Oasis

Blotched Water Snake

(Nerodia erythrogaster transversa)

     This particular snake was filmed swimming in the north end of The Pool.  After watching it for a few minutes, I went around to the other end of the pool, sat on a broad stone, and spent the next hour watching four such blotched water snakes swim around the pool's edges and back and forth across the small waters.  Once, a Nerodia swam to the center of the pool and floated still.  Then another swam out to it and immediately the two of them splashed the water about and then swam off in different directions.

     I should admit that the species named here may or may not fit the actual snake seen here. The genus is right on, but Nerodia includes a number of snakes.  They all live a semi-aquatic life, though, and all of them can be aggressive (an evolutionary piece of mimicry from living near poisonous cottonmouths?).  Fish, amphibians, and rodents are not safe around Nerodia.

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Subphylum:	Vertebrata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Suborder:	Serpentes
Family:	Colubridae
Subfamily:	Natricinae
Genus:	Nerodia

     For more information on snakes and reptiles of our area: http://www.austinreptileservice.net.

Exuvia of a dragonfly.

The exuvia is the remains of the insect's exoskeleton.

     For more information on dragonflies and damselflies, here's a nice site: http://odonatacentral.org.

Red-eared Turtle (Trachemys scripta)

      Notice the strong "keel" on the carapace of this young specimen.  As it ages, the ridge on its back will weaken out more.  This one was resting quietly on the edge of the very small stream emerging from stones about eighty feet south of the lower end of The Pond.  I saw no others nearby.

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Subclass:	Anapsida
Order:	Testudines
Family:	Emydidae
Genus:	Trachemys
Species:	T. scripta

For scale.

Damselfly.

A drought-shrunken snake hole.

      (The video of the blotched water snake was taken from the boulder at the far end of The Pool above.)

Looking down stream of the pool.

Sumac shadow on limestone.

First ripened dewberry prior to being orally appreciated.

Honey bees on the non-Creek property.

These females appear to be fanning the entrance to the hive in an 
attempt to create a bit of respite from the heat and drought conditions.

We are feeding them sugar water because the nectar "flow" is

down now during our drought.

Guests in the Garden

     Of course, we should have composed a much more deserving photograph of the following, but we were prevented for several reasons.  One, we possess little if any skill in the ways of cameras.  Two, if you really want to see The Creek through my eyes and you do not already wear smudged-lens bifocals, then an out of focus image of a coiled darkness in front of you will perhaps approximate the experience.  And three, when the hormone and neurotransmitter adrenaline is secreted from the adrenal gland into the circulation, it really doesn't matter what that dark rope is in front of you because it now is in back of you and you are running like any other common fool.  Only when the photographer is cool will the viewer be sufficiently rewarded.

Western cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus)

Working my way around behind it (look at the shape of that head).

And all that's left is a water trail and the impression of innocence.

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Subphylum:	Vertebrata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Suborder:	Serpentes
Family:	Viperidae
Subfamily:	Crotalinae
Genus:	Agkistrodon
Species: Our subspecies:	A. piscivorus leucostoma

     Water moccasins don't live much farther west than where we are here at The Creek, so we get the pioneers, the frontiersmen, of the species--leucostoma.  And a creekside in the middle of Texas is a perfect place for this semi-aquatic pit viper (the world's only of its kind).  Here it lives mostly off of frogs and fish.  Thus its Latin name "piscivorus," from piscis and voro, which mean "fish" and "to eat."  It will, of course, attack a person.  But rarely.  

     When tested to determine the snake's ferocity, 23 of 45 (51%) tested cottonmouths tried to escape while 28 of 36 (78%) resorted to threat displays and other defensive tactics. Only when they were picked up with a mechanical hand were they likely to bite.   (Whitfield Gibbons J, Dorcas ME. 2002. Defensive Behavior of Cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus) toward Humans.)   Human fatalities are rare.  

