Squid Dissection Day aka Calamari Calamity

Suction cups and painted nails.
Girl scientists rule!
We are finally to the fishes in my Marine Science classes ... my favorite animals ... excluding Labrador Retrievers of course.
Fish rule too!
We did have to dip back in to the invertebrates this week as my preserved squid did not come in until just after we finished the mollusca unit.
They were delayed by budget cuts that threatened to take away my entire, meager, supply budget.
In the end, the purchase order for squid, perch, and dogfish was approved.
So, we revisited the Cephalopods even though we had already switched to an OsteichthyCondrichthyAgnathaesque way of thinking.


A squid opened for inspection.
At a glance you can see the dark ink sac in the center and the gills on either side of it. This is the same species that most restaurant calamari is made from.
You may eat calamari, but I'm not much of a Cephalopod muncher. Once on a shrimp boat, I had squid in spaghetti sauce that wasn't too bad, but then, almost anything in spaghetti sauce tastes good ... especially if you are hungry.

I also had a live octopus escape in my Gremlin during my college days, but I eventually captured it and cooked it back in the dorm. (I had captured the octopus on a dive off of Destin)
My Top Chef skills were weaker then, and it was a bit like chewing garden hose. Unlike broccoli or beer, I just never made the necessary return trips to acquire the taste.
They just aren't on my list of desired seafood, but they make great bait for things I do like to eat.


Above is a short video clip of one of my student dissection teams opening the eye of the squid to extract the lens.

In other news ...
Tonight is the annual FFA Food Festival.
I will be boiling two bushels of Florida grown sweet corn in a giant pot.
You can rest assured that no squid will be consumed at this redneck fundraiser, but we will be chowing down on some mighty fine critters and plants.
Yes, I will take my camera.

Out On A Limb

Sometimes you're the hawk, above it all and feeling pretty darn apexpredatory. Everybody beware!


Sometimes you're the turtle, barely hanging on and thinking maybe it would be easier to just give up and slide back into the water.



If you've been coming to Pure Florida for awhile, you know I was mentoring a young guy, who we shall call "Frank". I wrote about Frank most recently here, and earlier here.


I was trying to be a positive influence on a young life that was at a crossroads. I suppose everyday is a crossroads for all of us, but I think you know what I mean.
I like to think teachers do that in general with all kids, being a positive influence I mean, but I was taking a little extra time to guide and encourage Frank.

A few days ago, an officer of the law showed up at my classroom door and asked for Frank.
"Tell him to bring his stuff", she said.

That was the last I've seen of Frank, and today I got the withdrawal notice in my mailbox, so he no longer goes to school here. He will be going to school in a different county.
On the form, there's a place for the teacher to place his grade at the time of withdrawal. When I look his up on the computer, it is an 89 ... one point from an A.

With a quick stroke of my pen I round it up to 90, an A, on the withdrawal form.

It's the last positive thing I can do for him.

It Bee Plum Springy Around Here

I was standing next to my garden patch the other day, chatting with the pig, restraining Bear from the nearby taunting chickens, and generally enjoying the gorgeous day when I noticed a buzzing in my head.
Only, it wasn't in my head, it was above it.
The wild hog plum tree that I had planted as seed years ago was in full bloom ... a white cloud of flowers tethered to the ground by the tree's twisty trunk.
In it, swarms of bees were enjoying some of the first blossoms of the season.


I shot this short video to share with you. Turn the volume up to hear the buzz.
You might also hear dog pants, and pig grunts since both were nearby.
What else do you hear?

Atlatls and Party Animals

Some of you will remember when I posted about making an Atlatl.

Like many of my "projects", I dove into it initially, then parked it. The delay was caused by a little inertia combined with lots of other things to do.
A really big part, way bigger than mere inertia, was the cluttered condition of my small barn shed that functions as USTORE-IT warehouse, garage, occasional chick nursery, and workshop.

For my birthday, Junior gave me a whole list worth of completed chores that had piled up and gotten the back burner treatment.

He repaired the canoe rack that a Tropical Storm flung branch had crushed.
He repaired the stand holding up a chicken pen that Bear had crushed.

He cleaned out and reorganized my barn and even added a new shop light. In doing so, the atlatl blank that had sat covered in debris came to the surface.

I had forgotten about it.

