Lost Snake

Looked up from the computer the other day to see a squirrel hopping around on the driveway... over a snake.  Made me think the squirrel had a death wish.  At first and from far away glance, I thought it was a rattler.  We've seen them here before.

  I went to grab the camera as Edward headed out.  That's me, camera first, safety second.  Or at least that was the case with the alligator.  As I got there Edward said it's not a ratter.  Yeah, I said, looks like a python.

  A Ball Python, to be exact.  The poor thing was looking for a spot of warm sun on the cold driveway.  It was a chilly day, high maybe 60F.  Cold weather for a snake. I'm not exactly sure what the squirrel thought it would accomplish, but it moved off after we got out there.

  Now what?

  We wanted to catch the snake.  It's a non-native species, and non-native species are wreaking havoc in the Everglades.  This guy also looked like someone’s pet.  I got my garden gloves and we got a box.  By the time I got back out there the snake was off the driveway and at the base of the oak tree.  I distracted it with one hand and picked it up with the other.  Not much fight in the guy, he was in a torpor from the weather.

  Again, now what?

  I walked next door to ask if they had a snake.  Yes.  Did it get loose?  No.  Would you like another one?  No... well.  At that point the oldest daughter said, "I want to see it..."

  So they came over and took a look.  He was a beautiful snake.  Shades of light and dark brown with a light colored belly, maybe 18 inches long.  Full grown for a Ball Python.  My neighbor noticed some of his side scales were roughed up.  Maybe the squirrel had scored a hit, counted coup.  We'll keep him, she said.  We have a spare cage.

  So they took the snake in and will give him a home.  Maybe put up a sign: "Lost snake."  I got to hold him one more time, this time without the gloves.  He cured up into, well, a ball in my hand.  Thus, the name.  I love snakes.  Their skin feels so cool, literally and figuratively.

  There's always a good feeling when you can save a creature, and it's even better when you know that the creature was most assuredly lost.  Hope he does OK in his new home.  It's certainly a better life then on some cold concrete on a chilly Florida afternoon.

Cowboys, Indians and Rubber Bands...

Sometimes the best games are the ones you didn't intend to play.  Ones with house rules; made up as you go along.

That was the case the other day when we got out the toy soldiers I got Edward for Christmas last year.  He had a set of game rules called War Pigs.  It's a simple table top game that uses toy soldiers as pieces.  The rules, as far as I read through them, looked pretty simple.  But we never quite got that far.

Edward started telling me about the games he'd set up on the floor in his room growing up, ones where he made up the rules as he went along.  There were two sides, with the furniture in the room acting as terrain.  The weapon of choice: a rubber band.  The winner was the last man standing.

Next thing we knew, we're off creating our own game.  

We each set up on one side of the table.  The trick was to knock over the other's soldiers with the rubber band, which was fired from a from an oversized tongue depressor with a notch cut in one end.  You couldn't fire from in front the chair, you had to be outside the edge of the table, winging the soldier didn't count he had to fall over, you could fire high or low, which ever worked.  We used candles, coasters and a rock for obstacles.  No figure could be completely hidden from your opponent.  

The first game we placed our guys on the table and merrily fired away.  The next two games we started further back and after 5 shots, you could move any piece the length of your firing stick.  The more figures left on the table, the easier it was to hit one, or two, with a single shot if you got lucky.  Half the time you hit the figure behind the one you were aiming at.  Sometimes you hit your own.  It all counted, if they were knocked over they were out of the game.  

We played for about 90 minutes.  We knelt, stooped, crouched and sat to get our shots.  Rubber bands ricocheted off the table, the candles and ourselves.  Nyala tried to help, but Mara wasn't all that interested.  

In the end we had a great time.  We packed up the toy soldiers and stuck the firing sticks in the bag, along with the rubber bands.  Next time we might play a variant of capture the flag, or seize the hilltop with soldiers flying everywhere. Who knows, maybe Custer will try his last stand again, only this time with slightly unconventional weapons.

Bright Side

Shiprock, NM

Normally when your flight gets delayed by five hours there isn't much you can do about it.  Our flight was delayed by a mechanical problem.  That meant we would miss our connection and would to end up spending the night either in San Jose, where our flight originated from, or Dallas / Fort Worth.  We were on business travel and while the thought of staying and exploring the mountains for an extra day was appealing, getting home 15 hours behind schedule was better then 22 hours behind schedule.  We opted to jump halfway and spend the night in Dallas, since it was halfway home.    

Life is an adventure, right?   Try to look on the bright side?  Sure why not.  You have to try.

The airline flew in another plane, so we were not taking the plane with the mechanical problem.  Worry number one taken care of.  Second, we scored exit row seats on both new flights.  Leg room is always a good thing on a full flight, which on the second leg was sure to be the case.  Third, only 35 of the original 135 passengers stuck with the flight to Dallas.  We averaged less than one person per row on the flight.