     According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, only 7% of all Texas snakebite cases involve cottonmouths, and of all people killed by poisonous snakes in the United States, only 1% of these deaths were from the water moccasin.  And according the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only about 5 (five!!) Americans are killed each year from poisonous snakes.  That's a lot of fear for so little actual death.  [Lightening gets about 200 Americans a year.  Fireworks, about 7.  In the twelve years from 1997 to 2007 407 people in the U.S. were killed from "wind-related tree failures."]  

     Watersnakes (the ones we are not supposed to be afraid of) look a lot like cottonmouths, but there are some key differences.  Though watersnakes can be aggressive when threatened, they usually escape quickly when approached, unlike the other which will often coil up and threaten right back with its white, opened mouth.  Only the pit viper will rattle its tail as part of its display.  And when the cottonmouth swims or crawls away, it generally keeps its head at a forty-five degree angle.  

     They are most active at night.  [This sentence deserved a paragraph of its own.] 

     And they can bite under water.  I remember as a child being told that they couldn't.  I was also told by the same person that one of their favorite foods is fish.  

     So it goes.

     But all that coils, attacks, and devours is not serpent.  About a week ago I noticed a new plant growing along The Creek.  More precisely, growing across some of the water willow (Justicia americana) plants at the south end of The Pond and just downstream between it and The Pool.

Dodder (Cuscuta)

      This is dodder.  

Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Solanales
Family:	Convolvulaceae
Genus:	Cuscuta

    
      Over a hundred species of this invasive plant range, wrap, and wrestle their way across the world.  Some species of this genus has arrived at The Creek coincidentally about the same time as Agkistrodon piscivorus.
     Dodder has been placed within the morning glory family, but it goes by any number of interesting names: devil's guts, devil's hair, devil's ringlet, goldthread, hailweed, hailplant, hairweed, hellbine, love vine, pull-down, strangleweed, witches shoelaces, angel hair, witch's hair.  (If you're interested in names of places and things, and if you've driven around these United States, then you've noticed that half the high waterfalls, rugged peaks, treeless ridges, and desolate deserts have been named some version of 'angel,' 'devil,' or 'hell.'  And sometimes, as with Cuscuta, the same thing can be named simultaneously for two or more theologically inconsistent references.)
     New seedlings spin about, searching for a host on which to wrap itself.  Often, I read, the plant "smells" for the scent of a host plant.  And because it contains so little chlorophyll, it depends on drawing all necessary carbohydrates and nutrients out of the host plant.  When the dodder finds a suitable host, it grows small bumps along its stem called "haustoria"  which drive into the tissue of the plant and begin the meal.

The dodder's tendrils on the right appear to be reaching out to the hapless water willow.

The parasitic plant will not let go.

Haustoria have formed and inserted themselves into the host plant's stem.

Dodder fruit and seeds forming.

Dodder soon to be pickled with a spray of vinegar.  Probably a futile effort at its eradication.

     

     So, does it feel more like Eden before or after our awareness of these two serpents?


     With the cottonmouth water moccasin, I felt the greatest temptation to lift a stone high over its head and do it in.  But, of course, it is part of The Creek, and so I am  experiencing again a bit of sympathetic antagonism.  The same goes for the dodder, the fire ants, the mosquitoes, the sun.  The list is not a short one.

    And still on the same topic of guests in the Garden, half the trail along the pool side is bordered by the healthiest green vines you can imagine.

Rhus toxicodendron, or Toxicodendron radicans
Either name will do.  It's poison ivy.

     This was The Creek on Easter morning, after all.

Guard-Daddy

     Below are a few weak illustrations of what we are seeing a couple places along the creek.  The bluegill will spawn from now until way through the summer. Before and after eggs have been placed in the creek bottom, the male will guard the nest diligently.  The nest featured here takes up about a square foot of cleaned gravel where the fish has removed all algae and the diatoms which make up most of the creamy white "scum" across the floor of the creek and the pool into which it flows.  These fish have chosen a spot right at the confluence of creek and pool, on the downstream side of a boulder.  The only other bluegill nest in the area likewise is situated on the downstream side of a boulder.
     The individual bluegill here is small, about five to six inches long, with aqua-blue lighting up where the sun shines on its fins and tail.  A faint reddish ring circles its eye.
     Most of the time, the male here is chasing away any other fish that swims close to the nest.  When it is not feeling threatened, it sometimes appears to stand up on its tail and flap it back and forth as if sweeping the nursery floor of silt.

