Happy Pi Day!

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Pi Day was first celebrated in the US. Larry Shaw was the one that started Pi Day in 1988. It took the US House of Representatives (2009) and the UN (2019) a little longer to recognize the day. Source. So I thought about making a pie, but nah. Instead I went for a brief visit to the grasslands to check on a plant.

And now I was headed to the plant. Of course, I stopped along the way. First up. Here a crab spider’s patience paid off!
Across the field was my FOS Prairie Paintbrush (Castilleja purpurea). And it was the only one I saw at this stage. See the cow patty? So you know where this post is heading now. 😉
There are plenty of cow patties in the field. Some folks call them cow pies. However don’t get these confused with a cookie also called a cow pie. What an awful name for cookie, eh?
Flipping the cow pie over, tentatively ID’d as a Striped Bark Scorpion (Centruroides vittatus)! Why was it named a bark scorpion. Seemed a bit ironic under there. 🙂

Indeed this one looked promising!
Furthermore it was great with an active centipede (Chilopoda)!

So most cow pies seemed to have a resident Roly-Poly bug.

A few cow pies had spiders under them.
This was my last pie. And it had a spider and a plant growing under it.
Finally not a cow pie, but a FOS Yellow Star-grass (Hypoxis hirsuta)!

Moreover whether you call them cow patties or cow pies, it can be very interesting to see what lives under them. Happy Pi Day!

Oh and my plant was doing just how I thought it would be doing. So my only gripe was that someone removed my marker flag. Not pointing fingers but it could have been a NEON person. My flag was in part the area they are monitoring.

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Keep looking!

The more you know, the more you see and the more you see, the more you know

8 Comments

  2. Learned all sorts of fun terminology tonight – frass-shooters,” “butt-flickers,” and “turd-hurlers.” Cowpie “phenology” too. Satisfying reading!

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  4. Yellow star-grass! I have still never seen that at LBJ. If I stick with you, maybe my luck will change.

    Reply

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