Flying from San Jose to Dallas / Fort Worth means we flew over some of the best geology the country has to offer, the southern part of the Rocky Mountains, including Four Corners.  Flying over the Rockys on a delayed flight meant that the setting sun highlighted the topography in a spectacular fashion. And I had a window seat.

Most of you know I'm a geologist.  Rocks are my "thing".  The few times I've flown west I've sat with my face plastered to the window watching the landscape pass by. This flight was no different.  Only this time, there were a lot of windows with no one sitting next to them.  

I felt like a kid in a candy shop.  For about 30 minutes I bounced from one side of the plane to the other, empty row to empty row, a few rows forward, a few back.  First snow capped peaks on the right side.  Incised rivers valleys on the left.  Half Dome in Yosemite.  Ooo!  Is that El Capitan?  The Grand Canyon in the distance?  The pilot kindly called out Shiprock, with a wonderfully long shadow and a tripod of resistant minette "legs" radiating out from the central volcanic pipe. A site to die for... if you are a geologist at 32,000 feet.

After a while the sun had set at ground level.  The ground lay in a muted shadow, with the details having faded from sight, while we watched a fiery sun slip below the horizon with too much haze, even at that height, for a green flash.  

The sky to the west slipped from orange to red to indigo, colors you only see in the clear sky from a plane, before fading to black.  In the distance, off to the east, there were thunderheads putting on a light show that my little Canon camera just didn't have the power to capture.  Above us, Sagittarius sparkled brightly in a clearly visible Milky Way.   

So I sat, sipping a Chardonnay, because the airline wasn't charging for snacks or drinks on the flight, and enjoyed the view.  As we drew closer to Dallas, the lights of Austin shone in the distance to one side, while more thunderstorms flashed off the other.  It hadn't been a bad flight, even for being delayed for five hours.  What else could I do but sit with my face plastered against the window, look for, and find, the bright side in the dark sky beyond.

Inside the Screen

Edward and I were just finishing up a board game this afternoon when I looked out the sliding glass door onto the porch.  Earlier in the game, I had looked out to see one of our squirrels climbing along the outside of the screen.  They do that every once and a while.  We usually chase them off with a spray bottle and they run to the nearest tree, then turn around and scold us.  

  The squirrel was still out there on the screen, but something was different.  "There a squirrel on the screen again", I started to say, then it dawned on me.  "He's on the inside!"  Edward turned and looked.  "Yeah, he is."  Luckily for the squirrel, the girls were inside enjoying a sleepy afternoon.  Edward and I went out and I propped the porch door open with a mat.  Then we proceeded to herd the squirrel toward the open door.  

  Needless to say, that was not a happy squirrel.  He had already knocked into some of the glass I have out there.  He scrambled along the top of the screen scolding as if we were a cat he needed to warn his friends about.  I chased him down the screen and toward the open door.  Great.  Until he decided that being as far away from the floor was the best thing and started to cross the screen over the door and move towards the house.  Edward moved to cut him off and then with one last squeal, scrambled down the door frame, jumped to the floor and dashed out the door.  He didn't look back until he was safely up the nearest pine tree.  

  A few years back we had noticed a large hole in one panel of our porch screen.  The screening is old and brittle we figure the lawn service had put a stick through it.   It measured about 3 x 4 inches.  We had patched the hole as best we could, we thought, mostly to keep lizards and mosquitoes out, and to keep overly curious cats in.  That patch had worked fine until today.

  After the squirrel was out, we looked at the patch.  It had been pushed in, and the hole torn even larger.  So this time I got out an upholstery needle, some black carpet thread and sat dow to repair the screen as best I could.  It took 20-30 minutes to cross stitch the hole and secondary tear closed then glue more screening over the seams to complete the patch, the whole time serenaded by the squirrel, who still felt it necessary to warn others of our presence.

  So once again I think we're covered for lizards, bugs and curious cats.  My only concern is that squirrel. They're smart little buggers. If he decides he wants onto the porch again, he might re-test the patch. That would not be a good thing.  Because if he gets in while the cats are out, that screen will not support one of them climbing up it after a squirrel, nor do I want to try to separate said squirrel from an excited cat if one of them were lucky enough to catch him, never mind the general destruction out there during the chase.    

$20 Dollars

  Edward and I had just a long discussion about whether or not to put any more minutes on the TracFone that we had gotten his father in May and then took when he passed away at the end of that month.  Edward doesn't use it, ever.  OK, except at DragonCon for texting me and our other friends. We decided to go ahead and put another $20 worth of minutes on it, and decide again in Jan (when the new set of minutes would/will) expire.

  We went out to Sweetbay and picked up a few other things we can only get there, plus the minutes, and headed home.  As I was pulling away from the stop sign on 119th, some movement caught my eye to the right and I saw the elderly woman who lives in the house next to the stop sign fall.  I stopped short.  Edward is like, what?  "She just fell" and I pointed.  I rolled down the window and Edward called out, are you OK. 

