Trash talking: Strangest Things?

Nature Talk
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Yeah, I hate finding monofilament fishing line when I’m out on a river or lake. You just know some animal is going to get tangled in it eventually so I do my best to gather it up whenever I find it. I once caught a Canada Goose that had been hobbled by fishing line wrapped tightly around both legs and took it to a wildlife rescuer.

Here’s an example of similar material that poses a risk to wildlife. It’s so common as a hazard that I co-authored an article on this topic back in 2001, just to raise awareness:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286280488_Plastic_netting_An_entanglement_hazard_to_snakes_and_other_wildlife

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1164469

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About those discarded fishing lines
https://thegreentimes.co.za/successful-fishing-line-bin-project-expands-its-footprint/

We also have a dedicated team to rescue entangled whales - which I find amazing team work. Including the cooperative whale!

Aquarium at Cape Town harbour has dedicated slatted wood platforms - where seals doze in the sun - and divers can come up underneath to cut and retrieve plastic loops on them.

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Bird netting from fruit trees is nasty. I’ve been stuck in it–shirt buttons, shoe tred, hair–and once ran over some, leading to spending forever cutting off what had wrapped around my tire.

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Is that the same kind of netting used to make grass sod/turf like described here?

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Turquoise plastic Mylanta bottles. Dozens of them in the swamp. Someone had a serious case of heartburn somewhere. We’ve never been able to figure out how all of them got distributed to the middle of the swamp, but there you are. I never took a photo, though. :(

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Yes, basically the same plastic monofilament material. Doesn’t biodegrade and remains an entanglement hazard for wildlife for years.

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My most recent strange finding was 6 roosters. Poor things, I suspect they were dumped by someone who didn’t want to deal with them. Biggest clue was that there weren’t any hens among them. I told myself that if they followed me home I’d give them a safe place to live. They didn’t. At least it will make some foxes happy.

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I wonder if the Mylanta bottles were being used as floats or markers for trotlines (for fishing). I’ve seen such floats in the southern US. I knew a biologist who saved all his empty Mylanta bottles in his office … he had real heartburn issues and had quite the collection.

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Well, it was in the swamp and the water has never really been deep enough for a lot of fishing. But I suppose anything is possible and that is as good an explanation as any. :)

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I recently created a post about a rope I found that had tricked me into thinking I had found something really special which is here:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/i-got-tricked-today/34435/4

Didn’t realise this thread existed, haha!

Edit: No pun intended when I said thread… oops.

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The strangest thing I’ve seen was a baby car seat, blanket, and balloon next to a sinkhole with bubbles rising from it…I probably have a picture somewhere. Also have found used tampon applicators on the trail 30 feet from a bathroom, a stuffed animal that my dog loved for years and years, and a full container of dip hidden half buried under a park bench. I guess someone wanted to hide it.

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I saw this and laughed out loud. I have done the same thing. I’ve also done it in reverse as well. Once I saw a Common Nighthawk and passed it off as a stick. Thank goodness my mom was there and saw what it really was!

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and the baby?

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There was no baby but there were bubbles rising from the sinkhole. XD

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I don’t think I have any pictures, but I have a few odd things.

Once while ditch cleaning one of the members in my group found a dead cat in a trash bag (probably the most gruesome thing I have seen). Also, the amount of discarded 5-hour energy bottles that we find each year on our walks is ungodly

At the disc-golf course near our house there is a heavily wooded valley that is mostly hidden from view in most of the course, and one day when we decided to look for mushrooms there, we found several old trash cans lying on their side along with an upside-down picnic table and several other large pieces of metal.

In the woods behind our house there is also an old school bus that’s probably from the 60’s or 70’s, it’s in surprisingly good shape for having endured the weather for several decades in the woods.

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This Norconia was found in middle of the river while I sought for planarians. Average optics but still good catch. Despite it looks not very fancy on pic it’s cleaned, polished and greased. Got few new screws. Working properly.

