I’d Love To Find The Owner Of This Skin!

A few days ago when I was out at my clothesline I glanced over at the garden and saw a really long snake skin. My first thought was that it once belonged to a rat snake.

I brought the skin in the house and got my book and started counting scales and such. It’s not the easiest thing to do, identify a snake when the owner of the skin isn’t there any more. It would help if I could see colors, however, a bit of pattern is visible, even on the scales. This one is solid with no markings at all. By the way, did you know snakes have scales over their eyes? They need those scales because they don’t have eyelids. This skin was totally intact, ocular scales and all.

Keeled scales have a little ridge on the middle of them. The scales on this critter are smooth and not keeled. He has 17 rows of dorsal scales in the middle of the body, with 15 just in front of the vent. (The vent is a scale that looks different on his underside. It’s where the digestive system ends. And, I have no idea whether this is a boy or a girl snake. I’m just going with the all-inclusive “he”.) He has a divided anal plate, with the scales going from the plate to the end of the tail being divided. If all the scales from the anal plate to the tip of the tail are divided, it’s a non-poisonous snake.

This rascal was 44 1/2 inches long when he left this skin behind in my garden. What a gift for me to find! Oh, my very best guess, according to all my counting of scales and such, and I think I’m right, is that he is a tan racer. We do have them here and they will even crossbreed with the buttermilk racer.  I actually skinned one that crossed. The poor thing was dead in my street, with just a tiny indention on his small noggin. Other than the dent in his head and being dead, the skin was in perfect condition.

I happen to like snakes and I like them to be alive and living in the wild. They certainly serve a good purpose, eating things like rats which carry diseases.

I took a few photos. The skin showed up better in the grass so I laid it out there for a photo.

Then I set it up by my tea cups. It’s still there. I don’t know how long I’ll leave it as part of my decor. Folks just never know what they will see when they walk into my house. Don’t you think it looks nice there? I like the contrast between cultured and wild, myself.

I Like How Survivor Ended!

I think this was one of the most interesting seasons of Survivor ever. The personalities were fun to watch, from Colton who was a lightening rod with his selfish, manipulative and seemingly racist (says he’s not?) comments, to Kat, who was crushed when she was voted out by people she trusted and the way she handled it. Did you see that? She, at the young age of 22, told the folks on the jury that life is too short to stay angry, that we need to forgive and get on with life.

Initially, I thought Colton would be back on a new season as his mean ol’ self. After seeing his mother’s reaction to his behavior at the Reunion, I’m not so sure. If he comes back he may try to tone himself down a little. He had absolutely no consideration for anyone’s feelings but his own. I was torn between being fascinated by such callous behavior and wanting him to be gone, or shut up, because he was hurting people.

I’m glad the women got it together enough to get it down to three women at the end, although I’m not as sure as I was when Tarzan was still there that he would have been able to get enough votes to win if they kept him til the end.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a group of people on Survivor, who for the most part, had affection for each other despite their idiosyncrasies. It’s got to be hard to be in difficult circumstances with people who you don’t know, you are competing against, but yet, you need them and they need you. For them to see past things like Tarzan’s crotchety self, to his good side just rarely seems to happen on this show. It also doesn’t happen often that so many of the contestants realize that it’s a game and they are supposed to play it like poker. Finally, someone used that analogy that this is like a poker game. I’ve been thinking that for years and wondering why they get so mad when they are outplayed? That’s what is supposed to happen.

It was refreshing to see contestants have good things to say to and about each other at the end. I especially like how Tarzan (Greg Smith) and his wife Terri’s relationship was inspiring to Chelsea. She said she didn’t know love like theirs could exist, and I’m sure other folks felt the same way.

I also liked how it came down to the last three women who had an alliance from the beginning. I like that Kim stayed true to Sabrina and Chelsea, even though she felt like she was risking losing the game, and with that the money.

The next game will be in the Philippines. The only thing is, we have to wait until September!

Tarzan Could Win This Thing

I’ve been watching the women on Survivor play a really good game by using their brains. It’s been pretty refreshing and I’ve had my favorites among them. I’d like to see Sabrina, Kim and Chelsea in the final three.

