Wildlife

It's true.

No. We're just talking about how many- inarguably wild animals we've all met and been closer to than should probably be legally allowed.

Like you think about, we, we all lived through some incredible, um, advances in child protective services.

Oh my

We would just have a bunch of crawfish up in the yard.

We'd have maybe a 10 or 12 and that was like their spawning season I guess and they would build these little nests and they would crawl up into the yard and I wanted to keep one for a pet and I have killed a lot of wild animals that I've wanted to take care of I've killed at least two box turtles the first one was like okay we'll try it again and see if I can do something better we'll give them some water or something They never survived for very long.

I don't know what I did wrong.

I can't remember exactly what I did.

K State Extension agronomists Tina Sullivan and Logan Simon keep the show rolling as they discuss how to estimate grain sorghum yields, and they share reminders about the speed of soybean drying.

Drew Ricketts, K State wildlife specialist, ends today's show talking about what wildlife species could be causing predation issues for owners of young livestock.

That and more is coming up ahead.

[on-hold country music]

So if you do have a dead animal and you s- you suspect that it was killed by a predator rather than just scavenged, reach out to your local extension office.

You can also reach out to me directly, uh, or you can reach out to Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

My contact information, including my cell phone number, is available at www.wildlife.k-state.edu. Um, and then of course, you can find your contact information for your local extension office or Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks elsewhere on the web.

Drew, you made a mention of black vultures.

I don't even know if you needed that, actually.

And then I drove to Fish and Wildlife.

Fish and Wildlife was by... by Tim Hortons there, right behind KFC.

Okay.

At that time, I think I walked in there, reported it and they're like pen and paper, write down everything.

And I'm Carolina.

For those of you joining us for the first time, we're a podcast series covering conservation, wildlife, photography, and a couple of cool stories along the way.

Well done.

I'm going to go and practice now so that I can come back and be Craig.

Pitying the poor mother, I picked her up out of the grass and helped her as gently as I could, and as soon as the egg was born she flew gladly away.

oftentimes i have thought it strange that one could walk through the woods and mountains and plains for years without seeing a single blood-spot most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being noticed nevertheless we at last sadly learn that they are all subject to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves many birds lose their lives in storms i remember a particularly severe wisconsin winter when the temperature was many degrees below zero and the snow was deep preventing the quail which feed on the ground from getting anything like enough of food as was pitifully shown by a flock i found on our farm frozen solid in a thicket of oak sprouts they were in a circle about a foot wide with their heads outward packed close together for warmth yet all had died without a struggle perhaps more from starvation than frost many small birds lose their lives in the storms of early spring or even summer one mild spring morning i picked up more than a score out of the grass and flowers most of them darling singers that had perished in a sudden storm of sleety rain and hail in a hollow at the foot of an oak tree that i had chopped down one cold winter day i found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its snug grassy nest in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat it had carefully gathered i carried it home and gradually thawed and warmed it in the kitchen hoping it would come to life like a pickerel i caught in our lake through a hole in the ice which after being frozen as hard as a bone and thawed at the fireside squirmed itself out of the grasp of the cook when she began to scrape it bounced off the table and danced about on the floor making wonderful springy jumps as if trying to find its way back home to the lake.

But for the poor spermophile, nothing I could do in the way of revival was of any avail.

Its life had passed away without the slightest struggle, as it lay asleep, curled up like a ball, with its tail wrapped about it.

It seemed perfectly satisfied to stay about the house without being confined, occupied a comfortable bed in a section of a hollow tree, and never wandered far.

How long it lived after the death of its kind master I don't know.

