Flora and Fauna of the Pisgah Forest

This is the third installment of blogging about our Brevard trip. If you've been keeping up, you know that today I'm going to tell you about the new friends we met at Key Falls Inn, Flora and Fauna.

Surely you're not THAT gullible are you? (Let me know if I fooled you, I'll want to try it again, later) Of course, I'm talking about the flora (plant) and fauna (animal) organisms which we encountered while in the Pisgah National Forest and surrounding region.

I won't be able to identify a lot of these living things, but a picture is worth a thousand words. These will be in no particular sequence, but I hope they give you a sampling of both the abundance and the diversity of God's creation.

In a residential area of Brevard we saw a white squirrel (not albino) scampering to a fence top. It's very small in the photo--but you can see that it's white (National Geographic, I'm not). I later read that about 25% of all the squirrels in the Brevard area have the recessive gene for white fur. They are not albino, having brown eyes. A local legend states that a man purchased two white squirrels decades ago from a traveling carnival. One escaped, and the man, feeling that the other would be lonely, released the mate. I've heard (and told) stranger stories.

Speaking of squirrels, the contraption below is an ingenious squirrel feeder in the courtyard of the Thai restaurant where we dined our first night in town. While we didn't get to observe any squirrels feeding (they're not as tame as Pinehurst squirrels, I guess), the idea is apparent. When one of the cute, little rodents leaps onto any of the five feeding stations, his little Ferris Wheel will begin to whirl. That must be unexpected the first time, but squirrels are highly adaptive. As you can see, something has been eating that corn! I'd love to see a demonstration.

Now for more living things.

This Swallowtail butterfly was on the Triple Falls trail (see previous blog post).

Mushrooms and other fungi thrive in the moist environment of Transylvania County.

This wildflower was commonly seen on the rural roadsides and Highway 276, which leads to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Man can increase the habitat for wild things rather than destroy it, but it must be a conscious effort. This Swallowtail butterfly was in a small park in downtown Brevard.

You've probably seen some of this type "flutterby" in your own yard or garden.

I was delighted to find a healthy patch of Rattlesnake Plantain on our uphill trek to Key Falls. My love for this wildflower dates back to my days as Nature Instructor at dear old Camp Cherokee in the '70's (and 1982).

It is so named because the flower resembles a rattler's rattle and the leaf pattern is similar to a snake's scales.

On Main Street, just outside the Humane Society Thrift Shop, we saw this pale green butterfly on a Morning Glory flower.

Butterflies are faster than you think. I couldn't get another shot of that elusive one, but the Morning Glory vine continued to pose cooperatively. What shade would you call that?

I'm not even sure what kind of tree this is, but I had to photograph it because it reminded me of Old Man Poplar on our Sandhills Farm Life Nature Trail. Can you find any "faces" on its massive trunk? (Use your imagination)

It's interesting how many non-green plants are found in the damp forests. Just because mushrooms and toadstools don't have flowers is no reason they can't be colorful.

When I was a boy, I thought this type mushroom looked a lot like a pancake. But I knew better than to taste one (without syrup--yuck)!

Here's one more non-chlorophyll plant for your viewing pleasure.

I'm just trying to be a fun-gi. I hope you've taken a lichen to some of these specimens.

Seriously, (no, not really) there's one more creature of the Pisgah Forest that I would have given anything to photograph. It's the Pisgah that this national forest was named for. As I learned from my old friend Jim at Camp Cherokee, the Pisgah is a large mammal inhabiting this region. It's a cross between a grizzly bear and a mountain lion. And when we used to take campers in an old army truck named Thunder to visit Courthouse Creek and Devil's Courthouse, we cautioned them to be on the lookout for this beast. After Jim's late-night tales, they would think twice about crawling out of their sleeping bag in search of the latrine in the middle of the night.

I love Pisgahs so much, I was thrilled that Judy and I got to stay in the Pisgah Forest room at Key Falls Inn. The only picture I could locate is this Pisgah from an internet source. But if you visit the Pisgah National Forest, lock your door or zip your tent at night. And think twice about those visits to the latrine.