So, Sunday, I laid out my carving gear and picked up the neglected atlatl to be. Surprisingly, no little carving gnomes had worked on it during my absence and it appeared just as I had left it ... a slightly curved shaft with one large blocky end and one slightly flaired end.

It was the blocky end that I focused on. I took the shaft in my hand as if I were spear chunking. It felt pretty good, but needed to fit the hand better, so I grabbed a pencil and traced around my fingers.

I carved out my finger grooves, stopping to test the fit from time to time. When the grooves and my fingers agreed, I turned to the end of the shaft handle.

I wanted to carve some critter at the very end of the handle and a gator head seemed to be present in the rough block, so I started removing waste wood until I had it to the point you see in the picture above.

It's a long way from done, but now that I have light and some space to work, I think I will be returning to it more often.

When it is complete, I will share it with you.

(ABOVE: Bear and Jr... Jr is the one in shorts)

Since y'all left so many kind comments about our Bear's birthday, I thought it would be rude not to share some birthday party pictures from last night.

He was a wild and crazy guy.

Things calmed down a bit after the cat juggler left, but Bear was up late into the night munching on his rawhide birthday bone.

Bear's Birthday

Today is Bear's birthday.

Unlike Katie, Emma, and Junior, I was not there for his birth. I did not cut his umbilical cord, bring his mother ice chips, or hold her paw while she labored.

And unlike my other children, I did not even meet Bear until he was a few months old.
(Longtime readers know that Bear was part of a pair, and that we lost dear Gumbo after too short a time together. That's all I can say about that right now... we go on.)

At one year old, Bear has charmed the socks off of all of us ... and they can usually be found in his lair under my bed.

He is strong ... my God he is strong.
Headstrong too.

He has become such an integral part of the family, it's hard to believe he wasn't part of us even 9 months ago.
Isn't that true for all new babies? After a little while you can't remember life without them.

He is very bad sometimes ... very Marleyesque ... at these times, we refer to him as "Bearly".
His chicken habit,speed, and hardheadedness have caused me to say words I almost never use anymore.

But, I am getting lots of aerobic exercise and that is a good thing.

Tonight, we will celebrate him with some doggy gifts and much affection.

Sea Biscuit Odds

A lucky sperm meets egg in a shallow sea millions of years ago.

Or is it lucky egg?

Cell division.

Differentiation ... but not too much.

A larva drifting, cilia beating ...not too long though.

Transformation to benthic body.

A year or so of detritus sucking life.

Creeping, burrowing, avoiding.

Death.

Soft parts go first.

Spines detach.

Mud oozes into spaces once tissue filled.

Time.

One, Two, Three ...? million years buried in limey mud.

Mud becomes rock.

The sea retreats.

Dynamite shatters limerock.

Excavating equipment rumbles.

Scoop, dump, transport.

Rock grinder groans and crushes.

Rock to gravel.

More scooping and dumping.

Dumptrucks rumble.

Dumping.

Front end loader spreads and grades.

Roller flattens.

Sifty sand road becomes stable gravel road.

Walker walks.

Looks down and finds ...

a perfect fossil.

Wonders ...

at the odds.

What A Hawk Wants

Here's the hawk.


Here's what he found. Cleverly camouflaged bits of bird flesh flitting and twittering from twig to twig.

Close cover and cryptic coloration caused raptorial consternation.

Now this is more like it. A juicy target out in the open.

This is what the hawk wants.

Heh, ... it's what I want too.

Prime warbler photography habitat. This is the type of roadside brush that is just alive with warblers during the winter. Usually, I just stop, psshhhhht, psshhhhhhht, a few times to get their attention, and then sit quietly for a moment.

If you pssshhhhhhhhttttt it, they will come.

Birders,

What exactly is that sound saying to these birds?

Am I being rude and they are coming to scold me?

Is it an alarm sound of some cranky species that everybody else responds too?

Does it translate into, "Free birdseed and bug larvae, come and get it!"

or " SNAKE, OWL, SNAKE, OWL!!"

If I were guessing, and I am as I am not much of a birder, I would suggest it sounds alot like a ticked off Carolina wren.

So weigh in, oh avianaficianado types.

Spring Signs

The local melon farmers have their fields prepped and the baby melon plants will be going in soon. The grassy strips serve as wind breaks and soil holders while the black plastic mulch will help in moisture retention and weed control. In the lower left corner, you can see the drip irrigation hose running under the plastic liner.

