What is a sallygrowler?

I would love to know! I can't find it in any dictionary and it produces only one hit on Google. As far as I can tell, it's a Jersey shore colloquialism for a certain saltwater creature I remember from growing up on the Metedeconk River. I remember a meaty, prehistoric-looking fish that lurked in the mucky depths of the river and would sometimes show up with blueclaws in our crab traps--but most memorably, was capable of "biting your foot off."

If you know more about sallygrowlers, please let me know. If I could find out their official name I'm sure I could get more info, and I hope even photographs.

In the meantime, picture teeth and slime and consider them a good reason to keep your feet kicking in the water.

Lisa at www.sallygrowler.com/definition.html

Longhorn sculpin
Myoxocephalus octodecimspinosus

We called them "sallygrowlers"--we thought toadfish was the official name. We caught them, feared them, heard them (they grunt when out of the water, but that hardly explains the "sally" part).

I got acquainted with one years and years ago--in bad moments I still hear it growling, buried in a white cardboard box that held the squid that fed this butt-ugly critter.

Yep, another fish story. This isn't your father's wikipedia.

---

Jack McCloskey was a barber with longish hair while the war still raged in 'Nam. He owned a wooden 25' boat, before wood became cool again. We ate short lobsters because he told us they tasted better, and because they were illicit, they did.

He died when I was young, the first person I knew selfish enough to do so--crushed in a car crash before our third fishing trip. He liked me, even though I was a kid, and not just because I was my father's son.

Jack wore his hair like Elvis. Jack talked a lot. And Jack liked to fish.

Twice Jack took us out tuna fishing. He had poles rigged with bunker spoons the size of my head. We were going to the Mud Hole, to the Acid Sea, to a place where we could not see land.

One time the motor conked out, another time 15 foot swells kept us close to shore. I bet if he had lived long enough he'd eventually make it out to the Mud Hole, but with Jack, reaching the goal was almost besides the point.

Kids can sense these things, sometimes before their parents can, both unnerving and invigorating. Jack was the first grown up I called by first name, and the last for more than a decade after that.

By late afternoon on a long day of a sputtering engine and too much drinking (drunk men, buzzed kids), we drifted in the shoals of the Navesink River. We had yet to catch a fish. Dreams of tuna were now reduced to bouncing squid on the bottom, hoping for a fluke or an eel.

Tug....tug tug. I yanked the pole, and wrestled out a fish uglier than pimples on a frog, bug eyed, covered with spines. And it growled at me.

"Watch for the spines!...Don't let your fingers near its mouth!
You got yourself a sallygrowler!"

"What's a sallygrowler?"

"A toadfish, son."

A toadfish. Of course, what else could it be. It was a reasonably large toadfish, as far as toadfish go, and it was ugly and fearsome and it growled. We dumped the rest of the squid from cardboard bait box, and put the sallygrowler in it. I figured it would die in a few minutes, and I wanted to show it to my mom.

The dock was about 20 minutes away. The box sat on the floor. It shuddered a couple of times.

While unloading the boat, I peeked at the fish--the gill flaps kept pumping--its eyes continued to stare up. It looked more frumpy than fearsome. Water slapped against the pilings There are rare moments in a 7 year old's life when decisions with lifelong consequences are made. I made the wrong decision. I took it home.

Fish breathe through their gills. Water has dissolved oxygen, and the water passes by millions of tiny capillaries. The capillaries are supported by the water. When a fish is out of water, the capillary beds collapse, and the fish suffocates. At least that's what the textbooks say.

Some fish can live for a long time out of water. Scientists do not spend a whole lot of time studying fish of no economic value--earlier generations of naturalists spent hours observing critters, but even a naturalist with tenure does not have the luxury of time we have as children.

The longhorn sculpin, at least this longhorn sculpin, does not suffocate when out of water. After a few hours of showing off my fish to my pals and my mom, it still breathed. Its eyes still stared.

I buried the fish, in the box, a few feet from our garden. A little while later I dug it up to make sure it had died. It had not. I buried it again, and have not dared to check since.

I can still hear it growling.

---

Henry B. Bigelow and William C. Schroeder, "Longhorn sculpin", Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, Fishery Bulletin 74,
Fishery Bulletin of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Volume 53

Oooh...momomom found a site where you, too, can hear a sallygrowler growl.

READ MORE - A (true) fish story

Spiders, really.
And like spiders, feared.

Kids, really.
And like kids, fearless.

I was 8, old enough to know better. The lifeguard, bronzed and confident, draped in red, asked us to slaughter the horseshoe crabs.

