Outdoors Maryland; 1001

s f Coming up, a four-legged legend chases gold and a last chance at galloping point-to-point lorry. Taking to the Maryland Underground in search of the elusive bat, and it loses its squishes and slides, it's the story of slime outdoors-style. Next, outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. DNR, inspired by nature.

Like a shroud of white lace, an early morning mist hovers over the rolling fields of Baltimore County. Another workday at Kingfisher Stables begins. Horses are scrubbed and washed. It's a cool sunny morning as the first group of race

horses heads out for their morning workout. This is Maryland Horse Country where the landscape is a showcase of stately farms and championship bloodlines. Jack Fisher runs Kingfisher Stables. He trains more than half a dozen steeple chase race horses among them a horse that has become a living legend. His nickname is cheerful in the stable because he's known to have an unpleasant disposition, but his real name is Saluter. Jack not only trains him, but he rides the horse and the races. Morning, cheerful. He is the bad boy around here, but when he is competing, he is very serious. Are we happy today or what? He likes to win and he likes to run. To say that Saluter likes to run may be an understatement. He is a champion race horse over

timber fences. For the past six years, he's had an incredible streak winning the prestigious Virginia Gold Cup six times. Nobody there wildest dreams would think about winning the Virginia Gold Cup six times. The most anybody's done before is three and he's not only done that, but he's broken the track record. I mean, it's just unbelievable what he's done. He's won 21 races. That's more than any other timber horses ever done. Was he going to go to Delaware to ride or was I mean to watch? At least. Yeah, that was in charge, yeah. Joe Clancy editor of the steeple chase times has been following Saluter's career from the beginning. To do timber racing well, horse obviously has to have stamina, big engine, you know, a big heart and the ability to carry the galloping speed up to three or four miles. They also have to merge in there some very good jumping ability. Saluter manages to combine that

stamina and he manages to save enough for the last, say, mile and a half where he still has speed. In steeple chase terms, Saluter is as famous or is there's no worthy of almost any horse you've ever had him. Come on, grumpy. But Saluter is now 11 years old. That's old for a racehorse. His career will soon be winding down. What are you looking at, huh? Jack Fisher is careful not to push Saluter too hard in the morning workouts. The one difficult problem that we have is this horse is a fragile animal. The work today, that was a mile. We never go any farther than that. The mile is as far as I go and usually

leave it shorter than that. Saluter's assistant trainer, Juliet Stegman, is in charge of keeping the horse fit. The amount of work and the stress on the body that these horses go through with new technology, they're just treated just like a human would be. There's a lot of money involved now. So they get the best treatment that you can imagine. That means after each workout, ice boots on the legs to relieve any swelling of the tendons. These tendons are the most important part of a racehorse. This is where everything happens. So the ice boots go on there to relieve any superficial swelling that has happened. Saluter also gets a massage. Leslie Fellini is his personal masseuse. With every horse you do a full equine massage. Saluter's funny is not like a lot of, a lot

of horses just like the nice and kind of relaxing kind of massage. He's tough. He likes it when you go deep. The number seven is Saluter, trained in written by Jack Fisher. The story of Saluter is one that is captured the attention of steeple chase fans all over, from one steeple chase event to the next. Once again, the horses are on the horse, on the way to the start, or the my ladies matter. Despite all the hoopla, Saluter came from humble origins. He was purchased seven years ago by Jack Fisher for a mere $2,500. No one thought Saluter would be any good. But Jack and co-owner Henry Stern proved the critics wrong. He got Saluter as a four-year-old. And he was kind of the horse that didn't really do a whole lot of anything.

And when I first got the horse, I thought he'd be a fox hunter. But he wasn't the nice, quiet horse the people are looking to fox hunter. So he ran him in luckily he won. And he continued to win, time after time, even in England. Nancy says Saluter's life story is classically American. He's got a great rags to riches tail. He was very close to not being anything. He became such an amazing horse from basically nothing. And I think that certainly keeps people excited. It makes me identify with it anyway. And it's been a fairytale dream story like that. Nowhere is that more apparent than at the Virginia Gold Cup, there amidst the glamour and the flamboyance of the occasion. Saluter has reigned supreme for the last six years. He has just done it year after year after year and had that excellence, but also had that longevity. And that's rare.

