Beach Creatures - Part Trois

Beach Creatures – Part Trois

While their saga will continue with future shenanigans yet to be experienced, this blog will be the last dedicated exclusively to our beach creatures. This one concerns the terrestrials that come and go and which are fewer in number than our avian and aquatic friends. However, that’s not to say that several of our encounters haven’t been somewhat intense!

The common species that visit our cove include rabbits, moles and their cousins, rats, mice, a ferret (or weasel), deer, raccoons, and the river otters. Some are just passing through when they appear and others take up residence (or attempt to).

One of the earliest encounters after acquiring the beach house was with an otter that had gotten under the house. At the time, the beach was a weekend place with gainful employment in the big city taking up all my spare time. On arrival on a Friday evening, it was obvious from the odor that the place had been invaded. The house has only about an eighteen inch high crawl space underneath and somehow an otter had found its way in and decided to stay. They are cute to look at but not the least bit tidy as housekeepers (which I readily empathize with). Their habits cause them to bring their fish catches home with them to be eaten at their leisure. When they are full of dinner, the remaining fish carcass lays wherever it was last gnawed on and it doesn’t take long for these remains to become disgustingly odiferous. After consulting with neighbors and friends who sympathized but were not helpful, a fish and wildlife “expert” suggested scattering mothballs under the house to drive them out. This proved to be a case where the cure was almost worse than the disease. It required first that I had to squeeze into the crawl space to scatter the mothballs (I was both younger and thinner then) and then created a combined and intensified odor with the otter’s contribution that rendered the house uninhabitable for several succeeding weekends. After a final airing out, blessedly, the otters have stayed out from under the house ever since and I never did find their entrance.

My next door neighbor had a similar problem under an old cabin (since torn down) next to their house. So, one Saturday I had brought my 8-year old son and his friend Scotty to the beach and we volunteered to help him get rid of his otter. He tore up several deck planks on the small cabin porch which gave direct access to the crawl space which was facing their boat slip. I went to the back of the cabin and prepared to fire my .22 pistol into the ground next to a hole in the ground connecting also to the crawl space. The idea was that the noise would scare the otter into leaving. I fired the first shot with no response from the otter. Meanwhile, the boys had gone around to the water side and were standing in front of the opening in the deck hoping to see the animal. A second shot also did not produce any response. With the third shot, the otter apparently decided it was getting too noisy there and it literally exploded out of the deck opening direct at the boys. Both boys were bowled over and the otter, undeterred by their being in the way, ran out the slip and into the water not to be seen again. The experience left the boys completely “gee-whizzed” for some time.

The cat that preceded Fred was Casey (after Mighty Casey at Bat). Casey was a stray that wandered in one day at our city house and stayed. She was a small indoor/outdoor cat that knew how to survive in the wild but decided that roughing it all the time wasn’t the best way to live her life. So, over my protestations, and aided and abetted by their grandmother, my kids prevailed and Casey moved in. With her insistent cuddling on my lap, she and I first formed a truce but in short order bonded and became best friends (BFF’s in today’s lingo). She would come with me to the beach on weekends, often just the two of us on Friday evenings. On one such summer evening, I was sitting quietly in the living room reading the local paper with the sliding door open. I heard a small, muffled “meow” at the door and got up to let her in. To my surprise, Casey had a fully grown rabbit as big as she was by the ears and had marched the rabbit up to the door, I presume as an offering to me which she often did with moles or garter snakes. I rescued the rabbit who took off like the devil himself was chasing it and brought Casey in. About a month later, the same thing happened again only this time it was a small bunny just several months old. She had it by the ears again. Often, Casey would sit in the lane during the day and stare intently at the bordering hillside, sometimes for an hour at a time. More often than not, she would spot a disturbance in the brush and would bring home a mole or snake as her contribution to our subsistence. One afternoon, an elderly gentleman from the nursing home on the hill behind the beach wandered into the yard where I was working and sat down on a lawn chair to chat. He was a retired merchant sailor chock full of stories. Casey wandered in and checked him out and he asked her name. What he heard was “K.C.” vs. Casey and after a moment’s thought said “Oh, Kitty Cat” which I thought was a remarkable connection for him.

