Yesterday, my husband raised the lid to the kitchen garbage can and immediately began to fuss about my not putting the bag in correctly. I explained that the reason for the bag covering only half the opening was that I had washed the can and was waiting for it to dry. "Oh", came the embarrassed reply.
We have a new resident in the yard. It began making mounds in the side yard and worked its way through the back, under the house, and popped up in front.
When I first moved to this part of Florida over twenty years ago, I had asked the locals about the sandy mounds dotting the pasturelands. They called them salamander mounds. Now, I couldn't imagine a salamander that large, so I looked them up and found that they are actually a burrowing rodent, the pocket gopher.
My husband's assumption that it is a pest has led to many loud threats against the creature's life. This morning, I looked it up again and found that it is a beneficial little animal. It not only aerates the soil, but according to zoologist Mark Bailey, The "sandy-mounding" habits of pocket gophers help maintain soil fertility by returning some of these leached nutrients back to where they can be reached by plant roots. One study found that, under optimal conditions, pocket gophers can return more than three and a half tons of soil per acre to the surface each year. The mounds of bare soil provide natural seedbeds where longleaf pines and herbaceous plants can germinate. The pocket gopher's burrows provide shelter to a diverse assemblage of other animals, as do those of the gopher tortoise. For example, at least fourteen arthropods (mostly insects) are believed to be unable to exist anywhere but in the burrows of southeastern pocket gophers.
"Oh."
Many circumstances seem, at first glance, to be a clear-cut nuisance or trial. Closer examination can reveal an unexpected benefit or blessing. "Salamander slander" is an ugly affliction, but happily it does have a cure.
Happy Sunday!
