Two Trails

As often as I can, I explore the Ouachita and Adai Trails at Walter B. Jacobs. Their combined length is very nearly 1.5 miles. Though both trails are in the same patch of woods in the same little nature park, they have distinctions:

The first two-thirds of Ouachita is flat. The trail is frequently under water. The under story is sparse. After it digresses from the Caddo Trail, and passes another path leading toward Caddo, it turns west and follows Fordney Bayou. As the trail creeps closer to the bank of the stream, the vegetation gets denser. Just before the concentration of Paw Paws and Spicebushes, there is a bench. This is where I sit. I listen to the Acadian Flycatcher, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Summer Tanagers, Flickers, Pileated Woodpecker, and Downy and Red Bellied Woodpeckers. I have to tune out the chorus of cicadas, and often the screams of the American Crows as they announce the presence of the Red-Shouldered Hawk family - who screams back. When the chickadees and titmice join the cacophony, I have trouble singling out and identifying species. I am occasionally harassed by this dangerous-looking hymenopterid, and though I don't know what she is, exactly, I'm pretty sure she wants me to move along. So I do. Then I come back a few minutes later.

I'm here for the Paw Paws, and the Zebra Swallowtail butterflies they host. I have had very little success finding caterpillars and chrysalides. I saw the spring flight of adult butterflies, but then I missed the summer flight while busy with Earth Camp. Now I await the final wave of Zebra Swallowtails for the year.

Bayou banks and Paw Paws are features Adai has in common with Ouachita. Adai parallels the western bank of Fordney Bayou, passes the Yatasi Trail, and then turns west and south and follows Shettleworth Bayou. Adai is on higher ground, and climbs, peaking just passed the intersection with the Miracle Trail. Then it plunges down to the edge of Shettleworth. The three oldest Paw Paws are on this slope. The trees reproduce vegetatively by sending sprouts upward from horizontal roots, so the number and size of individuals are greatest at the center, and then decrease away from the center in a radial pattern. I've seen flowers on the three trees, but not fruit. I suspect they were quickly devoured by gray squirrels, opossums, raccoons, or gray foxes. So, I think the seeds get dispersed, too.

Adai continues to follow Shettleworth Bayou, through a second colony of Paw Paws, past the other side of Yatasi, and on until it converges with Caddo. It then turns left again. This section is low, like Ouachita, and like the area around Ouachita after the bench, it is surrounded by ephemeral ponds, Louisiana Palmettos, and Giant Cane. Interestingly, I have found no Paw Paws here. There is another Acadian Flycatcher over here. After two foot bridges, Adai crosses a big bridge over Fordney Bayou and unites with Ouachita. From here on, the one path has five trail names: Ouachita, Ozark, Adai, Caddo, and Miracle.

I spend approximately three hours on this figure-eight. I prune limbs and vines, and remove debris from the trail, but I use most of that time to look and listen. I could spend longer, but the lure of mosquito-free indoor plumbing calls me back at about that time.

Chiggers

As a child I found lots of natural areas to explore right here in Shreveport. Some of them - like the Stoner Woods - I was forbidden to enter because caring adults feared the threat of strangers. (I did venture in there once, as an adult, accompanied by a dog, and I quickly discovered that my parents' concerns had merit.) Anyway, while in Shreveport, I enjoyed a happy medium between having woods to play in, and having friends to play with.

As you may have deduced from the foreshadowing, I did have to leave Shreveport during my childhood, and I was not a happy camper. We bought a nice house in Doyline for a ridiculously low price (location, location, location). I was forced to change schools, and convert my best friends into pen pals. The town of Doyline was picturesque enough, and there were two schools (K-5, and 6-12), but our house was two miles from those schools. Our house was also two miles from the nearest store. There was no park. The library was a single room building among the antique store fronts on the one road in town. It was only open one day a week for a few hours.

I scanned the houses and trailers for any child my age. I found none. As to add insult to injury, the really cool log-cabin house was surrounded by a desert of turf grass.

Overgrown turf grass.

(The trees were somebody else's property. Of course, I know now that the woods in Shreveport were somebody else's property, too, but back then, I had never before considered that somebody owned - or could own - the woods.)