"Hold them by the tail so they can't sting you, then smash them on the wall."

The wall--a creosote bulkhead jutting into the beach, already slimy with the blue blood and cracked shells of these fearsome creatures.

It was mating season. Not yet old enough to understand a desire that drove these beasts onto my beach, Ideal Beach, I smashed one creature on top of the others, picking the same one up over and over until the shells splintered and the sky blue blood soaked the shells underneath.

Sea gulls pecked into the soft flesh of our dying prey as the legs were still scratching at the sky.

When we were done, tired, stinking, and proud of our aching muscles, we jumped back into the water, washed ourselves, then went home.

---

Hemocyanin: blue blood. We wore it that day like war paint--stinking of death, sweating under the early July sun.

20 mg of high purity hemocyanin will fetch $175.00

20 milligrams.
Less than the weight of a fat housefly. Less than the weight of our soul. Our blood runs red from the iron in hemoglobin; a horseshoe crab's blood runs blue from copper.

Hemoglobin is cheaper.

---

Every spring the she crabs come to the beach, several smaller males trailing behind. The bayshore teems with horseshoe crab eggs, tiny bean curds at the lip of the beach. Millions upon millions, so many that none mean anything at all to me. Birds crowd along the beach, feasting. I used to think the birds were what mattered.

A female crab can lay 80,000 eggs in a season. She creeps up onto the beach, riding the spring tide on the full moon. She crabs reach sexual maturity in 9 to 12 years, not much younger than when humans do. May is crazy with life everywhere. Within 2 to 4 weeks, they are ready to hatch. I never really looked at the eggs closely, until last year.

It took me a long moment to believe what I was seeing. Horseshoe crab eggs do not remain opaque. Soon before they egg splits, the tiny pale crab spins wildly. Half the egg is clear, the other half white from the curled embryo. If you look carefully, you can tell that this tiny critter is a curled up horseshoe crab. As it spins, it looks like a tiny blinking eye.

If you watch one long enough, you will catch its birth. It will already have survived longer than most of its siblings. And it will not likely survive the next high tide.

Still, catching the exuberance of a newly hatched critter the size of an ice cream sprinkle on a warm, June afternoon changed me. Strangers saw a wild-haired middle-aged man squatting by the water's edge, staring intently at nothing, gesticulating a bit too much for others to come share his excitement.

I would not have let my kids close to me, either, had our roles been switched. Fortunately for my kids, I am not a stranger.

---

The smell of a dead or dying crustaceans can overwhelm a kitchen. On an open beach, however, mixed in with the salty life-teeming spray, a balance is reached. At high tide, the smell is almost too clean; at low tide, whiffs of the decaying mud is sharp, but not repulsive. The tide washes over us twice a day, the rhythm of mortality.

I occasionally find horseshoe crabs stranded on the beach. I will gently pick them up, and return them to the water. I may have returned thousands by now. I cannot make up for the hundred I slaughtered. That is not why I do it.

Every summer I show children how to pick up a horseshoe crab. Cradle the carapace with your hand. Do not carry them by their tails. I touch the point of the tail, show a child there is no stinger. They are gentle creatures. Omnivorous, true--clams, worms, and algae, so perhaps not so gentle, but certainly not harmful to humans.

Young loggerhead turtles snack on horseshoe crabs. Humans use their blood in medical research. Otherwise, they have few "enemies." Not sure being higher up in the food chain makes one an enemy. Someday I will feed the worms, unless some stranger stuffs my veins with formaldehyde and buries me too deep to be useful.

Horseshoe crabs live an average of 19 years, or so the scientists will tell you. I doubt the average longevity matters to a horseshoe crab--the mad, exuberant spinning of horseshoe crab embryos one June afternoon reminded me what matters.

Ask me someday....ask me in June. I will show you. Words will not do. I bet you smile like an idiot, too....

---

Sources:

Personal observations.
"The Horseshoe Crab,(Limulus polyphemus)," Maryland Sea Grant Schools Online Network
A.G. Scientific, Inc., Product Catalog,

READ MORE - Horseshoe crabs

She screamed.
Blood curdling, axe-in-the-head spine-tingling scream.

I worked years in emergency rooms in Newark, so part of me finds loud screams reassuring--airway open, patient conscious. Let the nurse deal with it until I finish sewing up the tyke in front of me.

Except this was in class. And I'm non-tenured.

A quick scan.

Blood? Nope.
Fight? Nope.
Screaming young student and others scattering away? Check.

CRITTER ON THE LOOSE!

Well, not even that.
A moth.

"Are you sure it's a moth, Dr. D?" she asked quietly.