To come back year after year after year and be so good. I mean, to win the Virginia Gold Cup, six years in a row, it's an amazing feat. But on this race day, Saluter is facing a highly competitive field, with much younger horses, including one horse from England. We have riders up in the paddock for the Gold Cup, riders up. The day is hot and salty. In line, and they're often running, and the 75th running of the Gold Cup and Gold Point goes to lead. The course is attacking four miles and 23 fences, a brutal ordeal for any thoroughbred. As always, early on in the race, Saluter stays behind, allowing the other horses to sprint ahead. That has always been Jack Fisher's winning strategy to come from behind. He's in the second place, Saluter in there with Buck Barrio right alongside J.J. Hand.

He's in the machine. I mean, you know, the thing that makes him special is in a four-mile race. He's never been beaten at four miles, because he just wears other horses down. But on this day, Saluter stumbles going over the all-important 19 fence. He almost fell, just at the point where he normally makes his move to overtake the rest of the field. They race into the final three-eighths of a mile. Price this from running in second-late, Penny Bridge in third. Saluter races in fourth. Saluter pushed hard in the home stretch, but had lost too much ground. This time, the champion couldn't make it. In a close race, he came in third, a younger horse at one. Saluter's six-year consecutive winning streak at the Virginia Gold Cup had come to an end.

Jack Fisher was clearly disappointed. He usually just comes with a burst of speed, and he didn't seem to have that today. He was only beaten to life, but he wasn't beaten that far. And so, you know, he ran his race, and, you know, the younger kid won. He's like any athlete when they get older. You know, they're going to get beaten at some point. But Saluter's track record at the Virginia Gold Cup still stands, as does his legacy. If he doesn't win another race, he's done more than any other horses ever done. I never thought about doing. He belongs to the sport now, and he'll become this legend. I mean, it's kind of strange to think of a legend who's still active, but he really is. He's become timber racing, horse, or stable chasing, horse. But, you know, I don't know if there'll be one that captures the memory or the feeling the way Saluter has. What creature could be more difficult to study than a bat?

Try to find a bat by day, and it's concealed deep within a cave, or hidden high up in a tree. Try to find a bat by night, and it's nothing but a soft truffle of wings. A quick darting shadow that disappears into the dark. Yet with the aid of sophisticated new technologies, Maryland biologists are rising to this difficult research challenge. At sites across the region, they're conducting studies of bat population dynamics, echolocation calls, and habitat use. Studies that are providing intriguing new insights into bat's secret lives. One of the most basic things biologists want to know is how bat populations are faring, and that's what brings Dan Feller, an ecologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources,

and Rich Raisley, an associate professor at Frostberg State University, to this Western Maryland cave and search of hibernating bats. Dan Feller. Bats have a high fidelity for hibernation sites, so we know the same bats are coming back year after year, and we can get a good handle on the numbers of bats that we have in Maryland. The men find several bats in one of the first rooms. It's like a little brown. How do they do that? Yet, as the men go deeper into the cave, the results are disappointing. In room after room, they find noticeably fewer bats than they've recorded in previous years. Don't often get too many bats in this section. The declining numbers appear to confirm a national trend, Rich Raisley. Most species of bats have experienced considerable declines in their populations,

because of a lot of different human activities, and anything we can do to ensure the conservation of those unique species is worthwhile. Reduced bat populations are cause for concern, because these creatures play such a critical role in the ecosystem. They are a night flying insectivores on a grand scale, and a single little brown bat can eat 300 mosquitoes a night. It can eat half its body weight and insects. Biologists think one of the biggest causes of bat population declines may be logging or development of forests, where many bat species feed, roost, and reproduce. Frostberg State University graduate student, Kieran O'Malley, is conducting a study in West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest that will help managers there learn which parts of the forest are most critical for bats. O'Malley began by setting up a trap in front of a cave face

