Chris' Rope Stand

Some outdoors folk like to rappel down or climb up ropes in their sport hobby; including mountain climbers, rock climbers and cavers. My friend Chris is none of these, but he does enjoy reading while sitting in the canopy of a tall tree, so he wanted to install a rope stand in his tallest loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) tree. Chris knew that I had experience setting up rope stands so he asked me to assist and I readily agreed. I love to see the exuberance in people when they first experience their own first rope stand. In the pics, Chris is the one with the ear-to-ear grin.

Chris used a bow-fishing rig to shoot a 40 lb test monofilament fishing line over the base of a 4-inch thick limb right in the thick of the canopy – perfect! We used the monofilament to pull an eighth-inch braided nylon line over the limb, and then used the eighth-inch line in turn to pull up a 9/16-inch (11 mm) nylon kernmantle static rope (PMI Pit Rope) up over the limb and back down to the ground. We tied off one end of the rope to an adjacent tree, and left the other end of the rope hanging relatively straight down for climbing and rapelling.

I climbed first as Chris has but little experience with SRT (single rope technique) gear. Several small branches and rotten limb stumps had to be removed on my way up the rope. Also, I had to maneuver among several limbs from subcanopy trees that the rope passed through. Upon reaching the limb crotch where the rope draped over, I used about 10 ft of 1-inch tubular webbing and a carabiner to hold the rope up off the tree limb. This “redirect” reduces damages to both tree and rope, and allows Chris to pull the rope down at night while replacing it with a leader line.

Chris had borrowed the bowfishing rig and was totally inexperienced at using it, but his first shot could not possibly have been any better. It passed over the same branch high in the canopy that we ultimately chose to use to anchor the rope. Talk about beginner's luck!

We did not have a measuring tape today to determine the distance between the ground and the anchor carabiner up in the tree, but based on the known length of the rope and how much was left over when rigged, I estimate the total height of the tree is possibly in excess of 120 ft, and the ground-to-canopy-anchor almost certainly in excess of 100 ft, perhaps 110 ft. That would make it the highest rope stand I have participated in constructing.

I then ran Chris through the basics of SRT, using a spare set of my gear on the rope just a few feet off the ground. He would use ascenders to climb a few feet up, then change over to descending gear and rappel a few feet down. He did this exercise twice, at which point I decided he was ready to climb to the canopy. About 50 ft up the rope, he admitted he was a little scared, but he continued on up anyway all the way to the canopy. He whooped and hollered upon attaining the canopy, definitely a happy canoper.

A Leo Humbled

A 12yo girl named Amber and her parents are neighbors of mine. One person gave her a monitor and another loaned her a computer, and she wanted to hook up to the internet. Being unsuccessful, the landlady suggested she come to me for help. I mostly acted as an advisor while Amber did all the shopping and wiring and softwaring, and finally succeeded in getting herself on line. Good for her! She's a smart and resourceful kid.

Her parents thought to do something nice for me in return, so they invited me to have dinner with them before I worked on their computer one evening. The meal was steak, baked potato with sour cream and salad with blue cheese dressing. How did they know blue cheese is my favorite? The steak was lean and tender and the potato was perfect. Yum! I gobbled it up!

Amber's dad growls and barks and swears at his wife, daughter and pit bull every time he speaks to them in front of me, and loudly, too. Of course, he was polite to me that evening, so I talked as soothingly as I could. During dinner, Amber's mom reminded “everyone” that they didn't have to eat everything on their plates. Nevertheless, it was late, I was very hungry and had spent a couple of hours on the project, so I cleaned my plate.

Being preoccupied with chatting and watching TV, and eating, I wasn't paying attention to what everyone else was dining on. As we finished our meal, Amber asked her dad if he had saved her any meat and he replied “Hell no!” It sounded to me like he said it, not with anger, but more like satisfaction. Puzzled, I looked around at Amber's and her mother's plates and realized they were not eating steak. Only Amber's dad and I had meat that night; they had served me her mother's steak. Possibly, Amber might not get meat with her meals on occasion. What I thought was her mom's platitude about not eating everything was actually a plea to share, and I had missed it. Amber and her mom would have had some meat with dinner had her father been more generous and I more alert.

