Articles

Article: Snake Farm

2008-02-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

Capybaras lounging at the Snake Farm

(Note: The Snake Farm has changed ownership since this article was written. I went again during the Fall of 2007 and found conditions much improved. More cages were labeled and new enclosures were being built for the capybaras and some of the other animals.)

If you've ever driven down I35 to San Antonio, you can't have missed the signs for the Texas Snake Farm. It's one of those places you pass over and over again, curious but driving on because you have someplace else to go; a throwback to the days of weekend road trips and roadside attractions. As with all roadside attractions, you have to be a bit skeptical. After all, the so-called World's Largest Pecan in Seguin is just a statue and not even the largest statue of a pecan at that. So is the Snake Farm really a snake farm?

Well, it's certainly not a farm. More than anything it resembles a giant exotic pet store crossed with a zoo from about 30 years ago. Inside are a wide variety of snakes housed in the small plastic containers that are typical among amateur herpetologists. They're simple, safe and efficient but not aesthetically pleasing. Add to that the thick wire cages that surround them and the place looks a bit like a prison.

There are a lot of snakes there though, many of them highly venomous. One of the most beautiful and interesting is the Gaboon viper, a thick bodied, poisonous snake with small horns on its snout and a bold pattern. In the back room there is a well-stocked bookstore dealing mainly with reptiles but also other types of animals. Past the books is a snake pit with maybe two dozen rattlesnakes of various species. The snakes are no more than five feet long and the cement walls of the pit must be twenty feet deep, add the wire mesh lid and viewing is safe but difficult.

Out the back door is an exotic animal park with llamas, miniature horses, longhorn cattle, ostriches, capybara (the world's largest rodent), monkeys and more. In this area the feeling of an old zoo is overpowering. The animals are kept in small cages with minimal adornment. The serval cat paces endlessly, its long legs quickly taking it back and forth along the short wall of its cage. Macaws and other exotic birds perch behind two layers of wire mesh in unlabeled cages.

This was my second visit, the first being many years ago and providing me with an experience that disinclined me to a repeat. As I wandered among the sale items, mostly toys and trinkets, some educational but most not, I was aware that a third visit was highly unlikely. I stared at a bin of alligator heads and wondered what motivated the owner(s). The label on one of the heads indicated that the alligator was farm raised for food. The heads were so small it didn't seem like much meat could have come from such an animal. I have no problem with farming alligators, in fact I think it's a good idea, but I'm still thinking the heads send the wrong message with their tiny gaping mouths and sharp little teeth. What are all of these dead faces saying to the visitors of the Snake Farm?

I wandered around a bit and eventually was able to talk to the owner, John Mellyn. I was prepared to condemn him for his treatment of the animals but instead I found he was a nice, articulate and caring man. He told me that the Farm is a member of the International Primate Protection League, that all (or nearly all) of the animals there are captive bred and that they breed many of the animals and sell or trade them to zoos. He's owned the Snake Farm for the last 13 of its 39 year history. It's a hard place to keep up and it doesn't make much money but he says he loves the work and the animals. He makes a point of helping people overcome their fear of snakes, frequently taking out his large python and letting people pet it.

Now I don't know what to think. I can't decide if the Snake Farm is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe you'll just have to stop by and decide for yourself. The $7.50 adult admission fee will at least help support the animals. At least visit the web site: www.txsnakefarm.com.

Snake Farm & Exotic Animal Park
5640 IH 35 S
New Braunfels, Texas 78132-4945
(830) 608-9270

Photo: Coral looking over the rows of unlabeled snake cages.

Photo:: An ocelot paces endlessly in its cage.

Photo: Monkeys in a cage

Disappointed in Obama

2008-01-24T14:52:00.000-08:00

There have been some e-mails circulated about Barack Obama claiming that he is a Muslim, that he said the oath of office for his senate appointment on the Koran and that he will not say the Pledge. These things are not true of Obama and I can respect him correcting them. When asked about them in the New Hampshire debate, Obama countered that he is a Christian, that he said the oath of office on the bible and that he sometimes leads the pledge at the US Senate.

That's fine as far as it goes. Where it doesn't go is to say that people of all faiths are Americans. That there is a Muslim man in the US House of Representatives who said the oath of office on the Koran. That should he be a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, a Mormon, a Muslim or an atheist, that would not make him unfit for the office of President. That our politicians, as our people, as all people, should be judged on their character as individuals. So I was disappointed. He didn't stand up for religious freedom when he had a chance to do so. Still, I can understand the political realities. I don't absolve him of this oversight, but I understand him.

Then two days ago I got an e-mail that claimed to be from John Kerry about those same erroneous e-mails being circulated about Obama. At one point in the e-mail, Kerry states, "The truth matters, but how you fight the lies matters even more." I don't know about the "even more" part, but I do believe it is important how you fight the lies. Kerry continues on to say, "These disgusing lies ... smear Barack's Christian faith."

Does this say, as I take it to read, that being called a Muslim is disgusting? That it is a smear to a Christian to be mistaken for a Muslim? Is this the kind of language that promotes religious intolerance. This is not language we should condone of any American, let alone a potential president. I hate that someone defending Barack, someone I once supported, feels that it is okay to say this.

I am neither Muslim nor Christian but I would hope that we can strive for the ideals this country was founded on, religious freedom and religious tolerance must go hand-in-hand. Our leaders must promote these values.

(BTW, I've stopped writing my weekly newspaper article so these blog posts have become much less frequent.)

--------------------------------------
I got an email from the Obama campaign. This is my response to this.
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Thank you for your canned response that in no way addressed my issue.

I am concerned that Senator Obama is not willing to take a stand for religious freedom when he feels that it might not be politically expedient. In his comments, and in the email from John Kerry, just the opposite appears to be true; he is willing to sacrifice the religious freedom of a minority for his own gains. Unless minorities have freedom, none of us is free. Not just philosophically but in fact, for we are all in the minority in some demographic.

I want change from the oppressive, fear-mongering policies of the current administration. Please prove to me that you mean to do it.

Article: The garage of the brain

2007-11-17T13:39:00.000-08:00

Cartoon from around 1980

After my car which was parked in the garage had a rat infestation, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the garage needed some serious cleaning. Each weekend and for an hour or so after work every day, I’ve been knocking things down from the rafters or moving them from the huge pile of junk at the back and throwing them into the truck for my now weekly trip to the dump. I throw away almost everything.

I’d gotten used to tossing stuff without looking at it when one dilapidated cardboard box caught my attention. Hey, this was my stuff! Stuff I wanted to keep. Stuff I’d looked for over the years and never found. Stuff that could not survive the hostile environment of the garage with its extreme temperatures, high humidity and rat and raccoon populations. Against all odds, most of the contents had survived.

A flood of memories washed over me as I opened a once-familiar lab notebook. This was my notebook from my Chem 5 Quantitative Analysis lab course at UC Berkeley. Wow, did I ever have neat writing back in those days. I couldn’t write like that now to save my life. Neat rows of numbers, precisely charted data, careful analysis. Come to think of it, I did pretty well in that class. Still, why keep such a thing? The data means nothing to me now. But my fingers stopped on a page showing a drawing of the laboratory apparatus used for one of the experiments.

I was surprised at the detail and care my younger self took with that drawing. What motivated me to be so detailed and meticulous? It’s not perfect but, if I had to, I could recreate that exact setup using that drawing. It made me remember how much I used to love to draw. I don’t do that anymore. Looking at the drawing I wondered why.

I pulled out a yellowed sketchbook with a missing cover. What a strange feeling to remember doing, feeling, thinking, something you’ve completely forgotten. I found a pencil sketch of a coyote dated July 3^rd, 1972. I was only sixteen then. I made the drawing from a photo in an issue of National Geographic. It had taken me hours. Those hours, that drawing, that feeling of creation and satisfaction had disappeared from my memory as if they had never happened. And now they were back.

I picked the box up, this one would go into the house for closer examination. As I carried it, a brightly colored paper dropped out and floated on an imperceptible breeze to land under my car. I set the box down and gingerly picked the ancient sheet out of the dust. It was a felt-marker sketch of a red-and-white Pegasus, highly stylized. There was no date. Back in Junior High I was in a club that met at lunch once a week. The only thing I remember about that organization was making drawings like these to be used as greeting cards for nursing home patients.

Back in the house, I rummaged through my early years as immortalized in artistic endeavors. Amazing how things disappear into the past and don’t reach the surface of your mind again for years and years. And yet they are still there, tucked away in the mental equivalent of a garage rafter. I remember drawing that cartoon about a magician snake who could pull a rabbit out of its hat being compared to a dog that could roll over. It appeared in the newsletter for a reptile club I used to belong to. I remember all that now looking at the drawing. I didn’t remember it yesterday.

What a weird thing the mind is. This weekend I am going to try to sit down with a piece of paper and see if I can draw something. Not just the stupid doodles I do these days but an actual drawing. I wonder if I can still do that, if my mind retains not just the memory but the knowledge.

Photo: Diagram of experimental apparatus from my Chem 5 class at Berkeley.

Photo: A pencil drawing of a coyote I made when I was sixteen
Photo: A felt-marker drawing of a Pegasus, probably from junior high school.

Article: Miniature donkeys and giant rodents

2007-11-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

Coral and Caplin meeting some adult miniature donkeys

Now that I’m back at work, my capybara is getting lonely. Since my husband works from home, this loneliness impacts him more than it does me. He suggested we get a small dog to keep Caplin company. While I like dogs, I’ve never wanted one. They are loud, demanding and they scare off the wildlife.

My daughter Coral suggested a miniature horse. Caplin’s breeders had a pair of miniature horses. They looked like horses that had been mashed down forcibly, oddly deformed and rather hideous. I know not all miniature horses are like that but I think the ones that aren’t are expensive. Maybe I’ll look into that some time in the future. In the meantime, what about a miniature donkey?

All of the mini-donkeys I’ve seen have looked just like big donkeys, only cuter. Ponies, such as Shetlands, and mini-donkeys were bred to their current size over hundreds of years to fit into places where their bigger cousins could not, but they did the same work. Shetlands worked in the mines. Miniature donkeys were beasts of burden mainly in Sicily and nearby islands.

Searching the web, I discovered that miniature donkeys make very good pets. According to Robert Green, who imported some of the first miniature donkeys to the US, “Miniature donkeys possess the affectionate nature of a Newfoundland, the resignation of a cow, the durability of a mule, the courage of a tiger, and the intellectual capability only slightly inferior to man's." That sounded good so we headed off to a local donkey breeder to see some of these little wonders.

Coral, her boyfriend Carl and I headed out to Small Pleasures Farm (www.smallpleasuresfarm.com) in Elgin. We brought Caplin with us to see how he reacted to the donkeys and how they reacted to him.

Susan and John Baker met us at their gate. They were instantly taken with Caplin but warned us the donkeys might be aggressive toward him. Three adults came to the fence to check Caplin out. They seemed friendly enough. However when we went into a pasture with jennets and foals, the mother donkeys seemed bent on attacking Caplin. The Bakers said donkeys view small animals like Caplin as predators. That certainly fit their attitude.

The donkeys were incredibly cute though and they were affectionate to their owners. We decided to try to introduce Caplin to two youngsters, a jack and a gelding, each about 7 months old. These two were very curious about the capybara. Caplin however appeared just as afraid of these guys as he was of the older donkeys.

Adult miniature donkeys are almost as small as Caplin will be as an adult. Adult capybaras stand about 24 inches as the shoulder and weigh around 130 pounds. The miniature donkeys we were looking at would probably mature at under 36 inches and around 250 pounds. That might work. Right now though Caplin only weighs around twenty pounds though and even these young donkeys must weigh at least 100 lbs. That’s a five fold difference. We decided it makes sense to wait for things to even out a bit more before mixing him with a donkey.

It was hard to pass on those cute little donkeys. That must be what the Bakers thought in 2000 when they bought their first mini-donkey. Looking around their manicured property, diced up into small pens and paddocks with mini-donkeys scattered throughout, I was amazed to learn they’d gone from two donkeys to fifty in just seven years. That’s good reason not to get the first one. My husband isn’t happy that I have four horses.

For more information:

The National Miniature Donkey Association:
http://www.nmdaasset.com/

The American Donkey and Mule Society
http://www.lovelongears.com/

Two mini-donkey foals and a jennet. How adorable those babies are!

These two mini-donkeys are about seven months old and were potential Caplin playmates.

Coral and Caplin get to know Jackson, a very curious stud colt. Caps was a bit frightened.

Article: Car trouble

2007-10-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

Over the years, the unused 1/3 of the garage has become a pile of trash.

On Saturday my husband and I prepared to attend a friend’s birthday party. It was a fancy affair requiring Rick to wear a suit and me to wear a dress. I seldom dress-up and it almost seemed like too much trouble. But it was a long-time friend of Rick’s and the food promised to be good.

I went to pull my Prius out of the garage while Rick finished getting ready. With his disability, Rick finds it hard to navigate in the garage. This is at least partly due to the garage being such a mess. Cleaning it is on my long list of things to do this month but I was letting it slide off the bottom. I punched the Power button and the car came to life with a low hum. I shifted into reverse and started to back.

The car didn’t move. I looked at the instrument panel, it was still in neutral, I must not have shifted correctly. But even after a more deliberate shift, the Prius refused to back, remaining steadfastly in neutral. I noticed a warning light in the shape of a red triangle with an exclamation mark bisecting it. On the navigation display was another red warning, this one shaped like a car with an exclamation point.

Rick came out of the house and wanted to know what was going on. I explained the situation to him. He panicked. Suddenly he was scrambling around trying to figure out how we were going to get to the party. Apparently it was more important to him than I had realized. He insisted I turn the car off and on again to see if the light would go away and the car would shift. Predictably, this didn’t work. Then he went to his car and started clearing out the front seat.

I never ride in Rick’s car if I can help it. It’s a nice car--or it was when it was new.--roomy, leather seats, everything electric, fancy. But Rick is one of those people who eats in his car and he’s not very neat about it. Plus cleaning the car is hard for him because of his disability. Not-quite-empty food wrappers stay in there for long periods. So I wasn’t eager to take that step.

I decided to read the Prius’ owner’s manual to see if the red car warning had a simple resolution. When I opened the glove compartment to retrieve my manual, I was greeted by quiet squeaking. Nestled amid the shredded remains of my proof-of-insurance form were eight newborn rats. I sat back in my seat and stared in disbelief. Clearly the appearance of the rats and the car’s malfunction were related.

I went into the house and returned with a plastic bag and some paper towels. No use letting the rats go to waste, they’re just the right size for feeding to my little rainbow boas. I packaged them up and put them in the freezer. As I pulled the baby rats out, I realized that the nest was not composed solely of my proof-of-insurance. There was other stuff mixed in and that stuff was most likely insulation from engine wires. Looking at the glove box, I noted that when closed, it would be easily accessible from the engine side by an animal the size of a small rat. It didn’t seem that my Prius was going anywhere soon.

Still, I didn’t want to ride in Rick’s car. Luckily, Saturday night was one of those wonderful, warm, Central Texas evenings. That meant we could take my Jeep even though I can’t put the top up. The wind ruffled us and hay blew in our faces but we got to the party on time.

