Cloudspotting

It's Sunday. That means I'm supposed to have a post up, and I don't, as yet. So I need to write something.  I've been viewing my blogstats with interest lately, trying to figure out who reads this blog, and what brings people to it.  

Read it and laugh, weep, or snort. People are out there Googling "bad owl" and Lord knows what. And that brings them to my blog. Not, I hope, to stay, or comment. I remind myself that many people use the Google for things other than determining the incubation period of a tinamou or the average weight of a rock hyrax.

I remind myself that it's a weird world out there. And then return to my clean little enclave in the Appalachian foothills, because who needs to be reminded what a weird world cyberspace can be, full of creepy people? I much prefer the real world, the one peopled with ones I love and trust.

The thing I'm trying to do, as spring comes on, is to get out in the sunrise. It's easier to do when sunrise is around 7:30, instead of 5! I can put a few thousands steps on the ol' Fitbit that way, too. So when I go for my run in the afternoon, I've got a leg up.

What a Fitbit Charge looks like after 13 months strapped to my wrist. They're gonna need a bigger boat. Fitbit, let me know when you figure out the "durability" thing. Might want to ask what African researchers use on radiocollars for honey badgers.

Chet is not entirely behind this new dawnseeking regime.  He huddles deep under fleece and down and ignores all the usual signals and sounds such as my putting on socks and lacing on hiking boots, the sounds that used to revv his little engine, and waits to be told to get up. I have to uncover him, kiss him on his jellybean nose, and tell him to come with me.

 He is becoming a creature of comforts. I understand, but do not approve, and I don't care how old 11 is in human years. 

In sloth is the path to decay. Get up, little black pup.

We get out before it's really light. You can see by the set of his ears he's wishing he were still under the covers. 

 
He keeps casting glances back down the driveway, and then lays his ears back and starts for home.
I call him back. None of that nonsense, Chet. Besides. There's no one else up to let you back in. You'd stand there and shiver by the back door and no one would be the wiser. Hyah, Bake! Come on.

I look at the tracks of our fun--the sled tracks Liam and I made when the big snow hit last week. Far to the left of this shot, you can see a single thin track Liam made when, on an impulse, he took the sled down the steepest part of The Bowl yesterday. The snow was melted and slick as snot. He said he was hurtling down, going too fast to bail, and saw a bunch of bushes racing toward him. 

He thought, "Oh, that's good, the shrubbery will break my fall."

That's when Liam found out that every hayfield around here is bordered on all sides by multiflora and black raspberry. No exceptions. He was impaled in a million tiny places, but all right. That's why there's only one track off to the left. 

I gaze upon The Three Graces, Second String. Three tulip trees who've grown up together, and were, for whatever reason, spared the saw. I don't know why farmers sometimes leave these sentinels standing. I'm just glad some of them do. 

The glory of the morning spread over the eastern sky. 

 Bill came out and lent Chet his fleece. It was a warm morning, but the small black dog was shivering dramatically as he longed for a warm bed and a cave of covers. The shivering stopped. Besides. It was 55 degrees!

I don't forget for a moment how lucky I am to be able to walk out my front door and stand under a silent sky to witness these things: enormous clouds that move over in utter silence. I stand beneath the moving sky and wonder how that can be. And remember that water vapor, no matter how spectacularly lit or monumental, makes no noise. Clouds are just water vapor. So how can I love them so? It's all in the way they're lit. It's all about the light, friends. 

Painting and photography is all about light. Not a lot more.

One could do worse than become a collector of sunrises. They're harder to get than sunsets; less likely to be colorful, at least in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

Sunsets are easier, but no less magnificent for it.

I post in the Cloud Appreciation Society's Facebook group. I try to use my cloud collector's jargon correctly. All I could come up with for these was "mammatusy fringes." 

This is what was going on just to the west (right) of the above shot.

Riches! Tune into the sky show and you will never be bored. 

There's almost always something good on.

Blogging: Year Ten

I was minding my own bidness this morning, answering a few emails, when my friend Wheatley emailed to congratulate me on my tenth blogaversary.  Well, that was a pure surprise to me because I wasn't even close to remembering that. The only other person I know who's been blogging consistently for ten years is Floridacracker. He's got me beat in posts and longevity, but not by a lot. Every once in awhile he has to marry off a daughter and gets a little distracted, but he keeps popping up like a rubber duckie, giving us a glimpse of the real Florida. When he does, it doesn't feel so lonely out here. And there's Murr, turning out the good stuff from Portland, perfectly twirled, jimmies on top, like some kind of brilliant delicious ice cream machine.

