The Lost Week Ends

A lack of internet service at PFHQ (at least service at any useable speed)  for the past week or so has really cut into my posting.

You may have noticed this, and I apologize.

As is my way, I tried to resolve it myself for a few days before I decided it must be the Hughesnet modem.

A phone call to "Brian" in India, confirmed this and after a 20 minute polite chat, I had a new modem on the way.

I hooked it up last night and I'm once again to slip around the ether at a speed I can live with.

It was actually very good customer service ... you would have heard about it if that had not been the case.

Enjoy this peaceful interlude ... courtesy of the Sun, Sony, and a new modem.

PiRknotSquare and ShrimpRknot Either

Last week, I had to be away for two days of training and some of my fellow teachers covered all my classes. They did this because the school budgets are so slim, it's hard to afford a substitute teacher these days.
And ... they don't make much, these brave substitute teachers, so that tells you something about the budget.

I wanted to thank the regular teachers who lost a planning period or doubled up, so I made a blueberry pie.

Not an extraordinary thing, but it was my first real, gotta crust, not a key lime ... PIE.

I found a recipe online,  pulled a bag of my own home grown blueberries out of the freezer, and got started.

My version of "dot with butter".

My version of a shark, made from the trimmings and leftover bits of crust.
The shark is our school mascot.

The thing about giving a pie to someone as a gift is ... you can't really taste it to see if it came out alright.
Nobody gives a pie missing a test slice, as a gift.
It just isn't done.

I left it in the conference room with a note thanking the teachers who covered for me.
In the afternoon, I had a washed and empty pie plate, so I guess it was okay.

In the foreground, a plate of salad and some of the shrimp that I caught back in August.

That was supper Saturday night. You can mess shrimp up in a million spiced, breaded, bacon-wrapped ways, but there is something to be said for minimalism with such a delicately flavored beast.

These were cooked by dropping them into hot water and almost immediately removing them.

Well, yes, I confess to dipping them in our homemade datil pepper relish. We made a big batch Saturday (background) and the whole house smelled AWESOME all day.

No way I was passing that up with a plate full of shrimp at the ready.

I may be a shrimp minimalist, but I'm not crazy.

15 Nanoseconds Of Fame

Okay, this is a test.
Which person in the Cedar Key Beacon photograph is FC?

You may remember that last weekend, I devoted my morning to slogging about in the marsh while participating in the Coastal Cleanup.
Astute readers may recall that I mentioned that I think I placed somewhere in the top trash picker category, since the sponsors gave me a bag of candy and had me pose for a picture.


A week later, I have confirmation.
Why a week?

The small towns in our Rhode Island sized county all publish weekly papers ... if you want a daily, you have to subscribe to a "foreign" newspaper from some other county.

I know, I know, who reads paper newspapers anymore ... everything in the paper version is a day old and you read it yesterday in the online version.

So maybe weekly papers make more sense ... less trees cut down, less paper waste, less gas used to deliver it ... and really, if it's not still interesting a week later, it was probably trivial to begin with.

Thursday, the Beacon came out, so I popped into the convenience store by the bait shop and bought a diet Coke and a paper. My Coastal Cleanup participation had 3 goals and getting into the paper was important to one of them.
My goals:

1. Lead by example for my students. I had promoted the clean up all week in class. If you talk the talk with teenagers, you need to walk the walk.
2. Clean up the local marshes that I love so much.
3. Let the community of Cedar Key see that their new science teacher is investing time in their community outside of the classroom. Sort of a "get to know me" moment.

So for all the reasons above, I hustled hard that morning.  Those folks I didn't meet in person during the Coastal Cleanup, well they could see how hard I worked in the paper, ... even if  a week later.
What a plan.
What could go wrong?

This:  The Beacon reporter got my name wrong in the caption.

Too funny!

I could correct them, but I'm not sure it's worth waiting for a week.

At least the "mud otter" creepy thing I found got named correctly in the paper.

Zick Eats

Zick really enjoys a good frozen pinky mouse ... thawed of course.  She goes at with great gusto, usually with a few missed strikes as I dangle the mouselingmorsel by it's tail.

Zick is, after all, new to this planet and still honing her accuracy.
Her instincts to make the strike and to instantly wrap up the prey animal in tight bands of squeezey snake muscle have been honed over millions of years and they work beautifully.
That is the wonder of the bio-programming known as instinct.
It's just there.