The moles, over time, have been a chronic problem. Most are ordinary looking but there is a variety that has multiple short, pink fleshy protrusions around their nose which, head-on, looks like a sunflower. They were a constant problem for years for me as well as the neighbors on either side. One of the neighbors is the epitome of the Bill Murray character in Caddy Shack and has been for years. As a result, he gets a lot of teasing from me. At first, when they came up in my yard, I would open their run and put the garden hose in with the water running. I probably put at least a thousand gallons of water down their hole to absolutely no avail. Next, I tried burying poison smoke bombs from the hardware store in their runs. Didn’t work. I tried the mothball trick. Didn’t work. Then I started watering the lawn only once or twice through the summer. The grass stayed green and not only did it result in only having to mow a couple of times a year but it apparently caused the worms and grubs to go elsewhere. Since these are mole food, the moles quit coming up in the yard and confined their travels to the flower beds where they are not doing any damage. However, one mole apparently tunneled under my deck over to the neighbor’s yard and is driving him nuts. I half expect to see him sitting on his porch with a loaded gun in the middle of the night watching for the mole to come up again. It would seem that this mole-mania is catching too because one of his four sons is equally paranoid about the mole.

One spring morning I came out in the yard and noticed a couple of small indentations in the flower bed. I realized that this was where I had planted new gladiolus bulbs a day or two before. When I dug into the indentations there were no bulbs. At first, I thought it was the mole getting them but did not know they weren’t vegetarians. More bulbs disappeared over the next several days and finally, quite by accident, I saw a rat run through the flower bed. It was living under the outer deck. Our island has a known rat problem. So, I put out a rat trap at what I thought was the nest entrance and within a day caught a big rat. That ended the bulb thefts immediately and now I know that rats are not only omnivores but can be vegetarians!

There have been occasional deer come down on the beach, but only infrequently. I suspect they come down to lick the salty rocks. One time there was a lone raccoon that came by but I never saw it again. There is a ferret or weasel that used to live under the neighbor’s outer deck. It would occasionally poke its head up through the very narrow openings between the deck boards. How it could manage that is a mystery. If Fred the cat spotted it he would act startled and make a kind of whimpering sound. Now, it appears to be living next door under some concrete steps down to the beach.

Mice have been an off-again/on-again problem in the carport storage areas. On more than one occasion I have gone out to the carport in the evening and when I flipped on the light found myself staring directly at the cutest, most appealing, big eared little mouse face imaginable. They have almost cartoon-like faces but are not something I want to cohabitate with. I have used traps baited with walnuts, which they love, with some success. More successfully, I used DeCon Mouseproof pellets. One early morning I stepped out on the deck to admire the beautiful weather we were having and noticed some movement in the grass out of the corner of my eye. When I looked carefully I could see it was a mouse staggering across the lawn. It would take three or four steps then stop and throw up. Then, another few steps and barf again. Obviously, it had eaten the DeCon and was on its way to the big nest in the sky. I felt terrible to be the perpetrator and have not had occasion to use DeCon again!

Recently, I had a lot of difficulty trying to rid myself of at least one and maybe two otters that had taken up residence under my outer deck. The second one was only here briefly and I'm assuming the one that hung around for several months is the mom who has annually had pups around here for the last several years. The second one was probably a guy who split as soon as he got her pregnant! I call her “mom” and she was extremely efficient at defeating or ignoring my attempts to get rid of her. She freely used my yard as her bathroom and was really messy. Although encouraged by some neighbors and friends, there was no way I was willing to shoot her.  My first attempt was to block the entrance under the deck with several loaded flower pots. These weighed about 15 pounds and she simply moved them out of the way! Next I blocked the entrance with rocks and flower pots. Same result. Then I tried pouring a witches brew I made from habanera and jalapeno peppers into the opening. She loved it. Next was the old mothball trick. I scattered them around under the deck and the next day found them neatly piled by the entrance like she had just piled them there. Finally, I saw her leave the den one morning and rushed to block the entrance with concrete pavers. This worked and I haven’t seen her since but once or twice she did try unsuccessfully to dig her way back in.

One morning, before I got the entrance blocked, I was standing on the deck looking out front toward the water and saw mom running hell bent for election across the neighbor’s bulkhead heading for her "home" under my deck. As she got closer, I could see she had a good sized fish in her mouth and very close behind her came a screaming eagle, legs and talons extended, obviously after the fish and maybe mom too. By the time she got to my bulkhead, she had spit the fish over the side and was now running for her life. Apparently the eagle didn't see her drop the fish as he kept coming and got perilously close to grabbing her as she dashed across the lawn toward her den entrance 10 feet in front of the deck. I tried to shoo her away but she was so totally focused on getting home that I don't think she even saw me.  As she ducked into the entrance, the eagle swooped over not 10 feet away but too late to get her. The eagle went to the perch tree behind the house, waiting, I imagine, to see if the otter was foolish enough to come back out, which she did not. High drama on the old beachfront!

So, with this trilogy of blogs on the creatures we are blessed with here at the beach, I’ll move on to other topics later.

