Wildlife Weekend: Thanksgiving Roadkill and a Rescue

We aren't into Black Friday shopping at all, but I did send Farmer B out on Thanksgiving morning to a local Walgreens to pick up a Christmas present for the boys that was on sale for 50% off. It was an odd place to find the present, but at that price it warranted a quick run to the store.

On the way home Farmer B called me quite excited that he was pulled over on the side of the road watching our national bird eating his very own Thanksgiving dinner. The eagle was about 3 feet away from his car window and was ripping apart some sort of roadkill. Farmer B took quite a few photos of it and even a short video and it was the hit our our Thanksgiving once he got home and shared it with the boys.


Bald eagles aren't unusual around here, but seeing one so close for so long isn't a daily occurance. I thought it was fitting that the turkey almost beat out the bald eagle as America's national bird and here was our up-close sighting on turkey day! Just think - if the turkey had been chosen as America's national bird, maybe we'd all be eating bald eagle and gravy for Thanksgiving dinner!

We've been on a bit of a wildlife kick recently. Right before Thanksgiving, Farmer B was soaking his legs in the swimming pool when he called for me to come over and see what the dogs were obsessing about. I walked over to the side of the pool and noticed an uninvited visitor stuck between the pool, the screen enclosure and the dogs. I'm not sure what it is about snakes, but we get an insane amount of them in and around our pool - luckily all the ones who have come in our pool area have been non-venomous.


This one was a little garter snake who happened to slither in to the right pool enclosure since I have a firm policy of never killing a non-venomous snake. I put the dogs outside and got a bucket and the boys plastic golf club to begin my rescue attempt.



After a few unsuccessful attempts and some awesome dancing on my part, I flicked the snake into the bucket and brought him inside to show to the boys. The snake was less than grateful for his rescue and spent the entire time striking at the air in the general direction of my hand.


I took him outside and released him under a bush by the front door. I think the whole experience was traumatic enough for him that he won't be back.

Wildlife Weekend :: White Ibis 1. Lizard 0.

We always have plenty of white ibises around here. They wander around in the ditches poking around for frogs and such. This one ended up with an adult lizard - or brown anole, to be specific.




Burrrrrp.

Wildlife Weekend :: Gorgeous in Green

This little green dragonfly stayed with me for about an hour while I was working in the yard. I figured he really wanted his photo taken so I went inside the house, got the camera and he was waiting for me in the same spot when I went back outside. Whenever I photograph dragonflies I'm always amazed by how beautiful they are close-up - something you never realize while they're just buzzing around the back yard. It's one those 'stop and smell the roses' moments for me.




Amazing little creatures, aren't they? You can click on any of the photos to view them larger if you'd like.

Wildlife Weekend :: Florida Beach Nature Walk

This week is Spring Break for my boys and we had plans to go back down to visit my mom for a few days, but the planets didn't align correctly and it just didn't work out. Although we stayed at the house, we managed to pack every day with plenty of fun-filled activities from painting to geo-caching to theme parks to swimming in the pool until they dropped.

But since it IS Spring Break and Spring Break in Florida is all about the beach, I thought I'd post these photos from our visit my mom's house a few weeks back. Taking my boys to the very beach where I grew up is a fun experience and I enjoy watching them learn about all the beachy things I took for granted as a kid.


Running along the sandbar - it's a semi-attached sandbar, depending on what the tide has done the previous hurricane season. The vibe of the beach is pretty dependent on what's thriving - or dying - along the shore. Stingray season - not so much fun... this time it was seaweed and jellyfish - lots and lots of brightly colored dead jellyfish. Most of the time there's hardly any seaweed and no jellyfish, but both happened to be in season on this day.


Most of the jellyfish were black or orange or white and resembled rocks. There are NO rocks on Florida Gulf beaches, so if you see something in that photo that looks like a rock, it's a dead jellyfish.


I tried to convince the boys that this jellyfish was a disembodied brain from some sort of underwater Frankenstein. I almost sold them on it.


Pretty coral of all colors and textures.


A few horseshoe crabs...mostly dead ones though. Did you know that horseshoe crabs haven't evolved much in 250 million years? They look pretty much like they did back in the time of dinosaurs. And did you know they have a copper-based blue blood? And that this blue blood is used by science to test out new medicines? Interesting stuff.


They might not have fall leaves in Southern Florida, but the mangrove leaves turn pretty colors at times. Mangroves are one of the most important living things in coastal areas - their roots hold the coast together and the area under the mangrove roots are fish nurseries.


Ever wonder where baby shells come from? This is a shell egg casing. Some people refer to it as a "mermaid's necklace." This one is a whelk egg casing and it is filled with tiny shell eggs from the female shell. Once it's done its job, it floats away, washes ashore and dries out.


