Spherical Spring Signs

Toad eyes are spherical signs of spring.

Usually they are found in pairs, but sometimes they come in quartets as in the picture above.

When they do ...

... it usually means there will soon be other spherical signs of spring like the toad eggs above.

Another spherical sign of spring are softballs, baseballs, and soccer balls like the one Junior sends into the net above.

He did really well at the swine show yesterday too!

(...or should I say his pig did really well)

More on that Thursday.

Why the delay?

The auction is tomorrow and I want to do a final combination fair posting that includes his awards and his sale price.

$Ka-ching!$

Patience, Grasshoppers ...

In other news:

PureAlligator.blogspot.com debuts tomorrow. It will be strictly crocodillian with new postings only about 4-5 times a month. It is also a photoblog with minimal text, although the commenting feature is on if you feel the need to express yourself there.

PureFlorida is where I will be hanging out and chatting with you.

Fairly Busy Weekend

Resting at the fair after a busy morning.


Parents and kids swarm in to set up watering pipes and feed their pigs.


Junior filling a watering pipe. It's a section of pvc pipe with a 90 degree angle at the bottom and a watering nipple installed. These are strapped to the pens and kept full of clean water for the piggles.


It was a bit hectic around here this weekend ...


Saturday morning, Junior and I were out before dawn, loading up the show pig for the Suwannee River Livestock Show and Fair. The loading went extremely smoothly since I had attached the pig transport contraption to the pig pen chute a week ahead of time and allowed her to wander to it for treats.


At loading time, a few well placed bananas was all it required to coax her into the trailer. Once she was loaded, she received a quick bath and then off we went to the always stressful weigh-in.

At the fair grounds, a long line of trucks and trailers bearing pigs stretched out of the grounds and onto the highway.



Apparently everybody else planned to get there early too.


It wasn't that bad however and before we knew it, the pigboys were offloading our pig into the chute that would channel her to the scales.


At that point, Junior got out of the JEEP, but I had to go find a parking place, so I did not get to see the weigh-in.


A few minutes later, as I parked the JEEP along the highway, a text message arrived, "250 pounds". That meant we had qualified to be in the fair, and one big chunk of stress slid off my plate with a loud "kerplunk".








We spent another hour at the fair waiting to be allowed in the row of pens where our pig was sharing a pen with good buddy Tyler's pig. Once all the pens were filled, the fair folks allowed us in so we could rig waterers and feed our charges.

At the same time all of this was going on, the rest of the PF family were driving down to New Port Richey for the Chasco Boat Parade, Festival, and Concert ... AND my wife's annual family reunion. We do this every year, only this year the festival and the fair coincided, plus Junior's first soccer game in over a year was scheduled for later that day.

Hence the familial division ... Junior and I stayed for pigs and soccer while the rest went to the reunion.

After an early lunch at BubbaQue's in Chiefland, Junior and I dashed home to play with Bear and clean up from pig handling.

Then it was off to Alachua for the soccer game. On the 40 minute drive to Alachua, the weather which had been pretty benign, began to ramp up. By the time we arrived at the soccer fields, the wind was blowing steady and extremely powerful gusts were turning the dirt parking area into a whirling sandstorm of dust, twigs, and oak leaves. No rain or ominous clouds, just roaring winds.


While waiting for the game to start, I received a phone call from Mrs. FC down at the reunion. Emma had gone out onto her uncle's dock to watch the boat parade and driven a huge splinter into her foot.


They were on the way to the emergency room. This apparently was no ordinary splinter. She was busy, so I didn't get many details at that moment.


Later I would learn that the splinter was a shard of wood several inches long that went in, out, and back in to her foot.


(She's supposed to take a picture of the wound and the 2 inch long HALF of the splinter that the doc let her keep.)


I'll blog that as soon as she gets it to me ... in the grand tradition of my cut off finger stitch pics from way back in this blog ... search if you dare newbies ... it's under "stupid things I have done".

So ... with my hurting Emma on my mind, I sat down on a bench to watch Junior play soccer in a gathering storm.
Our team was just barely big enough to play and the opposing team had about 20 players ... good players, so it did not look good.
For a while, it was 3-0 their favor, and then Junior scored and we rallied.
Then they scored.
Then Junior scored again ... 2- 4 now.
Then they scored.
Then Junior scored again ... 3- 5.
Then Junior executed a beautiful cross field pass and a teammate kicked it in ... 4-5 now.
Then they scored ... 4-6.
Dang it!
Then Junior scored again (got it on video ... later this week) and the score was 5-6.
Then the game ended.