Zick is instinctively wonderful ... she just needs a little more practice judging distance.

Here, she makes a little love knot to show me how fond she is of me ... or is she just chilly and enjoying the warmth of an endothermic hand?

The video below shows her already "in the grip" with a thawed pinky mouse.

Zick eats about once a week and I bet it wont be too long before I walk in and find a shed skin.

I suppose I should really try to get her to stretch out on a meter stick so I can get a baseline starting length.

There is something in a snake that abhors straightness though, so my measurement may not be accurate.

At least snake eating habits aren't gory with rending and tearing ... just smoothly, sinuously, squishy.

Baby Flying Squirrel Update

If you remember, just a few posts back, we had a little baby flying squirrel that needed some TLC rehabilitation after it became an orphan.
You may also remember that the "Squirrel Lady" out here at Cedar Key took it upon herself to get this baby to the "Flying Squirrel Lady" who had more experience with the tiny flying clan.

A recent email from the "Flying Squirrel Lady" included these photos and the news that little "Sharky" was doing very well.

... Just a little good news on your Wednesday.


(Oh, and ladies ... especially lady Gator fans ... there's a baby squirrel in the photos.)

Cedar Key Coastal Clean Up 2011

Meanwhile ... deep in the mangroves ...

When I showed up at the Coastal Clean Up staging area, early Saturday morning, I was given the "Back Bayou" as my target zone. This is a quiet marshy lagoon behind the school where I work.

Armed with a few extra tough garbage bags an enthusiasm for anything marshy and eco-friendly, I headed into the mangroves.

There were all kinds of trashy things under the mangrove canopy ... from left to right:
cans, old bottles, old shoe liner, old basura blanco.

There were weird things too ... things that gave me the willies ... like this big-eyed mudstronsity.

I grabbed ALOT of trash for a solo picker. There were way more glass bottles and shards than I expected. Some of the soft drink glass bottles were dated by designs I had not seen in a while. That told me that this area of black mangroves and gooey knee sucking marsh mud had not been cleaned in a long time  ... if ever.

It was hard going with soft mud and long slogs out and back again with black bags of glass and cans, pressure treated boards full of 16 penny nails, and metal pipes.

This is my "haul".

• Three garbage bags with mostly glass and metal containers
• One chair and one boat seat.
• A 10 foot steel pipe full of mud ... ugh, heavy.
• Rubber hose
• Two 5 gallon buckets which I used to carry more bottles and cans.
• 3 big pieces of pressure treated lumber and some tarp ... probably some kid's hut years ago. It was semi-attached to an oak that leaned out over the marsh.
• A rusty step ladder

I guess that's it ... There was more, but time was up at 12 noon and to be honest, I was needing a water break after hours of mud slogging and bush whacking.

Back at Clean Up HQ, dedicated volunteers sorted, counted, and classified all the trash. This is an international effort and the recording volunteer is using a standard data collection form to record trash data.

This dumpster was full of all kinds of garbage, from old clam farm bags to lumber. Recyclables went off to be "renewed" of course.

Let's hope they bury this scary thing deep in the landfill.


All in all it was a great morning. We've had a little bit of fallish (by FL standards) weather and what could have been a hot, gnat infested, torture session was just a lot of hard, dirty work under low humidity conditions ... (by FL standards).

I can't wait to read the trashy totals for the whole day. I did hear that the SWAT kids (Students Working Against Tobacco) picked up over 4000 cigarette butts.
I seem to have picked up enough trash to qualify for a prize, although I never heard if it was categorized by first, second, or third place.

I just know at one point, the organizers said,"Congratulations!", gave me a big bag of Hershey's candy, and had me stand with two other Coastal Cleaners for a picture.

I haven't seen the picture yet, but I know I was covered in dried marsh mud from head to toe, so I may be incognito anyway.

It was great fun and super exercise, plus, the beautiful marshes of Cedar Key are a little cleaner than they were before the Coastal Clean Up.

I'm definitely coming back next year.

We didn't get it all.

Meet Zick, The Baby FLORIDA Kingsnake

Meet Zick, my new baby FLORIDA Kingsnake. She arrived yesterday via UPS and is the first snake I have ever paid money for, even though I have had a dozen or more pet snakes since I was a boy.

