…but it’s not from the bottom of the sea.  If you had a hard time with the centipede or the solpugid, you may wish to look away.  Or not…

This is one of my favorite desert arthropods ever, in kind of an oscillating horrified/fascinated can’t look away from photos of the train wreck kind of way.

It’s a Tailless Whip Scorpion, or an Amblypygid.  Let me just say at the outset that it is completely harmless to humans, and has neither stinger nor venom nor powerful jaws like its “cousins” scorpions, spiders, or solpugids.  Like them, it’s an arachnid, but it has its own Order, Amblypygi.  It’s got narrow pincer-like pedipalps to capture and hold its small pray items which it detects with the long sensory appendages. The other six legs (as an arachnid, it’s got 8 altogether) are used for scuttling about.

>>A live “Rock lobster” on our front cinderblock wall; note that I do not have my hand nearby for scale. Also note that the entire creature is not in the photo: at least another two-inches of “feeler-leg” is out of frame in the upper right.  (Photo E. Shock)

But, it’s really big.  A few years back, I found one in the garage, all folded up with its legs held close to its flat, broad, segmented body.  Hoping to liberate it back to whence it came (the wash in our yard), I approached it with a glass jar and a postcard.  It saw me and moved a few feet away, very quickly and sideways like a crab.  Then it extended its long front pair of legs and suddenly my Bonne Maman jam jar seemed totally inadequate.  I had to get a plastic Trader Joe’s ginger cookie container and a 9×12″ manila envelope to cap it off with, so as not to crush the lil dude’s end leg segments.  Capturing the fast-moving skitterer involved two of us, a fair amount of herding and chasing, and some undignified screeching as feelers encountered fingers.  An odd sensory relic of this capture is that, having just bought new tires for the Honda, the whole garage smelled strongly of new rubber: the whipscorpion’s shiny black exoskeleton looked like a plausible rubbery source of this odor, and every time I’ve seen one since, my mind’s nose smells new tires.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the “Rock Lobster” — we’re due for a sighting, and this is the perfect time of year to find them abroad on warm Monsoon nights.

Here’s a pleasant fact about tailless whip scorpions, courtesy Wikipedia:

Amblypygids, particularly the species Phrynus marginemaculatus and Damon diadema, are thought to be one of the few species of arachnids that show signs of social behavior. Research conducted at Cornell University by entomologists suggests that mother amblypygids communicate with their young by caressing the offspring with her anteniform front legs. Further, in an experiment where two or more siblings were placed in an unfamiliar environment, such as a cage, they would seek each other out and gather back in a group.

Is that not adorable?

A centipede, a solifuge, now a dinosaur: all have recently made an appearance on our back porch.

Just now, I was sitting in the den with the sliding door open, when suddenly a winged dinosaur landed on the bricks right outside and ran up to the screen-door, its tail held high behind it like a velociraptor.

Greater roadrunner (Photo A.Shock)>>

Although my camera was inches from my feet, I couldn’t move without spooking the creature, so I sat still and watched it forage for a few minutes, searching around the furniture, planters, and nooks just outside the door for goodies. Goodies like centipedes and solifuges, I suppose, and geckos, all of whom might be hiding in their concealed day roosts.

When the bird moved away, I grabbed the camera and followed, only able to get a blurry shot as it looked down at me from the palo verde tree by the wash. Greater roadrunners (Geococcyx californianus) are fairly common in the Phoenix area, but we see them in our yard only occasionally — not every week or even every month. It’s always a surprise and a thrill when one swings by.

“I assure you,” the solpugid says, “it’s good you are bigger than me.  Otherwise… well, I couldn’t account for my actions.”

(Photos A.Shock)

Here’s the whole creature, my hand for scale:

Hoover, the semi-tame African Collared Dove who hangs out in our neighborhood, has been a bachelor for a while. But earlier this summer, we observed him in the company of a female dove who appeared to be a smallish Eurasian Collared Dove, a naturalized old world species that has become very numerous across the US. African Collared Doves are also non-native but less common; our Phoenix-area neighborhood just happens to sustain a small population probably descended from birds released in nearby Papago Park a couple decades ago.