For these farmers, profit depends on getting an early harvest so their melons will garner a high price early in the summer.



Another sign of spring are the blueberry blossoms in my little patch out back. I'm pretty nervous about this weekend as my little blue babies are opening up just as a hard freeze is predicted. I could lose my entire crop if these flowers get too cold.

Man, I hate buying blueberries.

Y'all think good warm thoughts okay?

Another sign of spring is Feather getting out of the porch dog nest and lying in the sun.

She's about half asleep in that picture, her eyes mostly closed, and her head occasionally jerking as she starts. I told her to give it up and just lay down, but she said she was on duty.

Last weekend the black cherry trees burst into new leafdom and the carolina jessamine began blooming, along with the farkle berry.

Spring is coming, which doesn't thrill me as much as some of you in more northerly climes. I love winter here.

Cool, no oppressive humidity, no bugs (sorry Doug), and ...

... I get all your birds.

heehee

Bear Caught On Game Camera

Emma's purple room lies dormant while she is away at college, yet I couldn't help notice rumpled bed covers and black dog hair appearing in her room recently.
What could be the source of this comforter calamity?
Could we have a poultrygeist?
No, couldn't be that... it was hair that was appearing in the empty room, not feathers.
I was in deep pondering mode when it occurred to me that I had a way to answer this dilemma.
The game camera.
It works outdoors, surely it would work inside.
So, I carefully set up the camera in a pile of Emma's clothes, which she left piled haphazardly on the floor.

The three purplish photos above show what the game camera recorded. Apparently MSMA (Mixed Species Martial Arts) has been going on upstairs when no one is around.
The lower right picture is of Bear begging Belgian waffles from me.
It's just there to round out the collage, although I may have unwittingly helped fuel one of the two fighters by sharing with Bear.

When I confronted Bear with the photos of the nefarious activity, he immediately went into his, "Have you noticed how cute I am lately?" mode ...which I completely fell for.

Again.

I Forgot My Fishing Pole

Yesterday, I needed to get out to Cedar Key as a favor to Junior. It was a holiday for the schools, but not for kids who are dual-enrolled in college. So while most of his friends (and his Daddy) were off, he was sitting in his college classes.
The favor involved getting under the bridge out at Cedar Key and setting up a sample site for his science fair project.
This is one of several project ideas he has proposed that have ranged from setting up a huge maze in the yard and testing Bear's ability to learn, to a very dubious project involving the Wii game Rockband.


In the meantime, as these other ideas (I kinda liked the doggie maze one, but the logistics!) were simmering, I suggested a little study of epifauna colonization out at Cedar Key.
Yesterday was ideal for getting under the bridge, but since he was obligated elsewhere, I agreed to go out and clear a test site for this possible project.

So it was that I found myself scraping barnacles off a few test sites in the shade of the bridge. I took along a paint scraper and clearcut a few sampling sites at different depths.
That took all of 15 minutes so I was able to cruise around as an incoming tide pulsed life back into an empty ebbtide marsh.
I had planned to bring a rod and reel and fish a little, but absent mindedly left it hanging back at the house.
Note to self: write trip list note so you don't forget stuff.



It was a beautiful day, even though the breeze was a little brisk in the open water areas. The sun was pretty intense so you could be alternately warm or chilly depending on the wind. Most of my travel time was spent in sheltered creeks and flats with only a few inches of water. The incoming tide brought with it schools of mullet that swirled in the shallows as they fled from the scary kayak.


The pterodcactyls were out as usual. Most were hunkered down against the chilly breeze, bills tucked under wings, but not this guy.
Is that sky blue enough for ya? I did not enhance it on the 'puter.

I only spent a few hours poking around, but wowsers was it ever nice to get out there, after all the wedding work and a rainy weekend that prevented this kind of fun.

In fact, Sunday was so wet and grey that I actually cleaned out my bedroom closet.

I guess kayaking was my reward for taking on the closet badlands.

It was bad ... I found things I forgot I owned.

The few feet of floor space between the closet door and the clothing rack along the back wall had long ago vanished in a pile of ... stuff, which kept growing.

Instead of cleaning it when I should have, I adapted to it ...

