The Gray Army

They're so ubiquitous that we hardly notice them, and when we do, we may love them or curse them, but our island clan of gray squirrels carry on in their thousands. Common throughout the eastern United States, gray squirrels were in fact first scientifically catalogued and described right here in South Carolina by a German naturalist, Johann Friedrich Gmelin, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who bestowed the scientific name Sciurus carolinensis on the animal. (The darker, or even black, squirrels you sometimes see are all grays with a genetic mutation affecting coat color.)

A kit at about six weeks old

Gray squirrels share with their red and fox-eared cousins a prolific breeding capability, with females as young as six months able to bear young, although most females begin mating at a year-old and produce up to four kits, sometimes twice a year for older females. First litters are born in February or March, and a second litter in June or July. The kits who, as adults, have an average life span of two years, are nursed in nests built high up in live oaks or other leafy trees before living on their own after about twelve weeks. Active in early morning and early evening, squirrels retreat to their nests in the heat of the day during warmer months.

Squirrels are scatter-hoarders, gathering and burying a diet of acorns, walnuts, tree bark and seeds raided from bird feeders over a wide area, returning to them sometimes months later through smell and by remembering landmarks associated with each horde. They have actually been observed pretending to bury a horde when they suspect a rival is watching, going through the digging and burying motions but retaining their prize in the mouth until the competitor is safely away and another site can be chosen. This has led some naturalists to speculate that squirrels have developed the "theory of mind" (an ability to attach mental states to oneself and to others) observed in other mammals like dolphins, elephants and apes. Squirrels are also one of the few mammalian arboreal species that can descend from a tree head-down, reversing the direction of their rear claws to grab hold on the trunk.

They're certainly clever, as anyone who has done battle with them over a bird feeder has discovered; in some parts of the western United States, Canada and in Europe, they're considered an invasive species who threaten native squirrels like the red squirrel. But they do play an important role in reforestation, helping forests regenerate with new seedlings and keeping nature in balance.

A Tale Of Three Bridges

Few symbols are more identifiable with Charleston than the iconic Ravenel Bridge spanning the Cooper River and connecting downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant. The third longest cable-stayed bridge in the western hemisphere (after Louisiana's Audubon Bridge over the Mississippi and New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the mouth of New York's harbor), the Ravenel opened to great acclaim in 2005, one year ahead of schedule and under budget. It carries more than 96,000 vehicles a day along the 1400-foot span between its distinctive diamond-shaped towers, and is expected to carry 100,000 cars per day by 2030.

The "roller coaster" Grace bridge

It's only the third bridge over the Cooper River which, until 1929, could only be crossed by commercial ferry or private boating. In that year, the John P. Grace Memorial Bridge opened to traffic, named for the Charleston mayor who spearheaded the building campaign. The largest bridge of its kind in the world at the time, the Grace was a cantilevered truss bridge with a narrow two-lane roadbed so steep that it became known as the "roller coaster bridge." Privately owned and maintained, drivers had to pay an equally steep toll for the time of $1.00. The toll remained in effect until 1943, when the city of Charleston purchased the structure and, three years later, lifted the toll.

The Pearman (left) and Grace bridges

The bridge's 10-foot-wide lanes were fine for the Model A Fords of the day, but by the 1950's they'd become dangerous for wider and bulkier vehicles in greater and greater numbers. Fender-benders and worse became so common (it became known to Charlestonians as "the scariest bridge in the world") that the city decided a second bridge was called for. This was the Silas Pearman bridge, another truss bridge built parallel to its older cousin, but with modern 12-foot wide lanes. Opened in 1966, the Pearman carried northbound traffic toward Mt. Pleasant, while the older Grace took vehicles south into downtown Charleston.

But the two sister bridges only lasted until the late 1970's, when they were rendered obsolete due to structural deterioration and the coming of larger, taller container ships too big to pass under them to reach the new Wando River container port, a serious liability for Charleston's and the state's economy. A twenty-year-old effort to raise the $700-million for a new eight-lane bridge was led by Charleston-born

Congressman Arthur J. Ravenel, who relinquished his congressional seat to become a state senator and spearhead the campaign and to help create the South Carolina Infrastructure Bank as the financing conduit for the project. So relentless was his enthusiasm for the new bridge that his fellow state legislators voted to name it in his honor during week-long celebrations preceding its opening to traffic in July of 2005. Unlike its relatively short-lived predecessors, the Ravenel Bridge was designed to last at least a century, an enduring symbol of Charleston's vitality and energy.

Open Season

Our island's main tourist season may be a few weeks off, but another and equally crucial season's about to begin, South Carolina's shrimping season. The Lowcountry is fortunate to have access to its favorite food for eight months of the year, from May to December, although the state DNR divides the season into three distinct phases, determined by the quality and quantity of the crustaceans each year.

Limited harvesting usually begins in the spring - this year, starting this week - and is restricted to specific offshore sites that lie along the border between state and federal waters, and then only if winter monitoring has indicated sufficient numbers of mature shrimp. The full summer season usually begins no earlier than mid-May, the date again determined by the DNR based on the health of shrimp populations (it's not yet been announced for this year), and mostly harvests smaller brown shrimp, which were spawned in the previous fall and matured during the winter. The third season begins in September and focuses on larger and more favored white shrimp, but can also bring in more rare pink shrimp until the season ends in December. This is all in addition to net casting for shrimp in tidal creeks by locals, again progressing from brown to white shrimp as the months progress.

White shrimp spawn in the spring and are ready for the table by autumn

Predictions for this season are for an abundant harvest based on a relatively mild winter, as colder winters and resulting lower water temperatures can affect spawning, drive shrimp far offshore and kill off significant numbers of the animals. Shrimping is an important economic driver for the Lowcountry, generating up to ten million dollars in revenue in some years from commercial harvests of some three or four million pounds in good years. A constant worry for commercial shrimpers is the cost of diesel fuel, which rose high enough last year to idle some of the fleet, which may return to the water this season as fuel prices trend lower. It's a hard, physically demanding way to make a living and a tradition that will be honored this weekend with Mount Pleasant's annual Blessing Of The Fleet on Sunday, April 30th at Waterfront Park. Find out more about the event here.