Wild Things Preserve

02/22/2026

💧🪱❤️

IT ISN’T FLEEING A FLOOD. IT’S IN THE MIDDLE OF A SPRINT.
You step outside in late February after a heavy overnight rain. The sidewalk is dotted with earthworms stretching and retracting across the wet concrete.
You might think they were washed out of the soil by mistake, or that they are desperately trying to escape a flooded burrow.
It is neither. That worm is seizing a rare meteorological opportunity to travel at high speed.
But the clock is ticking. As soon as the clouds break, that watery highway will become a fatal trap.

The Myth of the "Emergency Evacuation"
When we see dozens of earthworms stranded on the pavement after a downpour, the logical assumption is that they came up to avoid drowning.
The Biological Reality: This is a complete misunderstanding of their anatomy.
Earthworms, such as the common nightcrawler (Lumbricus terrestris), do not have lungs. They rely entirely on cutaneous respiration—they breathe through their skin. As long as the rainwater is oxygenated, an earthworm can survive completely submerged for days, or even weeks. They are not running away from the water. They are exploiting it.

The Scientific Reality: The UV Trap
An earthworm is a deep-dwelling (anecic) species, but it relies on the surface for food and movement.

The Frictionless Highway: Crawling across dry ground is a physical impossibility for a worm. The friction would tear its delicate epidermis and instantly drain its internal moisture. Rain creates a temporary, zero-friction film on the surface of the earth. This allows the worm to glide across the ground, covering distances in a few hours that would take days to tunnel through heavy, compacted clay.

The Solar Paralysis: The true danger of the sidewalk isn't the puddle; it is the sun. Earthworms possess light-sensitive cells along their bodies (negative phototaxis). If the rain stops and ultraviolet (UV) rays pierce the clouds, the light acts as a neurotoxin. The worm is literally paralyzed by the UV exposure before it can reach the safety of the grass. It is a traveler struck down by the light, doomed to desiccate on the concrete.

What is Happening Right Now (February)
Why take this massive risk in the late winter?
In many parts of the United States, February brings the first significant thaws and heavy, saturating rains.

The Energy Equation: When the soil hits maximum saturation capacity, the oxygen pressure underground drops slightly. It becomes physiologically and energetically much cheaper for the worm to travel above ground than to push through dense, cold mud.

The Mating Window: Earthworms are hermaphrodites, but they must physically meet to exchange genetic material. The mild, wet nights of late February offer the perfect, low-predator window to leave their vertical burrows, cross the wet leaf litter, and find a mate before the dry spring winds harden the topsoil.

Why This Matters Ecologically
The earthworm is the chief engineer of the terrestrial ecosystem.
They do not merely aerate the soil. They create the drilosphere—the millimeter-thick lining of their burrows that is exponentially richer in nitrogen and beneficial bacteria than the surrounding dirt.
Right now, their deep, vertical burrows act as a vital civil defense system. These tunnels (macropores) are an emergency drainage network, allowing heavy late-winter rains to infiltrate rapidly into the water table. This invisible infrastructure is what prevents surface runoff, stops severe soil erosion, and mitigates localized flooding.

Practical Action: The "Rescue Without Rubbing" Protocol

Move Them: They are physically incapable of digging through asphalt. Gently pick the stranded worm up (they have no teeth and cannot bite) and place it on the nearest lawn, garden bed, or under wet leaves.

Never Wipe Them Dry: The viscous mucus covering their body is quite literally their lung. If that slime is wiped off, oxygen can no longer dissolve into their tissue, and they will suffocate.

The Flashlight Check: Take a flashlight out on a drizzly February night. You will see them stretched out of their burrows, their tails firmly anchored in the hole, grabbing dead leaves to drag down into the depths. It is the ultimate recycling crew at work.

The Verdict
The worm on the sidewalk isn't a drowning victim. It is a sprinter caught between stations because the highway evaporated too quickly.
The rain was its boarding pass; the sun is its executioner.
By moving it two feet to the grass, you don't just save a life—you put the planet's most indispensable worker back on the job.

Scientific References & Evidence
Soil Ecology & Drainage: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). "Earthworms." (Details the creation of the drilosphere, the formation of macropores, and their critical role in water infiltration and flood mitigation).

Behavior & Phototaxis: Edwards, C. A., & Bohlen, P. J. (1996). "Biology and Ecology of Earthworms." (The definitive text documenting the triggers for surface migration, cutaneous respiration limits, and the paralyzing effects of UV radiation).

Foundational Biology: Darwin, C. (1881). "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms." (The landmark study proving the behavioral intelligence and massive geological impact of earthworms).

02/13/2026

SHE ISN'T HUNTING SPIDERS. SHE IS EATING YOUR HOUSE. 🧱⛏️

You hear a persistent tap-tap-tapping on your exterior wall. You spot a tiny Black-capped Chickadee pecking furiously at the mortar between your bricks. Your first thought: "She’s just looking for insects hiding in the cracks."

You are wrong. She is engaging in Lithophagy.

She is literally mining your home for minerals because the natural world has run out.

