Various levels of inconvenience . . .

We really should thank the Miami-Dade County Building Code. Being forced to comply with the most stringent safety regulations in the country, when it comes to building, may seem frustrating. But when the storms come, and a tree falls on the house, we may see a difference in the results from the rest of the country. Perhaps. Usually.

It seems strange and wonderful not to lose our power for two weeks with a storm so close. Just before the storm came near, Fla Power and Light had trouble on a main line. I know because I called to report the power outage and asked the cause of it. I was in the dark literally but I knew where a flashlight was supposed to be.

After making the call, I dug out a small battery-operated fan and put in four D cell batteries. If I didn't move a muscle, it helped. I didn't move.

Power came back on after just over an hour.

I feel so badly for those without power who didn't know exactly where the flashlights were and didn't have little fans with batteries for them. Plus, say, ice, water, and food supplies.

The aftermath is a different kind of ordeal than surviving the storm. Lots of people are stranded in our airport due to cancelled flights. Some are taking the train north.

I know this how? Because Amtrak is sold out through next Wednesday . . .

Life lesson . . . wild style

This morning was a mini-armageddon for wildlife. Something was on the wooden stringer on the outside of the tall, wooden gate and a Mockingbird was dive bombing it so hard the gate would rattle. Whatever it was came down the opposite side of the fence with the screaming bird chivvying it along so hard I could hear the thumps when he hit.

As the action got close to where I was standing with the three dogs on leashes, a desperate squirrel jumped over the top of the fence landing nearly at our feet. He was dumfounded and so were the dogs. Evidently the bird had done some real damage because he had a difficult time climbing the nearby palm and nearly fell off when he had to negotiate the fronds.

Only Mollie, the spaniel, tried to get to him. He was too traumatized to even chitter at her.

Bet he'll leave that bird's nest alone . . .

Guilt?

I may have lured that Mockingbird too far down the chimney. Outdoors, I like to try to get Mockingbirds to whistle the two-tone call that our mother used to use to summon us: whee-whoo, whee-whoo. It is so cute when they try to repeat it and especially when they get it right and incorporate it into their repertoire.

The bird in question still sits on top of the chimney and sings. We hear him clearly. I used to sit near the fireplace and tried to teach him to whistle the call. He may have tried to reach that rival bird and fallen down to the point where flying back became impossible.

I promise that I will only whistle at Mockingbirds outdoors, from now on. Fool me once . . .

Up, up, up, really . . .

This morning we woke to bird song from the fireplace in the living room. This was shortly before full daylight. The song was so varied and beautiful that it had to be a Mockingbird. It was just too pitiful, his singing desperately in the dark.

Somehow, by himself, that brave bird climbed the chain curtain of the fire guard and fluttered over the top of the glass fire doors. He was loose in the living room and terrified of the interested dogs. He fluttered like a moth against the cathedral ceiling until finally he came to rest, clinging to the brick of the fireplace.

We put the dogs (downer!) in the garage, opened the exterior doors and flapped towels to direct him toward the opening. He got the idea almost at once and swooped through the storm doorway and onto the front screened porch. A little test flight or two against the screens and he found the opening to the outside, then up, up, up.

That bird was a genius. He deserves to reproduce.

They eat snakes, too . . .

The flock was in possession of the swale in front of the house when I stepped out to see what the weather was like. One of the benefits of living in the semi-tropics? Yes, in addition to having toads try to make themselves at home inside the house.

I prefer these . . .

PS: If you know what they are, please let me know. I thought they were Cattle Egrets but they're not. Cattle Egrets don't seem to have the long curved bill. I did see a flock of these fighting over possession of a snake, a few of years ago, in our back yard. They were welcome to it.

Red Alert!

Big Ed took out the trash this evening. He came back in and said that he had just seen another toad hop inside the house. He scooped up a fascinated Mew and said that he would shut her in another room while I got the toad out.

Not being the official toad wrangler, I, personally, put the cat in another room and asked J to help Big Ed find the intruder and evict it. By the time I came back from imprisoning the indignant cat, they were ushering a toad outside with a broom and laughing about it.

This was a more kind fate than the last one met up with. If I meet it face to face, it's in real trouble.

Intruder alert . . .

Zeta and M have gifted us with a stationary bicycle. It lives in the guest/spare room and is oriented toward a television in there. That room is small. To open the day bed fully (for, say, welcome guests) it is necessary to remove the bike, temporarily.

Tomorrow, the plan is for BigEd to put the bike back where it belongs (he moved it out in the first place) and restore the guest/spare room to its gym incarnation.

Today? Early this morning? There was a Bufo Marinus beside that bike. Inside with us instead of outside where it could be as wild as it pleased. Also known as a Cane Toad, it exudes poison from glands in its head if anything attacks and bites it. I didn't plan to do that. But Mew might.

I recognized this particular toad, I thought. I had seen him (or one just like him) hopping away from our front door when I opened it to pick up the morning paper.

If he had stayed outside, he could have enjoyed a long and toadlike existence. As an invader, he became a threat. We dropped a bucket over him.