The obscure view of a bluegill's nest, center of the photo.

Male Bluegill Guarding Its Nest

A short movie, featuring a nervous father protecting his childless nursery in the middle of a stream.

Up the hill from the Creek, we have had test holes dug where we hope to intall a septic tank and field.  This photo is meant to show the soft sandy loam down for about five feet where rounded river stones take over.

Still don't know what this fossil of leafy swirls might be. 

Within the Stonefiled near the Creek, hundreds of these sorts of rocks can be found.

More of the same riffle bugs.

The rear-end view of a honey bee feeding on water willow blossom.

Venus' Looking-glass (Triodanis perfoliata) 

The cricket frogs have taken on a greener color than when we saw them earlier in the season.

Dewberries almost ripe.

This is a difficult one, based solely on the photo.  It could be a Clippedwing Grasshopper (Metaleptea brevicornis) or a Cattail Toothpick Grasshopper (Leptysma marginicollis) or some other.  (Anybody have a suggestion?)  It was found in the short bushes near the west side of the Creek.

Priest Cave

Notice the obvious here?

Deeper into Priest Cave.

      A few days ago we posted an entry which featured some of these cave photographs.  At the time we thought the cave might have been the home of a mountain lion.  Perhaps we were wrong.  After careful study and research of some big books, we are ready to announce the discovery of an ancient Priest's Cave.  We now refer to it as "Priest's Cave" instead of "the hole in the boulders where a cougar might have stayed."
  One of the first clues is the presence of what we call a "sun dagger."  You can see it in the photo below.   

Could a mountain lion REALLY be responsible for this?  Hardly.  Priests of an ancient cult remain our only answer.

     Though we are prepared to accept some coincidences as merely coincidences (like having not only ONE Negro living in the White House now, but FOUR Negroes and all at the same time), careful investigation of the following data leads us to a profound conclusion.  Data to consider:

1. The angles of dark black lines superimposed on the photograph above match those in the map below.

2. Notice the ley lines in the map below. If you follow each line real close, you will see that it eventually meets up with EVERY OTHER LINE.  And the point at which they all meet is EXACTLY at the spot where the Priest's Cave is. If only one of the ten lines had gone off in another direction, we would have been skeptical.  But EVERY SINGLE LINE without exception converges at the one spot on the globe where the Priest's Cave is.

Here's what we read about ley lines from a scholarly website (http://www.angelfire.com/in/RajunasRefuge/leylines.html):


Alfred Watkins, discovered leylines in 1921 from his realization that a series of straight lines could link all of the Earth's various landmarks into a network of ancient tracks. "Watkins believed that this alignment could not be due to mere chance. He believed that prehistoric man had deliberately made the tracks as a sort of road network, using the various landmarks as sighting points. Many of them are situated on hilltops where they could be seen against the horizon, and thus made excellent reference points for the Neolithic or Bronze Age traveller. He first voiced his discoveries in public at a slide-show and lecture to fellow members of the Woolhope Club where, although treated with some scepticism, they were well received and aroused keen interest. 

      3.  Though there are plenty of other caves on the property, any of which COULD HAVE been the Priest's Cave, this is the ONLY one that is.  In other words, it is the ONLY cave with a sun dagger and the uncanny angles.