The boys found some beautiful conch shells. This one is a Florida Fighting Conch. We showed them the difference between a live shell and a dead shell and explained that if you find a live shell on the beach you always throw it back in the water - as far as you can out of the reach of uneducated tourists.


Check out this freaky-looking jellyfish. I think it's a Moon Jellyfish. Was good to teach the important lesson about being stung by a jellyfish - they can still sting you even when dead, so don't step on one just in case the tentacles are lurking under a thin layer of sand.


What's a beach without some driftwood?


No matter how pretty the scenery is, if you've got two little boys, they'll zero in on the dead fish. It made me glad we didn't bring the dogs because they love to roll in some dead-stink.


Much of the sandbar is roped off because it's an endangered sea bird nesting area. But, as we know, it only takes one minor Tropical Storm to wash it all away.


Here are two of the shells we brought home. They'll be making an important appearance at Kindergarten and Preschool show and tell next week...if we ever remember to bring them!

I hope you all enjoyed a little peek at our beach walk! It feels like old hat to me, but I'm sure there are some landlocked readers who don't see this type of thing every day.

Wildlife Weekend :: Eye Contact

Dogs don't make eye contact with you when they know they've done something wrong. It's a surefire bet that your dog has been up to no good if they won't even turn their head to face you. Case in point...


Don't look at her...

Don't look at her...


GAH! She's looking at me... must resist the urge to look at her.

SAFFRON!

what?


Well I'm not THAT muddy, right?

Don't worry. It's just my face. I wouldn't let my whole body get muddy since you already gave me two baths today.


Oops.

Wildlife Weekend :: The Grass Is Always Greener...

...on OUR side of the fence. Don't believe me? Ask our neighbor dog, Toby.

Wildlife Weekend :: The Broccoli and the Bees

I accidentally let my big broccoli plant flower in February. I don't really go outside when temperatures dip into the 30s and 40s, so before I knew it my broccoli plant was a mess of yellow blooms and all I could do was watch from my heated living room. I knew there was no way to prevent it from blooming without braving the insanely cold temperatures and possibly slipping into a hypothermic coma...so I just let it happen.


When I finally did venture outside I noticed that the plant was alive with bees. At one point I counted over 20 bees on it going from flower to flower in a mad rush to get as much nectar as possible from the only flowering thing around.



I figured the rest of the garden was pretty much dead so the least I could do was let this flowering broccoli thrive to feed this mass of bees. It lasted for a good month before it wilted and the bees went away.


I then yanked it out and tossed it in the compost. It was definitely great while it lasted though - the bees seemed happy to have something to buzz around in this insanely cold winter. And I enjoyed watching them.

Wildlife Weekend :: The Cats are Revolting

You know it's time to give the dog a bath when the cats start revolting.



Oh the things they put up with.

Wildlife Weekend :: A Whole Year Later

It was a year ago today that my mom was in Boston for a travel show and I made a late night phone call to her as she sat in a noisy restaurant with bad cell reception. "Baillan just died," I repeated about five times until she heard me. A pet lover, she was deeply saddened. She knew that dog had been my protector when I lived alone in a crappy apartment in college and was an important part of our family 13 years later


I vividly remember giving Baillan a big hug and a kiss and burying my head in her white fur as she laid awkwardly panting madly on a blanket in the back of the car that night. It was weird to see Farmer B pull away leaving me standing there without her knowing I'd never see her again. And when he came home without her holding her collar I felt empty, but I do remember feeling surprisingly good that she'd had such a long life.

Here we are a year later and right now my mom is at that same travel show in Boston, and I have another furry white lump who likes to carry around her blue bowl and has that funny otter-tail that goes thump-thump-thump when she sees me.

New puppies are born, old dogs become a pleasant memory, and life goes on. The boys still talk about Baillan constantly, which is nice, because I know she'll be that first dog they talk about when they're older and reminiscing about their childhood.

Wildlife Weekend :: The girls

I can't believe next month I will have had these girls a year. Time definitely flies when you're raising chickens. I haven't posted any pics of them recently and I thought it would be fun to show off their full combs and wattles now that they've grown into them.

Here's Maggie, who is insanely difficult to photograph. She does that fast-moving-head-thing like pigeons do so every photograph is either blurred or she's not in it. I have to take about 50 of her to find a couple where she's focused and in the frame.


She's got an awesome comb that's so big it flops over a bit. I know we're not talking show quality birds here, but I'm giving her major points for style and personality.


Then we've got our big softie, Clementine. She's a full-figured gal and doesn't go anywhere fast. She stays perfectly still for photos and will look straight at you when you say her name.


She looks sort of mean in this photo, but she's just being all fluffy and cute and looking right at me when I ask her to strike a pose.