Every other snake was a yard capture or hand me down, all wild, all ratsnakes except for a few garter snakes when I was about 10 years old.

They were all temporary visitors in the FC household, but Zick is different.
She's captive bred and a long term commitment, just like any long-lived pet. Even though she's a native Floridian (duh, what else would you expect here at Pure Florida?), she won't be released at any time.

She's here to stay.

I named her after Julie Zickefoose, poet,musician, writer, and artist extraordinaire. The real Zick is just one of many amazing people I have met through the blogosphere, and she just charmed the scales off me when I met her and her two great kids at the Space Coast Bird thingie last January.


Zick the kingsnake is about 3 weeks old and about 12 inches long. She came from  Reptmart, a supplier that I found online by a random search in Google. I found other suppliers also, but I was impressed by Reptmart's facility as shown on their website and their concern for the safety and health of their animals.

Zick will be my classroom snake so, I cleared the idea of a snake arriving at the front desk with our receptionists and made the order.

 An hour after I clicked to complete the purchase, I received a call from a Reptmart employee.
She had looked on the map and noted Cedar Key's end of the road, middle of nowhere position on the shipping maps. The distance from any UPS air hub had her worried about the snake spending too much time on a hot UPS truck. Her research showed that deliveries to Cedar Key School were often late afternoon deliveries and she asked for a location closer to Gainesville.

Immediately I thought of my daughter Emma who now teaches at my old school, just 20 minutes from Gainesville.  The Reptmart lady researched time of delivery for that school and found that most deliveries there were by noon.
Perfect!

So we had the snake delivered to my daughter, much to the chagrin of the snakeyphobic office ladies there ...(who are great sports by the way!)

I tell you all these shipping details as evidence for the concern Reptmart has for the welfare of the animals they sell.

Zick arrived bright-eyed, active, and perky yesterday.
I could not wait to get home and meet her, so I zipped home as soon as I could.

She's beautifully marked, sweetly slithery, and very docile. Zick will spend this weekend at PFHQ getting acclimated to us, and then next week she will move into her new digs in my classroom.

You can expect frequent Zick updates as she gets busy growing and showing my students that snakes are not something to fear or loathe.

It's a big job, but I think she's up to it.

FRIENDLY REMINDER:
TOMORROW IS COASTAL CLEANUP DAY ACROSS FLORIDA!
CHIP IN IF YOU CAN!

THE COASTAL CLEANUP AT CEDAR KEY IS 8 AM TO 12:00 NOON. MEET AT THE BOAT BASIN DOWNTOWN.

JUST GOOGLE COASTAL CLEANUP AND YOUR COMMUNITY TO FIND OUT WHAT S GOING ON LOCALLY.

Goodbye Gopher

Happier days.

For years, the gopher above was a regular, but not everyday sight as I left for work or returned home.
It lived about a half mile down from my mailbox, along my quiet country road.

I have stopped to shoo it off the road and back into the grassy shoulder about a dozen times, almost always in the late afternoon as I headed home from work.

My usual shooing plan involved pulling over into the tortoise's lane, stopping close to the gopher, and chastising it for being on the road ... complete with wagging, nagging finger.

For this, I would get a hiss and a gradual turn back to the shoulder.

Then, I'd head on to my driveway.

Here are the trails made by the daily foraging of this gopher. It's all right next to the road. I'm actually standing on the road to take this picture.

This is very close to the giant diamondback rattlesnake location which I posted about a few weeks ago.

No mystery there ... diamondbacks are just one of over a hundred species that use gopher burrows as a refuge.

If you follow the main trail up to the fence line, at the edge of a cutover piney wood, you can see the burrow entrance.

The white sand around the front is from tunnel excavating and is called an "apron".
Often this where a gopher will lay her eggs.
For reasons that will become clear soon enough, I'd like to think there are some small round eggs incubating there right now.

A few days ago, a flock of vultures flew up as I approached the gopher's territory.
"Let it be an armadillo", I thought as I slowed for a look.


It wasn't.
It was my gopher, crushed by a tire and dead.

This is an extremely quiet,isolated area with almost no traffic ... I think this was most likely an unintended death.


I know plenty of good people who still run over snakes (I said "good", not "perfect"), but for the life of me, I've never heard anyone say they purposefully run over turtles.