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Some people mentioning dead domestic animals in bags. Yeah this gross habit is there too. Especially around big roads. Poultry, rabbits, pigeons, you name it. Once I found whole goat.

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Biggest piece of trash I’ve found on a hike so far was an entire plane crashed into the mountain. Apparently the area is too remote to recover it so it has been there since the crash occurred. Sort of a memorial site - somebody lost their life here on a foggy and stormy day in May 1978:

GMPlane01
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On a more icky-funny note, there’s the ‘Rubber Plants’ springing up at the local overlooks along the Parkway at certain times of year. Just found another one this weekend - Fall semester starts tomorrow…

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My favorite trash item found while iNatting was this old hand-embroidered door valance (known as a Toran), which was originally from India. It currently is decorating the doorway of my apartment here in NYC. A toran is supposed to work magic by attracting and pleasing Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the Goddess of Wealth (both material wealth and spiritual wealth too).

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This year (2022) on Earth Day I was on the Caribbean island of Nevis, and an ex-pat friend of mine had asked me if I would please go iNatting to record as much as I could of the nature at Fort Ashby, a historical site which had become totally overgrown with vegetation, so as to be almost impenetrable, and had a fair amount of trash illegally dumped in it too.

https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/susanhewitt/64478-fort-ashby-nevis-west-indies-an-earth-day-clean-up-and-nature-survey

There was an abandoned cottage, and the day before, another volunteer from Nevis Historical and Conservation Society had swept out the last small remnants of the cottage’s contents into two black trash bags. I noticed one arm of this Toran hanging out of one of the trash bags that were waiting to be loaded onto the truck that my friend would use to take all the trash to the dump, so I rescued the item. The cloth was not very dirty and not really stained at all. The lining is threadbare in places, but overall the piece looks good, considering its age.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/112849690

This is an old Toran, maybe 50 years old. The central figure is the elephant-headed god Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles. Also featured are Hanuman the monkey god, Krishna and Lakshmi, and two sacred cows, backed up by elephants, peacocks, parrots, palm trees and many flowers.

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The find that makes the best story happened after I was picking trash up off of my favorite beach in San Diego North County. The beach is Swami’s, the famous point break and marine preserve. Swami’s is right next to the lovely clifftop Ashram founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, hence the name.

When I arrived, I would ask the lifeguard for a trash bag, and then I would check the entire beach from the north end to the south end and from low tide level to the foot of the cliffs. There is usually not a lot of trash on that beach, but you can always find some.

There is a section of the beach where up top there is a very small vacant clifftop lot that is maintained by the parks department, and that day it seems that a team had been working up there wearing hardhats, and one of the guys had bent over the edge and his hardhat had fallen all the way down onto the beach.

I imagine the guy asked his boss, “ShouId I go all the way down the staircases to the beach, and along the beach to get it?” And I imagine his boss told him, “No, when we get back to the office, I will requisition you another one.”

So I picked it up and slung it over my arm. It was in perfect condition, like brand new.

I decided that when I was finished I would give it to the lifeguard on duty and tell him, as a joke, that he could use it if he had to paddle out in really big surf.

So when I was done, I climbed up the first set of wooden steps, threw away my bag of trash, and reached over the wooden barrier to catch the lifeguard’s attention. He had been talking to his friend.

When I made eye contact I told him, “This is for you…” and held out the hardhat. I did not get to finish my sentence, because the lifeguard’s mouth dropped wide open in amazement. My simple gesture had rendered him completely speechless.

His friend had to explain to me why. The lifeguard on duty had just been telling his friend that he was happy that he had gotten a construction job for the weekends, but he didn’t know what he was going to do, because he needed to have a hardhat, and he did not have $50 to go out and buy one.

And then I walked over and gave him exactly what he wanted and needed, announcing, “This is for you”!

It was a really great coincidence, and a magical moment for him, and for me too.

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My jaw DROPPED when I got to the last few paragraphs! Great story indeed!