Marty Michener wrote:
>
> At 10:39 PM 7/2/02 +1000, you wrote:
> >Warning! No electronics or wildlife sound. Delete now if not interested in
> >a crocodile attack under unusual circumstances.
>
> Dear Syd:
>
> Uh, me too, the above warning . . .
Or, try
> to imagine Walt, without the sound systems, in all those late-night frog
> ponds and marshes . . ;^)
I've been mucking around in swamps for some 50 odd years. Frogs are just
the most recent fun. And really the only swamp life I've chased with
sound equipment. Even with the sound equipment I'm still mucking about
as I photograph some of them too.
Now around here the reptilian life is not so likely to get a hankering
for the taste of human. Though recently a kayaker in Florida had his
boat bitten out from just in front of him by one. He swam around for a
while until someone noticed his plight. He was too scared to swim to
shore because he thought that's where the alligator came from, though
he'd not seen it beforehand.
Now the friends that leave holes in pairs in you can be a problem. I've
managed to avoid the holes so far.
> This ironic point was again illustrated to me in the mid-1970's when in a
> month I created a system entirely from Radio Shack off the shelf parts
> (yes, even the crystals) that would track salt marsh turtles, Malaclemys
> terrapin, in Cape Cod Massachusetts salt marshes. After using the
> cumbersome system for about a year, they found the turtles just where my
> friend Skip Lazell had SAID they always were - - the radio system was
> necessary to get the biologists (and especially their assistants) out into
> the actual salt marsh ponds, mucking about to find them.
Speaking of mucking in salt water, there are other, more passive
dangers. One of my old professors almost did himself in one day on one
of our forays. We were walking a mud flat on the Oregon coast at low
tide. The flat was too soupy to walk except along the lines of the
drainage channels. But this professor saw something interesting and
without thinking headed for it. He was in beyond his waist almost
instantly, and the tide was already on it's way in. There were more than
a dozen of us and we barely got him out in time. That's why this old
hand wears hip boots two sizes too large.
> I think it must take about an order of magnitude more courage to muck about
> Australian waters than old New England, though, and I accordingly salute
> all you Ozian biologists!
Indeed! I've never had that sort of danger to deal with.
Walt
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