Here is the science of "The Calcium Crisis":

1. The Metabolic Deficit (The 98% Gap) 📉 A female Chickadee weighs barely 11 grams. Yet, over the next two weeks, she will lay a clutch of eggs that weighs 90% of her own body mass. Each eggshell is made of pure Calcium Carbonate (CaCO₃).

The Demand: She needs ~100mg of calcium per day to form a shell.

The Supply: Her diet of seeds and insects provides less than 5mg. She is operating at a massive chemical deficit. If she cannot find external calcium, her body will try to leech it from her own skeleton (Medullary Bone), but this is often not enough to prevent Egg Binding (death by stuck egg).

2. The "Mortar Mine" (Anthropogenic Supplements) 🏠 In a wild forest, she would eat snail shells or bone fragments. But in a manicured American suburb, pesticides have killed the snails. So, she identifies the next best source of limestone: Your House.

The Target: Older lime-based mortar, window putty, or peeling paint.

The Chemistry: She isn't sharpening her beak. She is swallowing chips of mortar. These travel to her Proventriculus (glandular stomach), where hydrochloric acid dissolves the stone into usable Calcium ions for the uterus.

3. The Dual Function (Gastroliths) ⚙️ This behavior solves two problems at once. Birds lack teeth. To grind food, they maintain a collection of small stones in their Gizzard (muscular stomach) called Gastroliths. By eating your wall, she acquires:

Mechanical Grit: To grind tough seeds.

Chemical Calcium: To build baby birds.

The Solution: Don't Chase, Substitue. 🛑 She is acting out of desperation. If you chase her away, she may not be able to reproduce. Instead, offer a "Bio-Available Mineral Buffet":

Sterilized Eggshells: Bake chicken eggshells (250°F for 10 mins), crush them, and offer them in a feeder.

Oyster Shell Grit: Soluble grit sold for chickens. She will switch from your "dirty" mortar to this "clean" source immediately.

She isn't a vandal. She is a mother trying to build a skeleton from scratch.



🧠 Scientific Notes for your "Intelligent Audience" (Nuances)
Why Chickadees specifically? Parids (the Tit/Chickadee family) do not store calcium in their skeleton as efficiently as other birds. They rely on daily dietary intake. A sparrow can store a few days' worth of calcium; a Chickadee cannot. This makes them the most likely culprit for "eating houses."

Window Putty: Mention that traditional linseed oil putty contains Whiting (pulverized chalk/calcium carbonate). It is literally a "calcium energy bar" (Fat + Mineral). Modern silicone putty is useless to them.

Insoluble vs. Soluble Grit: Intelligent audiences appreciate this distinction.

Insoluble (Granite/Flint): Stays in the gizzard for grinding.

Soluble (Limestone/Oyster): Dissolves in the stomach for nutrition. She needs the soluble kind right now.

02/13/2026

Per the World Wildlife Fund's 2024 Living Planet Report, there's been a 73% global decrease in wildlife populations since 1970.

How you can help:
🌿 Plant native species for your region
🌿 Remove invasive species
🌿 Encourage biodiversity in your yard
🌿 Leave the leaves
🌿 Minimize "garden cleanup", especially before low temperatures in your area reach 50*F in spring
🌿 Avoid insecticides, embrace the bugs
🌿 Spread awareness
🌿 Leave seed heads intact through winter

01/29/2026

Deforestation has reduced rainfall over the Amazon, suggesting the rainforest could reach a catastrophic tipping point sooner than expected.

01/14/2026

Under President Trump, the EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses. It’s counter to the agency’s mission statement, which says has a core responsibility to protect human health and the environment. https://nyti.ms/3ZaGrJg

12/28/2025

New life at Wild Things! These Spanish Ribbed Newt eggs found their way into our care after we fostered the parents. Native to the still waters of the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, these fascinating newts are Europe’s largest, reaching up to 12 inches in length and living up to 10 years. They are known for a formidable defense by arching their backs to expose poisonous spines that pierce through the skin. These remarkable creatures have become valuable to regeneration research due to their ability to heal quickly and regenerate limbs.

12/04/2025

We hope that your holidays aren’t nearly as chaotic as trying to take a photo shoot with a hamster. 🍁🍂

12/01/2025

The Rocket Frog is gone. Officially extinct as of 2025.

Once found leaping through the rainforests of Central America, this tiny amphibian with its powerful legs and aerodynamic body was named for its incredible jumping ability, but no jump could save it from what came next.

Habitat destruction, relentless pollution, and a deadly fungal disease wiped out entire populations faster than researchers could react. For years, conservationists searched desperately for any remaining individuals in the wild. None were found. Captive breeding programs failed. And now, after decades of silence, the final verdict has arrived.

Extinct.

The Rocket Frog is yet another victim of the amphibian extinction crisis, a growing wave that's erasing frogs, salamanders, and toads from ecosystems worldwide. These creatures aren’t just cute, they’re vital indicators of environmental health. When frogs vanish, it's often a red flag for something much bigger.

And this one? It vanished almost unnoticed.

A species that once soared through the rainforest canopy is now a shadow in textbooks, a story in lab reports, a name etched on extinction lists.

Let this not just be a moment of mourning, but a wake-up call.