Poor Sookie missed out on the entire photo shoot because she was laying an egg. There is just something nice, old-fashioned, natural and sweet about seeing a chicken sitting on a nest. I still can't get enough of it.



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On a personal note, the blog has taken a bit of a backburner as of late. We've had some tragic news from family in the UK and my mom has flown over to the hospital in London. It's hard to focus on blogging when we're focused on that right now. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't need to go over there too... it won't be good news if I do.

Wildlife Weekend :: The corpse arrived before 7 a.m.

Early Saturday morning I woke up at around 6:40 a.m. after a long sleepless night thanks to a sinus infection, and came out to see my oldest son who was already bopping around the living room. I immediately let the dogs out into the backyard to do their business while I chatted with my oldest son, the consummate early-riser. Rommel came running back inside first and disappeared to begin his morning nap.

A few minutes later Saffie came charging in with something in her mouth. It was still quite dark out and I could see she'd grabbed a dark stick from the yard. I reached down to grab it to throw it back outside when I could see legs. Stiff long legs.

Shudder.

I screamed and grabbed the scruff of her neck and she dropped it.

The "it" was now clearly a stiff, dead, big, long-legged frog - I'd guess about 7-8 inches long. When it hit the ground all the ants and bugs that had been feeding off this early morning breakfast buffet scattered all over the floor of the living room.


I had to scoop the thing up - and all its surrounding beasties - with a stick-down floor tile I happened to have nearby, and chuck it outside. The best part was coming back inside and gathering up the remaining bugs and flinging them outside as well. The icing on the cake was going back outside about an hour later and finding the petrified frog corpse and this time flinging it over the fence so that it didn't end up in my living room again.


Looking like this is her only saving grace.

Wildlife Weekend: Gator Crossing

I was rummaging through some old photos this weekend when I came across a photo my mom sent me back in 2002. She is the manager of two beautiful resorts on Sanibel Island, Florida, which is a stone's throw from where I grew up. Sanibel is known for having lots of Florida wildlife and it's hard to spend any time there without seeing an alligator.

It's typical to see gators sunning themselves by the side of ponds or floating around in the pond. Locals don't blink an eye at a sleeping gator, but the tourists get downright giddy. We get our fair share of gators here in Central Florida, but they're so much more prevalent on Sanibel.

This leads to the photo. (You can click on any of the photos to make them bigger.) One of the problems of having so many gators is that inevitably they'll need to do like a chicken and cross the road. This causes a bit of drama when you have tourists with tasty-children walking along the side of the road. My mom caught wind of a gator on her property and walked out front to take a picture of the cops trying to steer it off the road and into a pond.


There are some interesting things to note about this photo. First is the size of the gator. I made marks to show you where the side of the road is in comparison to the gator. If the average lane is about 10 feet wide, how big would you say this gator is? I'd say a good 10 feet.


Do you see the weapon that the cop has in hand? He has a hollow plumbing pipe. I guess he's going with the "10-foot-pole" philosophy when it comes to gators. I can guarantee you that if that gator ran toward that cop he would drop the pole and run, like any normal human being should.


Now notice the car coming in the other direction. You can assume that at that distance they can just see some people in the road with a large moving log. I imagine it's tourists on their way onto the island from the airport, map in hand, oblivious to the dinosaur speed-bump just seconds ahead on the road. And FYI, if you hit a gator while driving, your car doesn't really recover.


It might all seem quite entertaining until you realize that gators actually do occasionally eat pets and even people. I can think of many stories of gators eating pets and a couple of them eating people right there on Sanibel Island. They say that tourists want a photo op and will feed the gators, then the gators see a local a few weeks later and associate them with food and … well… it's not a pretty ending.


I'd say the average gator just wants to live out his gator life and leave people alone, but sometimes someone's pet is in the wrong place at the wrong time and looks appetizing. Since Florida opened up alligators to hunting a few years ago it's safe to say that humans still have the upper hand. I know that alligators taste like chicken… I wonder what alligators say about us?

Wildlife Weekend :: Bonehead

Our dog is a real bonehead. I finally have proof.

Wildlife Weekend: One Gassy Chicken

After picking my oldest son up from kindergarten on Friday, I stopped at the gas station near the school to fill up the tank. As we pulled up to the pump, he screamed "MOMMM!!! CHICKEN!!!!" so I slammed on the breaks.



And there in front of me was a chicken at the gas pump just strutting along. No one blinked an eye.

You may have read about the beautiful chicken we often see in the Library parking lot and maybe you think that the gas station and the Library are close to each other and it's one roving band of wild chickens I keep photographing.

But the gas station and the Library are 8 miles apart. The two chickens clearly do not know each other.

I just seem to run in to a lot of random chickens around here.