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Wild America – a Patriotic Bestiary
If a mortician is someone who does mortuary work, Ben Franklin was something of a bestician, for his observations on American wildlife began a patriotic bestiary which has never, as far as I know, been completed. Franklin observed that the rattlesnake (ahem) is not only vigilant, magnanimous, and courageous, with a rattle like the 13 colonies, but is also “beautiful in youth and her beauty increaseth with her age, ‘her tongue also is blue and forked as the lightning, and her abode is among impenetrable rocks'” (a blue tongue being of course indispensable to the American Spirit).
Franklin wasn’t as kind to our bald eagle, though, teasing it for being a “a Bird of bad moral Character [who] does not get his Living honestly.” The turkey, Franklin wrote his daughter, “is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”
Right or wrong, Franklin did not get very far cataloging the patriotism of American wildlife, so now it’s up to us to continue. I consider it speciesist to suppose patriotism is only a human quality, and cannot be exhibited by our wildlife. For example, consider the star-nosed mole.
It is a hard worker, unafraid to get its hands dirty, toiling underground in the American heartland. As the world’s fastest forager, it lives life at an American pace, brisk and enterprising. Moreover, it has the world’s most patriotic nose, saluting both our flag and our national anthem with its tiny tentacles, which resemble spangling stars and bombs bursting in air. Those who cringe at the star-nosed mole, who’d call it an “ugly American,” are simply wrong: this mole is a beautiful American and deserves to be loved for all its fine American qualities.
I could go on to the gray squirrel, the mountain boomer, or perhaps the praying mantis (not the nefarious Chinese mantis, of course, but America’s own native mantis). But it’s less fun to do this alone.
Who would you add to the bestiary?
Published in Humor
I’ve been slipping!
Yes, the noble opossum. As American as you can get. I’ll do a write up when I’m at a computer again.
Seen at work just a couple of days ago. Was sitting on our front door.
I do love the wild turkeys. My parents have a flock that traverses their land regularly, and there is nothing quite so funny as watching one of them running full-tilt across the yard.
I nominate this animal to be the symbol of the libertarian party.
Already is.
The wild mustang, it will always epitomize the pioneer spirit of the West.
The Virginia opossum is the original animal named “opossum” and the name comes from the Algonquian wapathemwa, meaning “white animal”. The opossum is found throughout the US. This nocturnal marsupial is noted for reacting to threats by “playing dead”, an involuntary reaction triggered by extreme fear, but is not a docile creature and often reacts to serious threats by hissing, screeching, and showing its teeth. The possum is omnivorous and resistant to snake venom. Contrary to popular belief, possums rarely carry rabies because their body temperature is too low to support the virus.
Possums are patriotic because of their discreet helpfulness to Americans. Due to its normal diet of bugs, human garbage, dead animals, and small reptiles, many call it “nature’s little sanitation engineer”. The possum was not native to the western US, and was intentionally introduced to the region during the Great Depression as a source of food. In addition, possums limit the spread of Lyme disease as they successfully kill off most disease-carrying ticks that feed on them.
Momma possums carry babies on their back for 4 1/2-5 months. If a baby falls off momma’s back while she’s walking, they are on their own because she won’t come back to get them, thus teaching them independence at an early age. Because a possum is a scavenger, they aren’t looking for handouts to survive.
Hug a possum today!
I am not hugging that thing (no matter how many admirable qualities it has).
Vero Possumus, JD!
There must be some American history behind these patriotic postcards (which seem to announce, among other things, that patriotic Americans will no longer sexually harass bears).
And, googling it, there is!
The velvet ant is a creature of our American deserts who is very, very tough. She is colorful and independent, yet at the same time also civic-minded and cooperative with others of her kind. Velvet ants have a sting so painful they are known colloquially as “cow killers”. They only sting as a last resort, though, warning others off with their bright colors and, if necessary, warning stridulations. While the velvet ant is a solitary creature, she cooperates with her neighbors:
Velvet ants are in reality wingless wasps, and therefore larger than your typical ant. Nonetheless, they are still small creatures, and, one might think, handy snacks for bug-eaters such as lizards, birds, and spiders, but this is not so. The velvet ant’s carapace is incredibly resistant to being crushed or punctured; moreover, she is quite agile and her legs are unusually strong (the muscles which would have gone into wing control if she had wings being rerouted to serve her legs instead). Even in a predator’s maw, about to be swallowed, she can wrestle herself free, unharmed. The predator, for his part, may receive such a painful sting for his troubles he won’t sample any of her kind again.
The velvet ant’s strong defense is the secret to her striking beauty: her eye-catching appearance serves as a warning to all and sundry not to interfere with her, for she is much too tough and spunky to be digested. Thus does she display the American spirit.
(The photo credit for the velvet ant above goes to Dave Welling, whose gallery, Striking Images of Nature, can be viewed here.)
Some people have to ruin everything.
Judging by the one possum I ever ran up against, I’d be inclined to assume that any injuries in question were all suffered by auction newbies who fumbled the possum handoff.
Me too.
Moar velvet ants! –
This displays American velvet ants’ major mimicry rings:
Texans will note Texan velvet ants are in a class by themselves.
I’m a charter member of the Knoxville “Possums” rugby club. And, as you can tell, my avatar is Pogo Possum.
The Norther Stargazer is a fish native to the waters along America’s east coast. He is an ambush predator who digs himself into the sand, pops his eyes out on little stalks to peer out over his sandy burrow, and waits till his prey comes along. Perhaps this means of securing a meal seems rather unsporting and therefore unAmerican of him, but America is the land of opportunity and he knows how to seize his. Plus, he rejoices in the Latin name Astroscopus guttatus, where apparently Astrocopus doesn’t just mean looking at stars, but aiming for them, and America has always “aimed for the stars”.
They’re not its teeth, but the fierce-looking frills it uses to keep sand out of its mouth while it’s lurking in its burrow. Here is a closer look:
The skull of the Atlantic Stargazer (Uranoscopus scaber), does boast a set of spiny, recurved teeth, though. I’m not sure how morphologically similar the two Stargazers are, but both are in the family Uranoscopidae, and nothing I know of the Northern Stargazer (with the disclaimer that I’m neither an ichthyologist nor have I had the pleasure of meeting the fish in person) rules out its also having quite the rack, so to speak.
Its large maw is quite suggestive, no?
Oooh, give that critter some chapstick.
This is another fun American animal story: The early 20th-century push to make the hippopotamus a congressionally-approved all-American “beef” animal:
Japanese delegates at a trade fair had brought an ornamental plant, the water hyacinth, to New Orleans as a gift in 1884. Because the plants are beautiful, they became a popular decoration in local ornamental ponds. Then… they escaped… and took over our southern waterways:
At the same time, America was supposedly facing, “The Meat Question” – rising meat prices, loss of animal protein in ordinary folks’ diets (including, apparently, fish killed off by water hyacinths). Two men, Irwin and Burnham, decided to solve two problems at once:
The resulting proposal became “H.R. 23261, a bill to appropriate $250,000 for the importation of useful new animals into the United States—the hippo bill, as the public would come to understand it.” Wikipedia claims the “bill nearly passed, but fell one vote short.” If so, there should be a record of that vote. Other sources suggest the bill just sorta fizzled out because Congress never got around to it. I wonder which it really was.
I’ve grown fond of this little guy, who visits our backyard suet feeder in the winter. He’s a Townsend’s Warbler.
It’s a crime that Louisiana never became known as “Hippo Country”.
Once again government falling down on the job.