Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Requiem for a Biology Degree


I saw a flat dead squirrel today on the road. I can't bear to look at them when they're still gooey, but this one was as flat as a cartoon coyote. It occurred to me that it had really been quite a while since I'd seen a dead squirrel. Used to be, the city was chock-full of suicidal squirrels. As soon as I saw a squirrel dash ahead of me when I was driving, I would slow down or even stop, because it was guaranteed to double back to see if it could get under my wheels. I'd wait until it got all the way to the nearest tree before I'd drive on.

I have a theory about this. The reason squirrels are so whacked-out around cars is that they evolved to evade eagles, not Expeditions. If they run to and fro, and try to mix up the "to" and the "fro" a bit, they might escape death from the sky. I'm thinking that in a matter of forty or fifty years, the city squirrel population has finally evolved to reward the individual that just goes full-tilt in one direction. Because even though I still tend to slow down around racing squirrels, they don't seem to double back the way they used to.

It's either very urban of me, or very lazy, to make a study of dead fauna. I should be able to do better. I do have a dusty old Biology degree, by now vestigial. But you study what you can, and the dead stuff doesn't take as much stealth. So I noticed that another thing has changed. Years ago, we were awash in squashed opossums. Of late, they've been almost entirely displaced by dead raccoons. Did the raccoons eat the possums? It seems unlikely, possums being so stringy and greasy-looking and all, but raccoons eat a lot of things, so maybe they eat possums; after all, in some parts of the country, people do too. And they're huge (the raccoons, I mean, although some of the possum-eating humans can run a little large). I remember when they used to be medium-sized and cute. Now they stand there, leaning towards you, not backing away, looking at you eye to eye behind their villainous masks and rubbing their hands together like assassins. My night vision isn't that great, but the last one I saw was the size of a Volkswagen, had tusks and was swinging a tire iron. I don't remember them being so big before. That's one reason I think they've eaten the possums. Oh, sure, you hear about the natural shifting of fortunes of different species occupying the same ecological niche, with one population gaining temporary ascendancy due to variations in food availability and vulnerability to parasites. But one thing I learned in science was that the simplest and most elegant solution is often the best. So I'm sticking with the giant possum-eating raccoon hypothesis.

There's an impressive pile of poop under our grape trellis, all in one spot, and since I'm not out there at night checking, I don't know what has produced it. I do, however, have a field guide to poop, and I consulted it. My bookcase is a little light on literature, but I feel sort of proud of keeping a poop guide handy, and so I mentioned it to my sister, who was not especially impressed. She has a poop guide too. I think this says something about our family. For both of you still reading, possum poop is reported ("unfortunately," adds the guide) to lack distinctive qualities. Raccoon poop, it goes on, is not tapered at the ends, but is more or less broken-off. I see that as careless and lazy on the part of the raccoons. The guide says raccoon and possum poop are easily mistaken for each other, and in both cases they vary according to what is being eaten. I do not know if the poop of possum-eating raccoons is distinctive.

I do know they're up to no good. Poop should be tapered.

18 comments:

  1. This was almost as disturbing the post-op photo of Dave that y'all sent me. And just as entertaining.

    Signed,
    One of two.

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  2. This reminds me of a time when I was reading some of the interpretive signs outside the Baltimore Aquarium (which is in downtown Baltimore - by the harbor, but still very urban) and I learned about a rare species of turtle or terrapin that lives in nearby wetlands. Then I went to cross the street, and there was an absolutely flat, dried turtle in the middle of the road! I just googled "baltimore aquarium turtles" to try to remember what species the sign was talking about, and I found this: http://thechesapeakebay.com/article/416/chesapeake. The Baltimore Aquarium has a Marine Animal Rescue Program??? Why didn't anyone tell me! (ps the dried turtle wasn't a sea turtle, more like a snapping turtle, as far as having a really long tail....)

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  3. Might you evoke the tootsie-roll quality of the non tapered poop as a way to distinguish said night soil?

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  4. Once I had to be a raccoon in a children's parade. I had the huge head at home and showed it, on me, to one of the box turtles. Big mistake. She was one scared box turtle, a great believer in giant turtle-eating raccoons. Yup, raccoons really do that, and I was up for a big apology. Rosemary, believing in >2.
    P.S. Raccoon scat is so undistinguished it doesn't even appear on my scat reference (Thompson, B., and Haynes Beefy-T, 1989). Bison is pretty dramatic, though. I could tell (or was that smell?) that anywhere.

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  5. So let's see. Poop gets the most comments. I knew it wasn't just me who was interested.

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  6. That same beast traveled to Kentucky and was waiting for me on my front stoop. Giant raccoon? Giant possum? I didn't stick around long enough to find out -- and I'm such a girly city-boy, all I knew to do was flee. After pausing to suggest that it might enjoy Florida.

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  7. Florida? Home of the giant flying cockroach? It would be right 't home, honey.

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  8. Yet another thing in common - I have a bio degree from Notre Dame (ok, WOULD have if I had stayed that last year before going into computers). Love the image of the brandished tire iron!

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  9. I think you probably did just fine for yourself, especially if you didn't spend 1975-76 making Mouse Soup.

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  10. I love the photos. Did you take them?

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  11. You caught me. I scavenged them off the web. I suddenly realized it was time to post and I hadn't taken pictures. And I would never get that close to a raccoon. Cute, my Aunt Fanny.

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  12. What does it say about me, that I hunted this down and read it 10 months after it was posted, when I could easily have avoided it.

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  13. Damn, I have GOT to send you a copy of "Flattened Fauna." But in the meantime, I'll have to dig up that pic I took of coyote poop back in September; that's stool at its tapered best.

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  14. I hate to add to this, uh, thread, but with one of those poop-trail guide books you could become the Ella Fitzgerald of scat.

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  15. Damn, I have GOT to send you a copy of "Flattened Fauna." But in the meantime, I'll have to dig up that pic I took of coyote poop back in September; that's stool at its tapered best.

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  16. Might you evoke the tootsie-roll quality of the non tapered poop as a way to distinguish said night soil?

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