The Apothecary's Daughter

Eastern screech owls kill every animal they bring home to their chicks. Every mouse arrives headless. Every beetle is crushed. Every piece of prey is delivered dead to the nest. The one exception is the Texas blind snake. Owls bring blind snakes home alive, drop them into the nest, and the snakes burrow beneath the chicks and eat the parasitic insect larvae that would otherwise feed on the baby owls. Chicks raised in nests with live-in snakes grew up to 50 percent faster and were 25 percent more likely to survive.

Fred Gehlbach and Robert Baldridge at Baylor University near Waco, Texas, discovered the relationship in the 1970s and 1980s while studying screech owl nesting ecology in more than 70 experimental nest boxes. They published the finding in the journal Oecologia in 1987 under a title that told the entire story in one line: "Live Blind Snakes in Eastern Screech Owl Nests: A Novel Commensalism."

The Texas blind snake looks nothing like a snake. It looks like a shiny earthworm. It is five to eight inches long, pinkish gray, smooth-scaled, and essentially blind, with vestigial eyes reduced to dark spots beneath the head scales. It spends nearly its entire life underground, inside ant colonies and termite nests, eating larvae by the hundreds. Its tightly interlocking scales function as armor against ant bites. A related Australian species was documented eating 1,431 ant larvae in a single feeding. The blind snake is not a predator in any conventional sense. It is a larval vacuum cleaner that lives in the dirt.

An owl nest is a filthy place. The cavity floor fills with pellets, f***s, uneaten scraps of prey, and shed feathers as the breeding season progresses. Flies, beetles, and ants find the debris and lay their eggs in it. The resulting larvae feed on the organic matter and, in some cases, parasitize the owlets themselves, feeding on skin tissue, blood, or stored food that the chicks need. In a nest without blind snakes, the larval population grows unchecked for the duration of the nesting cycle.

In a nest with blind snakes, the larvae disappear. The snakes burrow into the debris layer beneath the chicks and eat every soft-bodied larva they encounter. They do this continuously, around the clock, for as long as the nest is active. Gehlbach and Baldridge found that 14 of their 70-plus nest boxes contained live blind snakes. Some nests had one. Some had as many as 15, all living beneath the chicks, all eating larvae, all apparently unharmed by the owlets sitting on top of them.

The selective behavior is the strangest part. Screech owls kill their prey before bringing it to the nest. They remove heads. They crush exoskeletons. They deliver inert food to helpless chicks that cannot defend themselves against a live animal in the dark. The blind snake is the only prey species they bring home alive. The researchers could not determine whether the owls recognized the snakes as beneficial and deliberately spared them, or whether the blind snake's smooth body and burrowing speed simply made it too difficult to kill in the talons. What they could determine was that the owls captured blind snakes regularly, that they did not kill them the way they killed everything else, and that the surviving snakes performed a measurable service inside the nest.

Some of the snakes were eaten by the chicks. The relationship was not perfectly cooperative. A blind snake dropped into a nest full of hungry owlets had a reasonable chance of being swallowed before it could burrow to safety. The ones that made it beneath the debris survived and fed. The ones that did not became food. Either way, the owl chick benefited.

Gehlbach described the relationship as commensalism, a partnership in which one species benefits and the other is unaffected. Whether the blind snakes benefit from living in an owl nest is unclear. They gain warmth, protection from their own predators, and an unlimited supply of insect larvae. They lose the option of leaving until the owls abandon the cavity. The owl gets a cleaner nest and healthier chicks. The snake gets a job it did not apply for.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: Gehlbach and Baldridge (1987), Oecologia / Audubon / BirdNote / Marfa Public Radio / Earth Touch News.

Clover does more than fill empty spaces in a lawn or meadow. Beneath the soil, it forms a valuable partnership with nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

These bacteria live inside nodules on the clover’s roots. They take nitrogen gas from the atmosphere—a form most plants cannot use—and convert it into nitrogen compounds that support plant growth. In exchange, the clover supplies the bacteria with energy-rich sugars.