Monday morning I called the service department at the dealer and explained my problem. I’m pretty sure they’d never heard it before. A tow truck came and hauled my Prius in. He’d never heard it before either.

The next day the mechanic called to give me the good news, “only” $300 to fix the wiring although it could have been much worse. Especially, he continued, considering that they discovered two more rats’ nests, one in with the spare tire and the other in the engine for a total of fifteen more baby rats. Sadly, I did not get to save these for snake food.

Today I started cleaning the garage. Although there is some evidence of rats, I haven’t actually found any, dead or alive, adults or babies. I don’t get it. I mean, I kind-of expect some rats to be around. We’ve seen the small, brown native rats around the property before. And the horses’ grain is just outside, plus the horses are sloppy eaters, spilling food everywhere. In that way they’re like Rick.

So why were the rats in my car and not Rick’s? I keep my car clean. It’s just not right.

Photo: Before his paralysis Rick stored all kinds of junk in the rafters in the garage. It's still there but now I think it's full of rats.

Article: Buzz's surgery

2007-10-18T19:33:00.001-07:00

Buzz walking with vet students down the halls of the Texas A&M Large Animal Hospital

I had never been up to College Station before this week but I knew Texas A&M had the only veterinary school in the state. It’s not close but it’s not too far, which turned out to be lucky for me since my twenty year old gelding Buzz was diagnosed with a thyroid tumor requiring surgical removal.

I’ve never had a horse that needed surgery before. They get their share of cuts and scrapes, sprained joints and infections, but horses are resilient animals. They recover from almost anything with a few antibiotics and a good rinse a couple of times per day. And it’s very difficult to tell when something is wrong with them. Unless it’s their legs or feet, horses are incredibly stoic. The only way I knew Buzz was sick was that he lost weight. That’s not to say he stopped eating, he ate better than ever, but the pounds melted off him.

I was impressed when I arrived at the Large Animal Hospital parking lot of Texas A&M. The place was designed for easy parking for a whole bunch of trucks pulling horse trailers. I registered Buzz and went out to unload him. It turned out we were a few minutes early for our one o’clock appointment. To the west, dark clouds loomed, slowly advancing on our position. Luckily, the student labor quickly brought us inside, moments before the clouds burst violently open.

Buzz went into an immaculate individual exam room with all the modern facilities. The floor was spotless and slightly springy to make it easy for horses to walk. The ceiling was high to give horses the illusion of space they need to remain calm. Skylights provided natural light for most areas.

Several fourth-year vet student gave Buzz a quick physical, either they didn’t have much to do or they thought Buzz’s case was especially interesting. When they finished, their professor made an appearance. He listed to the students’ evaluation and asked me a few questions. Then he explained that the tumor was almost certainly benign and did not require surgical removal. In addition, such a tumor could not be responsible for the weight loss that made me seek veterinary help in the first place since Buzz’s thyroid function tested normal. I didn’t know what to think. I’d driven 130 miles in hopes of curing my horse. This did not sound promising.

They decided they might as well do an ultrasound of the tumor just to verify it was what they thought. The whole entourage--me, Buzz, the vet, and four or five vet students--went down the hall to the ultrasound room. There we met a vet who specialized in ultrasound and another vet tech or two to handle the machines. Buzz endured everything without a single spook as they sprayed alcohol on his neck and poked him endlessly.

Finally, the ultrasound vet said the tumor did not look good. It needed to be removed after all. He phoned another vet to find out where a thyroid tumor might migrate. Then they recommend chest xrays. No point removing the main tumor if there were already baby tumors infiltrating his body, they explained. The diagnosis had gone from the-tumor-is-nothing to your-horse-might-already-be-dead. Not a good feeling. I was glad Buzz didn’t understand. Luckily the xrays came back negative. Buzz had a reprieve.

Buzz spent the night in a special stall in a hallway that looked more like a prison block than a stable. His hour-and-a-half long surgery took place the following morning. Everything went well and the good news was that the tumor was encapsulated, making it less likely to have metastasized. The bad news was that it was highly vascularized, making it more likely to have metastasized. The tumor itself was sent to pathology which will take several days to come back with a diagnosis on the actual nature of the tumor.

In the meantime, Buzz is home again and doing well. Once his throat stops hurting, he’ll go back to eating four times the ration of grain I gave him before he got sick, still in the hopes of putting some weight back on him. Although the thyroid tumor was life-threatening, the vet still says it could not be responsible for his weight loss.

I admit, I am impressed and intimidated by the facilities and expertise of the veterinarians and students at the A&M Large Animal Hospital, but there is one thing my scientific background tells me: while it is not impossible for two unrelated potentially terminal conditions to arise at the same time, it is unlikely. From my experiences with medical doctors and my broken wrist, I know that medicine is not a science, everything is guesswork. I am hopeful that removing the tumor will restore my horse’s health. Poor horse, he probably thinks we know what we’re doing.

Photo: Clarissa Leight (age 10) riding Buzz in April, 2007, just before he got sick.

Photo: Buzz waiting for his trailer ride up to A&M--or, preferably, more food
Photo: Buzz getting chest xrays to see if the cancer has already spread.
Photo: I don't think I've ever seen Buzz more miserable than when he got out of surgery.
Photo: Poor horse!

Article: What makes a rodent a rodent?

2007-10-11T13:49:00.001-07:00

Tequila, the pet mouse, peeks out of a "log"

I take my pet capybara Caplin everywhere. She goes out to lunch, to various flooring stores looking for new vinyl for the laundry room, to get new tires on my truck, to buy paint brushes. It’s surprising how many places you can take a capybara, maybe because she’s so unusual and people just don’t know what to think.

Wherever we go, Caplin gets a lot of attention. People want to know what she is. Of course, “capybara” doesn’t mean much so I have to further explain that capybaras are the world’s largest rodent. “Oh,” many people respond, “a giant rat.” I don’t have anything against rats, they’re smart, cute and they make great pets, but Caplin is not a rat. Nevertheless this common reaction led me to wonder exactly what it is that makes a rodent a rodent.

Over one quarter of all mammal species are rodents and several rodent species are commonly kept as pets. A hamster or a gerbil is often a child’s introduction to the responsibilities of pet ownership. When I was growing up we kept guinea pigs. Other rodents are prairie dogs, nutria, groundhogs, squirrels, marmots, gophers, beavers, lemmings, chinchillas, chipmunks and porcupines.

Most rodents are very social and very vocal, although much of their vocalization is outside the range of human hearing. The prairie dog is thought to have the most sophisticated animal language known. Naked mole rats, such as the one depicted in the cartoon “Kim Possible,” are the only eusocial mammal. Like ants and termites, naked mole rats are born into “castes” for which they develop unique physical traits. There is a colony of naked mole rats at the Houston Zoo and it is well worth a visit.

The main identifying characteristic of rodents is their teeth. Rodents have four very large teeth at the front of their mouths, two on the bottom and two on the top. These incisors grow throughout their lives and rodents must gnaw on things to wear them down. The teeth retain their edge due to a natural sharpening process. Thick enamel on the front but not on the back results in a wear pattern that constantly sharpens the teeth. Note that although rabbits have similar looking teeth, they are not rodents and belong to the Lagomorpha.

Another characteristic of rodents is that they are able to digest cellulose, the tough polysaccharide that makes up plant cell walls. They do this through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria. Rodents have a specialized adaptation of the large intestine called the caecum where cellulose digestion takes place. Because cellulose breakdown occurs in the large intestine while absorption takes place in the stomach, rodents first eliminate the partially digested plant material in the form of pellets. The rodents then practice coprophagy which entails eating the passed pellets and returning them to the stomach for further digestion.

Most rodents are herbivores although rats and mice are omnivorous and a few species are specialized carnivores. The large incisors can be used to crack open seeds, cut tough plant stalks (in the case of beavers this even includes trees) and gain access to well-hidden human food stores.

Rodents association with food supplies and their ability to carry human disease has probably led to much of their negative image. It is common knowledge that the “Black Death,” the great bubonic plague epidemic that led to the Industrial Revolution, was spread by fleas that spent part of their lives on rats. Recently hanta virus has given the adorable prairie dog a bad name. On the bright side, rodents neither get nor carry the rabies virus.

I’m not sure how any of this information is going to help me explain Caplin to people who meet her. I’m sure they’re not going to want to know about the disease or the coprophagy aspects of rodent life. Maybe I’ll just mention she’s related to beavers. Or chipmunks, who can resist those little cuties?

Photo: Tequila's babies at the "hopper" stage.Photo: Caplin the capybara demonstrating the distinctive rodent teeth.
Photo: Prairie dogs, like this one from Big Spring, TX, have a complex social system and a language to match.
Photo: This groundhog lived in a burrow in a cemetery in Maine.
Photo: Chipmunks, or ground squirrels, are brightly colored and cute. This one lives in Yosemite National Park in California.
Photo: Squirrels, like most rodents, are herbivores. This one is eating a pear from a tree in my backyard.
Photo: There are more species of rodents than any other mammals. Notice this squirrel from Yosemite National Park looks quite different from the one from Texas.

Article: Husbands are slobs

2007-10-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

Rick shopping for washers and driers

Sometimes I wonder how women and men ever get along together. At least I wonder how my husband Rick and I do. My month-long vacation started this week and I have been busy, busy, busy, working around the house. My first goal is to renovate the laundry room and I have diligently attacked the problem.

This weekend, I dragged Rick to Lowe’s to look at washer / drier combinations. What a struggle! In the end he only went because he wanted to buy some dumb little thing for himself. That’s not to say the washer and drier aren’t important to him, he just doesn’t want to do any work to select them. Of course, he would complain if they don’t meet his unstated criteria.

We also examined sheet vinyl options. Rick has absolutely no opinion about this except price and minimizing the disruption to his life. He also commented on the affect of various colors and patterns on the resale value of our house. This is ridiculous. We’ve lived here fifteen years and we’re not moving any time soon. Furthermore, I can’t imagine that any aspect of the laundry room would be the deciding factor for a serious buyer. It wasn’t for us and the laundry room looked terrible when we bought the house--as it still does.

Aside from that, the only contribution Rick has made is to worry about how long we might be without laundry facilities. I claim that the correct order to do things is to move the old appliances out, paint the room, put in the floor and finally get the new appliances. Rick disagrees. He insists that we keep the old appliances alive and functioning right up until the moment they are replaced by the new appliances.

This is clearly insane. It would make it much more difficult to paint the room, especially since I have to paint the ceiling. Rick says I can just move the washer and drier to the opposite side of the room while I’m painting. How hard can that be? And, after all, it won’t take more than a day to do the painting.

Exasperated, I said no. I’m doing all the work and I’m making all the decisions so we’ll just move them outside and we can go a week without laundry facilities. After all, I pointed out, he took almost a year off work and didn’t get anything done around the house. I’m sacrificing my vacation, he can take a little bit of inconvenience.

His witty repartee was that he didn’t do anything around the house while unemployed because he didn’t want to. It’s not his fault that I want to fix things up. Ugh! There are a million things that need to be done around this house but Rick takes no responsibility for any of them. For example, the laundry room is full of Rick’s junk. A lot of this is tools we don’t need in the house, for example a circular saw, or drill bits without the drill. I told Rick this stuff had to go out to the garage. Rick countered that the garage is too disorganized for him to be able to find anything.

Cleaning the garage is also on my list of things to do so I understand Rick’s contention that you can’t find anything out there. In fact, you can’t even get to areas that are too far removed from where I park my car. And why is that? It is full of Rick’s stuff, probably including the drill that goes with the bits.

So why do I have to clean his mess up during my vacation? Why does Rick get away with saying that he didn’t feel like doing anything around the house? It’s my own fault really. I knew he was a slob when we first met. He and his roommate had mold growing in the ice in their freezer. Stupidly, I thought he could be trained out of this.

I’m older and wiser now. I know it is pointless to ask him to put things away. He doesn’t even know what that means. And I suppose his argument that he is disabled gets him out of doing any of the actual work. But I insist that he participate in the selection. It’s the least he can do even if it is also the most he can do.

Photo: Floor samples. I choose the one at the bottom right.

Article: Quest for nature in Uvalde

2007-10-07T14:26:00.001-07:00

A fritillary butterfly on frost weed

A couple of weeks ago I decided to take another stab at attending a nature oriented festival. This is one in a series of nature festivals for me. Two years ago I started this trend with a trip to the Rio Grande Valley for a butterfly festival. Then last year I went to Roswell, New Mexico for a dragonfly festival. I’m not up to anything so grandiose this year, in fact, I’d thought I would skip the whole nature-fest scene. Then my friend Elizabeth pointed me at one in Uvalde. That’s far but not too far. We could do it in a day trip.

Uvalde lies in the Texas Hill Country River Region. They hold both a Spring and Fall Nature Quest every year. (You can find out about the next one at: www.thcrr.com). Since Uvalde is about 2.5 hours away (or 4 hours if you go the way we went), we missed the morning’s activities. We did arrive in time for lunch and the afternoon tours. Elizabeth and I opted to go on a butterfly hunt. We hopped in a van with the other tour members and headed down a dirt road toward a remote ranch.

I was impressed to find the other tour members had come even farther than we had: Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma, Mexico. I had thought we’d be the most far-flung since this festival is rather small. And they all knew each other. Their conversation focused on which was better, to be a bird watcher or a butterfly watcher. The consensus was that it is easier to be butterfly watchers and it is therefore more fun.

Fun or not, they took the whole thing more seriously than Elizabeth and I. For example one woman named the species of each of the butterflies she saw as the van drove down the bumpy dirt road toward the ranch. Maybe her view was better than mine but I could hardly even see those butterflies. We passed a group of wild turkeys foraging alongside the road but they hardly raised a comment from our fellow butterfly-watchers.

Finally we reached our destination at the end of the road high in the hills. I thought we would be in for a bit of hiking, seeking out those elusive butterflies in every nook and cranny of the rugged landscape. We started at a patch of frost weed on a sunny slope a few feet from where we parked. We spent about an hour examining every flutter of colorful wings that came anywhere near those flowers, never traveling more than a few dozen feet. It was nice. There were quite a few butterflies. But it lacked drama, no matter how our guide yelled that we should rush to see his newest find.

Later we drove about a quarter mile to view butterflies along a creek. There really weren’t many there but there were other interesting things. I got some photos of a lynx spider eating a hairstreak butterfly. That was pretty interesting to watch. And I spotted a tiny jumping spider with indigo eyes and bright blue pedipalps. A tiny frog blended perfectly with the pebbles on the bank of the creek.

While Elizabeth and I had fun on our tour of Hill Country butterflies, I think we didn’t fit in in crucial ways. We aren’t dedicated enough as butterfly watchers. For example, we didn’t even bring a butterfly field guide. Secondly, we’re more active and more interested in hiking around to see wildlife while getting some exercise. Another point is that we are not part of the butterfly clique. It’s probably more fun if you know the other people. Elizabeth and I aren’t outgoing enough to insinuate ourselves that doesn’t go out of its way to include us.

