House of Herps: A Festival for the Senses

The Little House in the Not-So-Big Woods is currently a house of another sort. The House of Herps Carnival has landed here this month, with posts that appeal to a variety of senses.

Touch

At Dave Hubble's ecology spot, the crumpet-like texture of a fossil tipped him off that he might have found an ancient crocodile. What else could it be, after all? It was located on that well-known crocodilian hotspot: the Isle of Wight!

A red-backed salamander is all snuggled up warm in its under-rock bed, until Bernard Brown goes herp-hunting. The chilly amphibian is at Philly Herping.

David Steen prides himself (and rightfully so) on taking down the myths that circulate on the web. Here, he debunks a bit of the "alligator vs. electric eel" video that made its rounds recently. Another of David's myth-defying entries dispels the notion that cottonmouth snakes want to drop in on you while you drift down the river in your canoe.

At the Birder's Lounge, a red-eared slider is caught basking in the warm sun. Sadly, Amber writes about another turtle, caught in the wild and for sale.

Taste

There's nothing like a nice ripe peach. In January, though, Stephanie Suesan Smith discovers that the fruit that you find on the tree may not be as sweet as you'd expect.

Here at the Little House, we've got two herps for the price of one. And one of the pair appeared to be pretty tasty.

Smell

Sniff...sniff-sniff....What's that smell? Is that insect repellent? Yes. Is it killing off anacondas? Probably not.

Hearing

Charlie Moore's shifts his focus from avians to monitor lizards at this entry from 10,000 Birds.  Read carefully, and you can practically hear the drip of water and the soft shush of grass as the enormous animals move through the marshes and waterways.

Sight

At xenogere, Jason shows off his photographic skills with an exciting story about his too-close-for-comfort encounter with a Southern Copperhead, complete with a breathtaking image of the gorgeous reptile. Nothing gets away from Jason's camera. Well, almost nothing. VERY LITTLE gets away from his camera....

Greg Neise writes of finding a Peruvian toad that only seems to exist in his photographs. These toads aren't only skilled in hiding in the leaves, they're also pretty good at keeping out of sight in the reference books.

Macro photography is applied to a variety of natural subjects. Insects, snails, and spiders have all become accustomed to having a big camera lens shoved right in their faces. Getting an up-close-and-personal macro of a snake is still a rarity, though. Visit Count Your Chicken! We're Taking Over! for a snake portrait of a different sort.

Blending into the background is a common adaptation. This individual hasn't read the memo.


Thanks to all who submitted an entry. Reading over all of these blogs was a joy to the senses: all five of them.  The House of Herps carnival moves from McKinney to Philadelphia next month, hosted at Philly Herping, so start writing!

There's No Place Like Hohme

Awesome Husband and I escaped the Texas heat for a week, fleeing to Seattle and surrounding areas.  One of the places we visited was the Hoh Rainforest on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where about 80 million shades of green assault you as you walk through. Conifers like spruce, hemlock, and fir rule the area, dripping with an array of mosses, while the ground is invisible beneath ferns and oxalis.

Imagine that you're a little spruce seed, getting ready to drop from your parent tree. It's exciting to be sailing toward the ground, knowing that all you need is a fertile patch of ground that gets a little sunlight and some water, and you'll be on your way!

You look down and get a bit of a jolt.

Living here in the rainforest as you do, getting a damp patch of ground won't be a problem. Getting a shot of sunlight, though, will take some clever planning. There's just not much clear ground here. In most forests, fires do the job of opening up the canopy and burning off the undergrowth so that new seedlings can get a start. Being a RAINforest, though, fires aren't common here. As many shivering hikers have discovered, wet wood doesn't like to burn. The thick canopy of the ancient trees only lets patchy light through, and the carpet of ferns block most of that from the soil. What's a young seed to do?

If you're a smart youngster, you aim for a rotting log. Fallen logs can help supply two scarce resources. Rich nutrients are locked up in the decomposing wood, as well as natural fertilizer in the form of decayed leaves and animal scat that accumulates in the cracks. Not only do the downed logs provide nutrition for hungry seedlings, they rest above the layer of oxalis and ferns that block the sun from a new wannabe-tree. (See the tiny little spruce tree there?)




As the new trees grow, they send down long roots that look like sinuous legs draped over the decaying log. Because of the sometimes enormous diameter of those logs (called "nurse logs") the roots may have to be several feet long before they begin to penetrate the actual ground. The scene ends up looking as though a tree-person is straddling the log, with long legs stretching for the dirt.



As time passes, the younger tree becomes firmly anchored around the nurse log, and it's often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The nurse log continues to decay, a process that may take over a hundred years to complete. When it's gone, it leaves behind a hole in the twisting roots of the younger tree.

The final product is really dramatic when more than one sapling got its start on the same nurse log. When they're mature, you can see several enormous trees in a ridiculously straight line, all with the telltale hole in the buttressing root system. These groupings of trees are called "colonnades." The colonnade system is the primary way that forests in temperate rainforests renew themselves.