The first day my family stayed in that house, my whole family was plagued with bug bites. My whole family...except for me. At first, my parents were convinced that they had been swarmed by mosquitoes. These country mosquitoes, however, went for skin covered by snug cloth and elastic bands. After two or three days, they were still miserable, as the bumps on their skin were still itchy, red, and swollen. Worse yet, good ole' calamine lotion gave them no comfort.

I couldn't help but think in was karmic: The people who forced me to leave civilization were now driven mad with some kind of skin parasites they encountered at their country paradise. But meanness aside, I held the biggest clue to the problem...I did not have any bites (or whatever they were).

So let's use deductive reasoning: The itching bumps appeared on Tuesday on three people, but not the fourth. On Tuesday, all four family members crossed the front yard, brought in boxes, and dwelled in the house. Three people ventured out among the tall grasses to explore their new backyard. The fourth walked the road following the woods to find a property owner. If the fourth person acted as a control, then the variable of the experiment is the overgrown grass - the one place the fourth person did not go.

Serves them right. Stupid grass.

But seriously, whatever they encountered were obviously not mosquitoes. They were...as we were about to learn from the locals...chiggers.



Chiggers are little bitty red mites that have a parasitic stage of their life cycle. You may actually be able to see the adults (harvest mites) if you sense movement well and look really hard. The larvae walk so lightly that you don't feel them on you, but once they pierce your skin and inject you with a salivary secretion, you'll feel them alright! The secretion contains powerful, digestive enzymes that break down your skin cells so that the chiggers can ingest them.

To board a host, chiggers climb up plant stalks and wait for something or someone to brush by. They only hang around for about four days, then drop off to complete the rest of their life cycle as upstanding members of the environment. Sometimes the skin remains irritated for a few days after the parasite has gone, but the itching that results from having microscopic quantities of your skin liquified and sucked out is incredible. To alleviate it, people have come up with all kinds 'remedies.' Paint the bumps with nail polish, pour rubbing alcohol on them, bathe in oatmeal, bathe in bleach, coat your skin in oil - you name it - someone has probably tried it.

During my family's first days at the new house, I escaped a chigger infestation, but I have not always been so lucky. I have had my share of chigger bites. I have also tried many of the home remedies. I seem to remember a product called "Chig-a-rid" that I painted over the bumps. It definitely worked better than nail polish. Not too long ago, I took my chiggers to the dermatologist. I thought it was high time to get some professional advice and prescription-strength products. I was surprised to discover that the dermatologist's advice was to add one cup of bleach to a hot bath and soak. "You can tolerate it," she said, "They can't."

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2100.html

http://www.chigarid.com/

Host Plants

I found this caterpillar on the Ouachita Trail at Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park. I was inspecting Paw Paw (Asimina triloba) leaves for Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars.

I have read that Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars eat only leaves of Asimina species. I have read that Paw Paw Sphinx caterpillars eat only Asimina species. I have read that there is this pyralid moth with no common name (Omphalocera munroei) that eats Paw Paw leaves so voraciously that it defoliates the trees in the middle of the summer, stimulating the trees to grow new leaves, providing the last generation of zebra swallowtail caterpillars with an unusually abundant food supply, and thus is responsible for increasing the population of adult Zebra Swallowtail butterflies that fly in the fall.

I discovered a folded Paw Paw leaf, and pried it open to peek inside, curious to see if I had found a Zebra Swallowtail caterpillar, or a Paw Paw Sphinx caterpillar, or the never-seen-by-me O. munroei. I found this. It's a Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar. As you might guess Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars eat Spicebush (Lindera benzoin). They are also known to eat Sassafras. Some sources say they will eat Sweet bay, Swamp bay, laurels. Caterpillars in the Field and Garden say the Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar "lives in folded leaf shelters on the host." ON THE HOST.

That's a Paw Paw leaf I'm holding. So did I just find another host for the Spicebush Swallowtail?

http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/bfly/zebra_swallowtail.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Caterpillars-Field-Garden-Butterfly-America/dp/0195149874

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0618254005/ref=sib_dp_pt/105-3765951-6342023#reader-link

[By the way, the Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars seem to stick to the underside of the Paw Paw leaves. I have discovered that curled Paw Paw leaves most often conceal little jumping spiders.]