Surprisingly, the age distribution was skewed way toward the high end . Apparently butterfly watchers are all retired people. I imagined all ages would be interested but especially families with preteen children. What better way to teach children about the wonders of nature than to experience the diversity of everyone’s favorite insects? Maybe the kids were missing because school just started. There’s another Nature Quest in the Spring. Elizabeth and I may go. If we bring her kids we can at least attempt to reverse the trend.

Photo: This tiny frog blended perfectly with the rocks down by a creek.
Photo: Hairstreak butterflies were the most common types we saw.
Photo: This little jumping spider was no doubt waiting for an unsuspecting butterfly.
Photo: I have no idea what kind of bug this is but I thought it was cute.
Photo: Virtually all the butterflies we saw were feeding on frost weed, which is enormous and plentiful with all the rain we've gotten this year.

Article: Dream vacation

2007-09-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Something needs to be done with this laundry room

This year I managed to wrangle some extra vacation from work. I get the entire month of October off. It’s a rare opportunity that I decided to waste by working on the house.

We’ve been in this house about eighteen years and the one room I have ignored completely is the laundry room. I hate spending time in there possibly because I hate doing laundry. However, I am going to assume it’s because the room is ugly and if I change the room I’ll change myself.

At first I just thought I’d paint it a bright color. It is dirty white now and a coat of yellow paint might be just what it needs. But isn’t yellow both predictable and boring? To spice it up, I could paint the cabinets red. I stood in the doorway and stared at the coffin-like rectangular room. I could paint a red sun in the far corner and put a few red rays across the walls. It would still be mostly yellow with red cabinets. My imagination soared.

Of course the room needed a new floor. The current floor is sheet linoleum and has curled up along the edges ever since we lived here. I’m tired of that. So new linoleum. But what color? Red would be too overpowering. Yellow didn’t seem right. Maybe blue, then it would be like sun shinning on water. Or green, sun on the grass.

I started talking over my laundry room vision with my husband. I told him I want to get rid of the freezer that takes up one large corner of the room. It is full of food we’re never going to eat. We don’t need it anymore since the kids moved out. Rick agreed. To my surprise, he added that we should get a new washer and dryer.

So far I hadn’t really contemplated doing anything expensive. A new washer / dryer moves us into a different category. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. Strangely, Rick was adamant about it. Our current set is old and functions poorly at best but they almost seem like part of the family. If we got new ones, maybe they would be more energy efficient. Maybe they would be quieter. Maybe they would be a color to match the new walls and floor. That last thing got my buy-in, we need a new washer/dryer.

The next time I had to do laundry, my mind viewed the laundry room in all its new glory. I decided to take before and after photos. I stood in the hallway snapping the photos when my eyes wandered to the hall itself. Because of Rick’s disability, he often puts his hand on the wall to steady himself. Years of this means that the walls are filthy. I’ll need to paint the hallway too.

Something inside me clicked and suddenly it seemed the whole house needed modification. I remembered that I originally planned to use stencils to put falling leaves near the ceiling in the family room. I could do that in October. That would require getting a really tall ladder since the ceiling is sixteen feet at its peak. While I’m up there I should change the light bulbs that have been burned out for the last year. And clean out the cobwebs in the high corners.

While I’m working in the family room, I should get the sheet rock repaired from when we had a plumbing leak two years ago. That reminded me that there is another sheet rock repair job to do in the kitchen. And maybe I should replace the wallpaper. I guess I need to take some more “before” pictures.

Suddenly a month doesn’t seem that long. I must be dreaming to think I can get all that done.

Photo: That freezer and the awful floor both have to go. And what about those dumb ladders?
Photo: We're going to replace this bland washer/dryer pair with a nice, new, brightly colored pair.

Article: A capybara on MySpace

2007-09-20T00:53:00.000-07:00

Screen capture of Caplin the Capybara's MySpace page

I belong to a writing group that meets twice a month. All the people in the group are writing novels. It’s a big ambition, ridiculous for the most part. I can live with that. We all have to have dreams. At each meeting we have thirty seconds to answer a random question about our writing. The question is supposed to help break the ice and reveal something about ourselves. This last week, we gave our responses to, “Do you have a blog?”

I was surprised that only I and one other woman had blogs. This dearth of internet savvy puzzled me. I guess most of my writing compatriots are older but even so, this is the twenty-first century isn’t it? And aren’t blogs a type of writing? Shouldn’t people who like to write be writing blogs?

It’s true that most blogs are pretty boring. Even blogs written by people who know how to write and have written on great topics, even those blogs tend to be so devoid of meaning that you wonder how they can say so little in so many words. Maybe it’s because people think it’s really interesting to write about their own lives, as if they are special or unique in some important way, which is almost certainly not true.

My blog is not like that. I’m as boring as the next person, maybe even more so, but my blog isn’t about me, it’s about my pet capybara, Caplin.

Those who know, know that lots of pets have blogs. Caplin’s blog, (I write in her “voice”), is on her MySpace page (www.MySpace.com/CaplinRous). MySpace is a hotbed of animal blogs. Most animal bloggers are dogs and cats, probably just as boring as people. But nearly all groups of animals are represented. One of Caplin’s MySpace friends is a snake. The snake has lots of snake MySpace friends. Caplin doesn’t have any capybara MySpace friends.

The thing about MySpace, blogs, YouTube and the like, is that you need to have something unique to say, but not too unique. For example, a pet capybara apparently doesn’t attract many readers. Most people don’t know what a capybara is, and if they do, they don’t think about searching MySpace to become friends with one. The reptile crowd is one up on the capybaras in internet presence and communication.

While Caplin’s MySpace provides information about capybaras, it could also be used by psychology students as an example of an 1obsession. Along with blog entries, I’ve got photos and videos of Caplin up there. I did a full customization on her page while my personal page has virtually nothing. Nearly every day I feel compelled to add something, a blog entry, a photo, a video. I do nothing to my own page. I want to share Caplin with the world.

The world isn’t looking. I’m not just guessing that, I know it for a fact. I can see how many people have viewed Caplin’s page and altogether it’s less than 250. Probably most of those hits are me. And she only has seventeen friends. Is it possible to be a nerd and an outcast on MySpace? I don’t want Caplin to suffer that kind of humiliation.

Maybe that’s why my writing friends don’t blog. Maybe they don’t have an animal to take the fall for them. With no pet to hide behind, their own lack of popularity would be exposed. For example, I am somewhat humiliated that, while Caplin isn’t exactly popular, she still has more MySpace friends than I do. Luckily I don’t have a delicate ego--or I’m living vicariously through my capybara.

Article: Not my birthday

2007-09-09T17:07:00.001-07:00

The second photo out of my new camera. Caplin sitting on my lap.

It’s not my birthday but I got a present anyway. I bought it for myself, which is the best way to be sure to get something you like. I bought my present over the internet, quick and easy, and everything seems available.

What I bought is a fancy-schmancy new camera. It’s a digital SLR alot like my old one except that technology has moved on and this is the new and improved version. I bought the camera for a trip to Rick’s niece’s Bat Mitzvah. I wouldn’t actually have bought a camera for that, I don’t like photographing people. But when I decided to drive up to Denver, well, you never know what you’ll see and my old camera just did not seem up to the task.

As can be expected when ordering online, the camera didn’t actually arrive in time for the trip. It was waiting for me when I got home. I would have been more excited but the drive back from Denver took longer than I’d planned. It was almost two o’clock in the morning and I had work the next day. So the camera spent one more day sitting on the table in its unopened box.

The next day when I got home from work I was too tired to look at it. I needed to get some sleep after all that hard driving. The camera spent another day in its box.

But Wednesday when I got home, I spirited the magical package off to my room. Sitting at the chair in front of my computer, I sifted through the contents. Wow that camera looks nice. It has a lot more controls than my old camera. I’m sure I have no idea how to use it.

I’m also sure I have no intention of reading the manual. I pried the documentation from its shrink wrap and opened to the first page. The heading read, “Preventing Serious Injury or Death.” That just makes the whole manual seem stupid. How many people could possibly have been killed by a camera? I suppose it’s possible that if you swung it hard at someone, maybe a baby with a soft skull, and you hit them just right, but who can take that threat seriously?

So I set the manual down, pulled out all the contents of the box and set to work. There were a few things I figured I already knew how to do. This camera takes the same battery as my old camera, so I knew how to charge the battery and install it in the camera. The new camera is the same brand as my old one so it has the same lens mount. I knew how to attach a lens to the body and I even had a lens to attach. The memory card installed the same way also.

That was the end of the easy tasks. The next thing to do was put the shoulder strap on. The mounts on the camera body were obvious. The straps themselves seemed pretty straight forward. And yet, it was not so. I was forced to open the manual again. Naturally that didn’t help. It turned out one of the little plastic keepers had to be used in a particular orientation that was not obvious. Given a 50-50 chance, I’d chosen the wrong way.

Then I turned on the camera. It came up with a screen for setting the date and time. I fiddled with the controls. I want the date and time to be right so I couldn’t move on to actual photography until I fixed this. Sadly, I realized I would have to open the manual and start reading. Annoyingly, the information on setting the date and time doesn’t appear in the manual until page 39. I didn’t read those first 38 pages but they got in my way.

All that done, I was finally ready to take my first photo. Caplin, my two month old capybara, was sleeping on my lap so she provided the obvious subject. It was hard focusing on something so close so I had to lean back in my chair to get enough distance. I snapped the shutter and examined the image on the LCD. Blurry. I put the lens on autofocus and tried again. The second image came out much better but still nothing to write home about.

I hope I’m not actually going to have to read the manual before I can get good photographs. For some reason I have all the time in the world to take pictures but absolutely no time to learn how to do it.

Photo: A giant praying mantis made from car parts that I saw on the way to Denver. I wish I'd had my new camera for this photo.

Photo: View from the Texas panhandle. If only I'd been able to take this with my new, higher resolution camera!

Article: Total eclipse of the moon

2007-09-09T16:56:00.001-07:00

Lunar eclipse during initial partial phase

Seems like everyone is always complaining about how hot it is in Texas during the summer. But that’s one of the things I love about Texas, especially the summer nights. What could be better than standing in the warm night air and drinking in the star light? Central Texas is great for amateur astronomers.

Actually, I’m kind-of lying, the warm air is not really that great for astronomers. Cool air holds less water and is therefore clearer than warm air and better for stargazing. However if, like me, you are not willing to stand outside in the cold, then it doesn’t matter how clear cold air is. That is what makes Central Texas summers perfect for people like me.

I was standing outside in the warm, moist morning air at 4:30 Tuesday morning to view the total lunar eclipse. I had my camera propped up on some pillows on my husband’s car since I wasn’t able to find a working tripod. The horses were out for the night and had nothing better to do then poke me with their muzzles to see if food would appear. And slowly the moon disappeared. The horses were completely unimpressed.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the shadow of the Earth falls on the surface of the moon. Since the moon is visible to half the world at any time, it’s about the easiest celestial event to witness. As the shadow moves, the bright face of the full moon gradually darkens. When you think about it, that’s amazing. You can actually view the relative movements of the Earth and Moon.

Looking closely as the eclipse progressed, I noticed that the boundary between light and dark was not a clean, sharp line. This fuzziness provided a mental contrast with memories of stark images from lunar landings. Even though I understood the phenomenon was due to diffusion of sunlight passing through the Earth’s atmosphere, it was still surprising to see.

Gradually, the entire moon fell into shade and the full glory of the eclipse manifested. The shadow of the Earth is not completely black. Some sunlight is scattered as it passes through the thin veil of the Earth’s atmosphere. If viewed from the moon, the Earth would appear to be ringed in fire, the red-orange color of infinite sunsets and sunrises. That diffused light falls on the darkened moon making it shine a dim but beautiful firebrick red.

The next lunar eclipse that will be visible in the United States is in February of 2008. Since the sun and the moon are on opposite sides of the Earth every month during the full moon, you might wonder why there isn’t an eclipse every month. This is because the orbit of the moon does not lie exactly in the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, it’s about five degrees off. This is just enough to cause the moon to slide above or below the Earth’s shadow during most full moons.

One of the great sites of the internet is space.com. There’s a wealth of information there for anyone interested in astronomy. Go to http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_070829.html for some excellent images from this week’s eclipse. Another good site is www.MrEclipse.com. That site includes tables showing when and where to expect both lunar and solar eclipses and tips for photographing eclipses. None of the tips includes using pillows, pushing horses out of the way or living somewhere where the night air is like a warm blanket rather than a slap in the face. Obviously the tip section could use some expansion.

Photo: Lunar eclipse during totality.

Article: Lessons from the Austin Zoo

2007-08-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

Prairie Dog at the Austin Zoo (looks a little fat)

I often drive the stretch of Hwy. 290 leading from Dripping Springs to Austin. Along that road is a sign that always catches my attention, an arrow pointing down Circle Drive with the words “Austin Zoo.” I love animals and I love zoos but somehow I never had the time to stop. This weekend, I decided to finally go and to bring my son and his family along.

Celeste, who is eight, was excited about going to the zoo. She’s a cat person and really wanted to see the big cats, especially the tigers. The rest of us wanted to see the pair of adult capybaras the zoo was reputed to have.

Zoos these days all have missions. Of course one mission is to educate the public about the beauty and diversity of life on Earth. In addition to that mission, the Austin Zoo is a rescue zoo. Over 90 percent of their 300 animals have been rescued. A sign at the entrance admonishes visitors not to keep exotic animals as pets. Well that put a stop to me telling them I have a pet capybara.

Still, I understand their point. The zoo gets around 200 requests per year to take unwanted animals. People don’t always consider the long term commitment they are entering into when they get a pet. Even with dogs and cats, few consider whether the animal will fit into their lives in the five, ten or even fifteen years that the animal will live. Local animal shelters are full of abandoned pets who have outlived their owners’ interest.

Responsible pet ownership also involves selecting a pet that you have the time and facilities to care for. Most people can accommodate a dog or cat but not many could care for a bear, a tiger or an anaconda. Surprisingly, according to the Austin Zoo web site, there are more tigers in Texas than anywhere else in the world. Some are in zoos, some in “roadside attractions,” some are pets and others are at game ranches waiting to be “hunted.”

Those are the obviously bad choices for pets. There are less obvious ones. I might as well go through my own pets as examples.

Firstly, I have horses. Horses aren’t like most pets, they retain value throughout most of their lives. But horses live a very long time and toward the end they typically can’t be ridden. I lost a horse this summer who was twenty-nine years old. She’d had only very light use the last five years of her life, occasionally taking small children for short rides. I have the land to retire a horse. People who are spending $300 per month for board are much less likely to keep a horse past its useful life. Those horses end up going to slaughter.

I also have reptiles. For my son Philip’s first birthday, I got him a young leopard tortoise. It’s a gift that lasts a lifetime. Leopolda is now at least twenty-eight years old and weighs fifty pounds. I have structured my yard around a large tortoise. I have a good sturdy fence she can’t see through, a nice pond for water, no poisonous plants, and several fruit trees. In 1989 I gave Philip a Florida kingsnake. I still have that snake eighteen years later.

