When it's difficult to find words...

A bird is mired in oil on the beach
at East Grand Terre Island along the
Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010.
(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The Cajun and his dad and brother went shrimping in our Mississippi Sound a few days ago, a result of the Department of Marine Resources opening the shrimp season early. They hoped to give the shrimpers an opportunity to catch some shrimp before any form of oil threatened the Sound, but warned that it could be a very short notice closing.

The Mississippi Sound is located between our barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the coastline of Mississippi.  If you've ever been to our beaches, you'll notice that our water is not crystal clear and blue like it is in Florida - those barrier islands are the reason.  The Cajun said the water was clean though and there were plenty of shrimp, though somewhat on the smaller side than normal.  Somehow, whatever oil has made it's way over from the damaged rig has drifted more west toward southern Louisiana and more east of us, toward Alabama's Dauphin Island and the Florida panhandle.  For now.

They hauled in about 700 pounds or so on our small, family owned, wooden shrimp boat. My father in law has a "day job" so he shrimps for pleasure, not for business, and thanks to his boys helping out in prepping the boat each year, we all get to fill all of our freezers with shrimp at each season opening.  I was standing in the kitchen rinsing, sorting and heading about 100 pounds of shrimp to put up in freezer bags, when that image above came on the television.  I don't mind telling you that I literally broke down right there at the sink.

A Brown Pelican is seen on the beach
at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast
on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The birds, including many Brown Pelicans - Louisiana's state bird - were found happenstance, when Governor Bobby Jindal was touring the area to survey a dredging operation, intended to help with the current oil problems, and something that he had been begging the government to take action on well before this tragedy at Grand Terre.

These poor babies. They don't deserve this.  The reporter on television noted that when these birds were found - and there were many of them - they were rescued and taken to be cleaned, examined and treated. Some may survive. Some, like the fella there at the top, I don't know how.  But how many more have suffered painful deaths that we don't even know about? It literally tears my heart apart.

Grand Terre is located in southeast Louisiana between Barataria Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, south of New Orleans. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is less than 100 miles east of New Orleans.  Like our barrier islands, Grand Terre, right at the mouth of Barataria Bay, provides critical protection to the inner marshes to the north and provides critical habitat for estuarine dependent fish and invertebrate species. Already facing major erosion challenges due to hurricanes of years past, the Grand Terre area was in the midst of a major restoration project before this spill. This project was intended to stabilize and benefit 1,575 acres of barrier island marsh habitat and extend the island's life expectancy.

Grand Terre Island provides a favorable habitat for many migratory and nesting birds, including tanagers, pelicans and buntings.  The Brown Pelican - of which several were found mired in the thick oil at Grand Terre - was only just removed from the endangered species list in 2009.

Grand Isle State Park, located on the far east end of the island, is the only state owned and operated beach on the Louisiana Gulf Coast.



May God forgive and help us.




Want that oil spill counter in the upper right hand corner for your own website? Hover over it and click in the white box to get the imbed code.  Then just paste it into your sidebar.

Sources: Louisiana.gov Gulfbase.org Baton Rouge Advocate Online

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Wildlife on the Homefront

Photo Credit: Wildlife Select

Isn't that such a pretty bird? It's a Red Winged Blackbird and I had a pair of them hanging around the yard today. I've never seen these birds before and frankly I'm amazed at the variety of birds I'm seeing this year that I have never seen before. Since I'm using pretty basic birdseed, I don't know what is different, except that maybe the bird population is finally getting back to Pre-K Days* and before that, well, I was working full time so was never here to bird watch and enjoy them!

I have been a busy bee today with housewifely duties- picking up the clutter, cleaning up, putting things away, dusting, doing dishes, laundry, filling feeders, diggin' up this to put there, trimming and inspecting plants, watering, and generally catching up on things that tend to fall to the wayside when I am piddling in the yard and focused on being outside.

Which reminds me, before I get to the rest of my story ... Virgos, we are a funny lot. I haven't met a Virgo yet who isn't a list maker. I try to keep notebooks for these things, but there's that clutter problem I seem to have these days {which is so UN-Virgo like behavior} and then I can't seem to find my notebooks, so I end up with scraps of paper all over the place. To-do lists for outside, to-do lists for inside, shopping lists, recipes I want to make {lest I forget what I bought those ingredients for}, notes for things I need to research, phone calls I need to make - it's crazy!

But today, I realized that I actually do this in my head too!