Yes, a moth.

"KILL IT!"

No. Sit down, Kyle! No one's going to kill this moth in here!

"Did it lay eggs in my hair?"

No, but even if it did, the caterpillars won't eat too much.

(Piece of advice to teachers new to high school sophomores--do not kid them about moths eating their hair. Really. Don't.)

The moth flitted to the American flag.

Seemed as good a place as any, especially this week. A newborn critter (or as newborn as an adult moth can be) muddling around in a crazy world settling on a symbol that gave it unexpected comfort.

This week both the moth and the flag gave me unexpected comfort, too.

READ MORE - A behemoth in the classroom

Just a few things folks ought to pass on to their kids.
If they don't do it, maybe I will.
Even if it's not in the core curriculum standards.


Find a meteor:

Get a blanket.
Wait for dark.
Look up--if you see starts, lie down on blanket and continue looking up.
Wait some more.
Wow!

Catch a frog:

Get a small net (optional).
Find a pond.
Make sure pond is not frozen.
Look for jumping green objects as you approach the pond.
Crouch by the edge of the pond (or in it if you like).
Wait.
Wait some more.
When you see a pair of eyes poke out of the scum, swing net in general direction.
Feel through net now full of duckweed, algae, mud.
If no frog felt, dump net.
Watch frog you didn't feel hop away from blob of pond drek you just dumped.
Repeat.

Catch a boxer turtle:

Find a woods.
Wait for rain.
Go crawling around woods during rain and look for splotches of bright yellow.
(I know this sounds odd, but when we were kids we could sniff them out.)
Pick up your turtle.

Taste nectar:

Find a blooming honeysuckle vine.
Pull off a flower.
Carefully pinch the very bottom of the flower.
Slowly pull the bottom of the flower, pulling the stamens with it.
If you're lucky, a drop of nectar will rest at the base of the flower.
Suck on the flower like a straw.
Yum.

Find a (tiny) meteorite:

Put a bucket under a rain spout.
Collect rainwater, then let it sit somewhere dry and forget about it.
Rediscover bucket a few months later.
Put a magnet under a piece of paper, then scatter dried contents of bucket on the paper.
Shake the paper.
Look at the tiny bit left under a microscope.
Some will be pitted and look like meteorites under the microscope.
Why? Because they are!

The frog and flower are from the National Wildlife Service; the micrometeorite from NASA.

READ MORE - A few amateur "How to's..." in an age of experts

Praying mantis, Visitors of the Prayerful Sort, taken by Scott Robinson

(This is a continuation of the Bloomfield menagerie series, describing various beasties living right here within our borders, easily seen if you pay attention. It's to remind me and my students that nature isn't just something that happens somewhere else. )

I heard a small commotion next to the old whiskey barrel holding basil and tarragon. I crept over, expecting to find a small mammal, maybe a vole. As I knelt to get a closer look, I saw a large praying mantis hanging upside down, an unusual position, at least for the mantises that live in my garden.

I followed the mantis' gaze down through the forest of mint that grew near the barrel. In the aromatic shadows, a brown snake lay poised to strike. The snake lunged, the mantis struck back, Jackie Chan against the giant serpent. The snake fell back, but did not leave. Again it set to strike, and the mantis cocked its head with the steady grace of an aging dancer. Another flash of movement, again the snake quickly repelled.

The snake started to rise again, and then slowly, as though accepting defeat, lowered its head and slowly slithered away.

Praying mantises can scoot, and if particularly perturbed, can even take flight. This one held her ground. Maybe its a praying mantis trait, taking umbrage at hungry brown snakes. Maybe it was peculiar to the mantis in my garden that day. No way to know.

When the snake had gone, the mantis straightened herself back to her usual position, head up, legs folded in front; she regarded me for a moment, her head slowly moving through an impossible angle, then apparently dismissed me as harmless as she went about her business.

In my days in my backyard I have seen a dragonfly merge from its nymph shell, only to die an hour or so later next to its casing. I have seen a lightning bug successfully woo her mate as the two exchanged brilliant flashes, she half-hidden on a brandywine tomato vine, he drawing out a "J" in flight with each flash (perhaps her name was Juliet?). My children regard me as a little odd, "But it's OK, Dad, you're odd in a good way...."

On warm, sunny days, my adult daughter sometimes spends hours staring at the life on the edge of a pond, just for the sheer joy of it. It is one of the few times I allow myself to believe I was a competent parent.

All of this in Bloomfield, an old town bordering on Newark.