I don't mean to omit anyone. Have to tip my hat to Birdchick, who got me into this in the first place, asking me to guest-blog in December 2005. To which I replied, "What's a blog?"  There are a lot of good bloggers out there, some great ones, too, but most of them seem to have moved on to other media, other stuff, to life itself, not describing life. I'm all for that, in theory. I just can't seem to do it. I would have been a great shepherd, or lighthouse keeper. Put me in a pretty place, give me something to do (clean the salt spray off the lens, birth a lamb or trim a hoof) and man, I'll hang in there for you. A decade. Huh. Well, you have to stay somewhere, and here's mighty fine.

In December, 2005, Phoebe was 9. Liam was 6. They were little kids. Chet was 1, a wasp-waisted pup. I was 47. I didn't own a cell phone or a telephoto lens. I shot everything with a tiny Olympus point-and-shoot that went KCHZIRRRRRR! when you turned it on and KaCLOP when you took a photo. Good grief. I'd love to be 47 now, and know what I know now. You can keep the Olympus.

 But we aren't given to know anything, really; we can't know that ten years later we'll still be faithfully keeping this thing, this weB LOG, having learned all the ins and outs of what to say and what not to say; when to rant (never); when to reveal our deepest, most vulnerable side (never); what to write about. Only the good stuff, thanks; there's enough sadness and bad news out there to paint the globe matte black ten times over.

And keeping it to the good stuff  turns out to be easy for me. Every day, I see and photograph things that I'm still, ten years later, dying to share with you. Holes in the landscape, sky eyes, mirrors on infinity.

What does dawn look like from inside the cornfield? Well, let's climb that hill and see. Who'd ever know that just behind this incredible scene, one of my favorites from this year, a highway project has eaten an entire woodland, all the trillium and Jacob's ladder, the box turtles and foxes and turkeys, gone. 

In this picture, there's only the good.

Blogging fills a hole in me somehow. I'm a compulsive sharer. I'm reminded of that on the now rare and much-treasured times when I can climb the tower with Bill or ride, hike, or run around with my kids. And it's all, "Look at the light!" or "OMG the Three Graces today!" or "Wait 'til you see this sassafras in winter!" "Turkeys!" "Redtail!" "Come down to the greenhouse, there's a flower you MUST see!"

Today, Creole Lady threw out one last blossom for Phoebe to see before going to sleep for a few weeks. 

She's tired, having bloomed hard for a month now, and the fickle solstice sun has failed her. 

This blossom, right at the top of the plant, hung head down, and I found sweet nectar spilling out, and no bee or hummingbird to take it. 

Well, I'll share it here. That way, it won't go completely to waste. We have witnessed it.

I'm grateful for you, the readers, who've stuck with me and want to catch the nectar, see all that great, sweet stuff that would otherwise (horrors!) go unshared. The southeast corner of Ohio, I'd wager, is not a place many would yearn to visit, yet you and I know that its treasure is everywhere, just for the noticing. I love this place with a passion that surprises even me. 

I wonder, if life had dropped me in a city, I would be able to love it like this. I kind of doubt it. I worry sometimes that I'm turning into a recluse, because my favorite times seem to happen when I'm alone, and then I go out for a run and some (more) solitude and wind up yakking for 45 minutes with some person or other I've gotten to know on my dirt-road routes, and breathe a sigh of relief. Nope.  Reclusive, maybe, but not a recluse. Whew. And they seem happy to see me. So, apparently, not a weirdo, either. Always good to check now and then.

You help with all that. You're out there reading, and you're out on the dirt roads with me, too, appreciating these landscapes, these trees, these skies, the animals I've come to love.

Beauty.

Hannah.

Nostrils. My girls.

Buddy. Ohh, Buddy. So much there I can hardly get my arms around it.

The Animal I Love Most. Who is just a little older than this blog. Amazing. All of it, amazing.

Having found a porkchop bone somewhere, and going to find a place to bury it. Got a stick in the bargain.