We lost, but he was magnificent.



Later in the day, I called Emma to see how she was doing. She told me she was in the emergency room, with her foot numbed and the doctor was just about to cut out the shard.
She sounded pretty chipper for one who had just impaled her foot ... but I got off the phone quick as I did not want to hear my baby girl in pain ... just in case the numbnicity was not fully in place.

Much later in the day, she was sore, but managed to go (on crutches) to the festival concert with her girlfriends.
Then she and the girls went back to college ... so I haven't seen her or her injury. No hand holding or Dad hugs ... I've never had one get hurt at a distance before and frankly I do not like it one bit!
At least her Mom, sis, buddy Corinne, and kin were there ... added together, they almost equal a Dad hug.

Even later Saturday, after dark, the powerful thunderstorms that the high winds had hinted at arrived with heavy rains, limb snapping winds, and much lightning.

A fitting end to a full day.

Emma's Birthday!

Back in 1989, just as we started construction on PFHQ, my wife brought home the cutest little colicy pup of a girl to stay with us.
She was a little (OMG!!!) cranky for a few (SEEMED LIKE YEARS!!!) months. Apparently she was just flushing out any and all fussiness, for after the colic passed, she became, and still is, the biggest sweetheart you would ever want to meet.
We are pretty crazy about her.

She's 20 today. We had to celebrate last weekend, because she is away at college studying hard and making great grades.
Just like her Daddy did (NOT ALWAYS DO) when he was in college.
Happy Birthday baby girl.
I love you.

Luckiest Ducks In Alachua

There were birds at the Alachua Sink last weekend too.
It might seem like all I saw were gators, but it was pretty birdy for mid-day.
It was a windy day so even though the swaying reeds were full of smaller birds like red-wing blackbirds and the air was accented with soaring marshhawks, I didn't get any decent photos of these.

The water birds were more cooperative.

There were lots of galinules among the dollarweed.

Little blue herons are big on risk taking.

They're quick too ... but not too quick.

An old favorite, the tricolor heron. I just don't see many of these, so watching this one hunt the dollarweeds was a pleasure.

Why didn't they name this bird "White Britches"?

The ducks above reminded me of a video that was shown during the first Gulf War. Remember the "Luckiest Guy In Iraq" video of the truck crossing a bridge moments before a guided munition blasted the bridge to pieces?

Watching these ducks waddle towards and then away from some huge gators just tickled me and that video popped into my head.

Butt Shavings And The Return Of The Prodigal Project

The Suwannee River Livestock Show and Fair is this weekend and will run into next week. As always, we are hoping Junior's show pig makes the weight, (230-280 lbs) and gets to compete.
One of the things that happen prefair is a haircut for Porki.

So yesterday, since Junior had both track and soccer practice, the role of "swine barber" fell to me.
Porki was pretty good for the beauty session. This does not mean she stood still of course. Essentially it was a barberballet. She shifted, I shifted, she walked over to eat, I walked and shaved at the same time, she turned, I shaved whatever side she gave me.

By the time the battery charge ran out on the trimmer, I had her hair knocked down a couple of inches and ready for the final trim, which will happen today.
The idea is to accent her buff musculature ... you guys who shave your chest hair can relate.

I rigged up the green pig transport cage at the end of the pen chute so she can get used to walking into it this week. On Saturday, I will set the green cage on my low trailer and place it back in this position with a plywood ramp for her to walk up and into the cage.

Then she will head to the fair.


I lifted Bear up (ummph!) and over the hog panel fence to let him in with the pig. I thought it would be fun to watch them have real contact.
The pig wasn't too interested in Bear and Bear showed only a passing interest ... butt smelling mainly. For Bear, the slow motion chasing of the chickens by mostly blind Flounder dog was much more interesting and his attention was soon focused elsewhere.

He is wearing his new 20 foot long training lead which allows him some romping freedom, but limits his runoffanicity when a deer scent or girl dog scent catches his fancy. This leash has been a great improvement over the short 6 footer we were using since he feels free and the constant tug O'war has ended.

Unfortunately for me, I was still connected to Bear when I lifted him OUT of the pigpen chute. For a brief moment, as he dropped to the Earth from my arms, all was well, but as soon as his paws hit the sand, he blasted off after the nearby chickens which had been driving him crazy the whole time I was pig shaving.

I could see the disaster unfolding and I lept up and over the fence, but the 20 feet of lead had already played out and I offered little resistance to Bear's might since I was vertically airborne at the moment.
I landed about 6 feet away from the fence with a skinned knee the only damage.
Life with Bear is never boring.