Before I bought my baby capybara, I considered whether I have the facilities for her. I have the nicely fenced yard that I built for Leopolda, including a pond. I want Caplin to be an indoor / outdoor pet but if that doesn’t work out and if she can’t just stay in the yard, I have a couple of pastures with wire mesh fence that I can configure for capybara use.

So we went to the Austin Zoo to take a look at their capybaras and compare their behaviors to Caplin’s. We wondered if she’d still be as friendly when she gets big and will she still make the cute noises. We ran into the general curator, Jim Carroccio, out at the tiger enclosure and asked about the capybaras. Jim told us that the zoo’s pair had died of old age a couple of years previously. We asked about capybara personality and Jim characterized them as “cow-like.” I think Caplin is going to prove him wrong. She’s already got a ton of personality

Photo: My baby capybara, the instigation for the zoo trip.
Photo: Leopolda, a leopard tortoise I've had for 27 years.
Photo: Many of the zoos animals are rescued, like this blind leopard.
Photo: Celeste taking a turn at Duck, Duck, Goose.
Photo: Austin zoo scenic.

Article: Taking the long way

2007-08-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

The AmerScot Inn, a B&B where I stayed in Stow, MA

I have a saying most people might not agree with but which suits me fine: if it’s worth going, it’s worth going the long way. Application of this motto provides glimpses into local culture and scenes that are completely missed when traveling direct routes or suffering confinement to major highways. It also makes me late.

This past weekend, I had the chance to put my travel paradigm into action. I found myself staying at a nice little bed and breakfast in the small town of Stow about an hour outside Boston. I travel quite a bit for work but seldom end up someplace that’s not completely urban. Stow is decidedly non-urban.

The AmerScot Inn (http://amerscot.com) provided a nice jumping-off point for my little adventure. Friday morning I had an excellent breakfast prepared by Doreen Gibson, the innkeeper, and followed by a short meeting with a potential customer. Then my day was free. All I had to do was get from Stow, Massachusetts to Bangor, Maine, a trip that takes about four hours on the major highways.

My natural proclivity in the area of indirection was given a boost when the customer advised me of a beautiful route along the New Hampshire side of the Maine / New Hampshire border. He warned that it was considerably longer. But I had all afternoon! So what if I got there at 6:00 instead of 4:00? Still plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely dinner and a long chat with my nephew in Bangor when I arrived.

Of course there’s no point taking a scenic route unless you stop to admire the scenes. Which I did. There was the adorable little town of Sandwich about half-way up the state. I stopped to look in a local art gallery and found a wonderful watercolor of marine invertebrates that I am going to regret not buying for years.

A little farther on, a sign pointed me to covered bridge #54. I had never seen a covered bridge so naturally I had to go. Number 54 turned out to be the Durgin Bridge, originally constructed in 1844 but apparently the current incarnation dates from 1869. Still, you don’t find bridges like that in Texas.

Near the New Hampshire / Canada / Maine intersect lies the town of Conway. That place must be a major tourist destination because I hit stop-and-go traffic well outside of town. When I parked my car to take a photo of some flowers with tree-covered mountains for a backdrop, a little tourist train put a stop to the go part of stop-and-go as it crossed the road between the tightly packed cars. I eyed the train enviously. If only I had time to ride it. Yet by this time I realized my arrival in Bangor was going to be a little later than six o’clock.

On the Maine side of the border I encountered a giant statue of Paul Bunyan in Rumford. The largest Paul Bunyan statue is actually in Bangor and I’d already seen that but this one nice too. Still no Babe the Blue Ox, which seems like a shame.

I didn’t make it into Bangor until after 10:00 pm, much later than I expected. Still, I saw a lot of things I never would have otherwise. Tired as I was, I did not regret my route. However, if I ever get a chance to do that particular drive again, I think I’ll take two days. And I’ll buy that watercolor in Sandwich.

Photo: Durgin bridge in New Hampshire.

Photo: The town of Conway, NH with traffic and a little tourist train.
Photo: Somewhere in western Maine.
Photo: Giant Paul Bunyan statue in Rumford, ME
Photo: Taken from Cliff Island off the Maine coast near Portland.

Article: Bats rule the world

2007-08-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

A flying fox bat takes off from its tree roost in Mysore, India

Last weekend I visited the most amazing location. I went to the place with the largest concentration of mammals anywhere in the world! I didn’t have to journey to the African Rift Valley or the rain forests of the Amazon. I didn’t even have to leave Texas. In fact, I only traveled about fifty miles from my home in Buda.

Maybe it’s not surprising that the largest concentration of mammals is composed of members of one of the most diverse mammalian groups, the bats. Bats, in the order Chiroptera, are only outdone in terms of numbers of species by the rodents. There are over 900 species of bats comprising about one fifth of all mammalian species. The bats at the world’s largest colony at Bracken Cave just north of San Antonio are Mexican free-tailed bats, the same species as the colony under the Congress Avenue bridge in downtown Austin.

Bats can be divided into two groups, the small microbats and the large macrobats. The microbats have a nearly world-wide distribution and include all of the 47 species of bats found in the US. These bats use echolocation (or sonar) and feed mainly on insects. The macrobats, also known as flying foxes, live in a swath from Australia, through Southeast Asia and Africa, including Madagascar and many oceanic islands. Flying foxes do not use echolocation and most species feed on fruit. As their names suggest, microbats are generally considerably smaller than megabats. The largest of the flying foxes have a wingspan of up to six feet. The smallest of the microbats, the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighs less than a penny and is considered to be the world’s smallest mammal.

When I was a little girl living in Panama, we used to sleep inside netting, mostly to escape the mosquitoes but also to prevent vampire bats from biting our toes at night. The threat from vampire bats is not really the bite, which doesn’t hurt at all since the bats provide a local anesthetic, or the loss of blood since each bat drinks only about two tablespoons. The real issue is rabies, which is more common in vampire bats than in other bat species, as can be expected by their feeding habits. The United States is well outside the range of vampire bats and about one in five hundred bats here carries rabies. In the US, an average of one person per year contracts rabies from a bat.

Aside from the prospect of rabies, bats have a large impact on human life. The colony at Bracken Cave consumes an estimated 200 tons of flying insects each night. Many of those insects are crop pests. Several plant species such as mango, clove, guava and avocado depend on bats for pollination. The large flying foxes are also hunted for food throughout much of their range.

Watching the bats emerge from Bracken Cave is an awe-inspiring experience. For a couple of hours before sunset, the bats swirl around just inside the mouth of the cave. It takes several minutes to notice that the dark rocks on the outer lip of the cave are not dark at all, what you are really seeing is thousands of densely packed bats. Just before the sun goes down a few brave bats spiral out of the sinkhole containing the cave opening and fly off in lonely solitude. As the sun disappears, a thin trickle of bats winds its way across the darkening sky. Well before full-dark that trickle has become a torrent with a seemingly endless flow of bats streaming forth. The wind from their wings causes the nearby trees to sway as if a gentle breeze were blowing.

Central Texas is also fortunate to be the home of Bat Conservation International (BCI) which was founded in Austin in 1982. BCI is dedicated to bat conservation world-wide and owns nearly 700 acres surrounding and including Bracken Cave. Tours such as the one I attended are offered periodically throughout the summer. Visit their website for information on how to join a tour.

Bat Conservation International:
http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp
Flying Fox Conservation Fund:
http://www.flyingfoxconservationfund.com
Organization for Bat Conservation:
http://www.batconservation.org/

Photo: Opening of Bracken Cave with bats milling about before sunset.
Photo: The bats at Bracken Cave were coming out pretty thickly at this point although they came out in even greater densities after it was too dark to photograph them.
Photo: These microbats were roosting on a tree trunk in Venezuela.

Photo: Flying foxes heading out for a night of fruit feasting, near Labuanbajo, Flores, Indonesia. These large bats fly like birds rather than like small insectivorous bats like the Mexican free-tailed bats at Bracken Cave.Photo: Flying foxes roosting in trees in Mysore, India
Photo: From a distance the bats look like large hanging fruit.

Article: The cutest rodent in the world

2007-07-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Close-up of a baby capybara named Caplin

I’m writing this article with a capybara sleeping on my lap. Capybaras are the world’s largest rodents with adults reaching 150 pounds. Caplin weighs about four pounds but she’s only fifteen days old. She has already doubled in weight since she was born.

Caplin is my new pet but she’s not the only pet rodent to have inhabited this house. When my daughter was a teenager she had a pet rat named Rainbow. Properly treated and maintained, rats make excellent pets. They’re smart, clean and personable. They can identify people and can learn tricks.

Capybaras don’t look like rats, they look like another rodent commonly kept as pets, guinea pigs. Capybaras have big, square heads, short bodies and no tails. Also like guinea pigs, capybaras are native to South America. They range from Panama down the eastern side of the continent. Unlike guinea pigs, capybaras are semi-aquatic. They have partially webbed toes to allow them to move easily on moist or muddy ground.

My kids and I went to the Los Llanos region of Venezuela earlier this year. We saw hundreds of wild capybaras sitting on the roads, wading in the swamps or swimming in the multitude of lakes. The setting looked idyllic but life in the wild is hard for capybaras. They share the swamps with caiman, crocodiles and anacondas all of whom enjoy a delicious meal of capybara. Those are some fearsome predators. And that’s not counting the occasional jaguar.

Of course, the wild capybaras main threat comes from humans. In addition to the standard issues of habitat destruction, capybaras are also hunted. This hunting is exacerbated by the fact that capybara are considered legitimate to eat by Catholics during the forty days of lent, the only mammal to have that honor. During our stay in Los Llanos, our guide told us that capybaras in that area are only eaten during lent and hunting is prohibited the rest of the year, but this is probably not true throughout their range.

Capybara gestation takes between five and six months which seems like a long time for a rodent. A typical litter contains five babies who are born with fur and with their eyes open. In the wild, baby capybaras stay with their mothers for up to eighteen months. Even though they nurse, baby capys eat grass from their first day of life.

Pet capybaras are not easy to come by. We searched the web and could find only one breeder in the United States, fortunately located not too far away in south-western Arkansas. When we contacted her we found she didn’t have any babies for sale and that her sales were booked for many litters in advance. Luckily she pointed us to one of her previous customers who had just had a litter. His location in Nacogdoches was fortunately even closer. By the time we got there less than a week later, only one of the original five babies remained.

We’ve had Caplin five days and can already see she will make a great pet. She loves being scratched or having her ears rubbed. She litter box trained herself. She’s still a bit skittish when she thinks someone is going to catch her but otherwise she will climb all over you, chew on your hair and take food or a bottle from your hand. When she’s happy she makes quiet chirping or purring sounds, more high-pitched than a cat’s.

The large size of a mature capybara probably means Caplin will have to move out to the backyard when she gets bigger. I’m hoping she’ll help with the mowing and maybe even cut back on the plants growing in my pond. Cute, friendly and useful, capybaras make the perfect pet--I hope.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video of Caplin getting her chin scratched.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leBCilpEqbY&NR=1

Photo: Caplin sitting under a chair.

Photo: Caplin on the couch.
Photo: Coral holding a wild baby capybara in Venezuela. At night you can pick them up when they're sleeping on the road.
Photo: A capybara family swiming in Los Llanos.
Photo: When two capybaras meet, their birds swap places.

Article: A home for termites

2007-07-20T14:01:00.001-07:00

Reproductive flight of subterranean termites

A couple of weeks ago I was outside standing in a light drizzle waiting for the vet to come look at one of my horses. Due to the overabundance of rain this year, insect populations have thrived. This fact asserted itself on me most obviously through the tiny gnats that persisted in landing on and walking across every inch of my exposed skin. More annoying than even the gnats, the constant buzz of mosquitoes and their too-frequent bites kept me busy swatting the air.

The vet took forever to arrive. I had nothing to do but stare down the drive looking for her. As I did, I noticed that there were a lot of flying insects mixed in with the raindrops. Small and colorless, I assumed they were moths and paid little attention to them. It wasn’t until my daughter Coral pointed out that they were coming out of a hole in the ground that I took an interest. I went to see what was going on.

Rising from a hole amid the caliche of the driveway, emerged a constant stream of winged insects. Each new arrival took to the air as soon as it was clear of the hole. Around them bustled smaller, whitish, wingless insects. I bent down to get a closer look. I hadn’t recognized the winged alates but I immediately knew the others to be some of the most destructive insects in the world: subterranean termites. As I watched hundreds of them were taking their nuptial flights, seeking to start their own colonies.

Termites are fascinating creatures. They are the only fully social insects that are not in the hymenoptera, the order containing wasps, bees and ants. Termites belong to their own order, the isoptera. They are most closely related to cockroaches. In fact, some roaches eat wood in the same way termites do. Uniquely, termites and the aforementioned roaches, have intestinal symbiotes to digest cellulose.

Like all insects, termites have to shed their exoskeleton in order to molt. The exoskeleton actually includes the lining of the gut and so when termites shed, they lose all of their intestinal contents, including the flagellates without which they cannot live. For this reason every termite larva and every adult after molting must be re-inoculated with the correct intestinal flora. Termites do this by anal feeding. It is thought that this dependence may have the impetus that drove termites down the path to social behavior.

As I watched the seemingly endless stream of reproductives helped out of their nest by soldiers and workers, I was reminded that most termites are completely blind, only the queens and kings even have eyes. In their mounds, termites live in constant darkness and they never forage in the open. This behavior allows termite infestations in houses to persist for long periods before they are noticed.

Looking around I could see that plenty of potential for new colonies to start on or around our house. In fact, the colony that I was observing apparently lay under the driveway, the one place on our property where the availability of cellulose seems limited.

On the other hand, we also have hundreds of trees, especially along the banks of Garlic Creek which passes just in front of the house. These trees are constantly shedding small branches and leaves and the creek imports significant driftwood from upstream when it rains. Nature has a way of taking care of that stuff so that I don’t have to and that is termites. In addition, termites are a valuable food source to many birds including a family of woodpeckers that I’ve enjoyed observing this summer.

Like everything, termites have good and bad aspects when viewed from a human perspective. I guess I’m going to have to have the house inspected because the termites cannot be allowed to feed on it. On the other hand, termites are part of the natural environment and watching their nuptial flight was a unique experience and a glimpse into their nearly invisible lives. As long as they know their place, I think we can get along.

For more information:
The Insect Societies by E.O. Wilson, Harvard University Press
Dr. Don’s Termite Pages: www.drdons.net

Photo: Note that the workers are eyeless while the winged form has prominent eyes
Photo: Termite workers and soldiers aid a alate emerging from the ground
Photo: Ladderback woodpeckers looking for wood-eating insects including termites

Article: Lady Bird Johnson is my hero

2007-07-14T12:12:00.001-07:00

Lady Bird Johnson advocated planting wildflowers
along roadsides like this one in Hays County, TX

I just learned that Lady Bird Johnson died today. In a way unlike any other First Lady, Ms. Johnson made a big impact on my life. It still amazes me how much she did for this country and how much we all owe her.