 "I don't think I can get up".  

  I put the car in reverse, backed up, then pull into her driveway.  We both got out and as we walked up. I asked if she was hurt?  "I don't think so, I don't know until I get up."  So we helped her up, and yes, she was OK.

  Her name is Ruth, and she's lived there for 40 yrs.  We used to see her husband, and remembered that he used an electric chair.  We hadn't seen him in 10 years, as that was when he passed away.   We do see her son, and I'd thought he lived there now.  I guess he just visits.

  Since her front door faced west, she would have been sitting there for a long time, or at least until the gentleman across the street noticed her.  She said he keeps an eye out for her, but today he was probably watching football.  Thing is, it's September, in Florida.  Did I say her porch faced west?  She could have been out there a while and it was pretty hot on that porch, even for just the few minutes we were standing there.  

  "God must be watching out for me" she said, "thank you."  I guess so.  I'm really glad I saw her fall and we were able to help.  Even more so she was OK.  

  I'm also glad we decided to get the phone minutes, because that was the driver for us going out to Sweetbay in the first place.  And that is going to turn out to be the best and most worthwhile $20 we've spent in a long time.

  Nothing beats being in the right place at right time.

End of the Ficus, Part III

  Looking back through all the pictures of the house that I've taken, I realized that I never got a picture of the ficus in all its full sized glory, except as a bare-branched shadow of its former self after the first freeze.  I have pictures of the back yard, where you can see the ficus, but none do it justice.  It just soared over the yard.  The canopy was so thick, we had trouble growing grass beneath it.  We even selected plants that required shade to plant against the porch because they received no direct sun.  

  Teresa started the second day about the same time as the first.  Unlike the first day, the second day was clear and sunny.  And while there was the barest of hints that summer was thinking about ending, it was going to be brutally hot before they were finished.  The majority of the shade in the back yard used come from the ficus, and that was still lying on the ground waiting to be hauled away.  

 This time she brought help, muscle in the form of a 24-year old kid named Sean.  He was bright, intelligent and really hard working.  He went right to work without being told what to do, while Teresa went back to work trying to figure out how to bring down the last two limbs.  The problem was they were too weak to bear any weight.  She couldn't safely put up her ladder to cut the limb in half and bring it down in pieces.   So they decided to pull them down.

  Ficus wood, when dry, is not very heavy, or very strong.   They looped a line over the limb and picked a direction. The lightest of tugs on the line made the brach wobble and dance. Then they pulled, hard.  I think that was when my heart stopped.  Edward caught his breath. There was nothing to do but watch.

  The limb snapped and started toward the house... and missed by no more then six inches!  It clipped the bougainvillea under the back window, scraping the bark, but doing no real damage to the bush.  That's how I know it was that close.  I think the house gods were looking out for us, both Sunday and Wednesday.  I'm thankful.  Once again, the house escaped damage.  The limb that posed the most danger to the house was down.  

  One more to go.  This limb leaned over the chainlink fence.  They had to do the same thing, pull it down, but at least it was being pulled away from the house, this time.  They looped the rope over the last limb, tightened it up and pulled from the park side of the fence.  It snapped, sooner then expected.  And while I only saw it from the corner of my eye, there was an "oh, s**t" moment as Sean turned an ran from the oncoming branch.  It bounced off the fence and shattered into five or more pieces. 

  And that was it.  The threat to the house was over.  The last of the tall limbs were down.  The rest was clean up.

  Teresa took the stump down in pieces.  The first cut revealed the true nature of the ficus.  That it was, in fact, many trees all grown together.  When I planted it, it had been a house plant with many tiny saplings all in one pot.  Over the years they had grown into one massive trunk.  The freezes, it turned out, had killed 90% of those trunks, leaving only a thin sheath of live wood that wrapped just under half way around the base.  When it fell, that living wood flexed but didn't break.  In the wild, Edward and I figure it would have re-rooted, and started over, growing from where it had come to rest.   Before Teresa started cutting it up, the leaves had not even started to wilt.  It was still alive at that point, and that makes me sad.

    It took another hour to load the wood from the ficus onto the trailer they'd brought.  I saved a few logs, some long dead and dry, one from the living wood.  I'll give them time to fully cure.  Maybe one day I'll make something out of them, like the box I made from from Sandy's log.  I'd like to do that.  It will be something to remind me of that once glorious tree.  

    On that low, lonely stump in the back yard, the sap is still running from the live wood.  We're not going to get the stump ground, not yet anyway.  There is a small chance it will put out a shoot, and some part of it will survive.  A small chance that we'll get some part of our ficus back.  Maybe this time, we'll manage it better, and not let it get so big.

  End of the Ficus, Part I

End of the Ficus, Part II

  End of the Ficus, Part III