READ MORE - A Bloomfield menagerie: praying mantis

I have been reading an anthology of articles and letters from Nature, a weekly British science journal which started in the Victorian age, and continues to serve as a major publication for scientists around the world.

Throughout the decades, Nature has continued to publish letters of all sorts, including a few that purport intelligence in beasts other than humans and the few others (dolphins, whales, primates) popularly accepted to have some level of intelligence.

Throughout school I was told over and over and over again not to anthropomorphize animal behavior. While my teachers (correctly) asserted that humans were animals, and that humans had some behavior similar to other mammals, one should not infer specifically human characteristics in animal behavior.

"Well, why not?"
"Because you are assuming the behavior reflects something human--that's anthropomorphizing!"

The circularity in the reasoning bothered me a bit, but teachers still carried the weight of authority, which I accepted.

In Nature, there have been all kinds of letters ascribing human characteristics inferred through observing behaviors of critters as varied as sea urchins, dung beetles, dogs, pigeons, and scorpions (credited with committing suicide to avoid life not worth living).

So here is my story--the observations are true, the inferences, of course, up for discussion. Since I have been on a Galileo kick, I will mention his take on using analogies in science.

Galileo was referring specifically to sunspots, and used clouds as an analogy to describe them. He was challenged on this, and Galileo explained why he used the analogy:

I do not assert on this account that the spots are clouds of the same material as ours, or aqueous vapors raised from the earth and attracted by the sun. I merely say that we have no knowledge of anything that more closely resembles them. Let them be vapors or exhalations then, or clouds, or fumes sent out from the sun's globe or attracted there from other places; I do not decide on this--and they may be any of a thoudand other things not perceived by us.

Galileo, "Letter on Sunspots," again quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake, Anchor Books, New York, 1957, p. 100.

So here's my first in a series of observations of animal behavior that my teachers told me to interpret without relying on analogous human behavior. It occurred April 20, 2003, and I wrote down what I saw:

Today, I spent a good bit of a warm Easter afternoon watching a wasp make the third cell of her nest, creating paper walls from her mouth. I mentioned it to my wife; she reminded me of the wasp problems the summer before, so I decided to knock the nest out now, before the fish held a colony of wasps. I felt ridiculous caring about the work the wasp had already done.

When the wasp had gone to gather more water, I took the fish down off the fence post, and knocked off the new nest, as well as the larger nest left from last summer. I set the fish upside down on our patio table, a good 10 feet from where it had hung, and forgot about it. The little sadness I had felt for the wasp dissipated with a shake of my head, reprimanding myself for my silly sentimentality.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wrestling with a grape vine--I want it to go one way, it insists on following the sun. As I walked past the patio table, I noticed the lone wasp walking back and forth on the overturned fish. It looked frantic. It rapidly walked one way, then the other. It clearly was looking for the nest I had knocked off.

I called my wife--the wasp had clearly identified the fish as the home of its nest. My wife is rational, and a good empiricist--she keeps me sane. She could not understand why I got so agitated.

"Maybe it can smell the nest." The nest lay a good 15 feet away. I have a habit of saving wasp nests, shells, acorns, anything of interest not made by humans. "How do you know it's the same wasp?" she wondered.

I brought the tiny nest back to the iron fish. I laid it next to the wasp. A breeze blew the nest away. A moment later, the wasp left.

I was shaken. The wasp clearly recognized the fish, upside down on the table, more than 10 feet away from its original site. She clearly exhibited an increase in movements. At the risk of anthropomorphizing, the wasp was clearly distressed.

There is more to this world than I can ever hope to understand.

I'm not claiming that wasps "feel" what we do, far from it--but I would not be so quick to dismiss any and all animal behavior because it might, somehow, resemble human behavior.

It's not that we're not special--we are. But we're not the only things special in this universe.

READ MORE - A Bloomfield menagerie: paper wasp

Capturing critters for the classroom is, understandably, frowned upon. I'm more concerned for the critters than the students, not because I'm a heartless educator, but because there a few ways most of the local critters are going to inflict anything more than an adrenaline surge in the classroom

This is a slug found in my garden. While it is "humongous" as far as slugs go, just about all of my students outweigh it by at least a few stone.

This particular one is a Limax maximus, a leopard slug, but telling the kids that really tells them nothing about it. Seeing a picture of one doesn't tell them a whole lot either. Handling one changes the picture, and the slime will last well into 5th period.

And maybe mention to them that the slugs are hermaphrodites. And that they lick each other while circling end to end before mating. A lot.

Not sure my kids will remember the Krebs cycle, but slugs will take on a whole new life for them.

READ MORE - A Bloomfield menagerie: leopard slug