I can’t remember the first time I heard the slogan, “Keep America Beautiful.” When I was young it became part of the mantra of our nation. In some vague way I knew Lady Bird was responsible for that saying but as I grew up it didn’t seem important. Or perhaps more accurately, it didn’t seem innovative or insightful, it just seemed obvious.

One day when my son was a baby, I sat on the porch talking to my mother-in-law and her sister. As they played with Philip they reminisced about when their own children were young. One thing they said that stuck with me all these years is that driving across the southern US they had used some of the first disposable diapers. And when one got dirty, they simply tossed it out the window.

Neva and Goldie weren’t bad people. As they explained, it did not occur to them not to throw the diapers out. They didn’t know how long those diapers would lie there. They didn’t think about what it would look like if everyone did what they were doing. And then Lady Bird came on the scene and began her beautification projects. It was the first time anyone had spoken to them about littering. And she changed their habits.

Lady Bird also fought the plague of billboards taking over American highways in the 1960s. I can remember when billboards lined nearly every road. If limiting those signs was all Lady Bird did, I would still be greatly in her debt. Removing the billboards has made traveling much more pleasant. Imagine what our highways would look like now without her work. Driving through the Hill Country would not provide rugged vistas dotted with wildflowers, it wouldn’t provide vistas at all, just advertisements.

Speaking of wildflowers, Lady Bird Johnson initiated the movement to line roadsides with wildflowers. All those people taking Easter photos of their kids in the bluebonnets have Lady Bird to thank for their photo-ops.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke on highway beautification, one of Lady Bird’s signature issues, saying “a new and substantial effort must be made to landscape highways to provide places of relaxation and recreation wherever our roads run.” He was speaking about flowers and billboards but I think the sentiment should be revisited today.

Continuing Lady Bird’s efforts means striving to include beauty and recreation in all highway improvements. The road bond bill that recently failed to pass in Hays County is a good example of what we shouldn’t do. Roads are not just about cars getting from one place to another, aesthetics and recreation must be considered too. Instead of a five lane thoroughfare with plain grass verges, maybe we should consider three lanes, native trees and hike and bike paths. Travel, beauty, relaxation and recreation.

Lady Bird Johnson provided an example for all Americans. She was a great woman who had tremendous influence on the way this country is experienced by all of us who share in her legacy. Let’s learn from her example and keep her spirit alive not just in our words but in our actions.

For more information on Lady Bird Johnson go to:
http://www.pbs.org/ladybird/shattereddreams/shattereddreams_report.html
or:
http://www.ladybirdjohnsontribute.org/
or:
http://www.wildflower.org/ladybird/

Photo: Wildflowers seem like the appropriate way to honor Lady Bird. These are Mexican Blanket flowers. Photo: A mix of wildflowers at Chapparral Wildlife Management Area

Article: In pursuit of painted buntings

2007-06-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

Not all birds are created equal

About a month ago I was out horseback riding when a strikingly colored bird flitted by. I caught only a glimpse knew immediately that it was a painted bunting, Passerina ciris. I’m no bird expert but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to identify a male painted bunting.

The Peterson Field Guide, Birds of Texas begins its description of this bird with “The most gaudily colored American bird.” There’s no mistaking it. The chest and belly of the male are as bright red as any cardinal, the head more brilliantly blue than a blue jay and there is a startling patch of yellow-green on its back blending to dark green feathers on the upper wing. No child would color a bird so fancifully.

I followed the painted bunting I’d spotted until it perched in the uppermost reaches of a large juniper (also known as “cedar”). Against the overcast sky, the primary colors of the bunting’s plumage disappeared into black silhouette. It soon flew to a farther location. Since it had started raining--again--I suspended the chase. But while unsaddling my horse, I was surprised to see that same bird chase a tiny hummingbird off the apex of a skeletal tree.

In the morning I was a woman on a mission. I hoped the painted bunting was staying near the house and I was determined to get a photograph. Nearly ever year, we see one or two of these birds but they disappear almost as soon as they appear. I imagined they didn’t like the mix of vegetation around our property and were headed to the Hill Country where an elusive bird could remain unseen by human eyes. I needed to get my photograph before the bird moved on.

So I grabbed my camera and dragged an old lawn chair out to the juniper where I’d seen the bird the previous day. I sat as still as I could while mosquitoes bit me and abundant gnats crawled all over my face and arms. It was worth it though because the ploy worked. Within a half-hour I had some half-way decent photographs.

Through my camera’s viewfinder, I watched the sparrow-sized bird sing. What a beautiful song it was! Longer and more complex than the songs of typical birds on our property, the painted bunting’s song has the distinction of containing no repeated notes or phrases. I quickly learned to recognize it.

The next morning I heard that song while feeding the horses. I rushed to get my camera. Slowly, quietly, I followed the auditory trail. Soon I spotted the bird perched, again, on the ultimate pinnacle of a juniper. Looking up, I should have seen the brilliant red of its belly. Instead the backlighting caused the entire bird to appear black

The next day I heard the song again and made another mad dash for my camera. The bird flew from the top of a near juniper to one in a dense copse of trees. However, I noticed something strange--that distinctive song was coming from more than one location. I had at least two of the magnificent birds living with me!

On the following day, I carried my camera out while I fed the horses and was rewarded with another sighting. Again the bird was near the top of a juniper but at least this time I could see it was red. As I walked to the front pasture I heard at least two other birds calling. Suddenly it seemed I could hear that song everywhere.

Apparently painted buntings are one of the more common birds on our property. I’m not sure if this was always true. It’s possible I just never noticed them before. Despite their almost ridiculously distinctive colors, small birds that perch on the tops of trees are easily overlooked. Or it could be that mulching of many of the junipers on our property this spring changed our land into prime bunting habitat. Either way, the little birds are now driving me crazy. I carry my camera everywhere--when it’s not raining--constantly on the lookout for buntings in photogenic poses. Someday I will get that perfect photo.

Song:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i6010id.html

Some nice photos:
http://www.greglasley.net/paintedbunt.html

Photo: From the bottom painted buntings look solid red.Photo: Singing from the treetops!

Photo: This one perched on a sunflower and darted into the grass to eat seeds.
Photo: Even when they're blurred they make a pretty picture.

Article: The history of a horse

2007-06-21T11:43:00.001-07:00

Camp had another relapse. We had her put down July 3rd, 2007. This photo was taken a couple of hours before her death. As you can see, she was curved to one side again and by this point was having trouble standing. A few carrots alleviated her suffering somewhat.

Camp and other horses romping in the pasture.

No matter how much you expect some things, they still come as a surprise. I suppose this is generally the case when the thing you’re expecting is not what you want. I had one of these unpleasant surprises last month when I went out to the pasture one evening.

My friend Sheldon and I had been working on making riding trails in the back part of my land. As sunset approached, we stumbled, hot and tired, back to the house. Lazy as I am, I decided it’d be easier to let the horses graze than lug hay out to their pens. Sheldon went to make the release while I secured hay and grain against equine marauders.

When I finished what I was doing, I looked out to watch the horses lope to the far corner of the pasture to where, in their minds at least, the grass is the greenest. They are such beautiful, graceful animals, I never tire of watching them. But immediately I knew something was wrong. My oldest horse, Camp, was literally stumbling along behind the others.

I grabbed a halter, called to Sheldon and we went after her. My heart sank. Camp wasn’t just lame her entire body curved to one side. From head to tail her spine traced an arc of a circle. Her hind legs seemed to want to go one direction while her head went another, resulting in an uncoordinated side-passing locomotion. When I put the halter on her she nearly stumbled into me.

I bought Camp for $700 fifteen years ago as a birthday present for my daughter Coral. Coral was eleven and Camp was thirteen. She was the perfect horse. Always calm, would do anything and go anywhere, never spooked and yet was willing to run all day if that’s what Coral wanted. Camp had the speed to make it worthwhile.

Over the years her smooth gaits and gentle disposition made her the perfect horse for kids and novice riders as well as the more experienced. A few years ago, I looked her up on the AQHA web site. I was surprised to learn she had an ROM (Register of Merit) in racing back from when she was a two-year-old. And she sold for nearly $20,000 as a yearling.

What was even more surprising was that her record was marked “deceased.” Further investigation revealed that the AQHA marks horses as dead when they reach twenty-five unless they hear otherwise. While Camp was starting to show her age, she was a long way from dead. Just last month she was under saddle with my son’s eight-year-old daughter on her back.

Then came her injury. Camp has struggled through the last month, making an amazing recovery. After last Friday’s vet check, our family let out a collective sigh of relief. On Sunday evening I decided she could go out to graze with the other horses, just as she was going to on the night she fell ill. But when I went out to release her, Friday’s healthy Camp had been replaced with the Camp from a month ago. She’d relapsed.

Now we’re waiting on test results that may, or may not, reveal what’s wrong. The options are four types of encephalitis--including West Nile--or a brain tumor. The prognosis isn’t good any way you look at it.

Twenty-nine is ancient for a horse. Even so we’re not prepared to let her go…not yet. We’ll try to see her through this. As long as her spirits are good and she seems happy, we’ll keep working. She’s done so much for us, especially for Coral, that we can’t fully repay that debt. But part of the payment is care for her current illness.

That’s the easy part. I hope we have courage for the hard part. We don’t want her to suffer and mercy is something we can afford our pets. If Camp knew it, she’d be glad she is livestock and not a human being.

Update 2007/06/28: Test results are back. Camp has a herpes viral encephalitis. There is no treatment and once contracted the horse has the disease forever. However it may go into remission but this is unlikely in a horse her age. We are starting her on oral steroids to control the symptoms. She's currently doing fairly well and as long as the symptoms remain mild, we'll watch and wait.

Photo: The last time Coral rode Camp was in July of 2006.Photo: Camp curving due to central nervous system problem this month. She still likes to eat.Photo: Camp in September 2004. She's red roan so she always had white in her coat.Photo: Camp in the bluebonnets, July 2004.Photo: Camp at around 16 years old.

Article: Baby bird abominations

2007-06-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Becky and her peach-faced lovebird Squeeks

Not all hybrids are bad. I have a hybrid car with an engine that is both gasoline and electric. It gets around fifty miles per gallon. Considering current gas prices, my Prius is more of a godsend than an abomination. And mules are hybrids produced by mating female horses with male donkeys incorporating some of the good traits of each parents (along with some of the bad traits of the donkey).

But not all hybrids are good. For instance, there used to be a vehicle known as an El Camino. It had the front end of a car and the back end of a pickup truck. They didn’t work well as cars since people were embarrassed to ride in them (at least I was) and they didn’t work well as trucks since they had low clearance. A liger is the production of a male lion and a female tiger. It lacks the bright color definition of a tiger and the resulting offspring are the largest felines in the world. Really, who needs that?

This is all leading up to my friend Becky and her two lovebirds. There are nine species of lovebirds and it turns out Becky’s pets represent two of them, the peach-faced lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis) and the masked lovebird (A. personata). Both of these species originate in Africa but it’s a large continent and their ranges do not overlap. In the wild, the peach-faced lovebirds zip from oasis to oasis in the sizzling heat of the Namib Desert while the smaller masked lovebirds inhabit the great African savanna in Tanzania.

However at Becky’s house their ranges overlap 100% in their little cage. Close quarters make strange bedfellows and lovebirds didn’t get that name for nothing. Soon there were six small eggs and four worried parents (the two lovebirds and Becky and her husband Randy). The potential babies arrived at a bad time though, it was the middle of winter and the family was moving. Becky and Randy did their best to shield the birds from the chaos of the times but, sadly, none of the eggs hatched.

We weren’t sure stress resulted in hatching failure or if lovebird hybrids are maybe not viable. Looking it up on the web revealed a strong prejudice against this kind of interbreeding. Apparently the Frankensteinian monsters produced by these crosses are viable and fertile themselves. This leads purists to fear that the lovebird breeds will become cross-contaminated and the pure forms will be lost forever.

Becky and her birds did not heed this dire warning. Within a few weeks after the move, when things were settled in the new house, four more eggs arrived. These hatched resulting in Tweety, Charlie, Foghorn Leghorn I who died and was replaced by Foghorn Leghorn II, the last of the chicks to hatch.Becky wanted me to come over to photograph the baby birds but I resisted. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of this affront to nature. These babies were never meant to be. Probably they would grow up to have two beaks and three eyes. But eventually I had to fulfill the responsibilities foisted on me by our friendship and go see the little abominations, take their pictures and fawn over them. The things I do for friendship--not to mention that Becky is my boss.

I was surprised to find the hatchlings were adorable. At least the two older ones, Foghorn Leghorn II didn’t have any feathers yet and naked birds are not very cute. They don’t have extra legs or wings and their baby feathers are bright green. They have relatively enormous beaks but I think they’ll grow into them. So I guess lovebird hybrids are more like hybrid engine cars and less like El Caminos.

Photo: Squeeks, the proud fatherPhoto: Pedro, the mother bird
Photo: Tweety
Photo: Charlie
Photo: Foghorn Leghorn II

Article: After the storm

2007-06-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Our bridge with an assortment of fallen branches.
Note that I had already moved most out of the way and that
several large but detached branches are suspended in the trees over the bridge.

I have something to confess: I’m afraid of chainsaws. People might call this an irrational fear. I think those people are all men. And I think those men have never read a chainsaw manual. There’s a warning that if you hit something unyielding the chainsaw will jump backward and saw your head in half.

Living semi-rural and having a disabled husband makes chainsaw-phobia a real problem. Things happen out here and someone has to go clean them up. Naturally, I’d like for my son Philip to do this. He’s twenty-eight, tall and strong, a perfect candidate for the job. Except he lives in Round Rock and has a job and a family of his own.

From time to time, I coerce a friend or two to help. Surprisingly, and because they haven’t read the manual, some men jump at the chance to use a chainsaw. They’re real-life incarnations of Tim on Home Improvement. Even so, I find you can’t really rely on them. Like Philip, they have lives of their own.

So when I got up Monday morning and saw the devastation the storm and high winds brought upon our place, I knew chainsawing was in my future.

Our property has one serious logistical weakness: we have to cross a narrow concrete bridge to get in and out. That bridge has a target painted on it in tree language. If a branch falls anywhere on our property, it falls on that bridge.

Monday proved a special case though. Certainly branches fell on the bridge but others went into the creek, across the fences, in the pasture with the horses. In fact, branches and downed trees could be seen everywhere. I couldn’t face all that right away so I pushed enough debris aside to get out and I went to run some errands.

I was stopped before I even got to the paved road. A gigantic tree had snapped in half and fallen on the dirt road that serves both our house and our neighbor’s. Fortunately their power was out and they needed to get the road clear so a utility service man could get in. My neighbor was just reseating the chain on his chainsaw as I drove past. I felt guilty but I had absolutely no idea what to do about that tree.

Eventually the time came to face my responsibilities and start cleaning the place. I got my truck, my gloves, a good pair of loppers and my cute little chainsaw and headed to the bridge. Now I wouldn’t normally call anything as deadly as a chainsaw “cute” but mine is different. It’s an electric chainsaw. Not one of those dumb corded ones. How’s that going to work? They don’t make cords long enough and I don’t have any desire to lug a generator around. No, mine is a battery powered chainsaw.