I never took notice of this before, but I sure do! Here's the conversation I was having when I realized this ... "Okay, run this to the compost and dump it, move the sprinkler, come back inside and throw the towels in the washer, and finish putting up the lemon juice in the ice trays." I knew if I didn't make a list, I'd forget something so yeah, I literally said this in my head, and frankly I've noticed, sometimes out loud.

But then... when I head out to the compost pile, I see some weeds that need to be pulled and I start pulling them, totally forgetting that I was going to move the sprinkler. Then, some pretty finches start flirting with me, so I start whistling back at them and talking to the lizards and the dragonflies who follow me around the garden, when I take notice of the bare spot in this southern facing garden where I can't seem to get anything to grow. Then I remember the pop-up volunteer Lantana plant I saw in the middle garden and think, "that would be perfect here, since the other two I planted here have done so well." So I go and dig it up, get some of the dirt out of the wheelbarrow and relocate it to the new bed.

If I'm lucky I remember to move the sprinkler before I get distracted by something else! All this while the washing machine that has now filled up with water, is waiting for me to fill it with towels and close the lid so it can get to work, and the lemons that I started squeezing but left half finished are still sitting there too. This goes on all day, every day - it's really a wonder that I ever do finish anything!

So, now the rest of my story.

But... a warning. This next part is probably not for the weak-hearted, so if you're super squeamish, well... ya might want to skip over this.

Last night when I took Boo out, I noticed something - an animal of some sort - struggling in the grass off in the distance. After bringing Boo back in, I went back out to investigate and discovered that it was a squirrel. Poor thing was alive, but weak and obviously dying, and he was literally covered in flies. You could just see the terror in his little eyes.

I had noticed him in the yard a few days earlier and knew he was injured - he was hopping like a rabbit and I could see from a distance that he appeared to be missing his tail. But, he kept ducking into obstacles when I tried to get close to him. Now that I had, I could tell he was a juvenile - just a baby.

Well, it was clear his injuries were really bad - one front leg had been bitten off and was just a stub, which was the reason he was hopping. His tail had been completely ripped off and the wound on his rear end was gaping and horribly exposed. It wasn't just his tail that was missing, but a hole had been torn in his rear end and it was pretty obvious that a dog had likely gotten hold of him. In his youth, he apparently had not learned how dangerous some dogs are.

After seeing him, I honestly don't know how this squirrel survived as long as he had, and I felt terrible for the little fella. I shooed away the disgusting flies and scooped him up with a shovel - he struggled, terrified, wanting to get away, not certain what my intent was. I carried him to the spigot outside to give him a good rinse, grabbed a pair of gardening gloves and placed him in a box, carrying him to the garage, where at least the flies wouldn't be crawling all over him. He seemed to become a bit more at ease, probably relieved to be away from those flies, who had already deposited eggs on his wound and yes, there were already maggots. I know ... its gross. My heart ached for this poor little animal. I couldn't help but wonder if he had let me get close to him before, maybe we could have stitched him up and saved him.

I soaped up some paper towels and washed him off, dabbed some tea tree oil on his wound which ran the maggots out, found an old pair of tweezers, and literally plucked the darned things off of him, drowning them in alcohol. I honestly don't know how I could stomach such a thing ... yuck ... {which is exactly why I ditched any ideas of a job in the medical field} but I'll be damned if I was gonna let that little guy suffer these last few moments of his life, so somehow they didn't even bother me.

Once his wound was cleared, I wrapped him in several layers of paper towels, and then tightly in an old towel - swaddled like a human infant. Using an eye dropper I offered him a little water just to wet his mouth - goodness knows how long he'd been laying there suffering - and he gladly took it. I even offered him a piece of seed meat from the bird feeder, which he took and chewed on. I've had animals all my life and many of them have lived into their 20s, dying of old age and taking their last breaths in my arms, so I knew this little fella was dying and I prayed that it would come soon to end his suffering.

Animals can't speak, but one thing I have learned is that you can certainly read a lot from their eyes, and it was there that I saw this transformation from the terrified little squirrel I found laying in the grass, to this little guy who was calm now and at peace. It was just amazing.

He curled up in the towel and I held the towel to my chest, against the warmth of my body, where I'm sure he could hear the beating of my heart. I had no fear of him biting me now at all. He was content and just laid there peacefully. After awhile he began to have convulsions. He stiffened, struggling to reach out with his one remaining front claw, reaching for something to steady himself. I offered my finger and he grasped it as his little body shuttered and his heart stopped. I imagined that at least for those final seconds of his short life, he must have felt some comfort, perhaps as he did in the protection of the nest against his mother's body, when he was first born not long ago.