They don't make much money. Amber's mom is a maid at the trailer park, and I suspect her dad works at minimum wage jobs too. I had forgotten what it is like to grow up so poor that dinner might be sparse and “uneven.” I am reminded of a pride of lions, where selfish alpha males eat first and only afterward are females and young allowed to feed on the leftovers.

Price's Scrub Greenway Tract

Price's Scrub Greenway is a 955-acre (382 ha) tract containing mostly pond pine flatwoods, mesic hammock and various scrub habitats located in north Marion County, FL: http://tinyurl.com/5qyfjb

The property has been recently acquired and its boundaries were marked and dirt roads mowed, so it was easy to bike around. The first slide (from top) shows a wet flatwoods topography seen when first entering the property in the SE. Its thin canopy is dominated by pond pine (Pinus serotina), and it appeared that what was a subcanopy of scrub live oaks (Quercus geminata) and rusty lyonia (Lyonia ferruginea) has been roller-chopped. Immediately to the left of the dirt road you can see some of the undisturbed shrub cover composed of saw-palmetto (Serenoa repens), fetterbush (Lyonia lucida), dwarf huckleberry (Vaccineum myrsinites), broomstraw (Andropogon virginicum) and earleaf greenbriar (Smilax auriculata).

Photo two (2nd from top) shows the effects of the roller-chopper on the scrub live oaks and shrubs in the flatwoods. Presumably, roller-chopping is being done as part of an effort to restore the original character of the pond pine ecosystem. Photo 3 shows more detail of the undisturbed pond pine flatwoods; clearly, there is too much underbrush to perform a controlled burn, so roller-chopping seems to be a good start toward restoration.

As the topography becomes more ridge-and-swale-like, the ridges support a well-drained soil with a relatively deep water table. This is habitat for sand pine (P. clausa), scrub live oak, rusty lyonia, saw-palmetto, ... Sound familiar? Yep, it is almost the same flora as what dominates pond pine flatwoods, except for the sand pine (photo 4) and the far lesser density of low shrubs and ground plants.

As I followed an old road it petered out and became an extremely well-traveled animal trail (photo 5). Its surface was easily a couple of inches below grade, with abundant prints of dog (Canis familiaris) and/or coyote (Canis latrans), raccoon (Procyon lotor), feral pig (Sus scrofa x vittata) and whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus). I found scat along this trail and on the southern boundary road, large enough for a large dog or coyote, some filled with hair and others filled with persimmon fruit (Diospyros virginiana). This trail went through open stretches as in photo 5 and through tunnels underneath tangled brush as in photo 6.

I wondered how many other people had traveled this gymnastic route. You never know who's out there in them thar woods. Once, while wading through saw-palmettos on Long Island (between Big Talbot and Little Talbot Islands in NE Florida), I came across a diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) that had been killed by a blow to the neck with a machete. The blood was still trickling down the side of the dead animal, so it had evidently been killed only a few minutes before. Where was the killer? Who was the killer? Was he watching me? I never saw or heard another soul while I was out there that day. Creepy.

Indeed, I was not the only person to have traveled that wildlife trail, as evidenced by a trap array set by wildlife biologists some time ago (photo 7). This array consisted of a line of plastic shade screen that was stretched out and held up by wooden stakes (now rotted and fallen), buried partly in the ground, with a series of aluminum funnel traps placed adjacent to the shade screen. The purpose is to capture small rodents, snakes, lizards and frogs - they encounter the shade screen and follow it until coming up to and entering a funnel trap. Funnel trap arrays are commonly used in Florida scrub habitats to sample for particular species of imperiled rodents and herps.

I wonder why they didn't remove the array? There were the skeletal remains of a frog or toad in one of the traps. One trap had a hole ripped into its side – evidently a predator wanted the catch within. Several other trap funnels had been reversed as though someone had done it deliberately, or a trapped animal had forced its way out. I rendered all the remaining traps inoperable so that no more critters would be killed by them.

