It was heart retching to see a baby so emaciated!

I happened into the garage and, glancing down, discovered a hatchling Western banded gecko (scientifically named Colenyx variegatus) stuck in an empty dog bowl and nearly dead from starvation. 

Like other lizards, a banded gecko absorbs the last of the yolk sac inside its egg just before hatching—a bolster of nutrition to hold it over until its first meal. This little guy was days, maybe only hours old when he somehow slipped into the bowl and found the edges too steep for escape. I do not know how long he suffered without food or water before I finally spotted his miniscule frame and stooped in horror.

     I could hardly believe he was still alive.  Under two inches long, his body was mostly bone, his tail thin as a thread. And the skin along his sides had folded into long yellow stripes from dehydration.

Urgently, I carried the bowl into the kitchen and transported a single drop of life-giving water from my fingertip to a spot just in front of his face.

      He immediately smelled the moisture and began lapping up the liquid, eyelids closed in weakness and gratitude. 

                        I covered the bowl to let him recover his senses...

     ...and within twenty minutes the skin on his thorax had filled out. 

     My recuperating patient was then set up in a small terrarium with some native plant clippings and a hide box made from butter packaging. Kevin was sweet enough to stop at the pet store to buy pinhead crickets, two of which the gecko gobbled in an instant.  

I do not like to keep animals—wild creatures should be allowed to remain wild. Normally I'd just relocate a misplaced critter to a suitable outdoor spot around the house. But this gecko would never survive in such poor condition. A dazed lizard is quick food for wandering predators. Plus he needs energy to chase and catch prey, and a bit of tail fat to sustain him into the chill of winter.

        So he stayed with us for a few days. He rested. And ate.

            And a week later he appeared in much better shape. 

I knew I could not wait any longer to let him go. In fact, with October pulling down on the thermometer, I worried it might already be too late. I wanted to be sure his release offered enough time to stabilize in the environment before his first hibernation.

I contacted a friend (and reptile expert) at the zoo for advice and, looking at my photos, she agreed he showed significant improvement. She encouraged me to send him out as soon as possible, before the Fall temperatures could drop any lower.

          So, yesterday I picked a nice area with protective rocks and ground cover in the wash behind our house.

                                                             And... 

            I let the gecko go!

He was set free with a full belly and, I hope, the necessary resources to grow into adulthood. Like all releases, it was bitter-sweet for me, simultaneously thrilling and worrisome.

However, I did manage to click one final photo before that banded baby slinked under a rock and disappeared from sight.

                           And when I compare this picture to the first one, the one of him in the dog bowl—when I see his resilience, his fortitude—I am filled with confidence that he will, indeed, survive.

                         Farewell my small friend.

                                                                    God speed.

                                                      my head in bat guano... hey, gotta get the shot

You know me—I love bats! (You my recall my blog post on 2-6-09, “Going Batty in the Rainforest”.) And loving bats as I do, I have always wanted to make a trip to Tucson to see the large colonies of migratory Mexican Free tail bats (scientifically Tadarida brasiliensis) that flutter north into Arizona’s summer swelter. Thousands of them roost under Tucson’s expansion bridges between the months of May and October and their nightly emergence is a wildlife must-see!

So my husband, Kevin, and I hopped in the car and headed south. We carved the winding back roads from Scottsdale, a more scenic route that slips between thick creosote and towering saguaro, two hours of glorious, mostly unbroken desert. Arriving in Tucson, we parked near the crossroads of Campbell & River. The bridge spanning the Rillito River has one of the highest bat occupancies in the area and—bulging, all cameras and eagerness—we dashed down into the wash to survey the underside of the viaduct.

Although the tiny Chiropteras (the order means “hand-wing”) hide too deep in the expansion grooves to visualize during daylight hours, the ground beneath gives away their warm sleeping bodies; in the river bed, the sand is striped with thick brown, pebbly-looking bat guano (code for “poo”).

At this point it was still only 6pm and yellow beams still poked at overhead clouds, too high on the horizon. So we waited. We ate. We watched. And watched some more.

Then, about 7:15pm, just as the sun began her curtsies on a stage of purple mountains, we started to see little bat faces peeking out from the blackness. What a delight! Thousands of wrinkled noses and pink tongues edged into the dusky air, anxious to twist and swirl into the cobalt world.

Soon bat chitter rang between concrete and stony earth, a rumpus of squeaks and screeches and clicks, a ruckus, a rally—precursor to one of nature’s greatest performances!

7:35. Let the show begin! Clouds of tumbling brown fell, swooped and rolled away to the west, hungry bat bellies seeking the night’s feast.

Ask anyone to name the five animals classified as amphibians and you are sure to be told:  FROGS, followed by… TOADS! Or vice versa.

Another moment of thought will probably deliver… SALAMANDERS (but of course—who doesn’t love a slime-covered sallie???)

Push even further and maybe, just maybe, your subject will offer up a questionable… NEWTS? Yes. Very good! But there’s one more.

At this point you are likely to get a blank stare. Hmmmm... what IS the fifth amphibian?

The answer: CAECILIANS.

                                (Category:Caeciliidae Photographer: User:Dawson The head end is in the water. From english Wikipedia.)

I learned about caecilians some years back, but only recently got a real glimpse at them. The zoo acquired two aquatic caecilians a few weeks ago, and I had the good fortune of working as a keeper for a couple days while they were in quarantine. I have to admit, they were pretty cool in person!