After the bone burial. December 23, 2015. And of course, I had to wash his face and rinse his eyes out. Twice today. He was in a thing-burying mood. Bill calls him Frost Warning, for his white eyebrows. And just this week, I think, Chet's eyelashes went white. His winky has always been white, glory be! And we love him more than you could imagine, with all his quirks and oddities and that wonderful energy and silliness, still shining so brightly.

Though I almost never read back through it, I'm thankful to have this record of a life lived in the hills and hollers. I sense that, should it survive and remain accessible (always a question with online information), my kids will go back to it to remember how things were and how they looked, what we were doing. Maybe they'll show it to their kids. It's a book, a real-time history such as no scrapbook could ever match. I catch Liam mining the archives all the time, looking up his birthday posts. For that, I'm thankful. It gives me a catch in my throat to see him looking up his own history. And I've used it when I'm at a loss for a subject for those ever-approaching column deadlines, and I know that there are books and books written here that I'll never have time to assemble.

Creature of the moment. It's tremendously difficult for me to write about anything but what's happening now, what I'm feeling and thinking now. For that, blogging is the perfect outlet. I know that some get impatient with me for not spinning travelogues of my insanely cool trips to Central America and South Africa, but the truth is I can't do it while I'm traveling, and when I get back with ten kazillion great photos, all the things that are happening in my little Ohio home, right now, always seduce me into that long embrace with the land right under my feet, now, with the clouds floating over my head, now, with the deer walking lightly into the clearing, now. I think I know him...and I look back in my blogposts, and yes, yes, that's him! Ellen's child! And what cotinga or monkey or eland could be more wonderful than that?

I did 64 blogposts upon returning from the trip of a lifetime to Guyana, and I still wonder how the hell I pulled that off. I want so badly to do it for South Africa. Please know I'm trying to get to it. It's all too wonderful, too big, and oh look at that cloudscape! Hanging out clothes at Christmas time. It's all too beautiful.

I'm grateful to still be here, and endlessly grateful that everything on me still works well and (usually) doesn't hurt. That I can still cover 7 miles in a morning, and Chet, 11 years strong, is still out in front of me, his finely turned legs ticking along like oiled clockwork. I never tire of watching him trot. I know it won't always be so, and it makes me hang on all the more fiercely to him, to the land, the people and the creatures that I love.

I got lost, as I often do during the holidays, when the mercantile world rings and clashes, shrills and jangles and tells us over and over and over that everything's MERRY and BRIGHT, that we'd better not pout, we'd better not fight, and asks us over and over and over if we're ready? Are we ready? Is everything bought and wrapped, cooked and prepared? Hark how the bells All seem to say Throw cares away! Ding-dong Ding-dong that is their song! Gaily they ring while people sing Songs of good cheer Christmas is HERE!! 

Again. Louder. Again. Even louder. And again.

Enough. Too much.

 And a friend said, "Why don't you just go find a warm place and sit, and see what the Universe brings you?"

photo by Shila Wilson

I replied, "Sitting has never worked for me. I have to put some distance between me and what's bugging me. Otherwise, my mind looks for obstacles, flattens itself against them."

But I knew he was right; that getting out was the answer. It's my go-to. And I had my wonderful kids both home to turn to, and I told them to suit up for a December day in the mid-60's. We were going to go put a few miles on our chassis, find a good piece of sky.

And I did find a warm place, and I sat down to see what the Universe might bring. And the sun popped out and the cloudy sky cleared.  I heard a whooshing noise, and two beautiful healthy smart funny big lanky UFO's hurtled down from the stratosphere and landed, right in front of me. FLOOP! Blessings.  And I was ready.

I got the shot.

                           Here's to ten years of good times. I promise to keep them coming.

December 24, 2015                                                                             Post # 2047

About That Baby Bobcat

I think in another epoch, I'd have been sitting around a fire, telling stories. I'd keep all those cavepeople coming back night after night for a nice installment of How I Outsmarted the Cave Bear and Lived to Tell the Tale. I'd earn my piece of roast beast, giving them something to think about, a nice bedtime story.

