Kim and I were in Texas last weekend for her latest ultramarathon race. It was a brutally hot day at Possum Kingdom Lake, a couple hours west of Fort Worth. The race started at 6am, though, when it was still pleasantly – but very temporarily – cool. After Kim and the other runners started down the trail, I spent an hour or so with my camera before I had to head to the first aid station to hand water and food to my wife.

I started my day with spiders. Before sunrise, I was looking for webs to silhouette against the thin line of color on the horizon. After the sun came up, those webs were even easier to see. I also returned to a green lynx spider I’d seen on a prickly poppy before the sun came up. It was still waiting for me (ok, probably not for me, specifically) on the same flower.

After I photographed a bunch of spiders, I started to look at the wildflowers around me, including a lot of blanket flowers (Gaillardia sp.) and lemon horse mint (Monarda citriodora). I also quickly noticed how many sharp, pokey things were in the shrubby grassland I was walking through. Several cactus species, yucca, sandburs, and prickly poppy seemed like plenty. But Kim had brushed up against a spurge nettle plant (Cnidoscolus stimulosus) almost immediately upon arrival, earning some painful, itchy bumps on her lower leg.

I brushed against a few, too, before I figured out which plant was causing the pain. I can only assume the lack of warning signs featuring this plant is part of a dastardly plan among Texans to torment tourists. And yes, I know it’s found in other southern states besides Texas, but that’s no excuse for not warning those of us from northern states where we’re less used to plants trying to bite us with venomous fangs.

Boy, they grow prickly pear cacti really big in Texas! I guess I should have expected that. I think I was looking at Opuntia engelmannii, but what do I know?

A prickly pear cactus the size of an economy car is impressive. The good thing is that they’re pretty easy to avoid at that size. Of course, that only works if you stay away from them. If you lean in closely to photograph the flowers or their invertebrate visitors, there are some big and small spines that can easily end up embedded in a careless photographer. I still have a couple small ones in the side of my left index finger as I type this.

I hung around those cactus flowers quite a while during the middle of the afternoon, watching bees flying in and out and tracking beetles working their way sluggishly through the anthers. The sun was bright and made photography difficult, but I had my homemade diffuser with me (a flexible hoop with a very thin fabric stretched across it).

With my camera on a tripod, I managed to hold the diffuser in place and soften the light on flowers and insects crawling around the cacti. It wasn’t a foolproof method, both because the diffuser scared quite a few insects away and because trying to do too many things led to more encounters with cactus spines than I’d like to admit. That includes the spines that got stuck in the diffuser and then in my hand when I adjusted my grip on the diffuser. Seriously, Texas, what’s with all these sharp things?

In addition to bees feeding on already-bloomed flowers, I also saw some big leaf-footed bugs feeding on the flower buds that hadn’t yet opened. They had their long straw-like mouthparts inserted right into the buds and stayed there while I held my big diffuser above them and snapped their photos. Below are two photos of the same bug, showing its mouth stuck into the flower bud.

Between aid station visits to help Kim, I wandered around much of the day, looking at wildflowers, insects, birds, and whatever else I could find. Some of the wildflowers were species, or at least genera, I recognized, but I had to look others up. If it hadn’t been so stinking hot, it would have been a great day. It was still fun, but that’s because I wasn’t running more than two back-to-back marathons on rocky, winding trails in glaring heat.

Around mid morning, I spotted a roadrunner at one of the aid stations. It ran and then flew off just as I realized what I was looking at. Later in the afternoon, I saw it again as I was filling Kim’s water and helping her get back on the trail. My camera wasn’t close enough to be useful – and I was also busy doing my actual job for the day – so I missed the opportunity to photograph it. After Kim ran off, though, I stuck around to see if I could find it again. I did.

When I came across the roadrunner, it had just captured a lizard on (appropriately) an abandoned section of road being overrun with wildflowers and grasses. When the roadrunner spotted me, it flew off, but not far enough that I couldn’t slowly creep up close enough to get a photo of it on a wire before it flew again. I let it go.