Because somewhere right now, another frog is falling silent.

10/26/2025

In memory of the Christmas Island Shrew

/ By Rhett Ayers Butler /

It never weighed more than a spoonful of sugar. Five or six grams of life, soft-furred and sharp-nosed, darting among the roots and leaf litter of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. At night, its voice—a thin, high cry, part bat and part whisper—once filled the forest of Christmas Island. Now the forest is silent. Australia’s only shrew, Crocidura trichura, has been declared extinct.

Few knew it lived, fewer still that it was Australian. The shrew was a stranger in a land of pouched mammals, a migrant that arrived tens of thousands of years ago, likely clinging to a raft of vegetation from what is now Indonesia. On this isolated outpost, it built a quiet lineage of survivors. When British naturalists arrived in the 1890s, they found the forest alive with its shrill chatter. “Extremely common,” they wrote. And then, almost at once, it vanished.

The black rats came first, stowaways in bales of hay. With them came a parasite, Trypanosoma lewisi, that swept through the island’s naïve mammals like a plague. Within years, both native rats were gone. By 1908, the shrew was presumed lost too. Its name lingered only in museum drawers and in the footnotes of field reports.

Yet it was not quite gone. Half a century later, in 1958, two shrews appeared as bulldozers tore into the forest for phosphate mining. They were seen, released, and forgotten. Then, in 1984, came a miracle: a live female, found in a clump of fern by biologists clearing a path. For more than a year, she lived in a terrarium, fed on grasshoppers and care. A few months later, a male was caught. The world briefly held its breath for a reunion that might save a species. But the male, sickly and short-tempered, died within weeks. The female lingered alone until she, too, was gone.

No others were ever found. Searches in the following decades brought only silence—the kind of silence that deepens until it becomes its own proof. When scientists dissected hundreds of feral cats on the island, not a trace of shrew remained in their stomachs. The Red List, in its latest revision, made official what many already knew in their hearts: Crocidura trichura was no more.

To some, the loss of a creature so small may seem inconsequential. Yet its passing adds one more mark to Australia’s lamentable record—the thirty-ninth mammal species lost since colonization, more than any other country on Earth. The shrew’s absence is a story repeated across islands: an ancient ecosystem undone by the carelessness of arrival, by rats and cats, ants and snakes, by the unthinking traffic of an expanding world.

The Christmas Island shrew had survived what many thought impossible. For decades, it persisted unseen—a shadow among roots, defying extinction. It was officially rediscovered, officially lost, and then, improbably, rediscovered again. It endured eighty years of disappearance before the recorders caught up. That endurance was its last act of defiance.

In life, it asked for little: a patch of soil, a few beetles, a quiet forest. In death, it leaves questions that are larger than itself. How many other lives flicker out unseen before the world even learns their names? How many others wait somewhere in the darkness, unseen but breathing still?

There is always a chance—slim but not zero—that the shrew endures yet, hidden in the damp heart of Christmas Island, trembling but alive. Hope, after all, has a long history of outliving the species it mourns. But the forest is quieter now. And if this really is the end, the last of Australia’s shrews will have gone as it lived—small, secret, and almost entirely unnoticed, save for those who loved it enough to listen for its cry.

Published at
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-memory-of-the-christmas-island-shrew/

10/17/2025

In a rare glimpse of evolution unfolding in real time, scientists have observed an Australian lizard species transitioning from laying eggs to giving live birth, a remarkable example of adaptation within a single species. This evolutionary shift offers new insight into how animals respond to environmental pressures and changing climates.

Researchers studying the three-toed skink found that some populations still lay eggs, while others give birth to live young. The transition appears to be driven by temperature and habitat differences, with live birth offering an advantage in cooler climates where eggs might not survive.

This discovery provides direct evidence of evolutionary flexibility, showing how reproductive strategies can shift as species adapt to survive. Today, around 20% of all snakes and lizards are known to give birth to live young, proving that nature constantly experiments with the most effective ways to preserve life.

Scientists believe this finding could deepen our understanding of how complex traits evolve and how animals might continue to adapt in the face of global change.

10/12/2025

Once fluttering among the coastal dunes of San Francisco, the Xerces Blue butterfly now lives only in photographs and memory. The butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces) is considered the first U.S. insect extinction directly attributed to human causes.

Native to the sandy dunes of the San Francisco Peninsula, it survived for thousands of years in a fragile, specialized ecosystem. But during the early 20th century, urban expansion destroyed much of its habitat. Roads, housing, and infrastructure overtook the dunes and displaced the native vegetation.

The larvae relied on native legumes like Lotus and Lupinus to feed and reproduce. When those plants vanished under development, the butterfly lost its life cycle foundations. Without food plants or breeding sites, its population collapsed. By the early 1940s, none remained.
This extinction is especially tragic because it offers no excuse of disease or catastrophe — it was a preventable loss caused primarily by habitat destruction and ecological neglect. Sadly, it was not unique. Other insects and butterflies have since disappeared under similar pressures.

In tribute, the Xerces Society was founded, named for this iconic butterfly, to protect other endangered invertebrates and prevent further losses.