand wasps nest. ('Sphexishness' : unthinking hard-wired behaviors that
look like deliberate considered behavior.)
So much to see and watch. After an exploration of the water and walk/ swim/ float
across and back, I left as I had arrived, by the small pool. There
in the sun and two foot deep water, was a nice, young diamond-backed
water snake, little bit longer than my forearm. It was swimming/
writhing up and down in the water in an odd fashion. I think it was
trying to catch the minnows that were much more agile in the water.
Watching a moment, I saw a second snake, same species, same size glide
to the edge of the pond and watch me. When it spooked and moved back
into deeper water the first snake quit its gyrations and glided
cautiously onto some floating sticks where it could watch me.
After a while I decided to head out.. enjoying the stands of fresh
white and pink doze daisies along the way.