The SE corner of the tract has a borrow pit that has become a well-vegetated pond (photo 8). Perhaps only 50 percent open water, the pond's marsh supports grasses and sedges, plus a pretty, a mass yellow flowering of a tickseed (Coreopsis sp.). Large mats of a macrophytic alga or other plant cover the benthic habitat of the pond. The only birds I saw here were the Eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) and red wing blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus). Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) and a hard-shelled turtle (Chrysemys sp) were common.

Uplands surrounding the borrow pond are dominated by an immature, early successional mixed forest (mesic hammock) dominated by laurel oak (Q. hemisphaerica), water oak (Q. nigra), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), black cherry (Prunus serotina), sugarberry (Celtis laevigata) and occasional loblolly (P. taeda) or other pines. Quality hardwoods are uncommon, and include southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), pignut hickory (Carya glabra) and winged elm (Ulmus alata).

Small blackwater streams drain the southern and eastern portions of the property, exiting under I-75 and then eventually discharging to the northeast into Tuscawilla Lake. Photo 9 shows one of the creeks, incised through the sandy clay soil. These creeks usually have wetland trees growing along their banks, including sweetbay (M. virginiana), swamp tupelo (Nyssa biflora var. sylvatica), swampbay (Persea palustris) and red maple (Acer rubrum). The little palm beside the pictured creek is a needle palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix). It is almost impossible to walk alongside the creeks due to dense, often thorny lianas and shrubs. Perhaps someday when the overstory of the creek and adjacent hammock are more mature, the route will be easier.

Feral pigs are a scourge of Florida's wetlands and wetland-upland ecotones. For example, photo 10 shows a portion of a creek that has been mucked up by feral pigs. Fortunately, Florida's wildlife authorities recognize the problem and allow hunters to to kill them without limit. This practice has significantly reduced their population in Florida as near as I can tell.

Photo 11 is a small sinkhole or borrow pit within a stream wetland. It probably makes a good watering hole for wildlife.

The northern part of the site appears to drain internally, but I was unable to find roads or trails going into that region to see.

The last photo is a “tuxedo” (mostly black with some white) dog that started to chase me away from his home, but I befriended him and he decided to follow me all the way from the northern side of the tract southward to my van. When I finished putting my bike and gear into the van, the dog jumped into the vehicle and sat down as though he is used to riding home in cars. Now it was time for me to take him home! I clearly heard him say, “Home, James.” So I drove him home.

Tropical Storm Fay

Tropical Storm Fay dumped only about 8 inches of rain here on Orange Lake. The water level has risen only by about that amount so far, but it may rise more over the next few days as the surrounding uplands and wetlands drain into it. McIntosh has a lot of swatches of Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) lying around, plus small tree limbs and cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto) fronds. Storm winds were only ~25 to 35 mph, but they are causing me some grief, as evidently they hit me harder than anyone else in town.

A 17-inch sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) broke about 2 ft underground and the tree fell toward my RV and van. It came to rest on five points: the tree's base and three limbs (bottom image), and the front left corner of the van (2nd from bottom). One of the supporting limbs smashed thru the power box framework and came to rest on top of the phone box after “hammering” it into the rain-softened ground a few inches (3rd pic). At this point I had lost electric power in a windy and drizzling rain, my van was helping to hold up a very heavy tree that could shift at any time, and my RV was blocked so that I couldn't move the RV to safer ground even if I wanted to.

My plan was to get the tree off everything and then try to reestablish electricity. All four of the trailer park's chain saws didn't work, so I had to drive into Gainesville to get mine out of storage. I spent most of Saturday chain-sawing the tree off everything and into pieces small enuf to move easily, and then moving logs and branches (4th pic) out of the way.

Moving the van out from under the tree was interesting. I held my breath when starting to drive the van backwards and out from under the tree, but fortunately the tree didn't shift toward the van and cause additional damage. Damage to the van was bad enuf, tho, almost $1,300 (I have a $1,000 deductible).