All went dark . . .

Talk to the twig . . .

Our Crape Myrtles, which lose their leaves over winter, have now decided that the free water falling from the skies is good enough to slurp up and make leaves out of. I don't have to worry about running over the one in the front of BigEd's window when I drive the car over there to load or unload at the front door. It is not a nearly invisible, dead looking, mess of twigs when some greenery decorates it.

Someone should explain to it that, even though leaves make it much more visible, an actual bloom would be even better.

It never listens to me, anyway . . .

Coincidence . . .

We used to go for rides. Recreational jaunts that we all enjoyed and which tired us out as if we had got out and pushed instead of being passengers. Today, the weather was so gorgeous that we decided to waste some recreational gas. The Camry gets pretty good gas mileage on the road, so we packed a lunch and headed down toward the Keys.

The ocean water along side the roadway was almost silken looking and nearly flat when we went over the bridges. We had just got past Layton where the water is close to the road and Sea Grape and Buttonwood scatter along between the tall roadside grasses when I saw a tall dog ahead and off to the side. He was waiting for our car to pass, I thought. Smart dog.

Then he bounded across and we felt the sickening thud. It was not a dog, it was a Key Deer.

There was little damage to the car but the small Key Deer lay inert.

Because he was a Key Deer, I put him on my key ring and used him to unlock the door when we got home.

It is, after all, April the first . . .

Breezing out . . .

Today should be a State Holiday. Today should be celebrated throughout the coastal US. There are slightly more than six hours left until the end of hurricane season.

This is our weatherly watershed for the year. Our continental divide of winds. The end of having to duck and cover when named storms take aim.

We can give a heartfelt sigh, but not all together. We don't want to start any major wind moving . . .

Open wide . . .

Yesterday, the truck came to pick up the results of the story of BigEd and the Alligator Lopper. As BigEd said, I should have taken a before and after picture of the yard. The only things not cut to 3 foot lengths were the fronds from the large palm.

They weren't very heavy and the truck only had trouble when the bucket picked up the tip of one frond along with its giant mouthful. The truck managed to swallow all of the stuff. Thank you truck.

And thank you, BigEd . . .

Wielding an alligator . . .

The Alligator Lopper: Chain saw for the non-chain saw user. It grips. It bites. It demolishes. It spits sawdust. It is altogether satisfactory.

BigEd, wielding the lopper, has been a deadly force to our hibiscus hedges, small palm trees, and overgrowth.The only thing that refuses to bow to its superior power is a tree with full girth, such as our sickly palm which reached full adulthood before developing the blight. Still, the fronds are destined for lopping.

And then, we'll see . . .

There and Back Again

J and I have been gone for over two weeks. BigEd was away for part of the time and Mew boarded at the vet's office while he was away at the same time we were.

A week of the time was spent at 3,600 feet, in Roaring Creek Cabin between Maggie Valley and Waynesville, NC. The cabin was halfway up the mountain via a gravel road with winding (and one hairpin) turns. But it was beautiful being up on the side of the overlook with trees originating well below us and stretching the canopy up to surround us with flowing, light-spattered green. We rocked on the screened porch and felt the stress melting down between the floorboards under our feet.

Being sea level dwellers, at first we felt the effects of the altitude. The local populace calls it mountain sickness. After we acclimated, we did not want to leave. There was no cell phone signal in the cabin but there was a land line, satellite television and wireless internet.

My kind of roughing it . . .

Here today . .

Occasionally, a house-fly gets, inside. And on those occasions, I can usually swat the intruder using a diversionary technique. When the intended prey lights, I hold the deadly swatter in my right hand and stick my left out to the side (or up, depending). Then, I wiggle the fingers of the left hand like the legs (in my imagination, anyway) of a web-challenged spider.

See, I know that flies have much faster reaction time than I do. But, they don't divide their attention very well. My technique forces them to try and while they are trying, the deadly right hand acts.

Usually. This morning, Mew was staring intently at a dining chair's back. When I asked her what she was doing, she glanced quickly at me and then resumed her stare. Moving closer, I could see a fly that had been elusive since yesterday. Grabbing the swatter from its hook, I went into my act. Between my twitching fingers and Mew's twitching whiskers, it was truly distracted.

It took two of us to hunt this one down. Cooperation between the species . . .

Please not . . .

Today, we had a little preview of hurricane season. For some reason, the wind came straight out of the west, causing the hard rain to tattoo our side door like a highland drum. The folded, bare mast and spars of our neighbor's boat were lifted above our hibiscus hedge, waving and oscillating as if at sea. Capsizing was not out of the question.

Smaller items were flung into the hedges and the tall palms turned inside out like broken umbrellas. I opened the front door a crack to experience it firsthand. The wind nearly took the door from my grip even though it was only opened enough to peek out. I locked it shut although I don't know what good locking it could do. It just felt safer. Silly.