I actually became pretty adept at grabbing the closet door trim, leaning in over the junk on the floor, and grabbing a shirt or pair of pants off the hanger rack along the back wall.

You can actually walk into it now ... who knew?

Feeling A Little Blue

Walking ...

... Stalking ...

... Processing incoming data ...

... Successful strike based on actionable intelligence.

This is a favorite wader of mine, the Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea). I took this series from my kayak two weekends ago while having my manatee encounter down at Chassahowitzka. A quiet cove off the main river channel was empty except for this little blue hunting in the shallows, so I gave the kayak one last push and then snapped the paddle along the gunwale so my hands could be free to shoot pics as I drifted close to the heron.

He did not seem to mind me a bit, which seems to be the general wildlife consensus regarding the kayak and me.

Little Blues are blue (duh) as adults, but white as juvies. The Cornithologists at the Cornell University birding site say that this allows young Little Blues to mix with egrets where they are more successful at finding food than if they were hunting alone ... and, they get to take advantage of that whole "safety in numbers" thing while hanging out with the egret posse.

This makes pretty good sense to me and it's a wonder that I did not come up with that independently, as it seems so obvious now that somebody smarter than me has pointed it out.

Speaking of that kayak, (well, I was earlier, scroll up if you've forgotten already) I need to get outside and get in it. School is out, the sky is blue (you feeling it?), and the tide at Cedar Key is gonna be low around lunch time.

Perfect conditions for ... whatever comes my way.

Surviving The Wedding

We did it!
We married off two great people, avoided what seemed like an imminent rain event, and sent everybody home stuffed to the gills with good food.

This was an outdoor wedding in my parent's backyard and as luck would have it, the day before was absolutely perfect weather ... warm, sunny, light breeze... just perfect.
That was Friday.
Saturday morning, we awoke to the sound of pouring rain and it continued off and on throughout the hectic morning preparations.
We continued on, hashing out contingency plans for food, people, and ceremony placement if it was still raining at wedding time.
An hour or so before the ceremony, although the sky was still grey and threatening, the rain stopped.

The ceremony went off as planned beneath my Dad's citrus trees with a crowd of well wishers to celebrate the new couple.

Here's a few scenes ...


Prenuptial agreement: I, the undersigned, agree to BBQ a bunch of chicken and make a big ol'pot of Minorcan style clam chowder.

FC

There's no small amount of pressure when you're cooking for a crowd at the most special event of someones life. I wasn't the only cook either, other people were stressing too. My Mom, my Aunt Shelba, the wedding couple, ... we all had our cooking jobs to do to make this event as tasty as it was tasteful.

The Minorcan chowder was my biggest stressor though. There were a lot of Minorcans at this wedding and they KNOW what good clam chowder tastes like.

It was like being on Top Chef ... only manlier.

When I dished out the first cups, a distinguished jury of Jan, Marlene, Greg,my Uncle Richard, cousins Rick, Alan, and Mike, and others were the first on the scene, spoons at the ready.
When they nodded and gave it the thumbs up, I knew it was going to be okay.

The chowder was finished off outside under a canopy and over a gas fire. I had made it 2 days before, but it needed a little more flame time and it had to be just right.
So while a DVD slide show of the happy couple was being watched by the throng inside, I was outside stirring and messing with my bivalve concoction.
It was somewhere after the final taste test, with the slide show almost done that I remembered I was supposed to give the wedding toast, so I grabbed a scrap of paper and jotted down some thoughts that had been bouncing around in my head.
It had to flow from my brain, down my arm, and on to paper before I could commit it to memory.
After the ceremony, when it was toast time ...I did okay, I think, only getting choked up once ... (dang it).


Here is the lovely Annette and her husband Terry, just moments after they became man and wife.


There was all kinds of huggy, kissy stuff going on ... it was a wedding after all.
I even put on flipflops for a few hours and I took a picture just to prove to y'all that I did it.


I videotaped the serious stuff, and then turned Junior loose with the video camera to do interviews. I did not go back and review the tape before handing it to my new sister Annette, so just as a disclaimer, ... Annette, my part ends after the ceremony, you can blame Junior for any nonsense after that.



Here is the incredible, amazingly delicious, wedding cake that my Aunt Shelba made. There are two kinds of pound cake hidden beneath that icing and it was all wonderful.
I had three slices of the chocolate pound cake ...it was so good.