to catch representatives of the bat species that used the forest. He was assisted on this night by West Virginia DNR biologist, Craig Styler. Our first tip is to draw the evening. It's a male. Here's some tiny things. It's a beautiful golden color. O'Malley is collecting these bats, so he can record their echolocation calls. Echolocation is sort of like radar or sonar. They emit these pulses of sound, which bounce off of objects in the forest and return to their ears, and they can determine their location. When we have enough bats for a night's work of recording, we would take them to an open area, such as a road, and release them. You want to fly, don't you? There he is. Oh yeah. Because the bats' calls are beyond the range of human hearing,

O'Malley uses a special high frequency device called a bat detector, which picks up the bats' calls, and turns them into audible signals. The calls are recorded directly onto the hard drive of his portable computer. Let's see what the pimp gave us. Oh, that's good. That's really nice. That's the bat we just released? Yeah, that's the pet. This is right right when he left your hand. It's kind of his orientation calls, and he's turning around, and this is him flying down the road. He's a good cause. After many nighttime recording sessions, O'Malley has managed to obtain the calls for each of the nine bat species known to use the National Forest. It's important to record these calls locally, because as it turns out, bats have regional accents.

Dialects have been identified in some bat species, and that is sort of similar to having people having accents, having like a southern accent or a New England accent. This electronic eavesdropping method could be a boon to bats, as well as forest managers. That's a benefit from studies such as this, because it will allow land managers to not only know what habitats the bat requires, but also allow them to manage and enhance these habitats, and will allow bats to be a part of the ecosystem for years to come. At Pokémon State Forest on Maryland's Eastern Shore, DNR biologist Dana Limpert is also trying to learn more about how bats use forests. She's looking at which trees bats choose as daytime resting spots, or roosts.

This is the first study of its kind in the state, and I'm hoping that the information that I get will allow us to better manage our forests to provide habitat for bats, as well as other things. Bats are so good at disguising themselves that it's almost impossible to see a bat roosting in a tree in the daytime. So in order to find out where the bats roost, Limpert and her assistants erect fine black nets to catch the bats when they're out foraging at night. We raise the nets a dusk, and check them every few minutes to see if we've caught a bat. Hello. The whole point of the capture is to attach a miniature radio transmitter to the bats back, so the researchers can track it back to the roost. We attach the radio transmitters between the shoulder blades of the bat, because they won't be able to reach around and bite the radio off. We use a glue that's used in surgical procedures,

and then put the radio on the bat. And hold the bat for five minutes and release it then when it's set up. On this night, the researchers trap until midnight, netting and attaching transmitters to a total of four bats, three red bats, plus one big brown bat. The next day, the group tries to pick up the signals from the bats they've tagged the night before. Wow! A signal from one of the red bats comes in strongly, and they head into the woods, following the signal to a large tool of poplar tree. I think it's that one. Once we zeroed in on a tree that a particular bat is in, we take measurements of the tree. We look at the amount of canopy,

closure surrounding that tree, and also the percentage ground cover. Positive for canopy, minus for ground cover at five meters. The purpose is to compare what makes this tree special for bats so that we can better understand why they are selecting this tree, versus any other tree in the forest. On the following day, the researchers set out to find the big ground bat, which they believe roosts in a different part of the forest. But after driving fruitlessly from miles along forest roads, Limpert decides to go to a more expensive fallback plan to find the bat. She rents a small plane from the Salisbury airport. By attaching radio antennas to the plane's struts, she essentially turns the plane into a giant airborne receiver, tuned to the brown bat signal.