We guessed the wind gusts might be between 50-60 mph and we have been through enough 'canes to be fair judges of gust speed. These were not altogether steady, though. The wind would moderate between gusts instead of hitting a steady 75 or so and howling up from there. There was no singing of the wind through the wires and chain link fences. No listening to that howl climb in height and volume as it approached. No hearing the trees crack and groan as roots gave way or branches twisted loose to fly.

I had better stop. I'm scaring myself . . .

Follow that car . . .

When we left to visit J's mother, our grass was brown and crunchy. We were gone for six days and it did not rain a drop while we were away. At least, it didn't on our grass.

This was one of the few trips during which not a drop of rain fell on our moving vehicle. Nor on any parked ones that we could see, either.

However, we must have towed a vortex of moisture laden air behind us as we returned home. Perhaps it was lost and needed a hint. Because, last night it rained some - just enough to make the brown grass supple and give the occasional greenish blade some hope.

This morning it is spattering rain again and the ground is loving the idea of slowly taking it in.

So now we know. It must be true. If there isn't rain down here in the southern end of our state, we have to travel up there and guide it down . . .

Chica . . .

She was an English Bulldog, squat, strong, and sweet. She first met Mew through the window, three days ago. Yesterday, she went into our back yard and set up residence in front of our rusty (yucky) garden shed. In the afternoon, I walked up to her and she rolled over to have her belly rubbed. I went to get her some water. On an impulse, I called out "Chica," and she whipped her head around to look. Aha, she spoke Spanish, then. "Chica, veng'!" seemed to motivate her in my direction, but barely. She was a Bulldog, after all.

A neighbor had seen her, the day before, coming down 107th Avenue from the north. So we surmised she was from farther away. She was footsore and limping on her left hind leg. And hungry? All we had was dry cat food but, from all evidence, it was just delicious.

We left her in the yard, happily snoring in front of the shed until it started to rain. We sequestered Mew, and brought "Chica" in to sleep in our bathroom off the bedroom. She moaned a bit about being left in there but when no one responded, she settled down. This morning, she yipped to go outside to take care of business.

Animal control had no calls about a Bulldog being missing, so this morning I started out asking more neighbors. The people directly behind us wanted to see her. The man came around in his van and looked at her. He thought she had been traveling a long distance, too. He looked at her teeth and eyes. She had something in her eye he said and when I looked, it was a little red. Then he picked her up and she lay belly-up in his arms wagging her tail at him. He kissed her on the side of her muzzle and said he was taking her straight to the vet to see about the eye. If animal control doesn't come up with an owner who is searching for her, I think she has found a good home.

Don't you just love a happy ending?

A rose, by any other rootstock . . .

Monday, the best of the day had gone by when the Ira feeder bands started. Rain came in bucketfuls followed by time for it to soak in. Then more buckets. Today is overcast and humid. One would think we were living in the semi-tropics, somewhere.

The roses J planted were dancing with the wind and losing a few petals. They seemed to like the exercise, though, and put forth more blossoms to get into the spirit of the thing, the next day. The two roses that are on Jackson Perkins rootstock are not much subject to black spot. The third, a different stock, will need some attention. I told J I felt like digging it back up and replacing it with another from the JP rootstock. He just looked at me. I'm not the one who would be doing the digging.

Spraying or dusting, though? That would be me . . .

Five, four, three, two, one . . .

We are in a holding pattern. One storm has passed us on the west and another system is trying to take aim from the east.

I remember during a flight to Washington DC, we were in a descending holding pattern which took us repeatedly over the Pentagon. Because of its regular shape, it was hard to tell when we revolved around the building. As it appeared and disappeared, through gaps in the cloud cover, it seemed to be growing in size, all by itself. Our approaching nearer seemed to have nothing to do with its changing size. It was like sitting in a parked vehicle and watching a moving train or bus nearby. The car sometimes can feel as if it is moving backward instead of the other vehicle going forward.

Our lives are stationary like that, at present. Traffic is light, shoppers in the grocery store almost non-existent, no one in our neighborhood is mowing or edging. Home Depot is busy but not extraordinarily so.

We are watching the images of the storms and hoping that as they approach they will shrink away, all by themselves . . .

Storm story . . .

We are all relieved to see the people of New Orleans making evacuation moves. There is a self-preservation area in my psyche that breathed a sigh of relief when I learned that there are proactive preparations underway there.

We experienced Hurricane Andrew's coming ashore and passing directly over. The southern end of the county experienced the calm in the eye and the eyewall winds on both sides of that calm area. We, as a population, became famous for the widespread destruction that was visited on us.

There were stories, though. At Florida International University, the parking and traffic department was then housed in a temporary trailer next to the public safety building. That building is a real aircraft control tower which still remains from the time the whole campus was nothing but an exurban airport.

The walls of the that tower are made of poured, reinforced concrete. By sheer luck, the trailer was situated on the leeward of that control tower. The wind-shadow of the building gave shelter. It was one of the few trailers in our whole county that suffered very little effect from the storm.

The aircraft control tower, itself? All of the laminated, inches-thick, safety glass was blown out of the observation room at the top of the tower.

But, none of it hit that trailer . . .