ANIMAL, LIFE IN OKLAHOMA, 



TURTLES. 



Besides the snakes^ Oklahoma has a widely distributed reptile popu- 

 lation that is both varied and interesting. The turtles and terrapins, of 

 which we have more than 13 varieties, are cold-blooded creatures that 

 lie dormant during the winter months, but are seen crawling or swim- 

 ming everywhere in the summer. The soft-shelled turtle is especially 

 abundant in many of the rivers, and the tortoises are familiar objects 

 in the fields and gardens. The members of the turtle group in fjkla- 

 homa are for the most part rather small, but a few large ones are 

 occasionally taken. Recently an alligator-snapping turtle weighing 

 110 pounds was taken from Blue River near Durant. When this 

 specimen was discovered a member of the party ventured certain 

 familiarities and extended the paddle end of an oar to within a 

 few inches of its head. At once the massive jaws snapped away la 

 portion of the oar and signaled a warning that was not to be disregarded. 

 These larger reptiles are not abundant, and only a few are ever taken, 

 for they frequent the deeper portions of streams and lakes, and -are 

 seldom seen except through periods of prolonged droughts when the 

 retreating water leaves them stranded or in shallow pools. 



LIZARDS. 



The little blue-tailed lizards are present in large numbers and dart 

 under some protecting object on the first approach of danger. Mountain- 

 boomers are present in rough, hilly parts of the State where rocks abound, 

 and the homy "toad," which is not a toad at all, but a lizard, isi a 

 eommon sight in practically every community of the State. A few 

 small alligators have ascended the rivers as far as the central portion 

 of Oklahoma. A specimen about four and a half feet long was taken 

 from an over-flow lake south of Norman, and another was reported in 

 a small lake near Durant. This is, of course, far Outside tlie usual 

 limits of their natural range, and it is one of the strange, interesting 

 experiments of Nature in thus projecting an animal into a habitat 

 remote from its established home, and under conditions that require 

 radical changes in its manner of living if it is to survive. 



INSECTS. 



Why is an insect? This question has always been uppermost in 

 the minds of farmers, while gardeners and fruit growers have never 

 ceased to speculate on what a paradise this world would be if insects 

 bad never been created. Dwellers in antiquated hotels give eloquent 

 testimony of the annoyance and humiliation caused by certain of these 

 lowly animals, and the inhabitants of swampy regions know only too 

 well of the deadly malaria that abounds and claims many human victims 

 in regions that are infected with the Anophiles mosquito. Texas fever 

 is transmitted through the bite of a tick, and is responsible each year 

 for a loss in this State that cannot be expressed with less than six 