I don't think that I'll ever look at a squirrel quite the same again.


*People seem to get uncomfortably silent when I mention Hurricane Katrina, though honestly that is an important measuring stick for those of us who lived through the experience. Still, I decided to just start referring to it as Pre-K to take off some of the pressure.

Garden Site Selection Dilemma & A Taste of Spring

Well, me and my perfectionist personality ... I have been in a dilemma.

It has to do with where to place my veggie garden. Now I originally planted my veggie garden here on the east side of the patio because it gets the best light. But as you can see in that picture below, the weeds have literally taken it over, and before we plant our raised beds, we have to remove all grass and weeds. Then oddly, here in this picture taken at noon today, the garden is very shaded! What? Did my oak tree grow a lot more?? Oh, no! Now what??!! But then, I think I recalled this last year too and that it might have something to do with the positioning of the sun this early in the year, because I know this area had full sun in the summer most all day the past couple of years! Ah, yet another thing to consider for site selection!!

But then I think... since we no longer have the gazebo over the patio (thanks to dry rot which we discovered during hurricane prep last year when we tried to take it down), I thought that we might be able to relocate the two smaller 4 x 4 beds I'm doing this year, to the other side of the patio because it appears to get some pretty good sunlight. And since this was a spot the dogs igloos were in for awhile, as you see, it's mostly dirt there - no grass and no weeds - which would certainly save me some work! This picture was also taken at noon, the same time as the one above. As you see, except for shade from a patio umbrella, it is getting full sun. But then the sun seems to fade behind trees on that side about 3:00 p.m.

But then, I thought ... well, I could do the two smaller 4 x 4 beds on the west side of the patio, and then do a long 4 x 8 bed in the original spot!

And then, of course, I thought... there actually enough room there that I could actually do TWO of the longer 4 x 8 beds in the original garden spot! But then, there's all those weeds...

Now you see why it takes me forever to do anything??? I over-think things. I over analyze things. Then I often just say ... oh forget it! But, I made up my mind. I'll do the two 4 x 4 beds on the west side and ONE 4 x 8 on the original east side, so I sent Hubs to Lowe's to pick up some more wood on his way home.

This afternoon we are going to see the grandbaby. Maybe I'll actually get my boards done before that, maybe tomorrow... in the meantime I thought I'd leave y'all with a little taste of spring.

That first picture up there are the unfolding of the leaves on the fig tree. Isn't that so pretty with the light behind it? And it's actually got some fruit forming on it already.

The lantana is coming back.

So are the bugs. If this is a ladybug, this is a good bug. If it's just a beetle posing as a ladybug, not so good. I'm not really sure what it is!

The lilies are beginning to peek out.

The hydrangeas are budding.

And the hibiscus.

And the baby azaleas.

The ferns on the east side of the house not only survived the winter freezes, but have substantially multiplied! This is an area that I can't seem to get anything to grow - not shade, not sun, so I'm happy to see that the few ferns I transplanted over here seem to like it here.

The bridal wreath is blooming.



And the squirrels have been busy.

I spotted this fellow up in the tree yesterday. More on this later.

The doves have been around all winter, but this woodpecker is new!

I'm not sure about this bug, but I have a feeling he is a "bad" bug.

And I've seen quite a few of my garden buddy lizards.

More later!

Birds

I love birds. All kinds of birds. I keep a very old pair of binoculars that were left behind after the passing of both of my parents, and they stay right at the french doors so that I can peek in on who visits my outdoor feeders. I haven't been able to catch the hummingbirds this year, though there have been several visitors. They are so tiny and difficult to catch at the right time.

I was honored however to watch the birth of some house finches in a hanging plant on my porch, all the way from the time that the mother laid her eggs until the time that they flew the coop. They still visit my feeders even now and one of them actually lets me get very close. I swear after all the peeking in at the nest when they were first hatched, I wonder if they recognize me! I can't recall if I ever managed to get a good photo of them - I'll have to go back and look.





Then there was the occasion of these beautiful herons that were born way atop the pine tree in my neighbor's backyard. Fairly large birds, it was cool to watch the progression as they grew, and sadly 2 did not make it, but this is the mama and the remaining three chicks. To see the male and female parents flying back to tend to the nest and feeding was just awesome, and then they too moved on.







Lately though, I have been inundated with doves. I have been keeping a plate filled with squirrel food on a small table and the doves seem to have taken to the corn, often crowding out the squirrels, who I only really feed to keep out of my bird feeders and my veggie garden. Well, guess they have to eat too.