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Q: I have this mud hole in the middle of my lawn not far from Dardenne Creek. Can you identify what animal made it?

Peer into a Missouri stream bed and you’re likely to see a crayfish flip its tail and jet away. But other species of crayfish — often called “burrowing crayfish” — live private, solitary existences in places you might not expect; for example, many feet beneath the soil’s surface.

Some of these “burrowers” include the painted devil crayfish, paintedhand mudbug, and digger crayfish. These species are found in lowlands. But the grassland crayfish are found on Missouri’s prairies, and the Great Plains mudbug are found statewide.

Burrowing crayfish often build “chimneys,” made of excavated soil at their burrow entrances. Chimneys can act as passive ventilation structures, where fresh air is drawn down into the burrow from an entrance with a lower chimney and exits through a second entrance with a taller chimney. Prairie dogs build similar structures. 

These burrows, which extend to and even below the water table, are more complex than they appear at the surface. They can reach depths of 15 feet. Sometimes, they’re a simple vertical passage that ends in a chamber. Other times, they have branches and multiple chambers. 

Burrowing crayfish spend most of their life cycle in the burrows they dig, but we often see them wandering around a few days after heavy rainfall, looking for food and mates.

Q: Last season, I harvested a large white-tailed doe in Iron County. When I skinned her out, I noticed quite a lot of fat or tallow. It was more than an inch thick in some places. My buddy harvested a doe on the same property, and he said it even had fat around her heart as well as fat all over. Does this mean anything? I have always been told it means a harsh winter ahead. Is that an old hunter’s tale? The buck I harvested last season didn’t have much fat on it.

Does with significant fatty deposits in November likely didn’t have fawns that season or weaned them early in the year. 

“Milk production burns a ton of calories, so not having to produce milk allows does to build up reserve fat deposits,” said Aaron Hildreth, MDC scientist.

Mature bucks frequently have little fat left this time of year as they have been in various stages of the rut for most of the past month. During this time of year, they are more focused on breeding and fighting than eating, causing their fat reserves to be depleted. Once the rut ends, they begin trying to rebuild those fat deposits.

Fatty tissue in deer isn’t correlated to what the winter may hold, but rather the recent history of that individual deer, Hildreth said.

Q: Does Missouri have scorpions? I found some in my lake house.

Missouri is home to the striped bark scorpion. These venomous arachnids can live in a variety of habitats but prefer glades with lots of loose rocks, such as limestone or dolomite, so they can hide from the sun during the day. They also are found in buildings and shelters, as well as under piles of wood, brush, or garbage. They are identifiable by the dark triangle on the front of their carapace and often have two dark stripes down their backs.

Scorpions arrived in this part of the country about 8,000 years ago when the climate was warmer, drier, and more like the desert Southwest. When the climate here changed again about 4,000 years ago, and became cooler and wetter, these scorpions were able to remain in glade environments where they can be found today.