Chapter 20: Tortoises and
time with Dad
Meanwhile, Johnathan was deep
in his field season and loving the work he was doing in the sandhills region.
It was a very unique and special habitat type, full of distributions and types
of reptiles seen nowhere else. On one of his site-scouting trips, he had actually
spotted a gopher tortoise hole. This is something unheard of in North Carolina.
Gopher tortoises generally stay further south where it is warmer, so to find
one in North Carolina at all was newsworthy! He decided that since he was
coming back the next day, he would bring Jack with him to see how the survey
was being conducted and to see the hole.
When he went home that night
and told Jack that he could come the next day, Jack was beside himself. He
couldn’t wait! He could barely sleep and was up before the sun, dressed and
ready to go before his dad even made it downstairs for breakfast. When it was
time to go, they got into the Jeep his dad was using for the summer, along with
all of the gear that usually stayed in it, and made the long drive to the study
site.
This particular site was on
the far side of the preserve. They met Johnathan’s graduate students just as
the sun was coming up, and together they all went over the plans for the day.
The students would spend the morning digging and carefully placing a series of
pit traps and then come back in the afternoon to see what, if anything, they
had caught. At that time they would take down notes and observations about each
find.
Jack was put in charge of
the clip-board, and as they set up each pit-trap, he was given all kinds of
numbers, from the current temperature, to the number and type of surrounding
trees and the GPS coordinates. It was long, hot, and exacting work and he was
glad his dad had insisted on long pants and boots as well as a wide-brimmed hat,
bug spray, and lots of water. At least he didn’t have to dig the holes!
Jack also liked meeting the
graduate students. One was a young exchange student from India by the name of
Anaan. He was a cheerful and very energetic individual who had always been
fascinated with reptiles. He worked hard and was very exact in everything he
did. He was also very friendly to Jack and spent a great deal of time either
teasing him or showing him how to do things. His accent was pretty heavy, but
Jack could understand him most of the time.
The other student there that
day was a girl by the name of Phoebe. She was short and thin but very tough.
She had a tan that made her look as dark as Anaan. She was friendly, but very
focused, and Jack was a little bit confused by the big words she kept using.
Much of the time he didn’t really understand what she was saying. She also
spoke really fast, which just made it worse. She and Anaan drove from the hotel
they were staying in, an hour away, each day during this intense part of the
sampling. When the sampling was over, they would return to the college and
their usual lodgings.
When all of the pitfall
traps were set and the data collected for the morning, they took a break and
sat around or in the trucks to eat their lunch. It was really nice to sit and
listen to them talk over the day. Jack didn’t understand all of the things the
grownups were concerned about, but he did ask them if they had found anything
interesting yet.
His dad was reminded then
about the gopher tortoise and how he wanted to show it to Jack. They finished
up quickly and he and Jack set off on foot to find a spot about a quarter of a
mile away. Johnathan had to use a GPS unit to find it again in the scrubby pine
flatwoods. It was, after all, just a hole in the ground under a bush. After
some searching they finally found it by looking for tracks in the sand.
Johnathan explained that the
gopher tortoise was found primarily in Florida and Georgia as well as the South
Carolina sandhill areas. It was an animal of special importance because it was
considered a “keystone species”. Jack interrupted to ask what a keystone
species was. Johnathan explained that it was a creature that was especially
important in an ecosystem, because if it was lost, that loss would impact many,
many other animals and could even lead to the loss of the ecosystem. He said
that gopher tortoises made big holes in the sand to live in and lay eggs in.
Other animals loved to use those holes. The holes were important, because they
provided shelter from extreme temperatures, predators, and fire when it came.
Researchers had found snakes, frogs, burrowing owls, lizards, opossums, raccoons…
all kinds of animals living together in these holes. He said that the fact that
there was a gopher tortoise here so far north was very special and that they
mustn’t tell anyone else where this hole was, so that it would remain
undisturbed.
When they found the tracks,
they saw that they led under a bush, and pushing the bush aside, could see the
tortoise, itself, sitting there at the entrance! When it saw them, though, it
retreated further down the hole and wouldn’t come out. Johnathan said this was
a small tortoise and wondered out loud how it had ended up so far north. Gopher
tortoises could get to be as big as sixteen inches. This one was only about six
inches. Johnathan also pointed out a snake track and said it was probably
living in the burrow with the tortoise. Johnathan also said he wanted Jack to
do a report about the gopher tortoise and use it to tell the rest of the family
about what he saw that day.
Jack was pretty fascinated,
though he was already pretty hot and sweaty and was wondering how his dad did
this every day. No wonder he was so tired when he came home at night! They
headed back to the trucks, where Johnathan let Jack have a bit of a break. The
two students went off to record some data and check some old traps, and father
and son just sat on the tailgate for a bit enjoying the sound of the birds and
the quiet. There was a loud nasally “kack-kack-kack-kack” and a huge pileated
woodpecker flew up to a tree nearby to look at them and them flew off. Jack was
amazed! This was the biggest woodpecker he had ever seen! It was even bigger
than most of the crows!
The late afternoon was
filled with rechecking the traps they had set that morning. They would leave
them overnight and check them the next morning. Only one of them already had
something in it. It was a skink, which is something Jack saw around the house
all of the time.
When they finally went home
that evening, Jack was exhausted. He just wanted to climb into bed, but his mom
insisted that he remove all of his clothing in the laundry room and she checked
him over. She found three ticks on him. Ewww! He was so, so freaked out! He
loved animals but he hated ticks! Having had a lot of experience with
tick-removal though, they soon had them off of him and he was sent upstairs to
scrub himself really well in the shower.
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