There are a few things to love about battery powered electric chainsaws. The first is that you don’t have to pull a cord to start them. I have never been able to do that on a gasoline powered anything. And pulling really hard on something that has stated it’s trying to kill me, well, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Another nice thing about them is they don’t have as much power. They don’t cut through things as easily as a gasoline powered chainsaw, including my head. I view this as a feature.

Its final advantage is that the battery doesn’t last very long between charges. There’s only so much work I can do before I am forced to take a break. And it gives me justification for using the loppers even though the chainsaw might be faster--gotta save battery.

After working for several hours and taking two big loads to the dump, I’ve decided to give up. The job is too big for me or my little chainsaw. I’m going to have to hire someone with no known chainsaw aversions to finish the job. I feel bad about that. I should be more self-sufficient. But I’d rather stay alive.

Photo: Some of the cleanup I faced to clear the bridge.Photo: Another view of the bridge-related debris.
Photo: My little battery powered chainsaw next to a branch it sawed. There's more work for you yet, my little darling!
Photo: Since I took this photo, the chainsaw and I have cleared those branches you see just beyond the trees.

Article: Spider safari

2007-06-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

A wolf spider eating a grasshopper

Recently I got a new macro lens, opening the world of the teeny-tiny to my prying eye.

The lions and tigers of the macro world are, of course, the spiders. Every spider is a predator but they go about capturing their prey using a myriad of methods. All spiders have spinnerets, the organ on the back of their abdomen that lays down spider web, but they don’t all use it the same way.

Orb weaver spiders, like Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web, spin a new, complex, spiraling web each day. If you ever get a chance to watch that, do it. It takes a while but it is worth it. They never stop to rest. Makes me glad I’m not a spider.

Along with their web producing ability, all spiders are venomous. That doesn’t mean your average spider can harm a human. Here in Texas, about the only spiders people need to worry about are black widows and violin or brown recluse spiders. Neither of these makes a habit of biting people and generally bites are minor when they happen, but in rare cases they can be dangerous.

The venom of black widows is neurotoxic (acting on the nervous system) while that of violin spiders is hemolytic (causes damage to tissues). Spiders typically use their venom to subdue their prey, generally insects or other arthropods. Tarantulas are an exception, especially the large South American varieties. Some of these spiders can eat birds or small rodents. Oddly, tarantula bites, at least in the US, are not especially dangerous.

Keeping all this in mind, I set out one day to photograph spiders. I could have just looked around the house. We don’t use any pesticides or other poisons on our property which is good for us, good for the birds and rabbits but also good for insects and spiders. So there are a fair number of our eight-legged friends crawling the walls at my house.

That would have taken all the fun out of a spider safari though, so I headed to South Texas and Chaparral WMA, my favorite wildlife management area. I wanted to see some exotic arachnids in their unspoiled natural habitat. I was not disappointed.

Among the first spiders I saw was a large wolf spider. Like real wolves, these spiders are active hunters. They don’t loll about the web all day waiting for food to drop in, they go out, track it down and kill it. That’s just what this spider was doing. Clutched in its powerful jaws--called pedipalps and consisting of modified legs--squirmed a still-living grasshopper. Since spider venom typically starts the digestion process, there was no point to rescuing the hopper. Besides, I’m not sure I like grasshoppers better than spiders.

Next I spied a green lynx spider staked out on some small white flowers. I can hardly see these tiny spiders with my eyes but my camera lens blows them up so I can see the black, spiky hairs on each leg.

Moving on I encountered a large web with a little spider. The dense web formed a white tangle between branches in a bush. At first glance the strands seemed haphazard, completely lacking in the geometric beauty of an orb weaver’s web. However, the whole mess formed a neat funnel leading to a small spider, neatly hidden but ready to pounce.

The big excitement of my spider safari was the discovery of the elephant of the spider world--a tarantula. This one ran across the road at break-neck spider speed just as I was leaving. It didn’t care how many times I took its photo, it wanted out of there. It must have known about me. Even the tiny green lynx spider knew it was being watched. This one was just in a hurry and didn’t have time to deal with it.

The sun was heading down in the west when I pointed my Jeep back north with a successful spider safari safely cached in my camera’s digital memory.

For information on spider bites:
http://spiders.ucr.edu/dermatol.html
Good site for identifying spiders:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/spiders5.html

Photo: A cabbage spider stalking prey on a sprig of white flowers.
Photo: Funnel spider waiting.
Photo: Tarantula crossing the road.

Atricle: Hunting horned lizards

2007-05-20T16:45:00.001-07:00

A horned lizard or horney toad

When I was a kid, my parents took frequent trips to Las Vegas dragging their five kids along and parking us at an arcade or at the hotel pool. This contented my older siblings but my younger brother and I could not be so easily contained. After our parents disappeared onto the gambling floor, Stephen and I headed out into the desert just behind the hotel.

The hot sand beyond the strip crawled with secretive life. We marveled at enormous ants clearing rings around the bustling entrances to their colonies. Turning over rocks, we watched in fascination as centipedes and scorpions scurried to find new hiding places. But our favorites were the lizards and most of all the horny toads.

There’s a lot to love about a horny toad--or horned lizard as they are more properly called. Of course, their thorny exterior makes them uniquely charismatic. Occasionally one would manage to jab us with the sharp horns that rimmed the back of its head and we would imagine ourselves as T. rex’s, in mortal combat with the great armored herbivores of the Jurassic.

The most endearing characteristic of horned lizards was how easily they were caught. Their evolutionary survival strategy is camouflage. Unlike the speedy race runners or desert swifts, horned lizards don’t run off when approached. Usually they hunker down and hope you’ll pass. To two little kids that made them the best lizards ever.

I suppose those memories are why horned lizards hold such fascination for me. I thrill every time I see one. I’m willing to travel a distance to get that rush too. So last weekend I headed south to Chaparral Wildlife Management Area to get my annual horned lizard fix.

Even in Chaparral where horned lizards are still fairly common, they’re not easy to spot. The lizard hunting plan is to drive, drive, drive and then drive some more, slowly going up and down the roads of the wildlife management area staring at the pavement. It’s not unusual for hours to pass without seeing anything.

I shouldn’t say that though, there’s a lot of other stuff to see. This time of year, the chaparral is teaming with flowers and butterflies. Birds including caracaras, painted buntings, vermilion flycatchers and roadrunners can be seen. Maybe a pack of javalina will cross the road. Or a diminutive Texas tortoise. On this trip we were amazed to spot two bobcats. And there’s the occasional western diamondback rattlesnake for excitement.

Our patience on this trip was rewarded with a stunning ten horned lizard sightings. Naturally, I had to photograph each and every one. Along with their official status as the Texas State Reptile, all three horned lizards species living in Texas are protected. The reason for their decline is not fully understood but may be related to pesticide usage or the invasive Argentine fire ant. Horned lizards are specialized ant predators but they need big, juicy ants like harvester ants, not small, stinging ants like fire ants.

It’s hard to believe that horned lizards were once common in Hays County. There are probably a few areas where they can still be found. My niece, who lives only about a mile from me, found a dead one on her driveway last year but I’ve never seen one anywhere around here. Kids growing up in this area will not have wonderful memories like mine. That’s a real loss.

To learn more about horned lizards go to:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/learning/texas_nature_trackers/horned_lizard/
http://www.hornedlizards.org/index.html

Photo: This lizard has one skewed horn. Sometimes they'll tilt their head backward to stab you with those things.Photo: The colors seem bright but they blend very will with the lizard's environment.Photo: My daughter Coral and her friend Carl serving as horned lizard spotters on the top of my Jeep.

Article: Taking a stand

2007-05-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

FM1626 near Jerry's Lane.

While attending the wiener dog races a couple of weeks ago, I wandered by an information booth on proposed highway improvements in Hays County. A large map showed expansion of FM1626. I didn’t think much about it. Change is inevitable. I took some literature, impressed with its glossy, well-organized presentation, and headed back to the stands. In the excitement of the event, I forgot all about road improvements.

Driving, I dismissed the primitive roadside signs admonishing drivers to vote no on road bonds. They were probably the work of special interest groups or people who want time to stand still. Again, the issue faded from my mind.

But this week my husband received an automated phone call to local residents stating that County Commissioner Jeff Barton was giving a presentation on the road bond and its impact on FM1626 in just a couple of hours. We didn’t have anything else to do, the meeting was conveniently located and the call peaked our curiosity. We decided to attend.

There was quite a crowd and it was obvious they weren’t happy. Many had been to a previous meeting where they’d learned the transformed FM1626 would not include an access point to their subdivision. Some were concerned about the affect of the expansion of the road from a rural two-lane farm-to-market into a five-lane conduit for traffic from points south into Austin. Others wanted to know how they would be compensated for the degradation of their homes or properties that proximity to this high-volume thoroughfare would bring.

For the most part, Rick and I sat back and listened. We’re not used to being involved. And our property is a good distance off FM1626, expanding the road would probably increase our property value if it had any effect at all. But it was hard to miss the tone of the meeting, which was that it had already been decided and this thing is a great deal, a once-in-a-life-time opportunity that has to be taken right now.

At one point a local resident asked how long it would be before there would be road improvements if this bond is defeated. The reply was thirty years! Barton later clarified that some improvements would undoubtedly take place within that time but there would be no major work on the level of what the bond would support. It felt like we were all being sold a used car, if you don’t snap this beauty up today, it’ll be gone tomorrow!

And don’t look under the hood. Rick asked a couple of questions about possible risks to the project. What if the community does not grow as expected? What if the project comes in over-budget? I’m not sure how legitimate those concerns are but Barton and the representative for the contractor who would build the road seemed to think they were irrelevant.

I remember when FM1626 used to be a Mecca for bicyclists. Traffic has gotten too heavy these days so you don’t see many anymore. I wondered if we couldn’t build a road with bike lanes to help preserve some of our local heritage as we expand. Wouldn’t it be nice if local kids could ride their bikes down to the new YMCA at the corner of FM1626 and FM967? Not to mention there are elementary and middle schools right there. Could we build a road so that kids could bike to school?

The answer is no. Out of $172 million dollars, there’s money for cars only. Barton explained proudly that $2 million--less than 1.5%--of the total budget could be spent on extras to preserve local flavor. He and the contractor explained how lucky we were. They might even use some of that money to spare a few existing trees. It occurred to me that those very trees were what used to attract bicyclists.

Something snapped for me in that meeting. I’m sick of the way big roads destroy local communities. Where I work in Austin is less than ¼ mile from where we normally eat lunch but no matter how nice the day, we have to drive. There is no safe way to get there without a car.

I don’t even own a bike but I am never again going to vote for a road that doesn’t include bike lanes.

Update: The road bond failed! I guess FM1626 will stay as it is for the next 30 years.

Photo: Near the corner of FM1626 and FM967. Where's all the traffic?
Photo: Looking south toward my road, Jerry's Lane, at the top of the hill.
Photo: Looking north from the previous location. No wonder people used to like to cycle here.

Article: Fish-And-Chips

2007-05-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

One day my coworker (who is also my daughter) peeked over her computer monitor and said, “I just made up a sentence with my name in it five times.” Aside from the fact that she should have been working, I wondered what was so remarkable about a sentence that contained multiple instances of her name. “What is it?” I asked. “Coral Coral Coral Coral Coral,” she replied. It wasn’t an interesting answer.

I informed her that a repetition of her name five times did not constitute a sentence. I knew I was in for a fight though, Coral has a master’s degree in linguistics and it’s just like her to pull some linguistic trick out of her hat to legitimize her claim. It took a while for her to explain but she was right, it is a real sentence.

Interpreting the sentence hinges on following definitions of the word coral:

1) the color coral, a pinkish yellow

2) the marine invertebrate coral that makes coral reefs

3) the verb coral, which means to color something coral colored

4) the name Coral, for example my daughter

Using those definitions, the sentence becomes: Coral (1) coral (2) coral (3) Coral (4) coral (1). In other words, coral colored coral animals color my daughter Coral coral colored. It’s a difficult sentence to decipher but I was impressed that her name had so many meanings. And there’s even another one, the unfertilized eggs of lobsters are also called “coral.” How versatile she is.

The coral sentence got us thinking about other people’s names. There was only one other person at work who had a name that could be made into a sentence. “Rob, rob Rob” wasn’t nearly as impressive though, using “rob” twice as a proper name and once as a verb and requiring a comma.

A few days later I overheard two coworkers discussing the meaning of a section of some computer manual. One read a phrase to the other. “File file file,” he said without even realizing it. I laughed out loud even though I understood the sentence. In typical computer-speak it meant to file a file whose name is represented by the word "file".

What about the sentence: I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign? That’s a perfectly normal sentence that just happens to contain five instances of the word “and” in a row. But what if you thought that sentence was confusing? Suppose you thought it’d be easier to interpret if it were written: I want to put two hyphens between the words “Fish” and “And” and “And” and “Chips” in my Fish And Chips sign.

I don’t know if the sentence really needs those added quotation marks so I might have to ask someone. To do that I could say: Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign” be clearer if quotation marks were placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, and after Chips? That sentence makes perfect sense and yet it contains an unbroken sequence of twenty-one instances of the word “and.”

Sentences such as these incorporate homophonous phrases. These are strings of words that either are the same (as in the Fish And Chips sign example), have the same spelling but different meanings (as in the Coral example) or simply sound the same. An example of the last is: To tutor two tutors in tutus is to tutor two tutued tutors too many.

Next time you wonder why computers can’t understand English, ask yourself instead how it is that people can. When you think about it, it’s a miracle we can understand each other at all.

Article: The day the world smiled

2007-04-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday was Earth Day.

Despite the promising weather forecast, a relentless drizzle leaked from the sky starting around noon. I stood with my horse while a neighbor took photos of her twin grandchildren petting Chesapeake’s enormous nose. The daughter and her offspring were visiting from San Francisco, she explained, the grandkids had never seen a horse before. Chessie stood quietly while they held the toddlers up to brush their tiny fingers along her broad blaze. I wondered sadly how many years it would be until they had their next encounter with livestock.

By the time the photo-op concluded, I had reached a conclusion. Forecast or no forecast, this was actual rain and it was not likely to let up soon. I gave up on the idea of an afternoon ride and returned Chessie to her pasture. I think we were both disappointed.

In my opinion Earth Day should be celebrated outside. I didn’t have formal plans. I’m not a social person so I eschew organized gatherings. With 6.5 billion people on the planet, I figure my physical presence isn’t needed. From the shelter of the back porch I looked across the jungle taking over our yard. Looked above the deep green of the juniper in the back pasture. Looked through the mist cascading gently from the infinite blanket of clouds. It seemed to me that the earth was sad and it reminded me of a poem:

Laugh and the world laughs with you
Weep and you weep alone
For the sad old earth
Must borrow its mirth
But has trouble enough of its own
______________Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The dismal sky seemed to reflect the troubles of the planet. The Earth gets a single day each year to celebrate--same as cousins (July 24^th) and reptile awareness (Oct. 21^st), same as the American flag (June 14^th) and grandparents (1^st Sunday after Labor Day). All of these things are important and they all share, as everything about humanity does, a dependence on the Earth. So it seems our planet deserves at least a week.