It's taken me awhile to get to a place from which I can write this post. I have had a lot to process and come to terms with. But I'm finally there. The thing about blogging is, if you start telling a good story before you know how it ends, you can be in for a surprise, and not necessarily a nice one, and then you've got to figure out how to convey that to many thousands of people. This is why I sometimes wind up not blogging about some of the best things, because I don't want to have everyone fall in love with some creature, and then be crushed when things don't end so well. For instance, I've raised three beautiful brown thrashers to from Day 9 to release this summer, but I didn't blog them, first because, feeding them every half-hour, then every hour, I didn't have time to, and second because I was afraid they might not all make it. Because you just never know with young things. You're raising them using an artificial diet in artificial surrounds, and who knows? Maybe you get that diet wrong, and they don't do well. I'm happy to say that the thrashers are healthy and sleek and strong and have been free for over a week and are lighting up our lives, hanging around the yard, still swooping in for handouts. So maybe you'll see them here before too long. Or maybe the world will just keep sweeping me along with new things to write about, and I'll save them for the next book.

So I went on a 7.6 mile run/lope down Dean's Fork today, and it was all so beautiful and wild and heartening that I was finally OK with having to tell you that the bobkitten I took in will not be coming back to Indigo Hill for release. It is a strange story, and there's more to it than just OOH and AHH. The minute I had that cat in my care, I went into a 36-hour panic attack about the possibility that it might be euthanized. I was so afraid that if I went through the proper channels and contacted my county wildlife officer, who would then have to contact the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, that some kind of ruling would come down from the state of Ohio that the kitten would be taken from me and put down. My fear may seem irrational, but it was very, very real to me, and I grappled with it, pacing in circles as I made phone calls trying to figure out the right thing to do for Bobkit. At the same time, I knew I had to go through the proper official channels for this state threatened species, so I steeled myself and made the call. To my immense relief, my kind county wildlife officer showed up the next morning to pick up the kitten, then transfer him to an intern who would drive him to a regional ODNR office, from which he'd then be taken to Ohio's only qualified bobcat rehabilitator in Lake County, up near Cleveland. I could hardly believe it was true, that Bobkit would have a chance to grow up and be returned to the wild. I was so thrilled that everything seemed to be going OK. I told myself that my fear was irrational; that the state would do right by this animal and the people who'd found it and cared for it.

I went off to Iowa with my kids, and after we returned I got a phone call from a District Manager of ODNR in my area. He was very kind and very sorry to have to tell me that my worst fears had been realized. The bobkitten had, in fact, been put down. It seems he was taken to another district office prior to being taken to the rehabilitator, and while he was there lots of people were looking at him, and one employee wanted to take his photo, but didn't want a dead mouse in the picture. Which I had given him so he'd have a meal for the road. He loved those little mousies, and he had a very small tank, and it would be at least five hours before he got to his next meal. So I sent a mouse for the road.  She opened his carrier and reached in to move the mouse, and the bobkitten took exception to that. He lunged and grabbed her hand and he would not let go, because he was a wild bobcat, and he thought she was taking away his food. And nobody should get anywhere near a wild bobcat with bare hands, because bobcats are like honey badgers, whether they're adorable and tiny or big and brawny. They're tough animals. Bobkit was just doing what comes naturally.

Because there was a remote possibility that the kitten could be rabid, the difficult decision was made to euthanize him for testing. The only way you can test for rabies is to look at brain tissue. Enough said. The would-be photographer felt horrible about this, and offered to wait out a 28-day quarantine, but by then, if the kittten were rabid, she could be dead. She was overruled.

It was just a rotten thing all the way around, and I'm sure nobody felt and continues to feel worse about it than that poor woman with the bitten hand. After I got over my initial shock and anguish, I realized that that could well have been me with the horrible dilemma and the holes in my hand. After all, hadn't I made a little video of him, chewing up his mouse? Yes, I had. I'd had gloves on when I laid the mouse in his carrier, but once he latched onto it and was happily chewing, I had to take my glove off to work my iPhone. I had to make a video, because it was so amazing to see this little thing, and I wanted to share it with you. So who am I to judge her? Nobody, that's who. It could so easily have happened to me.

I cried for most of the rest of that day that I got the call, and still felt like I'd been hit by a truck the next morning. I had to tell this story to the kind people who'd rescued the kitten in the first place, and they were a worse mess than I was. I had to tell Bill and the kids and Shila, too. We'd all gotten so wrapped up in thinking we had saved him from certain death, only to unwittingly send him to another certain death. Call my day of panic a premonition...I was a nervous wreck from the moment I laid eyes on that bobkit until Officer Bear's truck disappeared down the driveway. I was so sure something would go wrong. I was right. There were just too many people in the mix.

