Pocket gophers are "salamanders." "Gopher" is reserved to refer to the gopher tortoise.
All aquatic salamanders are "mud puppies."
Any of the slider-type turtles are either "streaked heads" or "cooters." Some local dialects also call soft shells "cooters," but in my time I never knew someone that didn't call a soft-shell by its proper name.
Common snapping turtles are "loggerheads." Alligator Snappers are just "alligator turtles."
Timber rattlers are "canebrakes." Named after an extinct kind of habitat that used to be common in the South until the end of the 1800s called a "canebrake," which was a kind of bamboo forest. I suppose timber rattlers like that habitat.
Cougars are "panthers."
Bobcats used to be just called "wild cats," but that was archaic in my lifetime. Most backwoodsmen in my lifetime did call a bobcat a bobcat.
Concerning deer; a scrape is a "pawing," a rub is a "scrape," a button buck is a "nubbing," Antlers were called "horns" by most local hunters well into the 1980s.
Black crappie are "specks."
All panfish are "bream," but primarily bluegill, shell-crackers, stump knockers, and warmouth.
Brown bullheads are "butter cats."
Bowfin are "mudfish."
Pilated Woodpeckers are called "lord-gods." Its actually a misnomer from the now extinct ivory-billed woodpeckers, for which the Florida Crackers told a dirty joke about what the Spaniards said the first time they saw an ivory-billed woodpecker. The ivory bills, or "lord gods," were woodpeckers the size of great-horned owls that were common in Florida in early Columbian times thru the late 1800s. When they went extinct the next largest woodpecker was the pillated woodpecker and the mythology around the ivory-bill went to it.
All long-legged, brown, swamp birds, are called "curlews." Especially limpkins.
Now here's one that Northerners in Florida have messed up. We have a kind of giant cockroach called the "palmetto bug," so named because it lives in sabal palms. They don't live in homes and are flightless. They spray stink juice when bothered. When Northerners moved down here they started calling all large cockroaches palmetto bugs so as to have a polite way of saying they had roaches in their homes without saying "roaches." The true palmetto bug is not a house roach. Its proper name is the Florida Woods Roach.
Native sabal palms are called "swamp cabbage" or "cabbage palms." So names because they used to be a food staple for settlers and are still enjoyed as a delicacy. Its the heart that's edible.
