Critters

Moles, not magic, make worm ‘grunting’ work

TATE’S HELL (AP) — Gary Revell gets up every morning before sunrise, heads into the woods and grunts.
Not because it’s so early. It’s the term for coaxing worms from the ground by the hundreds to be scooped up and plopped in a tin can until he can sell them for fishing bait.
He pounds a two-foot wooden “stob” or stake into the earth and rubs it with a 10-pound piece of flat iron. The vibration or “grunting” causes worms to panic, and they wriggle from the ground. For years it was just a guess why

Songbirds holdgrudges, study shows

Mockingbirds might look pretty much alike to people, but they can tell us apart and are quick to react to folks they don’t like.
Birds rapidly learn to identify people who previously have threatened their nests and sounded alarms and even attacked those folks, while ignoring others nearby, researchers report in today’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

10 Tips For Avoiding a Shark Attack

A lot of us have picked up tidbits from the news over the years on how to fight a shark if we’re attacked, but what do we really know? I mean, I know I’m supposed to ‘punch a shark in the nose’, but does that mean I’ll survive? No. And the idea of punching a shark in the nose scares me. And it wouldn’t leave the shark in a great position either…you know, if I, by chance, hit him hard

Biologists seek public’s help for horseshoe crab research

Biologists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) Fish and Wildlife Research Institute need help from the public in identifying horseshoe crabs spawning on beaches throughout the state.

The best

Free cat sterilizations offered in Walton

Free cat sterilizations offered in Walton
Alaqua Animal Refuge is sponsoring a mass spay/neuter initiative for cats in Walton County during April, with free sterilization services for cats 3 months of age and older at participating veterinarians.

Trading Turtles

One turtle has died during the Navarre project, and two have died during the Walton-Destin project, the most recent one last Sunday.
   The Corps decided that the Walton-Destin project was cut- ting it too close and shut it down because the Jacksonville District had only one take left, Pickel said.
   If the Walton project had killed one more Kemp?s ridley, then all restoration projects ? including the one in Navarre ? would have to stop until the new fiscal year begins in October.

Killer whales seen in Gulf of Mexico

It was a fish story that even veteran boat captains found fascinating: As many as 200 killer whales feeding on tuna in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“It was like being at Sea World because they’d come right up to the boat,” said Eddie Hall, captain of the Shady Lady, the 60-foot charter boat that spotted the shiny black sea beasts with white eye patches and undersides. “It was pretty neat.”

Crying Wolf “Up close and personal at the Seacrest Wolf Preserve

When Laurel Hill School fourth-grader Jessianne Fortune and her pals Nicholas and Kyle Powell were invited to a weekend getaway at Dogwood Acres camp in Vernon, she didn’t realize that in addition to a hike through the woods and making s’mores around the bonfire, she’d come face-to-face with a British Columbian wolf

Oysters on the Half Shell

After several hours of shoveling oyster shells into buckets, the volunteers were sweating and somewhat fragrant.