The feet above belong to Frank. Longtime readers know about Frank, if you are new, search this blog for him.
His time away turned out to be a temporary stay at a facility and he has been back for a few weeks.
His behavior is great and grades are good.
The picture was taken yesterday. I was helping him with his science fair project since he did not have a camera and needed to photograph part of his "experiment".
He is testing whether different brands of basketball shoes affect vertical jumping height.

Like all the other students, he has waited until the last minute ... which makes him perfectly normal in my book.

Baby Pictures

This mother gator and about ten babies were sunning immediately adjacent to the elevated dike trail that snakes through Payne's Prairie from the Alachua Sink.
While I was photographing her, a helpful park volunteer drove up on his golfcartysorta thing, and said, "Watch her, she's grumpy."

I appreciated the tip, but I was very aware that it would be a bad idea to slipslide down the dike slope into her protective mother zone. I was really, really aware of this because about 100 yards earlier down the dike, I had stepped on a pile of cut dry dog fennel stalks and almost skated down to another gator I was attempting to photograph.
It was like standing on marbles on a hill ...
...with a gator at the bottom.

Let's just say it woke me up and I was being extra careful.

The gator babies were doing what babies do, eating, sleeping, exploring.


Mom's tail is a great place for safely basking in the sun.

For a while, being a baby allows you to walk on top of the vegetation. Later, when they are much bigger, vegetation is for lurking in and under.

Like babies of all kinds, naps are essential.

Alachua Sink and Payne's Prairie

I've been to Payne's Prairie many times, but always on the Highway 441 side, so I have missed the spectacular scenery and gatornicity of the Alachua Sink portion of the preserve.
For those of you in other climes, Payne's Prairie is a 21,000 acre prairie just outside of Gainesville, Florida.
As is common in Florida, it is a wet prairie that varies from dry and brushy to flooded marsh. In the 1800's, the sinkhole that drains the prairie became clogged, and the "prairie" became a lake for about 18 years.

Last week, my extremely perky buddy Cindy shared some gatory photos she had taken at the Alachua Sink and they were amazing.
After seeing her pics, I knew what I was doing on Saturday morning.

Here's a view of Alachua Sink. Count the gators.
Panning left or right would have revealed similar numbers.


Most gators in the sink were big'uns and well fed.


It's weird living with dinosaurs.

Spring break at the beach.

Sometimes it gets pretty crowded.

This is Payne's Prairie ... or at least a partial view of the prairie.

The wild horses were visible off in the distance as mere equinaspecs, so I didn't make a serious attempt at photographing them.

I took so many gator shots ... huge ones, medium ones, small ones, duckweed covered ones, baby ones, ... they were everywhere.

Tomorrow I'll share some views of a Momma gator and her babies.

I was joking yesterday about changing the name of this blog to "Pure Alligator". I didn't, but I am starting a new blog (not yet published) by that name. It will be mostly pictures a couple times a week for those who need a weekly gator fix.

I won't be able to comment back and forth there, but I will read and enjoy 'em if you leave 'em.

This is my conversational blog and I do love it, I just couldn't keep up with more than one blog's worth of witty banter.

I'll let you know when Pure Alligator hits the web.

Guess Where I Went

There were some of these.


Starkly clear message.

"Keep Your Distance."

... Oh, all right, if I have to ...

A Pure Florida potpourri.

So where was I?

This week's posts will share more, but I may have to rename this blog, "Pure Alligator".

It's gonna be gatory here for a few days.

Attack Of The Killer Diller

College roomie Thunder and his better half, Lightnin', have been here all week eating indigenous Florida foods and exploring the local turf.

Up until yesterday, their search for gators had come up empty. I was feeling deficient as a host due to this absence of alligators, so I called them from work yesterday and told them to be ready around 4:00 pm. I would take them to gators ... guaranteed.

They were ready at the appointed time and after a quick change from work clothes to gator whispering clothes, we were off.

A few minutes of bumpy JEEP riding and we were staring at baby gators sunning and swimming under a beautiful blue sky.

After the baby gators, they were pretty stoked, but I knew we could find some bigger ones at another spot so we headed deeper into the woods.

At the second place, we hiked out to a hidden gator hole that never fails to hold a collection of gators. Sure enough, they had gotten the message and were posing like runway models.
Thunder and Lightnin' were restoked.

This gator was especially cooperative. I love his posture.