The only time I had another favorite player was when they were ganged up on Troyzan. He was such a fighter that I began to pull for him, but they took him out, so I’m back to my original three favorites.

I think though that these smart women are over looking something. It looks like they are all distrusting each other so much that they have missed this one man who they have left alone. Tarzan is just coasting along, quietly staying in the game while they look at each other and squabble about which woman ought to be voted out next. If they don’t get rid of him pretty quick, you know what’s going to happen. He will be the one man who all the men that they voted out will vote for. The women who are shocked and angry (wow, Kat certainly was rattled last week!) will likely also vote for him.

Details, Ladies. It’s all about the details. Let’s hope they wake up and get that done tonight.

I Wonder What Russell Hantz Thinks?

If you are a Survivor Fan, you know who Russell Hantz is – the fellow who could get two or three people under his control and use them to control the whole tribe. I wonder what he thinks about this upstart named Colton Cumbie? This is truly one of, if not the most, fascinating seasons ever!

I’ve been watching how each tribe talks about and treats the other tribe. There are several things to watch, but this is definitely the most interesting. At first, the men said the women were controlled by their emotions and not thinking logically. They said this because the women were a mess in challenges, and didn’t have any sense of cohesion going for them. It looked like a totally unorganized tribe of women was going to be decimated. That’s not fascinating.

However, there’s this guy, Colton, who is gay and said he didn’t fit with the men, so he kept trying to hang out with the women. (This is the first season that both tribes have been set up within view of each other.) He was telling the women that he didn’t fit with the men and he wanted to hang out with them and there was all this “I love you!” and “I love you, too!” talk. That was my first clue that he was going to be a problem if he turned on someone. Any time someone is so quick to “love you” my alarm bells – the ones that say “Manipulative, Vengeful Person Ahead”  - go off.

Well, the women told Colton he was going to have to go home and work things out with his own tribe, that he wasn’t part of their tribe, and it wasn’t right for him to be over there all the time. So, Colton stayed away from the women.

Then one of the women found a personal immunity idol, but it had a note with it stating that it had to be given to a member of the other tribe before the next tribal council. She gave it to Colton.

In the meantime, at the men’s tribe, there was a group of young fellows who thought of themselves as the ‘muscle guys’. They planned to get rid of what they thought of as the ‘misfits’ on their tribe and go to the end and win the million. There were two problems with this. These guys had more muscles than brains because they didn’t seem to realize they didn’t have good solid numbers to control anything. The second problem was Colton. He had an idol and he let the ‘misfits’ know and got them all around him. At that point he was controlling most of the tribe.

So, after saying the women were controlled by their emotions and thinking they were going to have an easy go of things, the women started winning, the men had to go to tribal council, and guess who was a goner? One of the ‘muscle men’. Guess who controlled that? One of the ‘misfits’. The one named Colton.

This is the part that made me wonder what Russell thinks. Last night, after being beaten three times in a row on challenges, the men won tribal immunity. The women were going to have to go to tribal council again. But then there’s Colton. He controlled who went to tribal council. What? How? Why?

He said he didn’t like – no…that’s not what he said. He said he “hates” this one man, Bill, and wanted him gone and he wanted him gone NOW. Everyone knew Colton had the numbers on his side, so everyone – with Leif thinking he had no chance (because he was caught in a betrayal and Colton chewed him out royally) and might as well vote with everyone else, and Bill thinking that Leif was going to be voted off - all agreed to go to tribal council. The women were shocked to see the men come over and hand them the immunity idol, but their shock was nothing compared to the look on Jeff Probst’s face when he saw a tribe of MEN walking into tribal council.

So, the men, who thought the women were controlled by their emotions, are now all being controlled by a man, who is playing according to his own emotions. He’s a man who said he didn’t fit in, and who also said he gets what he wants, that he is able to make people do what he wants them to do.