We wondered if these two had something going on. We may have had our answer this morning, when Hoover showed up for his daily handout with Offspring. Darker than its parent, the young one was just starting to develop the black neck-ring that both of its parents have. The little dove didn’t fall very far from the branch; after some jostling, both birds settled in for a feed on E‘s outstretched hand.

The young one has the typical gangly, big-beaked look of an immature dove. (Photo A.Shock)

By the way, I don’t recommend hand-feeding wild birds. Hoover was initially hand-tamed by soft-hearted neighbors. We inherited the “responsibility” sort of accidentally, while caring for our neighbor’s yard a while ago, and have continued it out of the same soft-hearted impulse. Now the behavior seems to be being passed on to the next generation. Time will tell if the youngster will learn Hoover’s in-your-face-wheedling technique of zooming low over our heads whenever we’re outside and he’s in the mood for safflower seeds.

(This is the eighth and final installment in a series. To read previous episodes, click here: The Ganskopf Incident or on The Ganskopf Incident category in the sidebar to the left. The earliest posts are at the bottom, scroll down to read them chronologically from the bottom up.)

As [Danneru] turned, a little tea sloshed from his cup onto the floor, but he moved away without noticing. Miss Laguna had gone to retrieve the desired journal, and I was face to face with the fragrant artifact…

Realizing that this was a piece I wouldn’t have another chance to see, let alone draw, I sketched carefully but fast. Also, Dr. Danneru was watching me work, which I found moderately irritating. After Miss Laguna had brought the dull green journal he’d requested, instead of reading it, he’d put his mostly full mug of tea on the table nearby and unexpectedly settled himself in the chair next to me, a little too close for perfect ease. Periodically he’d make a small sound of enlightenment, and jot something down on his notes, but mostly he watched my drawing progress. Ignoring this scrutiny, I kept working, adding detail and shading, building up volume and trying to capture the translucence of the little figurine.

The scholar’s proximity proved to be useful, however. At one point I paused as I detailed the lower edge of the piece, not knowing how to proceed without referring to the underside of the small figure, which I couldn’t see, or touch to turn over. Dr. Danneru noticed my hesitation, and after checking Miss Laguna’s whereabouts he reached out, criminally barehanded, and gently rolled the piece onto its back on the padded tray. Afterwards, the guilty fingertip brushed his lip in a conspiratorial request for silence, which I had no intention of breaking.

Before long I was through, and stood back to check my drawn work against its source object: a visual proof-reading, making certain I’d placed on the paper all the information needed to transmit the form and spirit of the spectacular little figure successfully to a hypothetical viewer who would never see the original object. Dr. Danneru stood, too. “Satisfied?” he asked, regarding me obliquely. I nodded, and he summoned Miss Laguna, who came over directly. She seemed relieved to be putting the item away; I suspected she didn’t feel quite right about the “irregularity” of letting me draw the piece, even sanctioned by Dr. Danneru’s haughty authority.

Satisfied? It was an unusual choice of words, but I was satisfied: in my sketch I’d captured both the precision of the artisan’s work, and the vivid imagery carved in the fragrant tree-gem. I’ve included the finished rendering here, since I think that the drawing will give a better idea of the remarkable piece than my words could.

As I finished, it was just nine o’clock, closing time. Out in the main reading room, the janitor was pushing a drymop around the chairs, shoving each one in tidily after she cleaned under it. The thick glass that separated the main room from Special Collections muted the skid of the chairs’ heavy wooden feet on the linoleum floor. The janitor was nodding her head rhythmically to music we couldn’t hear, coming from an aged radio perched on top of her supplies cart. The security guard smiled and said something, and she smiled too and kept dipping her head and guiding the broom. On our cloistered side of the glass, Miss Laguna, Ganskopf Special Collections Librarian, still pristine-fingered in her purple non-latex gloves, took up the tray with the small amber sculpture on it, to nestle it safely in its climate-stabilized, fire-proofed, motion-detectored, authorized personnel only, pest-free drawer in Secured Stacks.

As she passed me, she stepped in the small pool of contraband tea spilled earlier by Dr. Danneru.