After the gator hole, we continued on and encountered a lovely cottonmouth crossing the road. We stopped to photograph it which turned out to be serpentendipitous for the moccasin, as a pickup truck with a bubbaesque couple in the cab and a huge pitbull in the back pulled up behind us.
I was standing in the road to take the photo above, so I pointed to the snake and waved them on. I got "the look", but they pulled over some and continued down the road.
We stayed long enough to admire the snake some more and watch it slip gracefully back into the grass.

Then, with two completely stoked visitors in my JEEP, we slid on down the road thinking, well, that was the icing on the cake ... surely our dance ticket is full now.

But no ...





... none of us could have expected an encounter with an attackadillo.

WARNING: PUT YOUR COFFEE DOWN BEFORE WATCHING THIS MOVIE. I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR RUINED KEYBOARDS.

Vow Wow and Tony's At Cedar Key

My college roomie, Thunder and his lovely wife, Lightnin', have been staying with us this week.

Dave and Lightnin' just spent a year living in China courtesy of a major corporation and we have been honored to be one of their first stops upon returning to the states.

We were also honored to witness the renewal of their wedding vows, a task they wanted to accomplish beneath a setting Cedar Key sun.

We got a late start as usual, but Cedar Key isn't far at all from PFHQ ... AND we had leadfoot (Mrs. FC) driving so we made it, racing over the bridge and into Cedar Key just as the ocean began to sizzle.

We pulled over right here and everybody piled out and dashed to the edge of the marsh. With a beautiful Gulf of Florida sunset painting the sky, the two lovebirds renewed their vows.

(I think Thunder's may have been hot off the press)

I took pictures of the Vownifications, but I'm not posting them here, because I believe they will eventually show up on Thunder and Lightnin's blog.

I don't want to steal their thunder ... (heehee)

After the vowing, we went to the best restaurant at Cedar Key, "Tony's".

That's my plate above after I've already done some damage to the original load of fried shrimp.

Mrs. FC went for a platter with steamed farm-raised Cedar Key clams, steamed shrimp, and blackened grouper bites. She commented that I may have planted some of those clams since I help my friend Kelly with his clam farm sometimes.

This qualified me for a few of her clams and they were exquisite.


Three of the four diners chose the clam chowder for an appetizer. One of the diners, (who believes all chowder should be red and milk goes on cereal), did not order the chowder and was forced to listen to prolific lip-smacking and exclamations like, "Oh my God, this is amazing" and "I should have just ordered lots of chowder, it's wonderful."

Apparently it was pretty tasty, because they would NOT shut up about it.

At the end of the meal, I was too stuffed to order a slice of their excellent Key Lime pie, but Thunder ordered one to take home for his breakfast the next day.

I got to hear about that too as I ate my cereal the next morning and Thunder ate his pie across the table from me.

This caused me to write my own vow ...

... I vow to leave room for pie the next time I go to Tony's.

Washing Sharks

It's shark week here in my Marine Science Classroom. Along with the usual stimulating discussions and presentations, we are also dissecting the spiny dogfish shark. In a rare and happy bit of shark serendipity, the dogfish shark is the most abundant of the sharks and actually has an increasing population that can support a regulated fishery.

I would have a moral dilemma if it were different as I am a shark whisperer who is squarely on the side of the world's sharks. I only use 10 per year ... so in two decades of teaching, I have removed about 200 from the ocean for education.

Turnabout is fair play though ... maybe one of their cousins will remove me from the ocean some day.

It could happen.


Day one of the shark lab is the external lab. Step one is to give the preserved shark a good detergent bath.

This removes the fishy oil that seeped out of the liver during the preservation and shipping process.

That makes the whole lab more pleasant.


We recycled last year's leftover science fair project display boards into cutting boards for this lab. The sharks are just too big for our standard dissection pans.

This freshly scrubbed shark is showing his characteristic heterocercal caudal fin, but you already knew that. The cut in the body just anterior of the caudal fin is where the supply company accessed the circulatory system of the shark to pump in a pink latex. This makes it easier to track the route of arteries once inside the shark.


At the end of the first day's lab, I asked each group to use a bit of flagging to distinctively mark their specimen so they could get the same shark back on day two.

That is what's going on in the photo above.


This team has a nice dissection going.

This type of activity ... not dissections only, but all activities where the students are semi- autonomous and accomplishing a real task is learning at it's best.
I wish we did more of these hands on activities, but they take stuff and stuff takes money ... so we squeeze them in as funds and standardized test obsessed school districts allow.

During this activity, I was just their resource center and coach ... if they needed me, they asked for help, if not, they ran their own show ... did their own learning.