It could have been a case of distracted driving, texting, makeup adjustments, or a big log truck unable to safely swerve ... whatever the reason, I bet it was unintentional.

Goodbye, Gopher.

Whatever the reason, I'll miss the wonderful old lump of a reptile who made me stop and "shoo" on so many rides home after a long day in the classroom.

I wish I could have been a little bit earlier on this particular day.

If I squint real hard and try to see the bright side in this, there is a pretty sweet burrow left gopherless now, and just waiting to be claimed by a new tenant.

Perhaps one day soon, I'll turn the corner on to my road and find another stubborn gopher in need of a good chewing out.

I'd like that.

Shameless Teaser for tomorrow's post:

PHOTOS OF ZICK!

Baby Flying Squirrel



A friend's pet cat decimated this baby flying squirrel's family and then brought this tiny baby into the house. Luckily, the friend intervened and rescued the tiny squirreling before any obvious damage was done.
Sigh ... as if I needed one more reason to dislike the domestic cat.


Anyway, Ms.Sara N. Dippity was looking out for this squirrel, because another friend of mine just happens to be a certified squirrel rehabilitation specialist with a passion for all things squirrelly.

And, I happen to work with the "Squirrel Woman", so the little flyer was transferred into the best hands possible today at school.

She said he's dehydrated and the youngest she has ever dealt with, but she will do her best.

I know she will, and that's good enough for me, whatever the final outcome.

The Ride Into Work

Ho hum ... just another gorgeous sunrise at the Number 4 bridge in Cedar Key.
It's different everyday, but  is consistent in it's gorgeousityness.

I rode Raptor Red in today and it was chilly as I zipped through miles of piney woods and cypress swamps, but within a mile of this bridge things warmed up considerably. By the time I slowed for the bridge, the light windbreaker I wore was feeling a little stuffy.

That's heat capacity for ya ... or more specifically, that's the power of water's HIGH heat capacity.

Speaking of water ... Florida's Coastal Cleanup day is this Saturday, the 17th of September.
I'm going to be out here helping clean up at Cedar Key. (8-12, meet at the boat launch downtown)

If you get a chance, join your local community in their own Coastal Cleanup Day.
Get wet, get dirty, get clean.

Hum V Butt

Meanwhile ... at the feeder, conflict arose.

Lake Woodruff NWR, A Quiet Gem

This is the way into Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge.
The last time I was here was a winter visit over ten years ago. Now, the road in is paved and a security camera or two look down on the isolated parking area, but otherwise it feels just as it did on thse earlier visits.

The entry road passes through a lush cypress swamp. There's a wood duck nest box out there in all that green lifeyness.

After you park in the wooded parking lot, a series of dike trails are open for exploring. Like many NWR's that were designated to improve waterfowl populations, Woodruff uses a system of impoundments.
Each impoundment is surrounded by an elevated dike with flood gates and culverts so that water levels can be adjusted to best benefit migratory waterfowl.

Of course, you don't have to be a snowbird to reap the benefits of managed wetlands like these.

Because of my back road travel schedule, I landed at Lake Woodruff at the worst possible time to see critters.
Smack dab in the middle of a hot late August day.
I still walked the dikes, but not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Ok, maybe a bird or two, but not much else.
I didn't even see a gator.

This Tricolored Heron was busy chasing minnows near a culvert outflow.

The USFWS is busy improving the impoundments and beyond this point was "outta bounds" for visitors, so my walk was cut short.

This I was thankful for. I'll be back in the winter when the air is crisp and the impoundments are heavy with birds from distant regions of the country.

It's been a long time since I was here, but I remember clouds of snow geese ...

Triple D: Dad's Datil Doom

Last November, I wrote this ...

"In my refrigerator is a datil experiment that is meant to mimic a Tabasco type sauce using datils.

I took bright orange, ripe datils and chopped them in a food processor.

Then, I combined the caustic orange goo with a little vinegar and salt.


I don't have oak barrels, so it's aging in a glass jar, but it smells wonderful when I pop the top to check it.
Months from now, I will process it again and then strain it for an orange liquid that I hope will be amazing.
I will let you know."

Well, it's time to let you know.