Finally, a small limb fell across the fronds of a cabbage palm in a small garden. In the image (5th pic) you can barely see the limb due to the heavy Spanish moss, but you can clearly see the mass is a jumble of fronds, moss and wood. I started to pull it out of there, but then I remembered the time when Sleazeweasel, Ann, Bill and I were exploring the periphery of a polje in the Yucatan, Mexico, when we encountered just such a mass of detritus and vegetation (only bigger).

Sleaze told us it was a very snakey spot, and that we needed to study it until we spotted “the snake” that “must” be in there. Ok, fine, so we all pretended to study the stupid sticks when suddenly a snake crawled out of the tall grass and over my boot (6th pic)! It was a speckled racer (Drymobius margaretiferus), and I was impressed.

So, I just left the mossy log laying up there in the palms. It will make a good, new microhabitat in this generally snake-unfriendly neighborhood.

Storm Limb

We had a bodacious thunderstorm here on Orange Lake yesterday. It may have rained a couple of inches or more in about 2 hours. The storm was pretty big, as it extended at least all the way to and across Gainesville 15+ miles away. A mighty wind preceded the rain for about 15 – 20 minutes, I estimate at gale force or nearly so. Evidently, the wind circled the perimeter of the storm, as the strong wind was unwavering. I went outside and reveled in its power.

The photo above shows a limb that fell out of a sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) tree during the thunderstorm. As you can see, it fell right spang amongst my RV, van and bonsai dahoon holly (Ilex cassine). Nothing was so much as scratched, say “Hallelujah!” Fortunately, I had put away the RV's awning just a few minutes before the limb fell. The limb was about 5 inches in diameter at its proximal end, and heavy enough that it would have ripped the awning's fabric and folded its frame. Whew!

Don't rescue that snake!

In Per-Columbian times, North American caves were seldom visited by humans, especially those with vertical pit entrances. Animals that require cave habitats for survival (troglobites) pretty much had the caves to themselves. Some epigean (living above ground) critters occasionally fell into pit entrances and couldn’t climb out, and so died and became food for cave animals. (Photo of Procambarus pallidus in Deathtrap Cave, Florida, by Danny Brinton).

Likewise, rainwater was clean and unpolluted, and either streamed in bringing epigean invertebrates and detritus that served as food to troglobites, or percolated down through porous soils to provide the mechanism to create rock formations like stalactites, stalagmites and gours.

But now the streams bring in trash and dissolved pollutants, often forcing aquatic troglobites to live further from cave entrances and their critical food sources. Humans also draw down aquifers, which can dry up subterranean pools altogether, eliminating both habitat and species. We build gates on cave entrances that all too often prevent animals and detritus from entering the caves, and vandals now roam the nethermost corners of caves in order to deliberately kill troglobites.

The result is that many caves no longer harbor the bats and cave-adapted blind, albino fishes and crayfishes that they once did. In some instances, troglobites are even going extinct. Such losses of biotic diversity is not only of concern in itself, but the “library” scientific information contained within troglobitic populations being destroyed is non-renewable.

But there is hope! Cavers are increasingly successful at convincing governments to legislate protection for cave resources. Cavers conduct trash cleanups within the cave and outside of it. Society is slowly cleaning pollutants from industrial effluents. We are learning how to construct bat- and detritus-friendly entrance gates. We are buying caves and stewarding them. We are establishing trails in the more popular caves to keep floor damage to a minimum. We are making a difference on many speleo-fronts.

But we still have more stewardship to develop. For instance, on caving forums we read that well-meaning cave explorers are rescuing epigean animals from caves. This is largely a mistake that should concern all cave resource conservationists. Epigean animals trapped in caves are among the most important food sources of many troglobites. Stream-borne detritus provides an episodic infusion of small invertebrates, but this food source is generally small, unpredictable, and typically of low caloric value.

A fox or snake that falls into and then dies in a cave, however, can provide high energy meals to numerous troglobites over a several-week period. This nutriment is stored in fatty tissue and can sustain them for months or even years, along with the more frequent detritus and invertebrates, until another vertebrate windfall comes along. Some troblobites may not reproduce unless and until a large animal drops in and dies. Denying troglobites this critical food source thus represents one more significant stress on cave animal populations.

