I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

Pocket mice:

Cholla:

Beavertail cactus:

Takenoko, or bamboo shoots, are one of spring’s finest seasonal foods here in Japan…except maybe for fresh zenmai, but that’s another post for another day. You can find the shoots in stores for a very short time, but it’s much more fun to dig your own which is what I did yesterday.

Rieko invited me to her friend’s house yesterday who owns a sizeable takebayashi, or bamboo grove, to join in a takenoko digging party. The species that is most popular and edible in Japan is Phyllostachys heterocycla pubescens, or commonly called mosotake, or moso bamboo. The smell is not unlike fresh corn and the taste is very mild, almost like a cross between a potato, a mushroom and corn. It’s really good and can be prepared a multitude of ways, but I ate most of mine just boiled with salt only hours after I’d dug it up.

Inviting friends over to help dig bamboo is kind of like Tom Sawyer and whitewashing the fence. If a bamboo forest is not maintained it will spread like wildfire so it’s imperative for people to keep invading bamboo at bay. These shoots must be harvested almost as soon as they come up out of the ground because of their remarkable daily growth rate of 30-50 cm, the biggest greater than 100cm. Unbelievable! There are stories of people returning home after an absence to find moso bamboo growing through the floor of their home. Houses built near bamboo groves must have special plates below the ground to prevent the plants’ rhizomatous growth from overtaking their dwelling.

I was talking to my nature-lover friend Yabushita-san today and expressed interest in one day having a Japanese garden at my home. Would I be able to grow mosotake in the USA, I wondered. He replied that under no circumstances should I even consider planting bamboo because once it’s established, it’s impossible to destroy and it kills everything else around it. And, obviously it’s not native to North America, so it’s just a stupid idea in the first place. I checked on the internet and found a whole network of mosotake enthusiasts in the US. Apparently it will grow in the US, but not as hardily as in Japan and China. I’m still not going to plant it though.

The owner of the takebayashi also grows shiitake mushrooms so he also allowed us to harvest those in addition to the takenoko. The second photo shows the logs used to cultivate the shiitakes.

I’m suffering from post-Australia depression. I guess you can liken it to a junkie coming down off a crack high. The plants and wildlife there were so novel and stunning that I was in a constant state of stimulation and discovery. Returning to the sterility of this base is enough to plunge anyone into a black hole of depression, so you can imagine what it does to a nature lover.  Yesterday some pea-brain guard suffering from hypertestosterone syndrome bitched me out for wearing headphones in the car. He actually took it upon himself to take down my license plate number as I was exiting the base. When I returned to the base after lessons at the Defense Academy he was waiting to unleash what little power he has in his otherwise impotent existence. I admit, I was breaking the rules…but to lie in wait for something so trivial? Get a life buddy.

In an attempt to score a fix, I went to a wooded area today and found some interesting plants and insects. This is a Jack-in-the-pulpit, but a little different than the one native to the United States. In Japan they’re called urashimaso (浦島草 うらしまそう):

This is a bee fly, Bombylius major:

They hover around looking like a bee, but they’re actually nectar-feeding flies. 

This beetle belongs to a group of beetles collectively called Cardinal Beetles. I don’t think there is a name for this in English, but the Japanese name is akahanemushi. I don’t know the species, but thanks to my friend Yabushita-san, I was able to identify the genus. If anyone reading this knows what species this is please let me know in the comment section.

Some miscellaneous things from the AU trip that I thought were interesting and fun…for those of us interested in parasites, that is. The rest of you might be pretty grossed out.

Queensland’s rainforest isn’t all cuddly possums and endearing and mischievous honeyeaters alighting on your hand, despite what I made out in my previous Australia trip posts. I didn’t mention that the possums continually pooped and peed all over our porch. The particular possum who set up camp on our porch was a male and had typical male urine – pungent and  in copious volume. He had no qualms about eliminating anywhere he happened to be sitting: above the door, on our outdoor table and even on the barbie (the BBQ grill) after it had cooled. We typically woke up to multiple piles of possum poo pellets all over the porch. Occasionally the turkeys would crap on the porch too. That was a real mess.  We didn’t mind though and it certainly didn’t detract from their appeal. After all, everyone’s got to dump.