In my opinion, Russell Hantz knocked Johnny Fair Play off the throne as the most villanous player. I hope Russell didn’t get hurt when he was knocked off the throne by Colton last night. I’m not that far from Dayton, TX, and I think I heard him scream.

The Little Snakes Are Awake

Things are blooming early this year. I’d say spring has sprung. More than just the flora, the fauna are awake, too.

Last week, I was getting weeds out of the garden and I found a little brown snake. He’s the one we were told was a ‘Ground Rattler’ when we were kids. I think everyone told us that so we wouldn’t pick them up. Like this:

He’s really a Rough Earth Snake and he probably wouldn’t bite if he could. Which he can’t. See how tiny his mouth is? He couldn’t get a human finger to fit between those tiny jaws if he wanted to, and I don’t think he does.

This fellow also can’t bite, but I do think he wanted to. He was so mad at me for picking him up he pee’d on my thumbnail. See?

I guess I wrecked the beginning of his day. He’s a Texas Brown Snake and he was trying to scrunch himself up so I wouldn’t see him when I was sweeping the walkway. Here he is trying to scrunch himself up in my hand. Too late, Dude (or Dude-ess, as the case may be). I see you!

It was easy to get lots of photos of him even after I put him down, because he was still trying to hide. Not the smartest of creatures. Or else, so angry he couldn’t think straight. I’m not sure how snakes think, but he was mad. Kept sticking his tongue out at me. Really, he was smelling something – probably his pee on my thumbnail. I think he’s pretty. See the black mark under his eye? That’s how I know, along with the black marks on his lips, that he is a Texas Brown Snake and not a Marsh Brown Snake.

See the big scale right behind his eye? A Marsh Brown Snake would have a vertical black line on that scale and not a dark spot below the eye. Also, he would have no markings on the scales by his lips. (If you are finding it hard to see these marks, click on the photo and it will enlarge it. Then click the Back Arrow to get back here.) Oh, and I didn’t just have all this scale marking info in my head. It’s in my great Field Guide to Texas Snakes, published by Texas Monthly.

I’m glad to see some snakes this year. Last year’s drought was rough on everything that doesn’t have a faucet in their house with a ready supply of water. We all need to watch for the Big Bad Boy Snakes. I’m sure they’re out, too, now. Oh! I hope there are some Louisiana Milk Snakes around. I used to have several of them before I moved a brick pile. They are so pretty.

Well, y’all be careful, and enjoy nature.

Autumn?

We are down to the last few hours of Thanksgiving, and I feel like I missed Fall. I usually feel this way at the end of November, but more so this year. I love the fronts with dry cool air, and Fall colors and decorations – the cornucopia, fall squashes, pumpkins, watching the leaves change color. Well, there’s something good. The woods that I see out my studio windows have really been pretty.

The reason it goes by so fast here I think, is because I’m on the Gulf Coast. I grew up with school textbooks and scenic calendars with definite seasons in all the photos, and I think that affected my expectations. We don’t have such definite seasons here. And, when September is as hot as ours was this year, and then we go into October and November with our temps running 10 degrees above normal…geez. This week the weather is finally doing what it normally does and we’re getting two cold fronts in one week. We are loving it!

Besides our weather patterns not fitting in with school textbooks and most scenic calendars sold in the US, Autumn actually lasts until the third week in December, but we start putting up Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving. That certainly helps to shorten the season! I was surprised to learn that people used to wait until Christmas Eve to put their trees up. Now we put trees up before the Thanksgiving turkey is all gone. And not only Christmas trees, but we can decorate every single room in the house with Christmas stuff; there’s no end of pillows and linens and garlands galore. We seem to have made Christmas into its own short season.

As with Fall decorations, I want to have time to enjoy the Christmas decorations, too. By January 1st though, I want to do winter colors. I have an icy blue tablecloth that I like to put out during winter with a lace tablecloth over it. It reminds me of ice and snow, even if I look outside and see a random butterfly in January.