The Ganskopf Foundation is an august and well-funded institution, its seasoned custodial staff diligent and conscientious. Each week without fail they buff the Library’s venerable linoleum to a waxy gleam, imparting to its smooth surface an elegant sheen.

In an instant the librarian’s foot slipped from under her, and her hands involuntarily jerked upward, still clutching the tray. While we watched helplessly, the precious object launched straight into the air over our heads, turning over and over – each turn in its tumbling arc seemingly lasting an eon – then it plunged back down from its height. Suddenly spry, Dr. Danneru lunged forward, palm outstretched, but I was in his path, and we collided. I crashed hard into the heavy wooden table, which lurched, sloshing a warm wave of tea from the mug, drenching my soluble sketch.

The plummeting object actually brushed his reaching fingertips, but this barely altered its descent. I heard someone swear loudly – I don’t know which of us did – loudly enough so that through the glass I saw the janitor turn, her mouth open, catching sight of the commotion. Then I heard the sound of bright amber shattering, brittle against old linoleum.

Then silence.

Ribs aching, I pushed myself off the table and stared. Amber was everywhere – liquid amber tea soaking the white paper and umber lines I’d drawn; the scholar’s shocked amber eyes open wide above a wrist pressed ineffectually against his mouth; glittering fragments of amber sprayed across the floor; shivered amber spangling Miss Laguna’s dark skirt and shoes where she sprawled among the fragrant shards, cradling one arm.

“Leyla, are you all right?” Dr. Danneru asked, bending towards her, hands outstretched. The librarian shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again; she looked angry, and her cheeks were wet. He helped her up, their shoes crunching amber grit. It seemed as if the scholar wasn’t concerned about trying to recover what was left of the object he’d just been studying so minutely, so intimately. It was me, the non-expert, kneeling on the floor meticulously collecting shards, carefully trying to gather them up, keep them together. Dr. Danneru told me, “Leave it.” I looked up. He said quietly, “That’s what conservation departments are for.”

It was at this point that the security guard, alerted by the janitor, tardily burst into the room. Absurdly, his hand was hovering over his sidearm, in case shooting was called for. “Is everything all right in here?” he asked.

No one said a thing.

__________________________________________________________________

(stay tuned for the Epilogue to the Ganskopf Incident)

(This post newly updated with better link to owl sound)

Here’s a Spectacled owl (Pulsatrix perspicillata), staring hard at us from its perch in the tropical lowlands of Sarapiquí in Costa Rica.  What could be more delightful than a cinnamon-and-cholcolate owl with white “spectacles?”

I have the answer: one that makes a strange, rapidly pulsating noise like a ray-gun, pwup-pwup-pwup-pwup.  Click on this previous post for etymological details of its scientific name.

(Photo A.Shock)

I’m dying to make one out of clay — a jar perhaps, with a swiveling head?

…of the newest Maricopa County Audubon Society newsletter, the Fall 2010 CactusWrendition, is a very nice photo article on Three Star Owl.  Thanks, Emily Morris, for putting it together.

Last big monsoon event brought rain and a spadefoot to our Phoenix area yard. Tuesday night’s big monsoon event brought even more rain and a centipede.

This guy is a Scolopendra polymorphus, a Sonoran centipede, sometimes called a tiger centipede. This one is about 4 inches long (they can grow up to about 7 inches), and has crawled up the outside of our back door screen, possibly in search of prey, or maybe to escape flooding in the nearby soil, where it very likely dens up.

It’s a beautiful animal, although I have to admit I’m not partial to centi- or milli-pedes (it may be all the pointy little appendages) but as this one’s a neighbor, I’m trying to be inclusive. Apparently, I’m not the only one who has a hard time liking them. Our cat, Hector Halfsquid, spent the evening on the inside of the wet screendoor alternately approaching hesitantly and hurriedly backing away from the centipede, giving the impression of being simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by it.

(Photos A.Shock)

In fact, even today he’s still giving occasional neurotic “creepy hops” where from deep sleep he suddenly jumps out of his skin, apparently having received Gary-Larson-esque “cumulative willies” from the many-legged visitor. Hector’s wariness is probably justified, as these guys can deliver a powerful and venomous bite; not dangerous in most cases, but certainly painful.