Think about it grown ups ... the vast store of your knowledge ... did you learn it in school, or have you learned it since school?

Since school, right?

Whether you learned a lot, or a little, in your time on the planet probably is due to a sense of curiosity inspired by a parent or teacher, not facts and figures handed to you on a platter by them. Make me want to know more and I will learn.

These kids completed the required dissection activities and kept going beyond the lab guide, with almost no help from me, because they were curious and eager to know more.
I credit their parents ... mostly.

Knowing how amazing the design of the shark's spiral valve is, or the architecture of his gills won't change their life, but that curiosity thang ... now that can do wonders.

You might say curiosity is at the heart of learning.

I'm Here and There.

I'm here and there today.

It's my 15 minutes of fame day I guess.

Think I'll celebrate by taking the blog day off and visit your blogs.

Installing A Small Ephemeral Pond: Step By Step

I went into Lowes Saturday to buy birdblock netting for my classroom aquaculture project. Netting and a 90 degree L pvc fitting was the extent of my shopping list as I entered the store.
I came out with: 2 Apache blackberry plants, birdblock, a 90 degree pvc fitting, a big bag of potting soil mix, long zip ties, and a plastic shell mini-pond .

The pond was discounted to $10 and I could not resist it.

On Sunday, I hiked out to the recently burned area among the palms to install an ephemeral pond. Natural ephemeral ponds come and go with cycles of rain and drought. These essentially fishless ponds (the horror!) are important to amphibians for reproduction as a lack of fish predators increases the frog, toad, salamander clan's chances of survival.


Step One: I chose this spot as it had a nice mix of sun and shade. It is on the edge of the recently control-burned palm glade.

Step Two: The top soil here is a thick mat of leaf litter and tangled roots above what is essentially beach sand. I used the mattock to chop through the oak, palm, and smilax roots at the surface. I tossed roots out into the surrounding woods and began digging the pond hole.

Step Three: Excavating the hole for the pond shell. My cart has a mesh bottom so I cut a few green palm fronds with the machete to line the cart and hold the excavated sand.

Step Four: Almost done. Time to add the water. This was easy to do as I had about two hundred feet of hose extended down from the house due to last week's burning.

Step Five: I have the pond slightly tilted towards you so that overflow water pours out and around to the left ... your left, my right.

Step 6: After the pond overflow path was established, I excavated the low spot and planted some blue flag iris that I had in pots.

There's more to do.

I want to add some rocks and logs for critter shelter nearby. This being Florida, I will add about two male gambusia minnows just to keep the mosquito population down. They are small enough that their presence should not effect amphibian egg laying.

I will update you on this project as it progresses.

The Curse Of Cuteness

Ecological disasters don't have to be chemical like DDT or Mercury. They don't have to be icky and in your face like zebra mussels or hydrilla.

Sometimes they are cute and downright charming.

Therein lies the problem.

Here's an example that really drives me nuts ... and it's not just because I am not a cat lover. I may teasingly give cats a hard time on this blog, but it's in good fun and I know your pet cats bring you cat lovers much joy and comfort.
This is not about cats at all really, it's about stupid humans.
In a local community near here, Otter Creek, a group of ignorant well meaning folks recently trapped, neutered, and released back into the same community, about 30 feral cats.

Once they trapped them, it should have been over. Give 'em a shot at adoption at the pound, but then euthanize them if no one wants to adopt a hissing, fire-spitting feral cat.

But whatever you do, do not release them back into the community to feed on our NATIVE birds and other small wild creatures.
Plus, their very presence will encourage the dumping of other cats who WILL be able to reproduce.

Morons.


This scene looks pretty idyllic. Subtropical foliage surrounding a clear stream ... a mallard cruising by ...


Cute and charming as she is, she's an ecological nightmare down here in Florida. She's not part of some wild flock migrating through. She's feral ...


... and she is a genetic time bomb.

Florida does host some migrating flocks of mallards, but not many compared to other southern states to our north.

We do have an endemic mallard cousin called the Mottled Duck which is being hybridized out of existence by mating with released feral mallards.


Again, we have met the enemy and he are us. All across the state, good hearted, but ignorant folks are releasing mallards into local water bodies. I would imagine that a few months after Easter is an especially heavy release time, since so many impulse duckling purchases occur near this holiday.

Controlling feral species gets complicated when your target has a cuteness or beauty factor. It's not too difficult to get the public behind you on exterminating feral Burmese Pythons, Walking Catfish, or Cane Toads.

But just you try exterminating feral cats, ducks, or parrots ... that is another story.

Cuteness ... it's a curse.