Morning Comes to Elk Mountain: Dispatches from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

September

September Tarantulas are on the move this morning. These large, hairy brown spiders, some with leg spans reaching four inches, most likely have left their burrows to search for female companionship. Males in a mating mindset seek out lady tarantulas in their bachelorette digs, make the appropriate moves to break the ice, and then, after breeding, leave the premises before becoming supper. Female tarantulas generally are larger than males, and, other than a handy snack, have little use for the opposite sex past deposition of sperm. No time for an obligatory post copulation cigarette when tarantula love is in the air. Best to make tracks and live to tell about the conquest, rather than end up consumed by it. It seems to be a fine day for tarantula amours. According to the weatherman the temperature will struggle to exceed 80 degrees today. The morning has been more like May and soothed by strong south winds. There’s a sense that a brutally hot summer is losing its grip, and creatures on the move range from tarantulas to turkeys. A flock of Rio Grande wild turkeys joins the restless parade. A dozen hens and at least one old long-bearded tom take flight from nearby treetops and land along a stream bordering the wilderness. At the same time a pair of bright orange and black Baltimore orioles busily comb through the foliage of a streamside walnut tree. 164 Morning Comes to Elk MouNtain Walnuts waste little time turning colors after the fruits are ready for distribution. The refuge is still some two months away from a killing frost, and already the walnut leaves show the yellowish tint of late autumn, prime time advertising employed by nearby sumac shrubs as well. As with all life on the refuge, the business at hand is to pass along genes through progeny. Red leaves on sumac advertise ripening fruit. Seeds will pass through some wild creature’s digestive system ready to root and grow, replete with fertilizer. The walnut tree requires a little help from fox squirrels in the refuge woodlands, rodents noted for their willingness to cache food for the winter. Some walnuts will be dug up and consumed during the upcoming months. However a few will be forgotten, sprout into seedlings and, with luck and time, eventually replace the parent trees. The banks of a small pool churned and muddied by buffalo hooves holds enough water for dozens of leopard frogs. They leap and splash with every step I advance, the majority most likely the offspring of last spring’s choristers I listened to near this same spot in late March. The muddy banks also show evidence that raccoons frequent this place on their nightly rounds. Frogs rate high on the favored food list of predators including snakes, raccoons, mink, red-shouldered hawks, herons, egrets, and others with a taste for frog legs, once a culinary mainstay for southern country folk as well. It’s doubtful that many of these frogs, assembled for their first full season as part of the refuge fauna, will still be around when it’s time to sing for a mate during the upcoming breeding season. Nature deals with heavy predation by providing prodigious numbers to absorb attrition. Frogs and toads lay thousands of eggs. Yet not all are destined to hatch, nor are all tadpoles that do hatch guaranteed a safe and secure journey to adulthood. Some may be eaten, or die as a gilled juvenile in a dry pool, unable to mature SEPTEMBER 165 into an air-breathing, land-loving adult frog before the liquid realm of their birthright evaporates. Young leopard frogs that do survive tend to be eagerly sought fare. To compensate, adult breeders must rely on numbers to supply a conduit for their genes. It’s a young frog’s business to be among the lucky ones, achieve maturity and breed feverishly and as often as possible since after all, the species’ future depends on it. Frog survival is a numbers game plain and simple, a system that’s remained successful for thousands of years until pollution and habitat destruction became part of the survival equation and numbers began to recede. The sounds of summer and autumn seem split almost evenly this morning. At first the field crickets graced the granite outcrops with their sweet and lonesome chorus, only to be replaced around 10:30 in the morning by the eardrum...