Wildlife of Alligator River

Alligator River stories

TALES of A TYRRELL COUNTY DIRT ROAD
By William R. West

A teller of tales will have passed when the final Tyrrell County dirt road has been paved. I learned a great deal and developed a lifelong curiosity while walking the dirt road from the Anne Liverman place to Mom and Pop West's store on Cross Landing. Daddy was an amateur naturalist, and he passed his interest on to me. He pointed out the tracks left in the road's dust and the various wildflowers along its shoulders.

In dry weather the road's fine-textured Norfolk or Portsmouth loam soils turned to deep, powder-smooth dust. On hot days the cool, deep dust of shady spots was ecstasy for a boy’s bare feet. Doves and other birds enjoyed dusting, also, to deter lice and dress their feathers.

But it was the tracks and the many fascinating things that grew along the roadside that kept me occupied. Parallel lines of closely spaced indentations about a quarter of an inch wide indicated that a millipede had passed during the night. Widely spaced parallel lines might indicate the passing of a wolf spider with her white cocoon full of young.

Occasionally, tragedy was revealed by the gouge marks made by the wing tips of a hawk as it swooped down and caught a dusting dove. Within and around the wing-gouged pattern, a few gray feathers were all that remained of the dove.

Fox, marsh rabbit, squirrel, opossum, raccoon, and deer tracks usually turned up during hikes along the dusty road. More rarely we would see the tracks of wildcats, especially during their courtship, when they tore up the road. Now and then there might be mink or weasel tracks.

Snapping turtles left inches-wide trails, within which were the drag marks of plastron and tail, while the tracks of painted turtles, terrapins (musk turtles), and tortoises (we called them highland ‘tarepins) were similar but more narrow. The wavy tracks of snakes were common all through the summer, too, and some were wide, indicating large snakes.

All sorts of plants grew along the road. A rare (for the area) huge-leaf pawpaw grew just around the curve on the left as one was leaving the Cross Landing neighborhood. Farther along, in season, there were the small, cuplike, pink blossoms of sheep-kill, also called lamb-kill or wicky, named because its leaves are poisonous to many herbivores.

There were tasty huckleberries, blueberries, and "brier berries" (black berries), and even the spicy red fruit of the low-growing dwarf wintergreen called teaberry. Carolina yellow-eyed grass grew beside rosebud orchids in damp places, and the pine lily that Daddy called tiger lily grew in fire-opened areas.

One time I even saw a ghostly, ivory-colored, mutant pine lily. Unfortunately, the habitats that I knew as a boy have now been replaced by habitats unsuitable to the pine lily. Such change is inevitable, and habitat evolution is an ever-changing phenomenon.

Today the old road is paved. Its adjacent habitats have changed. It tells far fewer stories now than it did those many years ago when I walked its dusty surface with daddy.