Wildlife

Great Plains Skink. Gary M. Stolz/USFWS	An armadillo. Photo by John and Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS.
This fine fellow is a bobcat. Photo by Conrad Fijetland/USFWS.	Coyote. No photographer listed. USFWS
Red Fox. Photo by Jim Frates/USFWS.	Spoonbill. Artwork by Timothy Knepp/USFWS.

The armadillo is a newcomer to Missouri, as are the pelicans I watched a couple of weeks ago as they fished the Osage River below Truman Dam. Climate change is having an impact on our local wildlife, driving some species northwards and bringing others in from the south. Lately I've even heard stories about wild razorback hogs making their way up into Missouri from Arkansas. I hope they never make it this far north: Those things are vicious!

Bobcats are around, but shy and seldom seen. I see foxes regularly and hear coyotes howling nearly every night. There's a good sized deer population in my area and, in fact, they pose a serious driving hazard. Squirrels, rabbits, possums, and raccoons are all plentiful.

There are a lot of turkeys -- I saw three hens on my way to work this morning, in fact -- and geese winter over here. Smaller birds we see a lot of include bluebirds (Missouri's state bird) and bluejays, cardinals, orioles, barn swallows, and hummingbirds. Killdeer are charming birds that nest in long grass. The parents will feign injury to lead intruders away, just like Darzee's wife in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The whippoorwill is a seldom-seen nightbird whose distinctive cry coming from the hollow is one of the hallmarks of a Missouri summer.

Local reptiles and amphibians include box turtles, alligator turtles, the skink (a small, brightly-colored lizard), and a wide variety of snakes. The last I knew, and climate change may have altered this fact, Missouri had only three species of poisonous snake. They were timber rattlers, water moccasins and cottonmouths. Non-poisonous varieties include black snakes, grass snakes, bull snakes, milk snakes, and blue racers. When I was a child there was a blue racer that lived along the road heading to my uncle's summer cabin. If you ran from it, it would chase you. If you chased it, it would run.

Missouri has black widow spiders, but people who know spiders fear the tiny brown recluse much more. Small enough to go unnoticed, the brown recluse is agressive and its bite, while seldom fatal, can scar a person for life.

Like any place that has mosquitos, Missouri has lots of jokes about the size of them. ("Our state bird is the mosquito", for example.) A more unusual insect that we see at regular intervals is the cicada. Cicadas, often called locusts, though they are unrelated to a true locust, are a large, burrowing insect that emerges only upon adulthood, to mate. The best-known of North American cicadas are members of the genus magicicada, which emerge at either 13- or 17-year intervals. Male cicadas are among the loudest of land animals. A single cicada can be heard a mile away. A bush full of them can drown out a lawn mower. In the late 20th century (I don't remember which year exactly) the two cycles converged and we got them all at once. I seriously thought I was going to lose my mind.

Rattlesnake. Gary M. Stolz/USFWS.	Water Moccasin. Pete Pattavina/USFWS
Bluebird. Dave Menke/USFWS.	White pelicans. Dave Menke/USFWS.
Female cicada. R.E. Snodgrass/USDA	Whippoorwill. Watercolor. Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874–1927)

Alligator turtle. By me, taken on my road.