But rabies, you can't fool around with. And a human life is more precious than a bobcat life, and that's the truth. For me, it dredged up what happened with my beloved big brown bat Darryl from the winter of 2010, who innocently spluttered while Liam and I were feeding him. And because a droplet of his saliva had landed on Liam's cheek, and maybe microdrops had landed on his lip, that constituted a possible exposure. No way around it: Darryl had to be euthanized for testing. (He tested negative for rabies, but still). And it was terrible. And that was a story that I had to tell, too. I started the windup with this post, and then told the whole awful thing in this post. Trust me, those were no fun to write. Neither is this.

I now wear a plastic face shield whenever I handle bats, no matter what. Thanks, Dr. Starship. And of course, I wore gloves to handle the bobkit, but still. If he'd wanted to nail me while I was filming him, he could have.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, sorry I started a story that I couldn't finish well. But a baby bobcat in a plastic pet carrier was just too much---I had to show him to you. And I decided, firmly, upon learning that he was gone, that I wouldn't--couldn't--tell you that. You were too in love with him, and I didn't want to crush you. I didn't want to have to write this.

 But I had a change of heart on June 24, a bright summer day with high puffy clouds and birds singing everywhere.

To reward myself for finishing my book read, I went for a 7.6 mile run/lope/amble down Dean's Fork that day.

 Halfway down the road, I found these dead-fresh tracks in fine mud. Rear paw, 2 1/8" from top to heel, on the left. Front paw, 2 1/4" top to heel, on right. Adult bobcat, a nice sized one too. That's the second set of bobcat tracks I've found in the same stretch of puddles.

In this close-up you can see the perfect roundness of the pugmarks, the lack of any nail imprint; the grainy texture of the pads and even the fur that grows in between them. Beautiful. Life-affirming. Just here, just now.

I started thinking then about telling you what really happened.  I knew you'd ask, and I didn't know what I'd say. "No news?" "Haven't heard?" 

How long could I hold you all off? Would you forget about that bobkit? No way. You'd be asking along about late summer.

You're going to get the truth out of me here. You always have, even if it's painful.

As I loped along, there was a sound like someone was throwing handfuls of millet in the weeds along the road. It was extraordinary. I stopped and looked and found that the common plantain was riddled with holes made by flea beetles, and it was the beetles leaping on spring-loaded legs from the plantain leaves that made the millet spray sound.

And I thought, isn't that remarkable, that this plant is getting devoured, and that there are enough flea beetles to make noticeable noise all the way down the road! I'm sure it sucks for the plantain, but it was pretty cool for me.

Life is beautiful, even when it sucks.

Dean's Fork teaches me that. I saw so many incredible things this day--baby birds everywhere, learning how to forage--and I just drank it all in, and I felt so good, knowing that there are these wild places all around where things like this go on whether we're there to notice them or not.

I got all the way down to the end of Dean's Fork, and I was almost four miles from home. A rose-breasted grosbeak sang over a cerulean warbler, also singing. Breeding, both of them, north meets south. Fantastic. 

And I looked down and was reading the silt for more tracks when I found this one.

Bobcat. Another bobcat! But wait--only three toes on the foot?? No. There was a little green pebble sticking up, and that pebble was enough to keep the cat's inner toe from hitting the ground. 

Which along with the small size of the track, told me that this was a lighter-weight, smallish animal. I found a nice double set about a foot away, from the same series. Measured, the track was 1 3/4" from top to bottom. Too large for a housecat, which would be 1 1/8" top to bottom. 

Smallish female, maybe, or maybe a baby bobcat. 

And I realized, gazing at this track set, a smile spreading across my face, that I need to take a longer view on this tragic tale of a rescue gone wrong. And that long view is that there are lots of bobcats in Ohio now, probably more bobcats than have been here since pre-colonial times. Because there is lots more forest than there's been since then. The forest has come back, and people aren't persecuting bobcats any more, so they've come back too.

I've said it before: Wildlife rehabilitation is for people. The odd bobcat or brown thrasher that we manage to save; the fawn we bottle-raise; the squirrel we scoop up mean virtually nothing on a population level. Unless you're talking about saving the life of one of the world's 603 (as of February 2015) whooping cranes,  and putting it back into the breeding population, you really aren't making an impact one way or the other on these more abundant species by saving one here and there.

