Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

When and why do critters take night trips to town?
July 1, 2009

On June 19th, before the wonderful rain that night, the Midland Reporter Telegram’s city editor, Stewart Doreen, sent an email to us asking, “Is it true that dry weather makes snakes, scorpions, and other unpleasant creatures come to town looking for water or food?"  We had to tell him it was only partly true.

During a long drought, when the only green vegetation is where humans water, there is a higher survival rate of rodents. Predators of rodents, such as foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and snakes can sometimes become more plentiful at the edge of town. Rarely do they make it much further than the edge of town. The only part of town inside Loop 250 with a threat of rattlesnakes appearing is the area around Midland’s City Airpark, which has been home to hundreds of prairie dogs for the last decade.

A prospective Midlander from Houston emailed us, worried that rattlesnakes were an everyday occurrence anywhere in town. We told her most Midlanders have never had a rattlesnake in their yard, but folks that live at the edge of town, or have rural property can tell a different story, but not everyone.  I never saw a rattlesnake at Gone Native, my residence south of town for 27 years, even in the long drought from 1993 to 2006.

Midland has a population of gray and red foxes, but they live in town year around, usually unnoticed. (And they do not eat cats and small dogs,  for a rodent is about a big of a meal as a fox can handle. We get thirty or more calls every year from folks who do see a fox and then get worried about their pets.) A retired police officer told me that he watched four coyotes parade abreast like old-West gunslingers down Wall Street in front of the Midland County Courthouse one morning at three a.m. He figured they were looking for city rats, or the prairie dogs that have colonized areas along the railroad.  In 22 years, he has been the only individual that has reported coyotes in town to Sibley staff!

Bobcats have been seen at the edge of town. One raised its young in the backyard of a house in Green Tree a few years ago, for example, but the fence backed up to open pasture. Beyond that, we have not ever heard of bobcats further in town. Mountain lions have been seen at the edge of town, too. Now that we have had some rain, the rodents in the pastures will reproduce, so sightings of their predators at the edge of town will drop in number.

The part of Stewart’s question that was untrue, however, is about the action of invertebrates in dry weather. The invertebrates do not, I repeat DO NOT, become more plentiful during dry weather. Many species are then underground, waiting for rain to provide them with their prey. Scorpions and centipedes dry out quickly. When people do see either in dry weather, we find out that a vacant lot near them has been cleared for a new house. The resident arthropods have to move because of all the fuss.  

The only dangerous arthropods are black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders, swarms of Africanized bees, and a mosquito carrying a virus. There has been very few, if any, reports of mosquito-borne diseases. Africanized bees are a different story. Any swarm seen probably has Africanized genetics and should be treated with respect, and removed in any urban or suburban setting. Almost all brown recluses live inside of human structures, and when found outside, they are under a rock, a board, or a piece of trash some idiot has tossed on the ground. Black widows prefer protected places, such as in pipes, in prickly pear clumps, or in the corners of buildings, fences, under dumpsters and in firewood stacks.

Commercial television is to blame for much of the fear people feel about wild animals or arthropods. After thousands of commercials by pest control companies and cleaning product companies, many modern folks feel that all animals are threatening, nasty, full of germs, and ready to attack the helpless. It is a cultural malaise that diminishes the human spirit. A significant percentage of the children that visit the Sibley Nature Center on school trips are scared to death that they will be attacked by something as they walk along the trail. Many believe that if they touch anything they will contract a horrible disease. We have been taught to fear the natural world. God gave us the natural world for its beauty and wonder and we reject it out of fear. How abysmally sad!