These unique animals appear to be a cross between earthworms and snakes, but are directly related to neither. Instead they are their own special brand of amphibian living in tropical regions of Central and S. America, Africa and South-East Asia.

Like all “phibs”, caecilians metamorphosize from gilled to air-breathing forms, they have smooth skin that secretes toxins to deter predators, and most move comfortably between land and water.

But caecilians differ from frogs, toads, salamanders and newts in one very obvious way…

They are limbless.

Other amphibians sport four legs for walking on land. Not caecilians. They spend most of their time underground, residing in a network of tunnels where legs are not a helpful adaptation. For movement the caecilian’s body is ringed with skin folds called annuli, perfect for squirming through soft earth.

With their burrowing lifestyle, caecilians don’t need to see or hear well. Therefore, they lack ear holes entirely—which would get full of dirt anyway—and have only tiny eyes for detecting light and dark.

Their skulls are thick and pointy. They have fleshy tentacles between the nostrils and eyes to help them sense prey (Cool Fact Alert… no other amphibian has tentacles). And inside their mouth they have dozens of sharp teeth to catch and gobble dinner… things like worms, snakes, insects, pupae, and even other caecilians!

There are 124 known species, which range in length between 3.5 inches and… get this…  5 feet! In zoos they have lived up to 13 years. And in some species, the babies eat their mother’s skin for nourishment—that’s definitely weird!

Still, we know very little about caecilians. Let’s face it, most people have never seen one. Heck, a good portion of humanity doesn’t even know they exist!

Isn’t that true about so many of Earth’s creatures? We still have so much to discover!

Well, at least I can finally check the box for seeing a caecilian; although it was in the zoo…

                                                       two aquatic caecilians at feeding time 

Maybe someday, with luck, I will see one of these interesting animals in the wild.

 It was an honor to see Macho B in the flesh. To touch his warm amber fur, trace fingertips across black markings I’d seen only in photographs. To feel him breathing—chest lifting gently beneath my hand—and hear his steady heartbeat through the length of my stethoscope.

What an unlikely surprise, a rare gift, to be working at the zoo the day Macho B arrived, a jaguar known across oceans and held nearly sacred among conservationists in the American Southwest. A jaguar whose story I had followed for over a decade.

But our time was short. His aged kidneys were failing.

For our veterinary team, the streaming minutes were spent in motion. The doctors did an extensive physical examination. We set monitors, added fluids, drew blood, took radiographs. And vitals—always the vitals—I constantly rechecked them in succession. Heart rate. Respiration. Pulse Ox. Temperature. EKG. Our well-trained movements juxtaposed Macho B’s stillness.

He knew nothing of us and our human compassion. Through it all he remained sedated, his eyes lost in the unconscious gaze of sleepers.

It was a heartrending moment when the truth became clear: despite our urgent care and silent hope, there was no way to heal his ailments—no way to reverse the clock. He was estimated to be sixteen years old, and beyond the diagnosed renal failure he had other issues, too. Time steals health from us all.

Freedom from pain and stress was the most humane offering. I looked around the room; faces were drawn with sadness, eyes tipping with tears. My own heart, too, heaved with sorrow as I felt that beloved feline slip from this world.

In the forest, the death of a wild jaguar would be news to none but vultures and insects. Macho B was a wild jaguar. Yet his death reached round the globe like wildfire sparking across AP, phone lines and emails. He garnered international coverage.

Why, you may ask?  It’s an interesting chronicle to be sure...

Jaguars once inhabited the southwestern United States as far north as the Grand Canyon. By the 1950s only a few remained. The last female jaguar was shot and killed in Arizona in 1963. Although listed as an Endangered Species in 1972, jaguars were believed to be extirpated in our country.

That is, until 1996.

Six months apart, two separate hunters treed and photographed adult male jaguars in southeast Arizona and Panthera onca was resurrected as a United States species.

In the following years, protections were put in place, habitats held open and camera traps set to research the large cats’ territories. As more motion-triggered cameras were added, more images were captured. And the most commonly seen jaguar was Macho B, readily identified by a mark on his left flank that looked rather like…

                                                                      ...well, like Betty Boop.

Here’s a 2007 Smithsonian article about Macho B, the conservation program and the history of jaguars in the United States: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/prowl-200711.html.

Then a few weeks ago Macho B was accidently caught in a trap and biologists took the opportunity to fit him with a GPS collar before releasing him. That collar later showed him to be moving poorly, so he was recaptured and helicoptered up to the Phoenix Zoo for care.

An article in National Geographic describes the circumstances surrounding his death: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090303-jaguar-update.html.

Macho B was an icon, respected and adored. On a personal level, I will always cherish the miracle of our acquaintance. But his legacy was more than the connection we made with him as an individual. He reclaimed a piece of American soil—a powerful reminder that jaguars belong to this land. He rallied us to preserve vital natural space between Mexico and the U.S.—that he survived sixteen years in the wild shows land conservation efforts work.

Fate may have placed me at the zoo that day, but I don’t want to be one of the last Americans to see a native jaguar. We must continue to protect the habitat in hopes another young male overtakes the territory, perhaps expands or adds a family. Just imagine tiny jaguar cubs romping along paths that Macho B once roamed.

That is the way of things. Generations pass on, inviting new life.

Staking his birthright as a historical predator—observed without contact—Macho B was a special link to the natural world. He lived with dignity and died a legend. Yes, that magnificent bespeckled feline certainly left his mark.

                                     May man honor his life and God rest his soul.