I think what I really want in my heart of hearts is to live more in sync with seasonal changes than what I seem to be able to pull off. Farmers used to do that, ya’ know. They had to pay attention to weather and animal behavior and all kinds of signs in the skies. These things took the place of the meteorologist. They also had their seasonal chores. The other day, I saw a suggestion for farmers to use the winter as a good time to catch up on their reading. It was in a replica of a 1910 Almanac. Their tools had all been cleaned up and oiled during Fall. Fence mending and home repairs were done before the snow started. Of course, this was New England. I’d rather live here than there, so I guess I’ll just get in sync as best I can where I am. One thing that would help would be if I would get off this computer. Our brains weren’t designed to have this much light to process at this late hour. I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving.

October Sunrise

I saw the beginning of sunrise while ago. So pretty – tall pine trees silhouetted by a soft wash of color – peach, light pink, light blue, then darker above. It was one of those images that I want to burn into my brain for recall when I need something nice to think about.

Hiking the Kirby Trail

My husband and I took a walk on the Kirby Trail today. It isn’t too far from home and it isn’t too long, especially if you walk the inner loop (less than 2 miles). It was a little warm, but not too hot, and that is what I’ve been waiting for. Here’s a short report on what we saw.

Right off we noticed a lot of undergrowth has really thickened up. This trail has a variety of trees including pine, cypress, oak, water tupelo, magnolia, beech and many more. Hurricane Rita took out a lot of tall trees back in 2005, so the under-story plants are getting more light and growing quite well. I was happy to see many smaller trees that will one day be tall trees. Nice recovery.

It’s muscadine time! My grandpa used to make wine from those grapes. If I had my tomatoes canned (the ones waiting in the freezer) I might see if there are any muscadines at the farmer’s market next weekend. Jelly would be nice. Maybe I can get those tomatoes done this week…

Now for critters. We saw a Blue-tailed Skink. Well, that’s what we’ve always called them. They have stripes and a blue tail. I think they are really pretty. When I looked for a photo, I found this article, which is where I learned that when I see one with a blue tail, it’s a young ‘un. And technically they are called Five-lined Skink.

Also, saw a brown frog, or toad, that was about the color of the dirt. My husband wanted to know how on earth I could see him? He moved when he was in front of me, or I probably wouldn’t have. There were birds and evidence of squirrels (pine cone bits all over the place).  And armadillos have been tearing up the ground in search of groceries.

Because of the drought, the sloughs were dry. You can tell they have been dry for a while, too, because vegetation that wouldn’t normally be there is beginning to grow among the cypress knees. Village Creek is way down. If someone were to try to canoe  through the part of it we saw, they would have to carry the canoe quite a bit because of low water and logs.

Because of the scarcity of water there was a scarcity of mosquitoes. I only had one buzzing around me. It was probably the only mosquito in the whole Big Thicket. I say that because I’m mosquito bait. My husband said if there was one mosquito and me, I’d be found.

The pine beetles have been busy and there is a lot of damage from them. They cause the bark to separate from the tree then it falls off and the tree dies. Everything has to eat though. We’ve seen this before and it will be OK.

Overall, we really enjoyed our walk. There is just one thing that drops my jaw. I picked up two Marlboro cigarette butts on this beautiful trail. We passed by the burned out remains of a forest on our way to the Thicket, plus part of the Turkey Creek Trail, which connects to this one just opened back up two days ago. It had been closed because of fire damage this past spring. It’s not like forest fires, burn bans and drought haven’t been in the news lately around here. What knuckle-head – or two – would risk burning down the forest by smoking while walking in it?

Facebook Takes the Cake

What a surprise when I logged into Facebook and my Home Page didn’t look like it normally does! What got into my machine? Who got a hold of my account? Facebook did. While I was sleeping Thursday night they were rolling out changes. They say it’s “a test”. I’ve registered my opinion and others have, too, and hopefully, they will change it back.