You are making an impact on the life of that one animal, on your life, and the lives of the people who get involved in helping it make it back to the wild. When you tell its story, you get people involved and caring. And we very much need to care about other life forms, to empathize and show them mercy and kindness. That's what makes us human, and that's what elevates us from animal, vegetable or mineral--that ability to give a hoot about some poor helpless creature, to stop what we're doing and try to help it.

The bigger story here is that there are enough bobcats that we're starting to see them hit on the highways (saw my first just north of Exit 6 on I-77 near Marietta this spring!). This may sound odd, but I was happy and excited to see that, because it means there are enough bobcats around for that to happen.

There are enough bobcats around that I found tracks from two different animals, one likely a juvenile, on Dean's Fork in one morning. And as the raincrow flies, that's a couple miles from my house.

There are enough bobcats around that a juvenile left a poo in my driveway for me to find as I returned from that same walk that same morning. So make that fresh stanky sign from a third bobcat in the same morning!

Perhaps it was the child of this beautiful female who immortalized herself at the same spot in our driveway on July 8, 2014.

photo by Corey Husic's Bushnell Trailcam.

They walk among us, on midsummer mornings. 

There are enough bobcats around that a kitten ended up stuck in a drainpipe in my friends' yard. 

There are enough bobcats around that he found his way to my loving, gloved hands. 

And for that I am deeply thankful. 

Hodge is one of my dearest friends. She has two wonderful housecats, Java and Star. So Hodge was among the first I sent a photo to when I came by the bobkitten. And she was among the first I told when I learned he wouldn't be returning to Indigo Hill to grace our woods.

Here's what she wrote back to me. 

Oh oh oh oh.  Oh, why, oh why?

Okay. Don't go there.  The whys are useless in this case.  

By which I mean, please release all notions out of your conscience that your putting that mouse for the road in the carrier was how this happened.  Not Your Fault, no way.  

You gave him three square meals and a safe place to land.  You made him purr.  You own that forever.  Somewhere in bobcat heaven there's a kit who knew there was a you, and that's a good thing.  

How to Tattoo Your Dog

I'm not much for looking at blog stats, because by and large they're depressing. Readership is falling off for most everyone, even the most persistant and skilled bloggers, and it's easy to see why, when there are so many other Netty things vying for attention. Like Kim Kardashian's butt. I mean, really. Why would you want to read about owl angels, abandoned churches and one-legged bluejays (coming soon) when you can be aghast and amazed at that? That is something special.

If I've figured out one thing, it's that Liam, Phoebe and Chet Baker save my blog. I can be puttering along with my flars and my abandoned church and my hayrolls and deliquescing barns and my dearly beloved regular readers are happy enough with that, but deploy the redhead or the towhead and interest spikes. Looking at them, I can't imagine why. Not much charisma there.

Load both barrels with, say, the redhead and the dog, and Nelly bar the door. We blow up the Internet like Kim Kardashian's butt. Well, OK, we're still counting our hits in the hundreds, not the millions, but it beats toddling off into the Internet sunset sucking our thumbs.

Am I pandering for blog hits? You bet your bippy I am. I will do about anything to save this blog. I've been posting for nine years now--practically Chet Baker's whole life--and I'm highly invested in keeping this blog going.  Rather than allow Facebook to suck its will to live, I have forced Facebook to support my blog. Facebook has given me a way to spoon-feed my posts to a large audience, and when people share those posts, good things happen here on JZ on Blogspot. The key has been not to allow myself to fall into the lassitude of, "Ehh, I'm putting out entertaining content on Facebook, why should I blog any more?" If I've got something good, I save it for the blog, make people come here for it.

As I see it, all I'm doing is recording life as it goes on here on Indigo Hill, and if I have the ability to figure out how to turn that into an amateurish video and share it, and if that humble product can charm and amuse a thousand people, that's a beautiful thing. More beautiful, IMHO, than a steatopygic protuberance on a person with nothing better to offer. I can't change the collective appetite for junk food and junk content. I know that. But I can make a video of my daughter and her boyfriend tattooing the dog.

  Happy New Year!!

The Real FloridaCracker!

Sometimes you just know you're going to get along with someone. Reading a person's blog for years turns out to be a surprisingly good way to take their measure.  I don't remember how I got onto FloridaCracker's blog, Pure Florida, but the "crack" part definitely applied--I was hooked from the get-go.