When we stopped at Crawford’s Lookout on our way to Tarzali, we were met with this disturbing sign at the beginning of the trail.  Appropriately unnerved, we continued our hike without encountering this evil plant and forgot all about it. The stinging tree once again entered our consciousness once we got to Fur n’ Feathers and this time in a big way – the plant was everywhere, including the trails around our treehouse. Pam warned us that this thing was ferocious and to be very careful…which only intrigued me all the more. I couldn’t wait to get on the internet and find out more. I even entertained the idea of touching it just to see what would happen. Really, how bad could it be? Surely this was an exaggeration. Nothing could be worse than poison ivy, right?

Au contraire, you curious and doubting idiot, a voice in my head answered when I got home and consulted the internet. It really is that bad! Turns out, poison ivy is baby food. This thing is a killer, literally. The name of the species is Dendrocnide moroides, or locally gympie gympie, a derivation of an Aboriginal word. The sting is delivered through tiny silicon hairs that cover the leaves and the fruit of the plant. When a human comes into contact with the plant, the hairs penetrate the skin, and then break off. They’re so tiny that often the skin will close over the hairs making removal impossible.

The silicon hairs cause pain because of a neurotoxin produced by the plant which is exacerbated by touch or heating or cooling of the skin. Unfortunately this toxin is very stable and can remain active in a person’s skin for months or even years making every subsequent shower a painful experience. Experiments have been done with hairs that were collected nearly a century ago and they can still cause pain.  But you can suffer even if you don’t touch the plant. The plants continuously shed their stinging hairs so that staying close to the stinging trees for more than an hour can cause a reaction – intensely painful and continuous bouts of sneezing. You can even get nose bleeds from these silicon hairs floating in the air.

The reaction depends on what species of animal gets stung, and how many hairs get stuck in the skin. Humans feel something between mild irritation and intense pain and death. The pain comes immediately after touching the plant, and it gradually increases to a peak after about 20-30 minutes. The Dutch Botanist H. J. Winkler made the only official recording of Death By Stinging Tree, for a human. It was in New Guinea, back in the early 1920s. There have been other anecdotal stories from soldiers in WW II suffering intense pain, and of an officer shooting himself because of the unrelenting pain – but these are anecdotal stories.

Stinging trees are harmless to many native Australian species, but hideously painful to introduced species such as humans, horses and dogs.  Like capsicum (red pepper) the pain is real and intense, but the body does not suffer any damage. (Information paraphrased from here.) I find it incredible that a plant has this power to cripple simply by brushing up against it.

When I say that I left a part of me in Australia, I do not mean in the poetic sense. I carried a pretty heavy parasite load while in the jungle. I was ravaged by mosquitoes. The rainforest is reputed to have few mosquitoes, and not even all that many in the rainy season. But apparently every single one of them in the Atherton Tablelands sought me out and bit me. Gene didn’t get any bites. I also was host to many leeches, four of which had attached and begun exsanguinating me. Both of us found a good number of them on our pants, shoes and socks. There are around 100 species of leeches in Australia, but several of them have adapted to life in the forest rather than water. In wet weather they lie in wait on foliage or on the forest floor for a passing mammal. I was overcome with revulsion and an almost irrepressible reaction to immediately detach and kill them, but once I was able to stifle it long enough for Gene to take a photo. I later realized that I hadn’t shaved my legs in some time, so I won’t be posting the offending image here. You’ll have to make do with this:

I know they’re gross as hell and there is something so innately repugnant about them…but they are interesting animals. They keep their host’s blood flowing by use of an anticoagulant that is quite remarkable. I bled for 30 minutes after pulling them off. Pretty neat.

One evening we were sitting around and I felt a familiar sensation right underneath the elastic in my underwear at the top of my leg. I was horrorstruck; Oh god, no. Please, not chiggers!  I went to the bathroom and found a lone mite embedded in my skin. Which was somewhat of a relief since when I lived in North Carolina I suffered from severe infestations most of the summer months – I could handle one of them, not hundreds. I remembered seeing some insecticide under the sink and used a small dab of it to kill and remove the little bastard. Disaster averted. Such are the dangers that await the jungle traveller and I loved every minute of it.

I was a little disappointed that we didn’t see any snakes. Australia is home to three of the most venemous snakes in the world: the inland taipan, the king brown, and the coastal taipan. Two of those three are found in Queensland. It was still exciting just knowing that they were potentially right outside our door.

Here are some other photos. From left to right, emerald dove, green catbird, turkey feet, turtle, female Victoria Riflebird growing in some scalp feathers after what appears to be a serious molt episode, and a masked lapwing: