Interesting spider

I found this spider down by the creek. Judging by the way his legs were folded (and by the way he didn't budge when I poked him with a stick), I think he had recently met his end.

I was able to look him on up on this really cool spider site, and found out that he is a marbled orb weaver (Araneus marmoreus). Not a dangerous spider at all.

A word of warning, though. Do NOT look at the pictures of brown recluse spider bites on that page unless you have a strong constitution.

I don't have a strong constitution at all, at least not about medical stuff. I confess that I have felt a little faint ever since viewing the spider bite pictures.

The only time I ever really completely fainted was at a first-aid lecture. There was a drawing of a tourniquet and a chopped off leg involved.

People are usually sympathetic about this at first, and sputter satisfyingly, and agree what a horrible thing that was to be showing to impressionable young girl scouts.

Then they always start pressing me for details about the drawing.

When they find out that, well no, the drawing wasn't really all that graphic, it was just a simple line drawing... they start snickering.

It's hard to stop them from laughing long enough to properly explain about my very vivid imagination.

Anyway, it's probably not a bad idea to familiarize yourself with what the brown recluse spider looks like. The map shows that they are found in Alabama, but I've never seen one.

In general I am not superstitious, although at this point I feel obliged to say "knock on wood".

Kenya

Nobody seems to think that this is as funny as I do.

Well obviously some people like it, because it was one of the top ten picks from the Nicktoons Film Festival, which is where we first saw it.

But nobody I know seems to appreciate it properly. The responses I got (when I sent almost everyone I know the URL) ranged from just "cute" to "uh-huh, ok".

Maybe it tickled my funny bone in just the right way. Because I thought it was hilarious.

Kenya.

After we found it online, we watched a few others from the same animators, and also loved Badgers and Magical Trevor.

Some of the things on the site are a little odd and not what I'd particularly want little kids to see - Mr Stabby for example - but these three are all G-rated.

The films all loop, so they won't stop playing until you leave the page. These three load up pretty quickly, even for slow dial-up connections.

Can't wait til spring!

Virginia Bluebells last spring

The other day I was having lunch with my mother in law in Cullman. (I was lucky enough to marry into a bunch of very nice in-laws.) We tried to go to the All Steak but after finding that every parking spot in the deck was taken, we figured it would probably be too crowded inside. All Steak has some great orange rolls that my mouth had been salivating for since I’d left home, so I really hated to miss them.

We went to the Cracker Barrel instead. Some people sneer at the Cracker Barrel. I guess because it’s a big chain and because it’s so commercial - you have to walk through their crowded gift shop before you can set foot in the restaurant.

In the winter I always feel like the kid Randy from the Christmas Story movie in there, all fluffy coat and “I can’t put my arms down.” I’m afraid that I’ll knock over something glass and expensive.

But they have a wonderful grilled chicken that’s worth running the gift shop gauntlet for, and on Fridays the extra veggie is brown rice, which is also wonderful.

My mother in law ran into several people she knew there. I think that happens a lot in Cullman. (I see it happen a lot in Oneonta too but so far I don't know enough people here for it to happen to me.)

One of my aunts-by-marriage stopped by our table to say hello too. She said what had been on my mind for several weeks already... "I can't wait til spring!"


Long-spurred violet

We are both wildflower nuts. I spent a really inordinate amount of time last spring combing the woods at our new place, looking to see what flowers we had. But I'm sure I missed some. I've got the fever to get out and find new things, and see the old favorites too. But it's still too early.

I heard the little frogs singing this week, and the red-winged blackbirds too, for the first time this year. I’d love to learn which frogs are singing which songs, but first we have to figure out how to actually see any of them. Sometimes I’d swear that they are all invisible frogs.


Invisible frog tadpoles

But last night it got down to about 23 degrees F, so the frogs aren’t singing this morning. (That’s -5 degrees C, for those of you in the regular, non-“I’m never gonna accept the metric system” world.)

So it's still too early. But I can't wait til spring!

Ducks

We wanted ducks because we have ponds. "Ducks would look nice on those ponds," we thought.

We bought three mallards locally and ordered ten Indian Runner ducks.

If you remember the duck from the movie "Babe", that was a Runner duck. Supposedly they stand upright from generations of being herded.

I thought they would look just like the pictures in catalogs, but I guess that is the idealized version. They don't stand like that all the time either - just when they are very alert or when they are running.

They are hilarious when they are young. If Indian Runner ducklings were prescribed for people who are depressed, it would save a lot of money spent on drugs. We shared a lot of laughs over these ducks last spring.


Typical duck posture


Two of the mallards were victims of us not realizing what a coyote problem we had. After a certain age we were letting them sleep wherever they wanted, when we should have been locking them up at night. We learned that the hard way.

The morning of our realization about the coyotes, the remaining mallard was so pitiful. She wandered everywhere looking for her buddies. I felt really bad and really stupid.

She got used to the Runner ducklings after a short time though. They annoyed her, but she wanted some friends.

One of the Runners was DOA, and two disappeared in mysterious incidents. We suspected the dog, especially after we spotted her with duck feathers in her mouth. She was still a puppy and may not have realized what she was doing.

So now we have a group of eight ducks, none of whom want to go anywhere near the ponds. They want to stay in the yard. They like looking at their reflections in the glass shop door. They don't want to have anything to do with us, yet can't bear to be too far away from us. They love their kiddy pool and hate the ponds.


Ducks don't like being much farther apart than this.

But lately we've had glimmers of hope. The ducks have discovered that they like the ditch, and have been spending a lot of time there. Ducks are the messiest creatures on the earth, and being messy in the ditch is infinitely better than being messy on the porch.

We have been trying to coax them over to the ponds by putting corn out in the area. Someone told me that it took their ducks about a year to want to live at their pond, so there is still hope!

Viral marketing

An unqualified endorsement for Tamiflu.

If your husband/wife/significant other/posslq/roommate/kid brings home the flu from work/school, run to the doctor the minute you show the first symptom. Say, "I want my Tamiflu".

Or Relenza - I think it's the same thing, only one's a pill and one's a nasal spray.

If you take it within the first two days of symptoms, it's a wonder drug. They should have named it Flu-B-Gone.

The fine print: it's not cheap, and apparently it makes some people nauseous. (I was fine though.)

This should be an over the counter drug, and employers should hand it out like candy when the first person in an office is out sick with the flu.

The doctor's phone was busy for over 2 hours, and his office was as crowded as I've ever seen it. I think half the people in Birmingham must have the flu now. Half the ones in the Trussville area, anyway.

Fade to red

A dead cedar had started leaning onto the fence so Phil cut part of it off. I thought the color was interesting. The heartwood is purple like this when it is first cut, but fades to a reddish-brown color within a week.




Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) isn't really a cedar, but a juniper instead. At one time, almost all pencils were made out of wood from this tree, but nowdays it's only about 10%.

Hooded Mergansers

Many thanks to Randy Emmitt of RLEPhoto for giving me permission to use his photo of a hooded merganser. His site has lots of great butterfly and dragonfly pictures too.

Mergansers, we got 'em! This is one of my favorite ducks, and luckily for us they love farm ponds.

They are very wary birds, and so far all my photo attempts have ended up in fuzzy frustration because mergansers spook so easily.

I guess I could set up a blind, go out before daybreak, and try to guess which pond they'll land in IF they come that morning, but... nah.

Randy told me that he was able to get this picture at a pond where the ducks were used to people feeding them. I don't think that's normal behavior for mergansers, but every now and then we have also found some supposedly non-feedable bird lining up for handouts with all the other mallards, Canada geese, etc.

When they are feeling insecure or threatened, Mergansers' crests stand up, as on the male at left. The brown-colored female on the right is not as concerned (her crest is fairly flat).

Mergansers dive completely underwater to catch fish. They are only in Alabama in the winter, and breed mostly in the northern US and Canada.

We rarely see them travel alone. Last winter we saw several groups of up to 10 or so, but this year they have come mostly in twos and threes. Sometimes two males and one female, sometimes the other way around.

Wildlife Clues

I recently found this pile of crawdad claws and bits of shell. (Or crawfish or crayfish, depending on where you live.) I suspect that it's the remains of a red-shouldered hawk's dinner. I've seen them catching crawdads before at Lake Purdy, and just the other day I saw one swooping down to go SPLAT into the water at the pond's edge, catching something small in his talons.

I'm not sure if the hawk opens the shell and eats the good parts, or if he swallows it whole and then regurgitates the shell. (If you know please tell me.) I spread these out a little bit for the picture.

Red-tailed hawks eat crawdads too, but I don't think it's as much a part of their diet as it is for the red-shoulders.

By the way, most of the time on TV when you hear the majestic cry of the bald eagle... it's actually a red-tailed hawk. Bald eagles don't sound impressive enough I guess, so sound editors often make the substitution, figuring that most people won't know the difference. Go here to hear what bald eagles really sound like.

More Chickens

A Lakenvelder pullet dines al fresco with a Buff Orpington cockerel.

The Orpingtons are the largest chickens we have, but they are a very docile breed. So maybe that's why they always pick the smallest pullets to be their bestest girls.

The Lakenvelder is not a bantam (which I can't help but think of as a "toy" chicken), she is just a member of a very small breed.

They are also a very aggravating breed. They keep trying to lay their eggs in secret places known only to chickens. I didn't realize it until we found a nest in the woods with about 20 of their eggs in it.

We emptied it, which was probably a mistake since we haven't been able to find their current favorite spot. (When I was searching the woods the other day I realized I was humming that U2 song: "Still haven't found what I'm looking for...")

Anyway, the two chickens in the picture are exactly the same age (8 months).

For the non-chicken-savvy:

Female chicken less than one year old: pullet
Female chicken more than one year old: hen

Male chicken less than one year old: cockerel
Male chicken more than one year old: rooster

The rooster who is going to end up in the stewpot if he doesn't quit attacking me.

Otter in da Water

Before moving to the country, I never realized that there were otters in north Alabama. I was pretty surprised the first time I saw them.

Jasmine thinks that they are trespassers.



So does Hubby.

They have eaten most of the catfish from our ponds, and are currently working on the bass, bream, and grass carp.

I still think they are cute.




Apparently, otters used to be fairly scarce, but are now on the increase. They are more numerous because beavers are also more plentiful.

The reason that beavers are multiplying is that beaver pelts are now worth diddly-squat, so trappers don’t bother with them anymore.

Less beaver pelts taken = more beavers = more dam building = more flooding = more otter habitat = more otters.

Beavers have now reached nuisance levels in many areas, and trappers here are catching them for landowners at $50 a head, with a 5-beaver minimum. I doubt that they ever got that much for pelts.

Red State Diaries recently had a story from the Huntsville Times about a man being successfully sued for $30,000 because he failed to remove beavers from his land before they caused flooding damage to his neighbor’s property.

Important Groundhog Update

Apparently north Alabama has its own weather-predicting groundhog.

On the Birmingham tv news this morning, a woman appeared with “Smith Lake Jake”. He was wearing a colorful little bowler hat. I'm not much for hats on animals but it didn't seem to bother him.

Obviously there was no way that Jake could see his shadow on a rainy day like today.

But the woman insisted that since the hair on Jake’s tail was standing up, we’d have 6 more weeks of winter anyway.

She kept kissing the groundhog on the mouth though, so it’s possible that she wasn’t being too scientific about the whole thing.

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Edited March 7, 2007 to add: This will probably show up in rss feeds as a new post. It isn't. I'm editing to disallow future comments, since I believe that all the recent ones are actually from the same person. My intuition tells me that it's likely someone well acquainted with the groundhog in question, and if this is indeed the case, I'd like to encourage that person to start his or her own blog. Smith Lake Jake could try predicting all sorts of things besides the weather. The stock market, for example. The winner of the next NASCAR race. Who'll be voted out on American Idol. To my knowledge no one has even scratched the surface of non-weather-related groundhog prognostication.

Gray Skies and Work Things

Skies have been gray all week, but this morning instead of cold drizzle we have pouring rain.

In the photo, Hubby and Jasmine check things out after the worst of hurricane Ivan, September 2004.

By the time we returned, the power had come back on, making all my elaborate junk food survival plans unnecessary.




Html has changed a lot since 1997, but my knowledge of it has not. I’m hoping that later in the day I can at least figure out how to add links on this page.

If the title sounds poetic, it’s not because I wrote it. I stole it from one of my favorite Lilac Time songs (from the album Astronauts). Except I think they wrote it as Grey Skies and Work Things since they're British.

Jasmine

Jasmine shows off the scar from her recent operation.

After talking to a bunch of people at the recent north Alabama soapmakers meeting, I realized that about 20% of the attendees owned Great Pyrenees dogs.

At first I thought that was kind of strange, statistically speaking.

Then I realized -

Lots of them have dairy goats.

People with dairy goats tend to make soap - they've got to do something with all that milk, so they make milk soap.

People with goats also tend to have LGDs (Livestock Guardian Dogs).

So while it wasn't particularly statistically significant, it was fun comparing stories about Pyrs... loveable stubborn things that they are.

I haven't had a dog in a long time. Actually not at all, in my adult life. But it's been fun. Aggravating at times, but fun.

(No, we don't have goats... not yet anyway.)