What we do in an airplane is track the bats that we have been unable to track on the ground. You get much greater reception up in the airplane for a longer distance, and so it makes it a lot more efficient than just trying to track finally on the ground. Back on the ground, the researchers drive to the location Limpert pinpointed from the air, and quickly zero in on the brown bats roosting site. Yep, that's the snag. This bat has chosen a different tree than the red bat, a dead loblolly pine, whose bark and hollows provide safe daytime hiding spots. Limpert admits that it takes tremendous time and patience to learn a seemingly simple thing, like where bats hang out during the day. We have long hours in the day and long hours at night, through thick and festive fields and lots of bugs and swamps. I'm hoping that my work that I do is going to give us better information on managing bats in the forest,

and really learning about something entirely new that we don't know about in the state, or in most states for that matter. It's a slippery subject, a challenge for even the most brilliant scientists to fully grasp, often slandered and misunderstood. This primal ooze puts the slide in a slither, and the sticky in a goo. It's high time to celebrate slime. Ed Thompson knows some of the slimiest critters in the state. He's heritage biologist with the Wildlife and Heritage Division,

the Department of Natural Resources. Wow, look at this. A slimy salamander. The slimy salamander is one of the slimiest salamanders in Maryland, and that's why it got its name. And when you handle them rougher, when a predator tries to feed on it, it exudes a copious amounts of slime. It usually come out of the base of the tail and most of the tail. It could be poisonous, and it could be noxious. I'm not sure about that, but it is so sticky that it gums everything up. You can see how it's almost like glue, where my fingers are sticking together. That's from the slimy salamander. And that's what happens when a predator tries to eat it. Everything sticks to dirt, leaves, everything that's in the area. He'll stick to the salamander and the snake trying to eat it, or whatever's trying to eat it, and they get all gummed up, and they can't swallow them, so the salamander gets away.

Chances are it doesn't taste too good either. I'm not about to try it, because I've tasted salamanders before, and I've learned my lesson. Look at that. Oddly enough, some of the slimiest species are not land-based, but marine animals, where nearly being wet is simply not slippery enough. American eels, which look like snakes, but are actually fish, are a prime example. Julie Weeder studies American eels. She's a fisheries biologist with the DNR. Aren't they awesome? They're so neat. I mean, look at these tiny little fish. They're so determined. When the eels are very young, on their way to the Atlantic coast from the Sargasso Sea, they have quite a journey to go before they can reach their first water habitat, where they'll spend most of their life, and they have to overcome a lot of obstacles

in order to reach their habitat, including some physical obstacles, like dams or other obstructions. They employ kind of drastic measures sometimes, including climbing right out of the water onto a moist surface and sliding and slithering across to the other side of wherever they're trying to go. So they really have to have that slimy body, because they don't have any appendages or anything to help them hold on to that surface once they're out of the water. So it's very important to this animal. You can see that he's doing a pretty good job of getting away from me. Just do the slime. Alright. For other marine creatures too, there's definitely something fishy about slime. Alwishi and Steve Doctor are fisheries biologists with the Department of Natural Resources. Every year they conduct a survey of young fish populations in ocean cities coastal bays.

Okay. These black sea bass have a protective slime coating on them. And the slime is made. It's actually called nuken. It's produced by specialized dermal cells. And nuken is a glycoprotein that when it mixes with water produced nukus, your basic slime. The fish when it swims through water, the mucus will help them to cut friction and swim faster. The mucus protects against parasites, fungus, and any type of invasive species that could accumulate on the fish. The fish also use the mucus coating on their gills to remove any types of particles of dirt or anything they get on them. If the water is really cloudy, they'll actually produce mucus and put it in the water to clear the particles out of the water so that they can get oxygen from the water. 175. This toad fish here, he has no scales. And so he's completely dependent on that fish slime for protection.

He'll have a little thicker skin because he has no scales, but the slime is basically his protective mechanism. Slime also protects well. It protects as a salinity gradient. It's been known in King salmon that when they go into fresh water or come up streams, they'll produce a lot of slime. Because it'll help them make the transition from the saltwater to the fresh water. They'll produce a lot of mucus, a lot of slime, because it'll help them make their change into a different osmotic gradient. And see the slime helps the fish get away, you see that. And so for many creatures in nature, slime rules. They simply don't leave home without it. There he is. Drop into our website at www.mpt.org to send us your comments and suggestions.