I was too full of wedding pound cake to eat any of the groom cake, ... okay, that's a lie ... I had just a nibble to test it. It was wonderful too.
She did such a great job capturing his other love, after Annette of course. The boy has been surfing since he was 14 ... that's about 42 years worth of waves and Aunt Shelba nailed it with this cake. She even gave the surfer guy grey hair!


It might seem like a shame to cut such a beautiful cake, but this wasn't some bland bakery creation, this was an eatin' cake with actual flavor.




The newlyweds escaped for a little while in Terry's pickup which was decorated on the sly by his nieces and nephew.
Later they came back to help with the cleanup, because that's the kind of people they are.

So, whew! ... we did it.
We pulled off an outdoor wedding on a rainy weekend.

Back to nature tomorrow, but I thought you might enjoy these scenes of the big event.


Post Script:

The menu for all you foodies out there:
BBQ Chicken
Pulled Pork
Minorcan Chicken Pilau
Minorcan Sausage Pilau
Baked Beans
Salad
Shrimp Rounds with Datil Pepper Relish
Potato Salad
Minorcan Clam Chowder
Wedding Cake
... and a host of minor players to round out the main dishes.

Friday Florida Frolic Posted On Saturday!

This armadillo was totally oblivious to the JEEP even though we stopped right next to him. Obviously he needed re-education on automotive avoidance ... so I hopped out and gave chase.

In this video Bear demonstrates the sheer joy of being Bearrific. The green hole in the ground sans water is my "pond".

Happy Valentines Day to all you lovers.

Pre-Wedding Jitters

As you regulars know, my brother Terry and the lovely Annette are getting hitched tomorrow, so you can imagine that things are approaching that frantic stage where everything must come together just so.

You might also recall that I am BBQ'ing a small herd of unfortunate chickens to feed the celebratory crowd. In addition, I have cooked up a 4 gallon pot of Minorcan style clam chowder. It's red by the way ... the color of real chowder ... we're not making milk soup here.

(That should fire up the white chowder clan ... heehee)

I asked the folks at the seafood counter in Publix if they could find me some bones and parts for a little fish stock.

"Oh, we don't filet anything so we never have any bones lying around" the fish guy said as he leaned over a glass counter full of filet's on ice.

"It all comes fileted."

Who knew?

I didn't have time to run to a real seafood market, so I bought a few shrimp and some catfish nuggets for my stockpot.

That's the stock cooking in the photo above. There's datil peppers, catfish, shrimp hulls, a bit of onion, black pepper, a clove of garlic, and a bay leaf in the pot.

Later, I strained out the solids and added the broth to the huge pot of clam chowder.

The dogs enjoyed the mushy fish and shrimp hulls.


This morning, Mrs. FC was giving shrimp a quick boil to add them to "shrimp rounds" for the wedding feast. I don't make this dish, and to be honest, I like shrimp as "just shrimp", but this is a popular appetizer wherever we take it.

It involves some herby cream cheese surrounded by boiled shrimp, with a dish of datil pepper relish in the center.


Since I was trapped in the kitchen yesterday, cooking chowder and prepping for the big BBQ day, I decided to try out a recipe that had been dogging me since I stumbled upon it last week. In the 2007 Southern Living Annual Cookbook, there is a recipe for "Crockpot Apple Crisp".

It sounded good, but I just couldn't see how anything in a crockpot could get crisp ...

... And I was not disappointed.

What I mean by that is that the top did not get crisp. The stuff was delicious anyway. The tartness of the Granny Smiths and the sweetness of the brown sugar goo was fairly awesome.

There was no vanilla ice cream in the house though and this caused me some consternation.

Now THAT is a grill.

My good friends at B.K. Cypress Log Homes volunteered their company BBQ grill for my cooking mission today. This was a lifesaver as my smaller version has light shining through the bottom due to years of service, heat, and rust.

After this post, I'm going out to fire up my charcoal and begin hours of outdoor cooking under a clear blue Pure Florida sky.

If time allows later, I'll toss up a picture of the chicken cooking.

I'll have to taste test it often as it finishes off this afternoon.

Poor me.

Birds Of The Chassahowitzka River : Wordless Wednesday

All taken on my little manatee kayak sojourn last Saturday.