The man can really write, and he's got a wonderful sense of humor, and he knows pretty  much everything there is to know about Florida natural history. He cooks, too, and posts these hugely salivataceous photos of his culinary adventures. He fixes things. He has a lucky wife known as Mrs. FC, who stays off-camera. He has chickens and teenagers, too.  He has a ridiculously cute black Lab named Bear whom he videotapes doing ridiculously cute, doofy Lab stuff. Here's his tribute to Bear, whom he manages to conjure perfectly without a single photo of the dog. Anyone who goes through pet withdrawal upon being separated from their particular animal familiar will love this post as I do.

In his spare time, he teaches high school biology. For that, I give him five stars. Imagine having FloridaCracker as your high school biology teacher. Mrs. Corbin, you were great, but whoo-ee.

This may surprise FC, but one of the things I admire most about him is his ability to raise a pig for food and blog about said pig (without naming it, of course). And have it still turn out to be food, and not some kind of porcine cybercelebrity whom he has to keep until it is the size of a boxcar because all his readers have gotten attached to it. Anyone who has ever blogged about so much as a spider in the corner of the studio knows that once you name something, the blogosphere wants to know how "Corky," or whatever you  named the spider, is doing these days. So blogging a food pig is dicey territory, but FloridaCracker pulls it off. That, my friends, is something.

He also coins words that completely delight me. I try, in my ham-handed way, to emulate him, but fail miserababbleaciously. 

He freely breaks the cyberspatial rules. I was told by no less an authority than Corey Finger of 10,000 Birds, a blog that gets something like, oh, 72 gazillion hits a day, that if you, as a craven hit-thirsty blogger, want to have search engines pick up on your posts, you have to use really spare, to-the-point post titles and tags. So, for instance, if FloridaCracker were going to talk about transplanting a palm tree, he might use the post title, 

"Transplanting a Palm Tree."

Instead, his post is titled, 

"Moving A Small Palm Tree While Wearing a GoPro Camera On Your Head."

And then, needless to say, he puts a small camera on his head and it faithfully records his increasingly desperate groans and grunts as he lives the reality of lifting a hundred-pound rootball out of a deep hole. Who else would think to do this? I do not know.

His tag for such a post may well include 

The Boy Ain't Right

A recent post, "Gopher a Little Closer" , is about the endangered gopher tortoises (maybe a dozen) that inhabit his little piece of the Real Florida. There is an absolutely charming video of a gopher tortoise waiting suspiciously, then scurrying at warp speed into its burrow, or trying to. And FC finds a root that keeps the tortoise from entering smoothly, and he makes a little mental note to come out and cut that root. And then he leaves a bunch of nice romaine lettuce at the burrow mouth as a little present for the tortoise, who's already lucky as heck to be living in the backyard of such a sentient and caring being. He burns off the scrub to encourage the open habitat and the tender forbs the tortoises need for food. Anybody who can burn within a mile of their house without setting it on far has my undying respect. 

His JEEP looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor. Having never seen a clean Jeep before, I stared. Here, he's peeling a bit of plastic off the brand new windshield. Why a new windshield? Because a  vulture slammed into it a few weeks back, making it into this:

photo by FloridaCracker

Heavily ironic, because he'd just posted about planning his day around taking a sick black vulture to a veterinarian, which turned into a huge wild veterinarian chase. His post, "Riding in Cars With Vultures"

paints a portrait of a boy who ain't right, in the nicest possible way.

All right. My intent here was not to thoroughly embarrass FloridaCracker, which I have doubtless achieved, but merely to point up the front-loaded coolness with which he lives that made me completely geek out at the prospect of meeting him.

photo by Bill Webb

I mean, look at me. I'm all a-hyuck a-hyuck.

And then it got worse, because then I was flanked by FloridaCracker and CrackerBoy, whose unique take on the world as a socially evolved deep thinker and ex-cop I appreciate tremendously, and they made a big sloppy geek sandwich of me. Plotzing at the Enchanted Forest. Hooty hoot!

Like I said, sometimes you just know. I'm mighty glad to have met Bill and Michele Webb and FloridaCracker. This living through electrons is all well and good, but there's really no substitute for the brick-and-mortar version. 

photo by Bill Webb

To read FloridaCracker's take on the whole thing, visit his retelling here.