The nitrogen first supports the clover itself. It does not simply pour from living roots into the surrounding soil. Instead, much of it becomes available to nearby plants later, when roots, fallen leaves, cuttings, and other plant material break down.

In pastures, grazing animals can speed up the recycling process by returning nutrients through manure. In lawns and gardens, leaving healthy clover clippings in place can also help return nutrients to the soil over time.

How much nitrogen clover contributes depends on growing conditions, soil nitrogen levels, clover density, and management. A strong stand may reduce fertilizer needs, but it should not be treated as a guaranteed replacement in every setting.

What some people dismiss as a w**d can be a useful part of a resilient plant community—quietly capturing nitrogen, supporting soil life, and helping nutrients move through the ecosystem.

The spotted lanternfly starts its final transformation from nymph to adult in July. These pests will begin laying their egg masses around the county.

What Can You Do?
If you see spotted lanternfly nymphs or adults, squish/step on them.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/44m0eZM

Wow!

You didn't want the goldfish anymore. The bowl was too small. The tank was too much work. So you drove to the park, walked to the pond, and gently released her into the water. You felt good. She swam away. You thought you gave her a better life.

You introduced an invasive species that can trigger the collapse of an entire freshwater ecosystem.

A University of Missouri and University of Toledo study published in 2026 in the Journal of Animal Ecology provides some of the strongest experimental evidence to date: released goldfish grow rapidly in natural waters, reaching sizes that would shock most pet owners. They stir up lake sediments, cloud the water, consume massive numbers of native invertebrates, compete with native fish, and in documented cases cause what ecologists call a regime shift — a tipping point where the ecosystem reorganizes into a fundamentally degraded state that is extremely difficult to reverse.

In the Great Lakes region alone, feral goldfish populations are estimated in the tens of millions. The world record feral goldfish weighed nine pounds. The fish you held in your palm can become a football-sized ecological disaster in open water.

Goldfish eat dragonfly nymphs, tadpoles, native fish eggs, snails, and aquatic invertebrates. Every organism they consume was either controlling mosquitoes, pollinating, filtering water, or feeding something native. The pond you "freed" her into is now a degraded system — and it may never fully recover.

If you no longer want a goldfish: return it to the pet store. Give it to another fishkeeper. Contact local wildlife authorities. Do not release it. Not into a pond, a lake, a river, a ditch, or a storm drain.

The most common pet in the world is one of the most destructive invasive species on Earth.

The crow on your fence knows your face. She's known it for years. She told her family about you. They've never met you. They also know your face now. The grudge was inherited.

University of Washington researchers wore masks while trapping crows. Years later, crows who had never been trapped — young birds born after the study — would scold and dive-bomb anyone wearing that specific mask. The information was taught across generations.

She uses tools. She solves multi-step puzzles. She plans for the future — caching food she'll need later in locations she's scouted. She understands water displacement well enough to drop stones into a tube to raise the water level and reach a floating treat.

When one of her family dies, the others gather. Not to mourn — to study. They investigate how the death occurred, identify the threat, and adjust their behavior. They hold a safety briefing over a casualty.

She eats 40,000 grubs and pest insects per family per season. She eats carrion. She buries seeds that become oak trees. She's running a three-shift operation — pest removal, sanitation, reforestation — and she remembers the face of everyone who's ever thrown a rock at her.

What to Plant on a Tree Stump See all 20 options.

It is going to be HOT, HOT, HOT. 🔥Use extreme caution with your pets and limit outdoor activity over the next few days.

Heat can impact dogs differently. Dogs who are obese, brachycephalic (snub-nosed like Frenchies, Bulldogs, Pugs, etc.), less than 6 months or senior-aged can be especially susceptible to hot temperatures. The heat can be life-threatening.

☀ Make sure you know the signs of heat stroke in dogs, which include excessive, heavy panting, excessive drooling/foaming, bright red gums/tongue, lethargy, weakness, dizziness, and disorientation. If you see any of these signs, seek immediate veterinary care.

Find indoor boredom busters for pets at AlexandriaAnimals.org/Enrichment.