  4.  There is great consistency with this theory and that which is held by many other scholars. Below is an excerpt from one of these scholars.  You can find more that he has written on the subject of Ley Lines at his website: 


http://www.vortexmaps.com
[you really have to see this website to appreciate what we are doing here]


     "Vortices appear to be points of power or energy on the Earth, and ley lines are the relationships between those points. An analogy might be that the vortices are accupressure points. and the ley lines between them are meridians on the skin of the body of Mother Earth.
     However, reality is likely not so simple. My theory is that there is a template for this physical reality in a world existing concomitant with this one, and that template is geometric, or mathematical in organization. Matter is here, then not here, moving back and forth between implicate and explicate reality, as described in the theories of David Bohm, a contemporary and colleague of Einstein. This template for matter as we experience it in this explicate reality (the physical world) is in implicate reality, as also described in the "morphogenetic fields" of Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist at Cambridge in the 1960's.²Joel Goldsmith, a metaphysical healer, often alludes to the same kind of system in his books, Jane Roberts mentions It in the Seth books, and Swedenborg Wrote of the correspondence between this world and that of the spiritual in Heaven and Hell, paragraph 90.
     If this is what is, then it's possible that the template for our Earth 'in that unseen reality is crystalline 'in organization. Furthermore, that crystalline matrix seems to be similar to a geodesic dome--a series of triangular shapes fit together to form the skin of a sphere. The joining on the surface of the Earth at the apexes of these triangles are points of energy focus, the vortices of the Earth. Some of the principal lines of force Join -mg these vortices, called "ley lines, " form triangular shapes between vortices.
     At these foci of energy Earth, as it forms 'in explicate reality (our world as we sense it), reveals the presence of these foci, or vortices, by -nations of geologic significance: These formations are volcanoes, high mountains, hot springs, mineral deposits, ends of sand spits near the ocean, sea mounts, forks of rivers, river mouths, large falls, deep gorges, rock outcroppings, and possibly others. Some dams are located on vortices, and often mineral deposits, especially gold, denote a vortex. There is a whole swirl of vortices around and near the Golden Gate Bridge, and these might be the coming together of several faults--many ley lines follow the great faults and waterways on the surface of our earth.
     This system of vortices and ley lines is not a new idea. Sacred temples of the ancient world around the Mediterranean are located at powerful vortices, and drawing lines between them will bring out patterns of triangles. The Indians in the American Southwest as well as those in Peru and other parts of South America located their cities and the roads between them on vortices and ley lines, which look Like so many spokes and hubs. The Chinese practice the ancient science of geomancy. "The Olde Straite Pathes" of England,³ the location of Stonehenge and it's relationship to the Great Pyramid, Glastonbury and the myth of Avalon correlate to vortices. I'm sure there are many more examples throughout the world."
     Carefully read that last line.  Yes, here at Priest Cave we have another example of the sacred ley lines.  Ancient Indians came over Here a long time ago.  Some of them settled in the mountain lion's den because they recognized the sun dagger.
     Below are some photographs of another sun dagger.  This one is in Chaco Canyon or somewhere like that.  If the ancient Indians who came to our Priest Cave knew of the other sun dagger, then their settlement here is all the more striking.  But if they did NOT know about the other sun dagger, how did they recognize THIS sun dagger?  Either way, the fact is truly mysterious.
     
http://www.angelfire.com

"The Sun Dagger  site, near the top of Fajada butte, revealed the changing of the seasons to Anasazi astronomers a thousand years ago. Its secret was lost around 1250 AD, when the ancient people abandoned Chaco Canyon. Then in 1979, an artist was studying petroglyph art at Chaco when she noticed that a slender beam of sunlight passing between two rock monoliths bisected the center of a spiral-shaped symbol on the exact day of the summer solstice."

Notice that this cave nearby Priest Cave has none of the hallmark signs of mystery.
No sun dagger.  No uncanny angles.  Complete absence of religiously-placed rocks.
 A clear contrast.