Troglobitic crustaceans (crayfishes, isopods and amphipods) have thus evolved relatively slow metabolic rates and long lives. Although epigean crayfishes live only 3 to 5 years, some troglobitic crayfishes are known to live for decades and suspected to live in excess of a century! It's one thing to splat a bug on the windshield of a car, but a hundred year old decapod is a being that we should respect. So, when we rescue an animal that Darwin would have written off as stupid or unlucky, we are taking food from the mouths of cave organisms.

Now, I am the first person to say that we should give imperiled species every second chance that we can. If I find a short-tailed snake (Stilosoma extenuatum) or a Barbour's map turtle (Graptemys barbouri) below a cave pit entrance, I'm certainly going to try to rescue it. But the species that I read about cavers rescuing are almost always common species like garter snakes, bullfrogs or dogs. I maintain that we have plenty of those common critters and that we don’t need to save any of them. It’s the cave animals that we need to save.

So please, the next time you see an animal that is too stupid to watch out for a pit underfoot, leave it in the cave. Your epigean wildlife populations will be more fit. Your cave ecosystem will be healthier. Your cave crayfishes will thank you and your cave millipedes will be ever so grateful, and your biospeleologists will wonder why there are more troglobites in that cave than they ever saw there before.

Dave Maehr is gone

I am so sorry to note that Dave Maehr was killed in an airplane crash last Friday while looking for bears near Lake Placid when the plane's engine stalled (photo of Dave by Carlton Ward, Jr.).

http://tinyurl.com/3qnkaa

I met Dave Maehr for the first time back in, I think, the mid-1980s. He had found a large, hollow cypress tree in the Mormon Branch floodplain of the Ocala National Forest. Because the tree had bear claw marks on it, he wanted to learn whether it was a winter bear den. A positive finding would have been interesting because no other bear den had ever been found in a tree in Florida. The only way to settle the question was to climb the tree, because the only entry into the hollow was through its broken crown.

Bob Simons, Florida naturalist extraordinaire and the friend who taught me how to id and nominate champion trees, told Dave that I had developed a safe technology to climb such forest giants. Dave contacted me and the next thing I knew we were standing in front of that marvelous vegetable. The three of us studied the situation for a few minutes and then the conversation suddenly transitioned into an expectant quiet. I was on.

I cleared out a small area below the tree so a long monofilament line could be laid out without becoming entangled in the greenbriar, and using a bowfishing rig shot an arrow attached to it over a crown limb. An eighth-inch line was then pulled over the limb with the monofilament, and then a static 11mm caving rope was pulled over the limb using the eighth-inch line. I put on my harness and ascending gear, and climbed the tree.

It's a good thing there was no bear inside that tree, as it most certainly would have climbed back out of the tree before I could have changed over from ascending to rappelling gear. Dave assured me that if there had been a bear in there, it would have zoomed past me and down the tree and into the swamp quicker than greased lightning. I guess I trusted Dave lot at that point.

Dave and I had a few more encounters over the years, the last one being an email thread a couple of months ago. When Bob first introduced us, I expected Dave to be like so many other Florida state biologists I had met – that is, rather supercilious toward me, an environmental consultant. I guess I was initially a little offish toward him, which he instantly sensed, but rather than take it on the chin or reflect my attitude back, he used his natural charm to totally disarm me. Within a few minutes we were buddies, so I really appreciate the statement that “[h]e wore out his welcome at the commission.” Certainly, mine is worn out, too.

In our last email communications, Dave allowed me to invite myself on one of his South Florida bear hunting research expeditions. Had I known about his last flight, I just might have been allowed to invite myself along for that ride, too. Scary, that Fate. I wish I could be given the honor to finish the bear book that he was working on. I am retired and have the time, am a fair writer and am confident that Dave left the copious notes it would take for me to do so. It would be the best way that I could honor his memory, his perseverance, his life.

Floridians have lost the man who possibly was the best friend that Florida bears and Florida panthers have ever had. The rest of us have merely lost a loved relative and a great friend.