Here is what happened: The thing that is only annoying is the Ticker on the right side of the page. Every single thing that any of my friends, or pages that I’ve Liked, posts on any wall that is open to view by the Public or Friends of Friends, is popping up in a scrolling box. It reminds me of the flashy junk on poorly designed websites. I can ignore it if I concentrate really hard. The worst is that the Recent Posts choice is gone. My lists are gone. I can no longer scroll down the News Feed and see only the posts that I have time for; I have to see everything or nothing. And it’s divided into things like “Recent Posts” and “Top Stories” and “Last (However Many) Hours”. I have no idea how they determine what is “Top.” Normally, if I only had time to check family, I’d do that and come back later and catch up on everyone else. I would also only see my pages when I had time to read whole news articles. Not anymore. And until they put it back, if indeed they do put it back like it was, I am not even signing in for days at a time. I’m going from one who used Facebook up to the line that one doesn’t want to cross (addiction) to one who won’t even sign in. All in one day. And in the meantime, Google + (what we like to call Google Circles) is looking pretty good. In fact, I think I’ll start sending out a few invitations today.

When I went to Facebook’s Help Section I found out this started at least two weeks ago and no one seems to like it. Why on earth would a company do something that takes control away from the user and causes so much consternation? I have a theory. It’s only a theory and I don’t have a degree in business, but I’ve learned a bit about how things work.

One of my solutions to this (among other possibilities, including closing my account) is to UN-Like most of the pages I’ve Liked and whittle down my friends list (don’t want to do that!) drastically. I figured if that I, and LOTS of other folks would do these two things, then Facebook would not be getting as much revenue from ads. You know the ads on the right-hand side of your screen? They are geared to page content. The fewer items of wide variety in the News Feed, the fewer ads of any variety in the right side bar. Thinking about that is what led me to the theory of why they did this.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason Facebook wants all the pages we ever liked and all the posts we don’t have time to check to be in the News Feed, is because it will increase their ad revenue. Even the Ticker would entice us to click on more pages, if we didn’t try to ignore it. More posts = more ads.

Hm. Seems like I remember a (can’t say “another social networking site” because this is only my theory) social networking site that wanted to have more ads displayed. They made the site harder to navigate so users had to click on more pages which gave way to more ads being displayed. They let profit be their driving force for their business, rather than customer service. What was their name? Oh, yeah. MySpace.

ADDENDUM: (September 18) Facebook has brought in a way to use lists again. You can also subscribe to each friend individually to adjust settings for how much of what you want to see of their posts. If you choose not to go through your entire list to make the choices, Facebook will choose for you. There is a default already on some things. They have come up with “Smart Lists” of their own which you can use, or not. Also, an algorithm to determine whose posts you will see and how often, if you don’t make the choice yourself. They think this is easier to manage and less cumbersome than the way it was. Whatever. If you are on Facebook and you are frustrated you might want to check this out.

I LOVE Outer-Band Weather!

Yesterday afternoon we started getting some of the clouds and rain, along with a bit of a breeze, from what has become Tropical Storm Lee. This morning when I went to the clothesline to hang out laundry I saw the most beautiful blue sky, with little wisps of clouds moving quickly from east to west. When the wind blew I could hear the drought-parched leaves rustling on the big oak tree in my neighbor’s yard.

It’s middle of the afternoon now, and since this morning, it has been mostly sunny with thicker clouds at times.  It’s the “at times” that I like about this. If you look at a satellite view of a tropical storm or hurricane, you will see how the clouds swirl around the edges. It’s pretty on the satellite view and unique in experience, because there will be rain and thunder and lightning and wind but none of it is constant. It gets mixed in with sunshine. And how much of all that one gets depends on how close you are to the storm and which side of it you are on. We are on the west side of Lee, so it’s not nearly as rainy as we would like. (Poor Louisiana is going to be drenched!)

This is how folks used to know there was a hurricane or tropical storm nearby. They didn’t have a meteorologist, so they had to pay close attention to things like wind direction and intermittent clouds and rain. Several years ago, we had a bit of that from Hurricane Katrina. A few days later, I spoke with someone who hadn’t even noticed what our weather was doing. I find that stunning.

Sometimes I almost wish I could live outside, or at least without air conditioning. My eyes can see through the windows, but I can’t feel breezes or smell rain. I may just have to go sit on the porch a while.