Beach Creatures – Part Deux

Hopefully, this will not sound like a natural science lecture. But, I find the wildlife here at the beach to be a never-ending source of interest.

While not as numerous as our avian friends here at the beach, there are plenty of terrestrial and aquatic creatures that keep life interesting. We have rabbits, a ferret, moles, rats, deer, raccoons, mice, and feral cats on the land side and river otters which are neither land nor water creatures exclusively.

On the water side, there are several clam varieties, mussels, moon snails, worms, mud shrimp, limpets, whelks, chitons, barnacles galore, anemones, spiny sea urchins, starfish, tiny sand and hermit crabs, and the occasional nudibranch (colorful, small hairy sea slug) in the intertidal zone. This area of the beach also supports large colonies of a variety of brown, green and nearly black seaweeds, large kelp and sea/eel grass which serves as an incubator for salmon fry and small species that are food for larger fish. Some varieties of seaweed are gathered by residents for making specialty foods. The seaweeds firmly attach themselves anywhere to the rocks. The larger varieties like the giant kelp spread roots around smaller rocks much like a grasping hand which is known as a “holdfast”.

Our tide varies from a minus 3.5 feet or lower to a plus 13.5 ft or higher over the course of a year. Of course, there are two high and two low tides each day, generally occurring within that range. Since the beach has a shallow slope to deeper water, the tidal range creates a large intertidal zone which is uncovered twice a day and which accommodates these species. With the lowest tides, a person is able to walk several hundred yards out from the beach without encountering the bottom dropoff and water any more than waist deep. The beach denizens generally orient themselves in bands running parallel to the shoreline, seeming to prefer certain shallow water depths and/or temperatures for their “homes”. Further out in open water, there are several salmon varieties, sea-run cutthroat trout, skates, bullheads (sculpin), several varieties of crabs, perch, small flounder-like flatfish, dogfish (small sharks), sea lions, dolphins, whales – both grey and orca, and many other species that we never get to see. However, during the several extra-low tides in the summer of each year, an occasional unfortunate small open-water individual will get trapped in a tide pool and have to wait until the tide returns to swim free. On one occasion, a large perch was trapped in a derelict crab pot on our beach and had to be set free.

The two most prevalent species in the intertidal zone are the clams and mussels, both generally good to eat. The clams live just below the surface of the beach and extend a neck up to the mud surface to feed. . Digging them out for making fried clams or chowder requires a bit of effort. They are detectable by a small dimple in the mud around the neck or, more easily, when disturbed and they squirt a jet of water several feet into the air when the tide withdraws. A nearby footstep is enough to trigger their squirt and, sometimes when directly underfoot, it goes right up a pantleg! With the tide out, on a sunny day we are treated to a “dancing waters” display of clams randomly squirting, unprovoked except by their own exuberance. When digging clams, it’s not unusual to also find thousand-legged sand worms up to a foot long and small mudshrimp that are not good to eat.

Mussels are mostly black or deep blue colored with an occasional brown shell. They locate on the beach surface and attach themselves tenaciously to rocks in colonies by threadlike “beards”. Looking across an expanse of beach it can appear black because there are so many. The density of the colonies, however, varies widely from year to year since winter storms can transport large amounts of sand to the beach which covers them the following season and they must generate new colonies. When picked, their beards must be removed before steaming, but they reward the pallet in numerous recipes.

Moon snails are somewhat of an oddity. They are fist-sized snails and are eaten by some folks. Their eggs cases are large, a six to ten inch diameter sheet of grey sandy material with a foam plastic appearance and a collared opening in the center. These egg cases are found scattered around the beach in their spawning season.

Other intertidal species like limpets, chitons, and barnacles attach themselves either by suction or by a very effective adhesive to the rocks typically high on the beach and remain static. Limpets are small, Chinese-hat shaped creatures considered a delicacy in Japan. Chitons are flat creatures up to a few inches in length with a segmented, armored shell similar in appearance to an armadillo.

Barnacles are the ubiquitous denizens of the salt water environment. They adhesively attach themselves to anything that moves (or that doesn’t) whether it is boat hulls, rocks, crabs, fish, whales and even seaweed. They tend to gather in large colonies, often on rocks, high up on the beach. Their sizes vary from miniscule to an inch or more in diameter. When viewed underwater, they will open and extend delicate tentacles like the pistils in a flower in order to feed.

