The Denizens of Dougan Creek

       On Friday Sandra and I made one of our regular forays to the Upper Washougal..  Traveling a bit further than usual, up to 1300 feet elevation, we were unable to do better than the small ruddy skipper that we have been seeing in the area. 

Juba Skipper, Livingston Mountain, August 2023

 To the best of my ability, this humble butterfly is a Juba Skipper.  As far as butterflies went,  this ruddy little stub kept us from being skunked.  Not what you would call a sterling day for the old lepidoptera.

   As we descended along the river, I spotted a chunky grouse on the side of the road. She let us cruise by slowly as she meandered into the roadside weeds.  This was a Blue Grouse, now known as a Dusky Grouse.   This bird was once common, but at least in my current meanderings, it is unusual.  We saw one just after dawn on Mount Rainier last summer, so I now have a two year streak going on Blue Grouse.  Or is it Dusky Grouse?

    Of course, be it blue or dusky, this bird comes with an anecdote.

    When my son was courting the mother of my grandchildren, he was driving with his future father in
law in the hills near Roseburg, Oregon.  They happened upon just such a blue grouse and the pater familias leaped from the cab and dispatched said grouse with his handy shotgun.  This may explain why we don't see many blue grouse.  It also explains why the Recoubtable SKG discourages me from confronting pickup driving rednecks in the Fred Meyers parking lot.  I mean, how would I look, recumbent in a broiling pan packed with a savory stuffing?

    Or to quote Washout from the teenage classic Hotshots, "If it helps, I didn't have seconds."

   The grouse went a ways towards justifying the expedition as we proceeded past Dougan Falls, turning up the creek towards our favorite picnic spot.  When we got there, we discovered that someone had pitched a rather nice tent right where we park for our al freso afternoon meal..  The audacity of some people!  

   Well, we brought the boat about and found a different wide spot in the road where we enjoyed our sandwiches while not seeing any butterflies.  It has rained exactly one day in the last two months, so this may explain the lack of both wildflowers and butterflies.  

    Sandra was feeling lazy, so she let me go off by myself, wandering past the interloper's tent and down to the creek.  When I got there, I discovered that the campers had left a plastic box, the type in which you store unused sweatshirts.  As I  approached, I could see rocks and water in the box.  And when I peered inside, I was treated to a surprising aquarium.  The campers, presumably including some curious children, had collected a variety of northwest aquatic wildlife.  They had a few fish, some water boatmen, a crawdad and three brown salamanders.

Stop Grousing about the lack of butterflies!

     Not being a child myself, I have not seen these animals for many years.  But, hard to believe, I was young once.  Way back then, even in the little creeks in Vancouver, we found crawdads.  My son tells me that  they found them in the creeks around Salem, but by that time (I was 40, for crying out loud) I was  too old to dabble in the mud. 

   The first sign that you are getting old is that you include gardening in your list of hobbies.  That you exclude mud dabbling from the list is another tell tale sign. 

     Taxonomists tell us that this crawdad was a Signal Crayfish, P. leniusculus.  Crayfish are closely related to lobsters, making them eminently edible if a bit small, and occur only in freshwater.  There are three invasive species of crayfish found in Eastern Washington, but this was almost certainly the native endemic from my childhood.

A plastic box on Dougan creek opens a trove of memories.

    My history with the salamander is shrouded in mystery.   Sixty years ago I was a Boy Scout.  As I recall, our troop would take camping trips to Silver Star Mountain, the highest spot in Clark County.  Needless to say, the camping trip was usually accompanied by a hike.

     The campground of my memory was across the road from a ranger station with a choice location...right beside a stream with a waterfall. And, you guessed it, in the pool below the falls there were salamanders.   The scouts caught these salamanders, which were fairly large, dark brown and totally aquatic, bearing obvious gills.  I can't recall for sure if the scouts of Troop 400 tortured these salamanders, or if it was different scouts and salamanders somewhere else. 

    As it turns out, there is just such a waterfall, Hidden Falls, near Silver Star, only seven miles as the crow flies from Dougan Creek.  But at this point my memory and the facts part company.  There is no road to Hidden Falls and there has never been a ranger station there. Only two things are certain: I didn't especially like the long hike and there were definitely brown aquatic salamanders.

Salamanders and a Crawdad, Dougan Creek August 2023

   The Burke Museum at the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) tells us these are Cope's Giant Salamanders, D. copei.  Despite being "giant" they achieve only a whopping eight inches.  They are almost entirely aquatic, a condition known as paedomorphosis. 

     Only a few metamorphosed adults have been found in the wild.  Scientists, who are at least as likely to torture salamanders as any boy scout, have been able to induce metamorphosis by exposing the salamanders to thyroid hormone.   What one then does with a metamorphosed Cope's Giant Salamander is anybody's guess.  Probably brain it with a piece of driftwood, ala the boy scouts, or, being scientific, toss it into jar of ever clear. This is what is known as your tax dollars at work.  

   But I digress.  The salamanders are endemic, living in the cool mountain streams of Western Washington.  With any luck they escape the notice of small children, boy scouts and scientists. They harbor under rocks during the day and emerge in the evening to forage on the bottom of streams. 

   Neither the crawdads nor the giant salamanders are threatened.  Regrettably, the same can not be said for my aging memory!  So get out there and create some memories of your own, before its too late

jeff