     The following was copied from another reputable website.  Please study what it has to say about ley lines, too.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/index.html

"The relationship between the distances from Angkor Vihear to the Great Pyramid and from the Great Pyramid to the Nazcan Hummingbird is also a precise expression of φ:

4,754 x 1.618 = 7,692

Because the Hummingbird and Angkor Vihear are antipodal sites, with a distance between them of one-half of the circumference of the earth, two Golden Section relationships between these three sites are shown by the circumference of the earth along the line of ancient sites:

4,754 x 1.618 = 7,692

4,754 + 7,692 = 12,446, and

7,692 x 1.618 = 12,446

These Golden Section relationships may also be diagramed on a straight line:

The line of ancient sites is a line, from the perspective of the first illustration in Part One, and it is a circle, from the perspective of the azimuthal projection above. The line and the circle are found in the greek letter φ and the number 10. Zero and one are also the first two numbers and the only two numbers in the binary code.

The φ relationships between these sites are reflected repeatedly in the first 500 Fibonacci numbers. The first three prime numbers, 2, 3 and 5, approximate the intervals along the circumference of 20%, 30% and 50%, between these three sites. This same percentage of the circumference relationship, accurate to three digits, is found in Fibonacci numbers 137-139:

Percentage of circumference:	First three digits of Fibonacci numbers:
Angkor to Giza: 19.1%	#137: 191... (Prime)
Giza to Nazca: 30.9%	#138: 309...
Nazca to Angkor: 50.0%	#139: 500...

The next prime Fibonacci number after #137 is #359. The distances between these sites, in miles, is reflected by Fibocacci numbers 359-361, accurately to five digits:

Distance between sites:	First five digits of Fibonacci numbers:
Angkor to Giza: 4,754 miles	#359: 47542... (Prime)
Giza to Nazca: 7,692 miles	#360: 76924...
Nazca to Angkor: 12,446 miles	#361: 12446..."

     We will continue to explore Priest Cave and post our findings as we know more.

Road to The Creek

     Sunday morning.

     It’s middle April, and according to a quick estimate, the fifteen hundred fortieth  Sunday morning since I quit going to church and started spending my holy day of the week outside among the marsh birds, wildflowers, creeks, grasses, and pines.  Still, whatever my thoughts now are concerning religion, one thing is for sure: Sunday mornings are sacred.  I’ve occasionally tried working or watching television on a Sunday morning, but I cannot.  Even agnostics know what sin is.

     So I drove down to The Creek for some sunshine, water, and wind.  I love wind in the morning.  Not a “breeze,” but a wind (breezes are for Romantic poems—real air is a wind).  Grass-stem and horse-mane wave to its prompting.  The presence of morning wind is one of about ten ways I can know I’m really alive.  

     But before I even arrived at Church, I passed through scenes from a world that little resembles any sort of Paradise.  Three miles from our house, I drove up on a twenty-something year old man hiking into town and not quite walking the white line.  A car would approach him, and he'd stumble down the ditch slope like a drunk and then back up to the edge of pavement.  I turned around and picked him up.  He just needed a ride into town, but along the way was hoping to find sufficient numbers of used cigarettes to resuscitate.  Once he was sitting on the seat beside me, I recognized him as the former patient I treated one day.  I had just left the emergency room in our ambulance when I saw what appeared to be a manikin lying in the weeds on the shoulder of the highway.  We turned the ambulance around and found the poor fellow just coming out of a seizure and still wearing the white wristband he had been issued in the emergency earlier in the morning.

     After I dropped him off at the nearest convenience store, I drove past the laundry with the fat man sitting outside on a little plastic chair.

     And past the metal barn where the double-amputee sits every day with his parked wheel chair in the open doorway.

     And closer to The Creek, past the site where another of my patients met his end because his car collided with a power pole at a bend in the road.  An officer's green spray paint remains on the pavement, marking the position of a vehicle.

     And past the broken carcass of a white-tailed deer with two hopping buzzards at its side.

     And past the little home of another patient who had overdosed one morning.  As we were wheeling her across the yard on a stretcher, she screaming and we struggling to keep the cot upright in a cluttered yard, I noticed the woman's young daughter standing silent and lost on her own front porch.     