Late in the day, as the sun was getting lower and many of the runners were just a little past half done with their run (excepting the one taken away by ambulance), I found some bare sand patches that looked promising. I photographed a tiger beetle hunting small prey and a wasp digging a hole. I assumed the wasp would soon bury paralyzed prey in that hole after laying an egg on it. Nearby, I found a few species of grasshoppers and some glowing grasses backlit against the sun.

I ended the daylight hours as I’d started them – with a spider. This one was building a web between some grass stems with the last of the light illuminating its legs. I said goodbye to it and headed back to the car to start sorting and processing photos on my computer while Kim kept running through the darkness. We each have our own individual skills and interests, I guess.

I mentioned earlier that spurge nettle, the plant that attacked us, has other common names. A few of those common names include bull nettle, tread-softly, and finger rot. Those all seem appropriate. They’d all look good on a warning sign, too. Come on, Texas!

Hi everyone. Today’s post was written by Claire Morrical, one of our two 2024 Hubbard Fellows. Claire hails from Peoria, Illinois,and has been out here in the Great Plains since her Fellowship started in early February this year. She’s full of energy, questions, and ideas, and – as you’ll see in her post – is always trying to engage with and learn from the people around her. I hope you enjoy her writing. – Chris

Why you should talk to strangers, specifically about prairies.

By Claire Morrical, 2024 Hubbard Fellow

One Sunday, a few weeks ago, I found myself at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery at 10:00 PM with a plate of blueberry pancakes and my laptop in front of me. Our internet had been out for a couple days, the cafes were closed, and I was hoping to get some work done. As it turns out, Perkins is surprisingly inhabited at 10:00 PM and an ability to focus in busy spaces which had impressed my middle-school janitor was absent that night. As I was packing up to leave, having thrown in the towel, a woman in the booth behind me asked what kind of laptop I had. It looked lightweight and she was thinking about getting one. An hour later, I was still at Perkins, twisted around in the booth, chatting.

Among other topics, we talked about our jobs. She had worked in air traffic control for 25 years, having taken the opportunity on a whim before discovering that she was really good at it and really enjoyed it. I know very little about air traffic control, but she was clearly passionate about her career.

We’ll get to prairies soon, I promise.

But first – air traffic control is an unsurprisingly complex system, but one that varies from airport to airport, from much simpler setups at small airports, to a highly complex system with dedicated runways and landing strips at large airports like Chicago’s O’Hare. The job of air traffic control is to separate and direct planes as they move through the airspace and approach airports. In more complex airports, they’re passed from controller to controller who guides them as they get closer to or further from the airport. I learned that at large airports like O’Hare, pilots don’t even have time to repeat directions back to the controller because instructions come in so fast and so many planes are being directed through the airspace.

I would not have considered myself particularly interested in aviation or airspace control, but it was fascinating to learn about it from someone so happy to talk about her work.

In return, I gushed about our Platte River Prairies, explaining why disturbances like fire and grazing were so important to grassland health and biodiversity and explaining grazing practices like patch-burn and open-gate grazing.

She told me she would never drive by a prairie and look at it the same way again.

We parted ways, both apologizing for our rambling and holding each other hostage at the Perkins, but both clearly pleased with the interaction.

A week later, I was sitting in Daily Dose, a local coffee shop, again with my laptop (but fortunately no internet outage at home), when my table neighbor and I struck up a conversation over Nicholas Cage-themed Christmas gifts. Soon I was sharing about an oral history project I was working on to document restoration work and lessons learned by past TNC employees. Shortly after, they listened attentively as I explained the basics of how a prescribed fire works, accompanied with a hand drawn diagram. Again, we parted ways, happy to have learned something new and with a slightly different perspective on things.

This is all to say that it never ceases to delight me how eager we as people are to learn from others who speak lovingly and sincerely about the things they care about. Isn’t that why we’re reading this blog? And it’s a good reminder of how much power I have even in my personal life to make a little bit of change and get people to care a little bit more about prairies and conservation by speaking lovingly and sincerely.

So, the next time you strike up conversation with a stranger in a Perkins at 10:00 PM, take a few minutes to tell them about prairies! Chances are, you’ll both part ways a little wiser, with a slightly different perspective, and caring a little more about something you never thought to care about.

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Here are a few more photos Claire has taken since coming to Nebraska.