Some of the most desirable open water creatures are the crabs, succulent Dungeness and rock crab varieties. There are spider crabs as well but, while interesting to see, these are not edible. Like game fish, crab trapping is carefully regulated to assure the sustainability of the species. Only male crabs of edible size may be kept and the trapping season this year runs weekends only for the two months of July and August. Our cove seems to be a hot spot for crabbing. At times there may be 8-10 pots or more showing, all placed near the bottom dropoff several hundred yards out from the beach. During the commercial crabbing season, 30 or more pots are out front in the same general area and the attending boats are equipped with hoists to help in pulling the pots. The seagulls are wise to the commercial crabbers. When the pot is pulled, female and undersized crabs are hand sorted out and thrown back in the water. The gulls swarm around the boats when that happens and attempt to grab a rejected crab before it sinks.

Other types of crabs are plentiful on the beach. These are small sand crabs and hermit crabs. The sand crabs are only a quarter-inch to an inch across and hide in small puddles under the rocks on the beach. Turning over any rock may reveal 10-20 in a colony and, when exposed, they make their sideways run to hide again under an adjacent rock. The hermit crabs are curious small soft creatures. They appropriate an empty whelk or moon snail shell and move in. If disturbed, they withdraw into the shell closing the opening with a large claw. Hermit crabs move along the bottom with several legs that poke out of the shell opening along with the claw. As they grow, they will discard their shell and find a larger one.

Starfish frequent the beach and tend to be found in shallow water. Up to about10-12 inches across, they occur in a rainbow of colors from grey to brown to shades of red, purple, orange and green. Typically with five arms or webbed arm-like lobes, they move about slowly. Even though the arms are covered with a hard coarse covering, they are flexible. The bottom of each arm is covered with hundreds of tiny tube-like “feet” that are actually suction cups. They will wrap their arms around an unlucky clam and, using their suction attachment to the clam’s shell, will apply a steady pull to open the clam. When the clam tires and opens, the starfish will extend its stomach through its mouth into the clam and proceed to digest it in-situ so to speak. Several times there has been a seagull sitting on the bulkhead with several arms of a small starfish protruding from its beak. The starfish had apparently used its suction feet to attach to the inside of the gull’s mouth. One other variety of starfish can be found here and that’s the sun star or sunflower star. This variety is a foot or more in diameter, orange in color and has 20 short arms arrayed around it’s perimeter like a fringe.

In the summertime we are often visited by pancake-shaped moon jellyfish that may be a foot or more in diameter and range in color from clear to shades of brown/orange. Often at low tide one can be found stranded on the dry beach. Their name is no misnomer since they appear to be made of firm transparent gelatin with some colored interior organ patterns.

Larger gamefish like salmon do not normally come close in to the shallower beach water. Fishing for them requires trolling from a boat. From time to time, often in the evenings, salmon and other fish can be seen jumping out of the water, sometimes as high as their own body length or more. They are either feeding on smaller fish or are being chased by a sea lion. The sea lions swim just under the surface of the water with only the crown of their head , eyes and nostrils showing above water. Several summers ago, one fat sea lion spent several months in the daytime sprawled on a large rock on the beach. He would orient himself to expose his belly to the direct sun with his flippers splayed out as if ready to embrace the sun. He was apparently a visitor from Southern California!

When the whales come by it’s an event, especially if they’re orcas. The grey’s that come by are largely loners. They lumber past with their backs undulating above and below the water surface, occasionally flipping their tail, and, periodically, noisily blowing a great spray of mist (and probably bad breath) from the blowhole at the back of their head. There is an area several miles south of our cove where the grey’s go to feed. The bottom there is comprised mostly of a mix of mud and sand with very few rocks. When the tide goes out, a number of long shallow troughs are visible where the grey’s have scooped up a large amount of the bottom and water. They then spit it back out through their broom-like baleen which filters out shrimp, worms and other edible creatures (and probably some that are not edible!).

 Three or four years ago an entire pod of orcas paraded by, enormous dorsal fins erect. They were grouped in what I assume were families of about 2 to 5 and totaled 60 or more in number. As they were spread out a bit, it took a half hour or so for the first and last to pass, an incredible sight. Whenever the whales are present, island residents turn out in droves and line the bluffs to watch. Several years ago, a pod of Dall’s porpoise came by. These are colored black and white, much like the orcas, but noticeably smaller and with a short dorsal fin.

Other open-water species in the neighborhood include sea-run cutthroat trout, skates, bullheads, small flounder and dogfish which are small, 2-5 ft long sharks. The cutthroats are a great fighting sport fish. The bullheads that the kids delight in catching from the bulkhead are small, ugly, spiny fish with a very large mouth. They are mostly a bottom dweller. On one occasion, two small skates with a wingspread of about three feet were trapped in a tide pool in the cove as one of the years very low tides withdrew. They ultimately escaped when the tide returned.

More about our land-side species including otter escapades in another blog and then, perhaps, on to other subjects.