     This is what you pass by on the way to The Creek.  It's not a paradise on a different road, though.  The same road leads us to the carcass and to the creek.

     Down at The Creek, between Pond and Pool by shallow waters, we watched these tiny bugs on the surface.  Scores of them circled around and around like so many disoriented Sufi dancers.  It would be easy ignore or  mistake them for small flies from the vantage point of five feet above.

Rhagovelia obesa (?)

Rhagovelia obesa (?)

Rhagovelia obesa (?)

Rhagovelia 

Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hemiptera
Family:	Veliidae
Genus:	Rhagovelia

     The family Veliidae includes riffle bugs and small water striders.  What we are looking at above appears to be a riffle bug.  And as always, if anybody sees a need to change the identification of this insect, please let us know.



     "Rhagovelia obesa is commonly found in groups varying from 5 to 100. Both nymphs and adults have been observed to swarm in this way usually close to the banks of streams. When disturbed, such swarms tend to disperse, but reassociate later. Such swarming behavior is more  pronounced in the nymphal stages.

     "Rhagovelia  swims by means  of a  tuft of hairs spread  fanwise under the  water surface (Coker et  al.  1936). Bueno (1907) states that they swim underwater readily especially at night. Bacon (1956) noted that individuals  swimming  underwater were near death.
     "According to Bacon (1956) Rhagovelia feeds on small insects and crustaceans trapped at the surface of the water, and on  larger insects under laboratory conditions. We have found no record in the literature  of the  feeding habits  of Rhagovelia  under  field  conditions."

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/z71-067
     This article contains some wonderful line drawings that reveal details of the bug's anatomy through successive stages of development (instars).

     And here's a short clip from the bit of Creek near where our whirling Turkish water dancers were observed.

Surface level of The Pond: Seven feet away from the gauge

Transplanting stolen water lilies

Grasses heading out among stones on the upper reach of  The Creek

damsel fly 

Look closely . . .

Redstripe Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis proximus rubrilineatus)

     Ribbon snakes like this one enjoy a semi-aquatic life, feeding mainly on the cricket frog population of The Creek's banks.  Last week, Rita caught sight of this small snake consuming one of the frogs.  Unhinged jaws become a necessity when it wants to swallow an animal that's bigger than the snake's head.

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Suborder:	Serpentes
Family:	Colubridae
Genus:	Thamnophis
Species:	T. proximus
Subspecies:	T. p. rubrilineatus

Apiaceae

     This white-flowering plant (Hedge Parsley--Torilis arvensis?) that grows now beside the transplanted roses appears to belong to the Apiaceae family, the one that includes other of our favorite species such anise, caraway, carrot (domestic and wild), celery, chervil, coriander/cilantro, cumin, dill, fennel, hemlock, lovage, Queen Anne's Lace, and parsley.  Pretty soon, this plant's white flowers will give way to fruiting structures that resemble Velcro seeds attaching at any opportunity to socks and dogs' ears.

Seed pods quickly replacing white yucca flowers

The first of yellow prickly pear cacti flowers.  Near the top of Whitman's Rough.

These are the beautifully eroded limestone boulders at the top of the hill.

     Carbon dioxide in the air turns into carbonic acid after it dissolves in rain water.  And because limestone is basic, the acid in the water can create such other-worldly shapes as these.  When the rain water settles onto one spot of boulder and is allowed to chew away at stone, it can form flat pools like the one above.  For limestone like this to be dissolved, the following sequence of reactions takes place:

H₂O + CO₂ → H₂CO₃

CaCO₃ → Ca²⁺ + CO₃^2–

CO₃^2– + H₂CO₃ → 2 HCO₃^–

CaCO₃ + H₂CO₃ → Ca²⁺ + 2 HCO₃^–

Mustang Grapes (Vitis mustangensis) just beginning to fill out. These vines are sprawling 
out on top of short walnut trees out in The Stone Field near The Creek.

Turkey vulture riding thermal lifts above the sandstone bluff.