The fresh peppers on the right were just picked. THEY were off my best, most vigorous datil plants and they are the source of the seeds for the upcoming 2012 gardening season.

I didn't waste the fruits of course, they will be used to make some of our traditional tomato based datil pepper relish.

This post is really about the jar to the left.

It contains ripe datils from last year that were chopped in a food processor before being placed in that crock with vinegar and salt.

It's been curing in the fridge since November, and with a new crop of peppers pouring in, I chose yesterday to finish it off.

The photo above shows half of the aged pepper mix already reprocessed into a smooth sauce. On the right you can see the remaining half awaiting  a turn in the food whacker.

I had thought I would strain it through cheese cloth, but cancelled that idea in favor of just giving it a heck of a puree ride in the processor.

I'm not afraid of the extra heat those seed will provide.

This sauce is going to stay in the fridge, hence the lack of canning equipment and boiling water.

I have a long list of things to add it to ... seriously considering wings as my first experiment.

Don't let the "DOOM" part scare ya'.

I dipped out a spoonful to taste test it and it was pretty damn wonderful.

Certainly good enough that the Pure Florida Crock Of Datil Fermentation will soon be curing a new batch in the fridge.

I have peppers coming out of my ears.

Not really.

That would be weird.

Blue Springs

I used the Sunday after my reunion to do some exploring. If I left early, I could loop south on the way home and hit a handfull of parks that I had not seen in a long time.
One of these was Blue Springs State Park, near Deland.

 It was a weekend day in the summer so the place was jam-packed and crazy ... well, crazy with people having a good time enjoying the spring and playing in the water.

I had to hang around for a gap in the foot traffic to catch the shot above with an empty trail.

I wasn't prepared to get in the water on this day, so I did my shooting from above the surface.

Florida has at least 4 "Blue Springs" that I can think of. It's a logical name for these beautiful aquifer access points.

At Blue Springs State Park, the park service seems to be doing a good job of managing large crowds while protecting the banks and vegetation.

It's harder to protect water quality in a spring as it can be affected by land use miles away from the actual spring site.

I have only been to this spring once or twice in my life, so I don't have the, "You should have seen that water 20 years ago" blues like I get when I go to Crystal River or Manatee Springs.

Ignorance is bliss in this case.

The spring had an impressive gar population.

Most passerby announced that these were "Alligator Gar", but they are a panhandle species mainly and not common on the peninsula.

It's kind of a rippley picture, but it looks like a "Longnose" to me.

This guy looks like an exotic PACU to me ... perhaps a red pacu.

Pacu  are vegetarian pirannah shaped fish that are usually seen as tropical aquarium fish. They are a high value food fish in the Amazon basin and are being aquacultured in some areas.

I only saw this one.

Contrast that fact with the dozens of exotic blue tilapia using the spring and it makes me think that perhaps it is a single aquarium escapee.

Still, I only fish watched for a half hour, so my perception may not be reality.

That is often the case.

Trying To Reason With The Peak Of Hurricane Season

Okay, hurricane season is getting serious, as it does every year around my Mom's birthday, so be sure you are ready.

Your hurricane shutters won't do you any good if they are rusted shut, or gunked up with mud dauber nests, wren nests, and a year's worth of windblown leaves and debris.

These shutters are on the house where I grew up in St. Augustine. Each year, either my brother or I do a clean and lube job on them so they can be shut securely with no last minute surprises.

This job consists of :

• Walking around the house and zapping each wasp nest with wasp spray in a preemptive strike.
• Next, old wren nests are cleaned out of the corners (this year there were 3).
• Then the shutters, which fold accordian style, are opened and thoroughly lubed with WD-40 or something similar.
• Latches are activated to make sure everything works and then they are secured in the open position until needed.

Don't let Katia (or her minions) be a Caught Ya ...

... unprepared that is.

Things Are Different Here In Cedar Key

Like Mayberry with a dash of salt.

Does that photo capture the essence of a small island school or what?

It's an actual scene too, ... not staged.

That fishing pole sat there all day.

Oh yes, I'm loving it.

I'm working hard though ... hence the posting gaps this week.

I hope to catch up this weekend!

It's open house at school tonight and in about 30 minutes I should be meeting the parents who have been wondering, who is this new guy?

I think I'm ready.

Wish me "luck", or "break a leg", or whatever you deem useful!