I entered the house to find my husband watching a video. I sat down with him. Turning my attention to the TV. I saw Al Gore presenting a slide show on global warming. Rick and I both saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in the theater. I often think that the only reason he cares anything about the environment is because he’s married to me. As the video neared its end, Rick remarked that he’d caught a lot of things in the second viewing that he hadn’t noticed the first time.

While watching the movie seemed a suitable pastime for the planet’s special day, it did not improve my mood. It again reminded me again of the poem and the troubles that plague the Earth.

I switched the TV over to the Discovery Channel. They were having a marathon of their new series Planet Earth. I’d never seen it but had heard good things. While the video is at times spectacular, I couldn’t tolerate the inane narration. How many times can they fit the phrase “Planet Earth” in their descriptions?

Unmotivated, I sat down at my computer and stared at the monitor. I still have a lot of work to do repairing my dad’s photos but I didn’t feel like doing it. I found myself browsing randomly. Eventually I stumbled upon a series of photos I took in April of 2004. 2004 was the last good year for wildflowers and these photos showed the diversity that grew on our property that year.

The photos reminded me that under the gloomy sky, bluebonnets are blooming again. And there are other wildflower plants just waiting for the right moment to show their colors. I know I’m not doing everything I can to save the planet. I’m probably not doing everything I should. But at least I’m preserving something on this little plot of land. Each year we loose a little as we become more hemmed in by development, but this Spring, the wildflowers are returning.

I smiled a little thinking of that. Maybe the Earth smiled with me.

Photo: Bluebonnets in my front pasture in the Spring of 2004.Photo: Cat claw is one of my favorite flowers. They look like purple powderpuffs with yellow tips.

Article: Book backlog

2007-04-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Like many people, I find there are a lot of things I don’t have enough time to do. I don’t get around even to things I really like, never mind the endless list of tasks that I don’t like. This predicament became apparent when a friend lent me a book. He’d gotten two books and said he’d read one and I’d read the other, then we could swap so that we’d both read both books. I didn’t want to agree because I haven’t had any time to read lately but when I saw the books he’d selected, I couldn’t resist.

I dropped the copy of “Infidel,” an autobiography by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the backseat in my car. I’d seen the author on one of the late night comedy talk shows and her story struck me as fascinating. Born a Muslim in Somalia, she later became an atheist and a member of the Dutch parliament. How could I not want to read about that transformation? Yet the book remained in the car, untouched. Each day, I would see it lying there, waiting to be read.

The problem isn’t just that I don’t have time to read. Compounding that issue, there are a whole slew of books ahead of “Infidel” on my reading list. I don’t want to read them more than I want to read “Infidel,” but neither do I want to read them less. And some have been sitting on my desk or coffee table or bookshelf for a long time. I can’t just take the johnny-come-lately book and advance it to the top of the stack.

My daughter, who is a linguist, gave me an intriguing book for the winter holiday titled “The Language Instinct.” If I read that, maybe I’ll understand what’s she’s talking about better. Even without that carrot to entice me, the subject is something I’m interested in. When I was getting my degree in computer science, I studied a lot about artificial intelligence and natural language parsing. I know what an intractable problem language is. I’d love to learn about it from a linguistics vantage.

I also committed to read and review a book a friend of mine is writing. I’ve read about half of “Comancheria” and really liked it. But when Darrell gave me the second half, I was caught up in another project and set the book aside until I could finish that. I’m still not done with the other project and Darrell’s book calls forlornly from the coffee table where it sits even as I write this. Reviewing a book is more time consuming than simple reading though and I need to set aside a block of time to really do it justice. Maybe next week.

Last weekend I decided to take action on this backlog of books. I went to my shelf and pulled out the book that had been waiting the longest. I sat myself down and started reading. The book is “Eldest” by Christopher Paolini. It’s the sequel to his first novel, “Eragon.” Paolini wrote “Eragon” when he was fifteen years old, a formidable feat. I read it a couple of years ago and it was pretty good. Then I saw the movie version which was terrible. It took all the bad parts of the book, the parts that gave away the author’s age and immaturity, and coalesced them. Not a good idea. Still I wanted to give “Eldest” a chance. That has proved to be another bad idea but I’m going to stick it out to the end.

A package came from my sister-in-law Cherilyn this week. Guess what, it’s a book. “The China Study” presents a comprehensive review of diet and nutrition as revealed by a study of 6,500 people in China. It also promises to discuss western politics and its influence on nutrition. That does sound interesting. I placed it prominently on my desk where I will see it each day. Some day, hopefully some day soon, I’ll get around to reading it.

Article: Giants of Los Llanos

2007-04-12T19:13:00.000-07:00

My younger brother had a room full of snakes when we were kids. Our mom struggled against this at first. Rules were well defined: small species only, nothing poisonous and all animals securely caged. Stephen broke all of these rules at one time or another. I can still remember the look on Mom’s face when she asked him if his “water boa” wasn’t the same thing as an anaconda. It would have broken his heart to give up Annie, as he called the snake, but luckily Mom wasn’t as good at enforcing rules as she was at making them.

One of the goals of my recent trip to Venezuela was an encounter with a giant snake in the wild. As my brother’s euphemism implied, anacondas live in the water, including the vast marshes of Los Llanos. This is one of the best places to view the largest of the anaconda species, the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). Even so, cruising around Los Llanos in a small boat, or even driving along the raised dirt roads that serve as levies, you’re not likely to see one. But you can easily spot both their predators and their prey.

The most obvious item on the anaconda menu is the capybara. It makes sense that the world’s largest snake would eat the world’s largest rodent. You can’t expect a snake weighing in the hundreds of pounds to be content with a rat. Capybaras look like enormous, big-headed, coarse-furred, web-toed guinea pigs. The males top out at around 140 lbs, a good meal for even a large female anaconda. The smaller female capybaras provide tasty treats for the smaller male anacondas or for juveniles.

It is impossible not to notice the large numbers of caiman sharing the water with the capybara. The caiman are not as large as many crocodilians, generally smaller than six or seven feet in length. While anacondas of all sizes consume appropriately proportioned caiman, the converse is also true: caiman eat appropriately proportioned anacondas. I guess they probably resort to this mutual predation when they get bored of an endless diet of capybara.

Another giant shares the swamps of Los Llanos, the Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius). These large crocodiles reach fifteen feet and are much bulkier and have nastier looking teeth than their caiman cousins. They look like caiman on steroids. Since there are so few left in the wild, it’s not easy to determine who is predator and who prey in their interaction with the anacondas.

Surprisingly, I found my first anaconda at a crocodile breeding station. It was actually in an enclosure with several large crocodiles. We strained to see it through the dense vegetation. It appeared to be sleeping. Our guide pointed to a place where a circular opening had been made in the wire mesh allowing the anaconda, a regular visitor, easy access. Even though the snake was free to go, this hardly fulfilled my dream of a wild anaconda spotting.

About a week later in another part of Los Llanos, we came across an anaconda basking in the evening sun. The snake was only seven or eight feet long, typical size for a male. I snapped several photos and then posed with the snake after capture. It didn’t seem particularly large or dangerous. When released, it took its time sliding its heavy body into the tall grass.

I guess I expected more from my wild anaconda experience. It was great seeing how they live and everything but, well, Annie was only a little smaller and a lot more vicious than her wild con-specific. Our guide had insisted that only he was qualified to catch the wild anaconda yet, in one of those common breaches of the rules, even my mom caught Annie when she escaped from her cage one time when Stephen and I weren’t home.

Photo: Green anaconda at Hato El FioPhoto: Coral, Philip and me holding the 7' anaconda we saw at Hato El Frio
Photo: Capybara family swiming
Photo: Male capybara at water's edge
Photo: Coral with one of the Orinoco crododiles that was in the enclosure with the anaconda.
Photo: Head of an Orinoco crocodile. This one attacked Coral but luckily couldn't get through the fence.

Article: Making maché

2007-04-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve always wanted to do papier-mâché. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why I had never have until this year. It was on my life list but apparently very close to the bottom. Still, this year I decided to cross it off. To that end, I enlisted the help of my eight year old granddaughter, Celeste.

To implement my plan, I bought a couple of books on papier-mâché and gave them to Celeste for the winter holiday. On New Year’s Day Celeste and I poured through the books and picked a project. I wanted to make a cute little snake but Celeste is more of a cat person. Since the books and the project were nominally her gift and not just a thinly disguised excuse for me fulfilling a life-long dream, the cat project won out.

I had the necessary items available: newspaper, plastic bags, masking tape, flour, salt and water. Plus a plastic tablecloth, a true essential for such a messy project. Celeste soon bored of ripping strips of newspaper. I should have done that the day before. But she loved picking out shreds of wrapping paper from the holiday festivities to stuff into our cat. Never mind that the shiny remainders would never be seen again, it was still important to use the prettiest pieces.

After plumping the bags and taping them together, it was time to apply the papier-mâché. At first Celeste enjoyed wrapping strips of dripping wet flour-covered newspaper on our creation. She’s a clean kid though and eventually decided she didn’t like getting her hands wet and gooey. Plus, we had to admit that our cat did not look like the cats in the book. In fact, our cat did not look like a cat at all.

Since the papier-mâché had to dry, we couldn’t complete the project on the same day. Philip assured me they would return on the weekend so Celeste and I could paint our creation. Things being as they are, that didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen the next weekend. Or the next month. Or the month after that. Everyone is so busy these days that we didn’t get to work on the cat again until last weekend.

April 1^st is a long way from January 1^st but luckily the kitchen table wasn’t used during that entire time. The project was exactly where we left it. All it needed was paint. We eyed the “cat” warily. It didn’t seem possible that a thin veneer of color would transform the shapeless blob into something recognizable. Still, we picked up our brushes and set to work.

Celeste chose baby blue as the base color. As we worked it became apparent that neither of us has much talent at painting. Still, we persisted. Transformed by a uniform shade of blue, our monster was still not a cat. We needed a pattern. I voted for tiger stripes but again Celeste’s suggestion--colorful flowers--won out. I painted the outlines and Celeste filled them in.

After our work was completed, no one was more surprised than the two of us that the cat actually looked like a cat--and it was kind-of cute! Our first papier-mâché project proved a success. Celeste hasn’t taken it home yet because we still have to paint the bottom. I hope that doesn’t take another three months because I’m hyped about starting a new project. I think I can convince Celeste to do a snake this time.

One success and I am hooked on papier-mâché. I wish I didn’t have to rely on an eight year old for an alibi but wouldn’t it seem lame for a person my age to take up such a silly hobby? I don’t think I’m old enough to claim senility. That might undermine my position as Director of Engineering if word got out at work.

To make your own cat use: Papier-mâché for Kids by Sheila McGraw

Photo: Celeste on New Year's Day with our incipient cat.
Photo: Celeste applying base color to the cat.
Photo: Me and Celeste painting the cat's pattern.
Photo: The eyes are the most important part. Celeste made them a shiny green.
Photo: Nearly done! Cat and artist pose together.

Article: Tombstone tales

2007-03-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever walked through a cemetery? There’s a special feeling in a cemetery, a connection with the past that you don’t get in museums. I think this is because people buried in cemeteries are ordinary people. Their lives mimic our own in ways the lives of the great and mighty do not. Although we may imagine our genealogy includes kings and queens, those lives don’t have the relevance to our own that the lives of common people do.

In western culture, most burial locations are marked with a stone. Walking through a cemetery, you might find yourself wondering about those interred below. What were they like? How did they live? Unfortunately, most tombstones give few clues. Frequently information is restricted to name, marital status, birth and death dates and religion. If there is an epitaph, it is usually generic or trite.

At one time, headstones were made of marble. Marble is a soft rock and easily chiseled, even so it took a skilled artisan many hours to make a truly unique stone. And over time, the words and art melted from the face of the rock, running with the rain into the soil below. You stop to stare at a child’s stone with a sleeping angel carved into it. You can see that it once displayed incredible detail. Now the fingers and nose are missing, the eyes filled with dark lichen.

As you meander through the newer section, you find a tombstone that includes a photo of the deceased etched on a ceramic oval. If you bend down, you can look into the photographed eyes to try to read them. You wonder why that particular photo was chosen. Did the deceased select it himself or did a bereft family member make the decision? Would the man, who died at 90, want that photo of his aged self or did he still identify with a dashing 20-something? You straighten your back and look down at the stone with its yellowed and already fading image. Why does this strike at immortality fall so short?

Then a shiny, dark stone catches your eye. You focus on it as you make your way along the narrow alley between the graves. There’s a color picture on it: a small ranch, a windmill, a barn and a family of deer. The field in front of the ranch house is filled with bluebonnets. The black stone shines behind the image. It is granite, a hard rock that will hold the etching for a very long time. These people were ranchers and the image is probably their own spread. You imagine they lived there many years and loved their land. A bit of personality has made it past the threshold of death.

If you’re like most people, you’ve been looking for your own family name on the stones. When you find it, you wonder if that person is some distant relative from a long-lost branch of a wide family tree. I do that too but my name is too unique. I have only found one this way and that was on my family’s home island in Greece. It was a beautiful piece with a mourning woman contemplating the names carved in marble. But my name was written in Greek and, while I recognized it, it did not make a real connection with me.

The only other tombstone I’ve seen with the name Typaldos on it is my brother’s. Stephen’s kids designed a black granite stone that should last nearly forever. My brother was a doctor and his children choose to prominently position the seal of the Fascial Distortion Model (FDM) on his stone. Stephen not only conceived and developed the FDM himself, he also designed the seal. His kids did a great job with a difficult task. The stone will always speak for him.

To learn more about the FDM go to:
www.orthopathy.com

Photo: A typical older generic tombstone from somewhere in Maine. Notice it contains only names and dates.
Photo: Another generic tombstone. This one is from Texas. I wonder if the grown children aren't also in graves marked "Mother" and "Father".
Photo: An angel statue on a child's grave in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Photo: A tombstone from Hamilton, Texas showing a ranch house.Photo: A Typaldos family tombstone in Lixouri, Kefalonia, Greece.
Photo: My brother Stephen's tombstone in Bangor, Maine. Note the seal of the FDM.
Photo: Stephen's tombstone on his 50th birthday.

Article: It's hard being a horse

2007-03-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

Horses are one of the great loves of my life so it might be surprising to learn that I passed up an opportunity to ride while in Venezuela last month.

We were staying at a cattle ranch that also accommodates a few tourists near the town of San Fernando de Apure in central Venezuela. The hatos, as these ranches are called, typically encompass thousands of acres of grazing land and are patrolled by the Venezuelan version of the cowboy. The llaneros ride scrappy little horses that bear little resemblance to American Quarter Horses, their cowboy equivalent.

Life is hard for the llaneros and their horses. Half of the year, most of the land is flooded. All year round, caiman and crocodiles lurk along the edges of the water holes. Pumas and jaguars roam the land at night. Distances are vast and the few roads double as dams, ineffectively holding the marsh at bay. Moving cattle generally involves herding them along roadsides where the land is most likely to remain dry and passable.

