Raising the Bar (Code)

It was B who first noticed the dew streaks on our new screen porch roof in the morning. He said, “Look, it looks like bar codes!”

He’s right.

Here is a closer look:

2583083787659384679266684940726839007251433679287569096etc

Mailbox Monday: Another Amazing Dragon

Sons, D and D, had both noticed this mailbox in Gainesville.

How could you not?

 

 

It is all welded metal.

Wow!

I think even I could remember that address.

Bear With Me

Timing is everything. My sister sent me this photo she took this week as she headed through the Lake Placid, Florida area. The same day she sent it, we had two FWC guys do a lesson on black bears for our kindergartners. (We borrowed a spare portable for the space to have three classes together, which explains the very plain area in the pics.)

Here, one presenter is showing a tracking device.

The kids got to explore the items brought in.

This is the plaster cast of the track of a three-year-old female bear and the hand of a five-year-old male kindergartner.

Compare to that of a cub.

This is a jawbone from a three-year-old female. They can count the rings in a tooth to determine the age.

But the most exciting to the kids was the preserved-in-polymer bear scat. Gallberries and blackgum seeds are what we are looking at.

When the presentation was over, I took each of my students’ pictures with the bear skin. I will email the pictures to their parents. (The original pictures of course did show the child!)

It was grrrrrrreat!

Shootin’ Sandhills

I did a little marathon driving last weekend. I left here on Saturday morning and drove to Gainesville to younger son D’s apartment. Older son, D, and his K met us there and after a nice breakfast at a little place called, The Jones, we headed south to Polk County to my parents’ and brother’s house. We got acquainted and reacquainted with some cousins from California and then all went to my sister and her husband’s house for dinner. Another cousin and a couple of other folks were there too. It was such a nice day. While we were visiting, a pair of sandhill cranes were foraging just out from the screen porch.

We don’t get sandhills in Tallahassee, so this was a treat.

They use that long, long bill to hammer into the ground to retrieve bugs, snails and worms.

They stick it all the way into the ground. They also sometimes use it to fling the grass clods. They had done quite a bit of lawn damage. Interestingly, they were not on the greens of the golf course. Too much fertilizer? or pesticide?

D caught this one as it sipped from the birdbath.

Their coloring is so striking.

We also saw the very rare (two-headed) pushme-pullyou crane:

Fleeing Flu

I took a blog sabbatical this week as there was just too much going on ---but not enough to write about. One of these was getting a flu shot. Now I learned long ago that flu shots make me sick and this year’s shot was no exception. It only lasts a couple of days and the fever only lasted 10 hours. After discovering that they make me sick, I skipped flu shots for years. Then a couple of years ago, my tough immune system could not stand up to a particularly bad strain and I was down for weeks---seriously. It was enough to make me think again about the shots. I have a new perspective on the pluses and minuses. Anyway, I’m back.

Mailbox Monday: Houses

A man’s home is his castle….

Or for some, a log cabin is more suitable…

Or for the one who really was raised in a barn….

Take a peek at a close-up of the reindeer moss on the roof:

I guess that is to attract Rudolph, et al.

The Cool Bug

I found  this bug on my car one morning. I was not able to identify it and had to consult IFAS. (What would I do without these people when I hit a dead-end on a bug question?)

“Leaf-footed bug, Acanthocephala declivis,” was the answer.

I had a hard time finding out more about it. Here is all that I was able to learn on-line.

It is also known as the Giant Spine-headed Bug. They can be smelled from a distance of a couple of feet. These bugs feed on plant juices, but are often not numerous enough to do major damage.