i suppose that almost any wild animal may be made a pet simply by sympathizing with it and entering as much as possible into its life in alaska i saw one of the common gray mountain marmots kept as a pet in an indian family when its master entered the house it always seemed glad almost like a dog and when cold or tired it snuggled up in a fold of its blanket with the utmost confidence we have all heard of ferocious animals lions and tigers etc that were fed and spoken to only by their masters becoming perfectly tame and as is well known the faithful dog that follows man and serves him and looks up to him and loves him as if he were a god is a descendant of the bloodthirsty wolf or jackal even frogs and toads and fishes may be tamed provided they have the uniform sympathy of one person with whom they become intimately acquainted without the distracting and varying attentions of strangers and surely all god's people however serious and savage great or small like to play whales and elephants dancing humming gnats and invisibly small mischievous microbes all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them as far as i know all wild creatures keep themselves clean birds it seems to me take more pains to bathe and dress themselves than any other animals even ducks though living so much in water dip and scatter cleansing showers over their backs and shake and preen their feathers as carefully as land birds watching small singers taking their morning baths is very interesting particularly when the weather is cold alighting in a shallow pool they oftentimes show a sort of dread of dipping into it like children hesitating about taking a plunge as if they felt the same kind of shock and this makes it easy for us to sympathize with the little feathered people occasionally i have seen from my study window red-headed linnets bathing in dew when water elsewhere was scarce a large monterey cypress with broad branches and innumerable leaves on which the dew lodges in still nights made favorite bathing places alighting gently as if afraid to waste the dew they would pause and fidget as they do before beginning to plash in pools then dip and scatter the drops in showers and get as thorough a bath as they would in a pool i have also seen the same kind of baths taken by birds on the boughs of silver firs on the edge of a glacier meadow but nowhere have i seen the dewdrops so abundant as on the monterey cypress and the picture made by the quivering wings and iris dew was memorably beautiful children too make fine pictures splashing and crowing in their little tubs how widely different from wallowing pigs bathing with great show of comfort and rubbing themselves dry against rough bark trees some of our own species seem fairly to dread the touch of water when the necessity of absolute cleanliness by means of frequent baths was being preached by a friend who had been reading combee's physiology in which he had learned something of the wonders of the skin with its millions of pores that had to be kept open for health one of our neighbors remarked oh that's unnatural it's well enough to wash in a tub maybe once or twice a year but not to be paddling in the water all the time like a frog in a spring-hole another neighbor who prided himself on his knowledge of big words said with great solemnity i never can believe that man is amphibious natives of tropic islands pass a large part of their lives in water and seem as much at home in the sea as on the land swim and dive pursue fishes play in the waves like surf ducks and seals and explore the coral gardens and groves and seaweed meadows as if truly amphibious even the natives of the far north bathe at times i once saw a lot of eskimo boys ducking and plashing right merrily in the arctic ocean it seemed very wonderful to us that the wild animals could keep themselves warm and strong in winter when the temperature was far below zero feeble-looking rabbits scud away over the snow lithe and elastic as if glorying in the frosty sparkling weather and sure of their dinners i have seen gray squirrels dragging ears of corn about as heavy as themselves out of our field through loose snow and up a tree balancing them on limbs and eating in comfort with their dry electric tails spread airily over their backs once i saw a fine hardy fellow go into a knot hole thrusting in my hand i caught him and pulled him out as soon as he guessed what i was up to he took the end of my thumb in his mouth and sunk his teeth right through it but i gripped him hard by the neck carried him home and shut him up in a box that contained about half a bushel of hazel and hickory nuts hoping that he would not be too much frightened and discouraged to eat while thus imprisoned after the rough handling he had suffered i soon learned however that sympathy in this direction was wasted for no sooner did i pop him in than he fell to with right hearty appetite gnawing and munching the nuts as if he had gathered them himself and was very hungry that day therefore after allowing time enough for a good square meal i made haste to get him out of the nut-box and shut him up in a spare bedroom in which father had hung a lot of selected ears of indian corn for seed they were hung up by the husks on cords stretched across from side to side of the room the squirrel managed to jump from the top of one of the bed-posts to the cord cut off an ear and let it drop to the floor he then jumped down got a good grip of the heavy ear carried it to the top of one of the slippery polished bed-posts seated himself comfortably and holding it well balanced deliberately pried out one kernel at a time with his long chiseled teeth ate the soft sweet germ and dropped the hard part of the kernel in this masterly way working at high speed he demolished several ears a day and with a good warm bed in a box made himself at home and grew fat then naturally i suppose free romping in the snow and tree-tops with companions came to mind anyhow he began to look for a way of escape of course he first tried the window but found that his teeth made no impression on the glass next he tried the sash and gnawed the wood off level with the glass then father happened to come upstairs and discovered the mischief that was being done to his seed corn and window and immediately ordered him out of the house the flying squirrel was one of the most interesting of the little animals we found in the woods a beautiful brown creature with fine eyes and smooth soft fur like that of a mole or field mouse he is about half as long as the gray squirrel but his wide-spread tail and the folds of skin along his sides that form the wings make him look broad and flat something like a kite in the evenings our cat often brought them to her kittens at the shanty and later we saw them fly during the day from the trees we were chopping they jumped and glided off smoothly and apparently without effort like birds as soon as they heard and felt the breaking shock of the strained fibres at the stump when the trees they were in began to totter and groan they can fly or rather glide twenty or thirty yards from the top of a tree twenty or thirty feet to the foot of another gliding upward as they reach the trunk or if the distance is too great they alight comfortably on the ground and make haste to the nearest tree and climb just like the wingless squirrels every boy and girl loves the little fairy airy striped chipmunk half squirrel half spermophile he is about the size of a field mouse and often made us think of linnets and song sparrows as he frisked about gathering nuts and berries he likes almost all kinds of grain berries and nuts hazel nuts hickory nuts strawberries huckleberries wheat oats corn he is fond of them all and thrives on them most of the hazel bushes on our farm grew along the fences as if they had been planted for the chipmunks alone for the rail fences were their favorite highways we never wearied watching them especially when the hazel nuts were ripe and the little fellows were sitting on the rails nibbling and handling them like tree squirrels we used to notice too that although they are very neat animals their lips and fingers were dyed red like our own when the strawberries and huckleberries were ripe we could always tell when the wheat and oats were in the milk by seeing the chipmunks feeding on the ears they kept nibbling at the wheat until it was harvested and then gleaned in the stubble keeping up a careful watch for their enemies dogs hawks and shrikes they are as widely distributed over the continent as the squirrels various species inhabiting different regions on the mountains and lowlands but all the different kinds have the same general characteristics of light airy cheerfulness and good nature before the arrival of farmers in the wisconsin woods the small ground squirrels called gophers lived chiefly on the seeds of wild grasses and weeds but after the country was cleared and plowed no feasting animal fell to more heartily on the farmers wheat and corn increasing rapidly in numbers and knowledge they became very destructive especially in the spring when the corn was planted for they learned to trace the rows and dig up and eat the three or four seeds in each hill about as fast as the poor farmers could cover them and unless great pains were taken to diminish the numbers of the cunning little robbers the fields had to be planted two or three times over and even then large gaps in the rows would be found the loss of the grain they consumed after it was ripe together with the winter stores laid up in their burrows amounted to little as compared with the loss of the seed on which the whole crop depended One evening about sundown, when my father sent me out with a shotgun to hunt them in a stubble field, I learned something curious and interesting in connection with these mischievous gophers, though just then they were doing no harm.

As I strolled through the stubble watching for a chance for a shot, a shrike flew past me and alighted on an open spot at the mouth of a burrow about thirty yards ahead of me.