It Might Get Messy

One of the coolest things about being an ecologist is color. The differences in it, the significance of it. What looks like a brownish early winter landscape to many people is a mosaic of structural and functional diversity to a field ecologist. That yellow-brown over there through the bare trees? The grassy meadow whose winter caramels and tans will provide the seeds that get many of the songbirds through to spring. And spring! Man, we’re talking daily shifts in the greens and flower-whites that run like a real-time art movie. 


Then there’s the idiosyncratic colors that, for arcane personal reasons, piss you off. Every herpetologist has some kinds of snakes that he or she knows, deep inside whatever the source of their destiny is, they’re never going to find. Except sometimes they get lucky. The late Carl Kauffeld, esteemed Director of the Staten Island Zoo with its legendary rattlesnake collection, spent most of his career dead center in the range of the rather abundant black rat snake. He caught his first very late in his days. Me? I grew up knowing I’d never find a smooth earth snake, Virginia valeriae, an obscure, tiny, brown, secretive species inhabiting woodlands just about as far north as central New Jersey. 


Except, today, in a wood lot across town on the other side of Columbia, I saw one. On the surface of the forest floor. I was so shocked, I forgot to reach down and grab it. It only took it 3 or 4 seconds to disappear forever under the leaf litter. I’m sure I’ll never see another one. Even the enormous black racer I found a few hundred meters further on (photo below) wasn’t enough to console me. I’m still bummed. 

Color has another reason to piss me off these days. My mouth and throat are a polychrome battle zone. Brown and black flakes of bacterial film slug it out 24/7 with white, sticky fungal slime. Usually, the bacterial film owns the morning and the fungal slime the afternoon and evening. The medical arsenal being thrown at these clashing armies are state o’ the art. My oncology surgeon doesn’t like antifungals—he believes the trade-off in liver toxicity isn’t worth the return on investment. So he’s prescribed massive and massively toxic antibacterials. Conversely, my general oncologist and local GP both love antifungals. I have buckets of marginally-to-completely-in-effective antifungals and anti-yeast medicines. Meanwhile, I just watch my mouth change color and texture throughout the door. It would be entertaining if it wasn’t MY FRICKIN’ MOUTH.


Anyway, I see Dr. H, Oncology Surgeon, on Wednesday. Hopefully he’ll help me sort this out. If it’s sort-able out-able. I’ll let you know, my friends. Thanks for stopping by, letting me vent. Now that spring is here, I expect to get the 4 blog empire back into action, with additional nature photos, rough-draft chapters from our forthcoming book on urban ecosystems, etc. But not this week. This week, I’m just enjoying life’s colors…. . 


Do, however, if you have the opportunity, check out my weekly professional PeopleSystems and Sustainability weblog at http://www.aehsfoundation.org/ . Labor of love, which means I really don’t bother to check my imagination at the door… .