There is an element of the romantic in the llanero. I’d read a lot about their solitary existence, their music and unusual dress that includes sandals instead of boots while riding. I was curious to see them in person and my first chance came at the hato. When we arrived we were told that we could go on to two excursions per day, and one of them could be a horseback trek through the ranch. It sounded interesting and fun but I’ve had bad experiences riding other people’s horses so I hesitated.

As we walked around the ranch house that first day, I saw a few Venezuelan horses up close. I’ve always said that all horses are beautiful but the first horse I saw proved me wrong. Its white coat was speckled with scars and bites, red skin ringed its nose and eyes, its knees were so low on its legs that it could have been walking on them. It wandered around the buildings, ugly and unkempt and looking for food.

Next I saw a little dun horse, just skin and bones, standing saddled under a tree. A llanero strode up, untied it and mounted. The horse acted almost as if it had never been ridden before. Only a severe bit provided any control to the rider who managed to straighten him out after taking a few spins on the haunches. Did these so-called “expert horsemen” not bother to train their horses at all?

As I watched the llanero ride off, I noticed the horse was gaited, possibly a smooth-riding relative of the Peruvian Paso horses so highly prized in the US. Although I was intrigued by the horse’s movement, I resolved not to ride. All of the horses near the ranch house were scraggly and skinny. It would be cruel to ride them.

A couple of days later we passed a pickup truck with two horses standing in the bed as it sped down the highway. Rails had been installed to provide some height to the walls. My driver laughed when he saw me take a photo. I explained that this would never happen in the United States, it would be against the law. He didn’t understand why. The horses seemed calm even though a stiff wind blew in their faces. I hoped they remained that way and that the driver never had a reason to brake suddenly.

On one excursion we stopped at the home of some llaneros, far from any paved road. A little gray horse stood saddled and tied to the fence outside the shack that housed the extended family. This horse was in better condition and his tack was both colorful and complex. Finally my vision of the romantic life of the llanero acquired some validation. Later as I watched three llaneros ride across the plain on their small horses, I thought that these men matched their animals, sculpted by the harsh life they lead together. Living much closer to their horses and relying on them for their livelihood, the remote llaneros cared for them better.

Everywhere I went in Los Llanos I saw this division: at some places the horses were thin and sickly looking with mangy coats lacking any shine or luster, in others, horses looked about with bright, inquisitive eyes, running across green pastures to investigate visitors. I guess this is what happens when there are no laws regulating the treatment of animals, horses like other pets and livestock suffer or thrive at the whim of their owners.

Although I enjoyed my stay at the hato, I will not go back. I can’t support an establishment that allows animals to suffer. There are other hatos in Los Llanos and if I return, I will stay at one of those.

Photo: Even the ugliest horse in the world should look better than this.

Photo: I wish I could take this horse home and feed it a good meal.
Photo: My horse Ribbon showing what a well-fed horse looks like from this angle. Notice that the backbone and hips do not protrude.
Photo: Safety last.
Photo: Please don't hit the brakes!
Photo: Horse in typical llanero tack.
Photo: Los tres llaneros!
Photo: A happy, healthy horse in a nice pasture

Article: Spring clearing

2007-03-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

At New Year’s I proclaimed 2007 “My Year of the Horse!” Like so many New Year’s resolutions, my proclamation has rung hollow these past two months. But as the weather warms and the days grow long, it becomes easier to live up to my vow. Last weekend, I actually got on one of my horses and rode for the first time this year. Buoyed by my success, I decided to tackle a major horse-related issue--a riding arena.

I’ve wanted an arena ever since we moved to Buda fifteen years ago. We have the land but it’s covered with juniper and mesquite. In some places this “forest” is so dense I have never been through it. It’s a fire hazard. The trees suck all the water from the soil and block the sun, stunting any grass that might provide grazing. Over the years I’ve tried and failed to contain this unsightly, exuberant growth. This year I conceded it was time to call a professional.

The idea of hiring someone to clear some land is not new. My husband, Rick, has put this idea forward every year. “Get someone out to cut some trails for you,” he’d say. “You can’t do it yourself. You’re not strong enough and you don’t have the time.” These seem like reasonable arguments but everyone knows you can’t win an argument with your spouse through reason. I steadfastly refused. No bulldozer was going to tear up my land and push down trees willy-nilly, leaving them lying on their sides, bare roots exposed to the sun. Still, this year I admitted the time had come.

I searched the web for land clearing and Central Texas. There were quite a few hits. When I began going through them, I realized there was an option I had never heard of. One of the first web sites I examined introduced me to the track mounted mulcher.

The track mounted mulcher is a miracle machine. Its caterpillar tracks allow it to travel over rough terrain. Its small size means it can squeeze between trees and through gates. Since it’s a mulcher, it gobbles up a tree and spits it out as mulch. The mulch can be left on the ground to protect against erosion. Since it is mulch, it eventually returns to the soil restoring lost nutrients. I still have piles of dead juniper from when we had the fence line cleared ten years ago so the transformation of brush into mulch particularly grabbed my attention.

I searched a few more web sites and found someone operating out of Austin. Within a couple of days, he was out examining the property. I was embarrassed by the state of things. Massive, multi-trunked junipers spread their horizontal branches until they almost touched. And the scraggly mesquite that grew in the narrow spaces between them clawed at us as we examined the task.

Carl nodded knowingly when I indicated where I’d like my arena. “You’ve got some nice land here,” he said, “but I wouldn’t put your arena right there. Those big junipers will either leave big stumps or big holes. It’d be better to move it back a little to this area that’s mostly mesquite.” I nodded. Of course he was right.

Finally I asked the big question, how long would it take and how much would it cost. I was shocked when Carl said most likely it would be around two days at $1200 per day. That’s quite a bit of money but I’m sure it’s not worth spending fifteen years without an arena for.

This morning Carl started working on my land. In just an hour, the place was transformed. I stood on a carpet of mulch and gazed about me. Carl had left some trees as shelter for the horses and some to block the view of neighbors, some he had trimmed so they actually look like trees rather than monstrous bushes, others had gone through the mulcher never to be seen again. It was beautiful.

After the arena, Carl is going to make a few riding trails for me. “I’m an idiot,” I told him. “I should have listened to Rick years ago and had someone clear this land.” Carl informed me that the track mounted mulcher wasn’t available years ago. I smiled to myself. So I was right and Rick was wrong after all. Go figure.

This is the link to Trees Unlimited / Natural Texas, the company that cleared my land.
http://www.treesunlimited.com/naturaltx/about.html

Photo: A row of large junipers (aka cedars) in the back pasture. You could hardly see the house from this location.

Photo: This enormous juniper was in the corner of the pasture closest to the cul-du-sac. We want to make a driveway through here some day.
Photo: This is the same juniper from the last photo! And the whole row of junipers from the first photo has been turned into the mulch you see on the ground. This took about two hours.
Photo: This section of the pasture was rife with mesquite. Behind the gate in the Back 18, was a solid wall of large, dense junipers. I once had a trail through these but it disappeared over the years.
Photo: This is looking back at the area in the previous photo. Before the mulching, I couldn't have gotten to this spot and even if I did I'd be in the middle of a mass of junipers.

Article: Anteaters

2007-03-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been intrigued by giant anteaters. And who wouldn’t be? Even if you know nothing about them, the name alone is provocative. What kind of giant animal could eat something as small as ants? How giant is a giant anteater? How many ants would it take to feed one? So anteaters were high on my list of desired sightings when I went to Los Llanos, the great flood plane that spreads across thousands of square miles of the Venezuelan interior.

February is in the dry season in Los Llanos and the locals are somewhat confused by this. Although the country lies entirely north of the equator, they refer to this time of year as “summer.” They call the rainy season “winter” although it actually takes place in the summer. Stepping off the plane into the warm, dry air I gratefully accepted the reverse naming convention. It felt wonderful leave winter behind in Texas.

During the summer months the vast marshes of Los Llanos evaporate leaving a plane of grass punctuated by palm trees and dirt roads that form a cobweb of levies. We were driving along one of these roads just before sunset when I spotted my first giant anteater. It looked like a black smudge rising from the sea of green. I almost mistook it for an incongruously placed boulder. Then it moved.

As I clicked off my first few photos, another black smudge appeared. The new one was smaller and slightly closer. I had trouble making out its shape as it barely rose above the tall grass. The more distant anteater stopped, then back-tracked a little. The baby quickly climbed on its mother’s back getting a grip in her long, thick fur. In an instant she was in retreat again.

This was what I wanted to see, the giant anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla. The adults are about the size of German Shepard dogs. They look a bit like German Shepards too, except they’re hairier and have very, very long snouts that house their equally elongated tongues. They’re not related to dogs though, except that they’re mammals. And they don’t have big teeth like dogs. In fact, they don’t have any teeth.. They don’t need teeth since their food, which is mainly termites, doesn’t take much crunching.

What they have is impressive claws. They use them both for defense and to rip open termite nests which can be as hard as concrete. Once the nest is opened, the anteater sticks its long snout into the hole. It doesn’t suck up the termites as is popularly believed. Instead it uses its sticky tongue to lap up its prey. Anteaters eat around 30,000 termites each day.

Anteaters belong to the order Edentata, meaning toothless. They are most closely related to sloths and armadillos. Like sloths, they have a very slow metabolism that allows them to thrive on a low energy diet of termites and ants.

I felt pretty lucky to see several giant anteaters on my trip. Our driver even raced one as it ran through the scrub on the side of the road. I got luckier still when we spotted an elusive lesser anteater, Tamandua tetradactyla on a remote dirt road.

About a quarter of the size of its giant relative, the lesser anteater is mainly arboreal. It was fortunate to find one on the ground where it could be easily observed. Carlos, our guide, grabbed the little animal by the tail and temporarily captured it for us to get a closer view. It used its formidable claws to rip Carlos’ camera free from its strap around his neck.

Anteaters are some of the most fascinating and unique animals in the world. The range of all four species is restricted to Central and South America but if you can’t swing a trip, the San Antonio Zoo is a great place to see some. They have three species including the giant and lesser anteaters, only missing the squirrel-sized silky anteater.

Photo: A giant anteater running beside our car.Photo: Mother giant anteater waiting for baby.

Photo: Giant anteater
Photo: Lesser anteater. Note the big claws and prehensile tail. These anteaters are arboreal.
Photo: Lesser anteater attempting escape.
Photo: Lesser anteater hiding in some brush
Photo: Lesser anteater. The nose isn't as long as in the giant anteater but it's still pretty cute.

Article: Airport art

2007-02-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I took a short business trip to California. The trip consisted of two days of meetings with various potential customers. Normally I take my camera with me everywhere but I couldn’t imagine what I might photograph on such a brief and restricted journey.

When I arrived at the Sacramento airport, I realized my mistake. Two pillars disguised as piles of ancient lost luggage rose in stacks toward the high ceiling in the baggage claim area. The sculpture didn’t make me feel better about my chances of reconnecting with my own luggage but it did open my eyes to airport art. Thus enlightened, I soon found airports to be full of imaginative decoration.

Let’s face it, there’s not much to do at an airport and you may be trapped there indefinitely. In some ways airports are the closest many of us will come to being in prison. Airports force us to relinquish our personal belongings, they virtually--and sometimes literally--frisk us before we enter and the food is terrible. The one thing they have going for them is the art.

I actually took my first airport art photo years ago. I had few-hour layover at the Hong Kong airport on my way to Singapore on a business trip. After I deplaned, I looked back through the window and saw my plane. It was beautiful. Singapore Airlines must have the most highly decorated planes in the world. My plane sparkled (or would have sparkled if it hadn’t been raining) in various shades of blue, yellow, orange, red and tan. I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo.

The San Francisco airport has most impressed me with its art. Everywhere you look there are tremendous murals, some including 3-D elements including wonderfully polished wood carvings. I felt a little self-conscious going around photographing them (I was the only one doing so), but I wanted to remember them.

In Tokyo, a monument of colored glass adorns the international check-in area. Each of the four sides blends with the two adjoining and yet presents a new color scheme. I wandered all around admiring it from all sides. In an obscure corner was a plaque explaining the piece. The creation, titled “The Land of Nature,” was designed by Itoko Iwata of Iwata Class Co. I’m sure the rest of the explanation meant more in Japanese than it did in the English translation.

On my recent trip to Venezuela, I had several hours to explore the Caracas airport. The use of stained glass windows delighted my eyes and my camera. Each area of the airport sported a different color of glass and each color lent a unique atmosphere to the scene it illuminated. It provided at least a half-hour of entertainment, too bad I had ten hours to kill.

So next time you’re stuck in an airport, spend some time looking around. Even the Austin airport has some “art.” I had to put that in quotes because Austin is a bit on the nerdy side. One section in the baggage claim area depicts the street layout of central Austin in floor tiles. And much of the remaining art consists of holograms. At least it’s unique, I haven’t seen that anywhere else. I guess Austin is still weird.

Photo: The Caracas airport is colored with stained glass windows.
Photo: Singapore airlines has the most brightly painted planes I've ever seen.
Photo: A mural in the international terminal at SFO.
Photo: This mural at SFO also included carved, wooden birds.
Photo: A huge glass rectangle at Tokyo Narita airport.

Article: Am I dreaming?

2007-02-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

I rode my bicycle down a rocky dirt path that switched back and forth across the undulating face of a cliff. Blue-green waves with brilliant caps broke far below. Rocks beneath the tires wrenched the handlebars, pulling me from one side of the narrow trail to the other. As I rounded a sharp bend, the rear wheel nearly skid over nothingness before I pulled it back. I’m not good on a bike and I’m afraid of heights but I held myself together and continued.

The next curve proved worse--both tires came to the very edge of the cliff, sending puffs of dirt down the side of the cliff. Yet I continued. On the next, the bike seemed to hang suspended over the abyss like the coyote in the cartoon, not realizing it should fall. Then, miraculously, I was back on the path.

That’s when I decided to put a stop to it. On the next turn, I let momentum carry me out over the water. The bike fell away while the air suspended me like a bird. Then I plunged toward the water. “Great!” I thought. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to dream underwater.” It proved everything I imagined because it was my imagination. Of course I didn’t need to breath. Brilliantly colored fish came to me so I could pet them. I created a hammerhead shark and clung to its dorsal fin as it cruised through the clear waters.

This is lucid dreaming, defined as dreaming while knowing you’re dreaming.

The dream I described above could have been a nightmare. In real life, I am afraid of heights and the dream began with a wild ride on the edge of a cliff. Because I knew I was dreaming, I didn’t have any fear. The challenge of riding the bike consumed my attention at the beginning of the dream and when that proved more difficult than I cared for, I simply gave up, exchanging the cliff world for the marine world.

Controlling nightmares is one reason people learn to dream lucidly. In a lucid dream it is impossible, or at least irrational, to be frightened since you are aware that nothing is real. I can remember nightmares from when I was a child--in one I was being devoured by ants--but I haven’t had one in many years.

Aside from controlling nightmares, lucid dreams can help people overcome real-life anxieties and phobias. The dream setting often reflects the dreamer’s fears and concerns. I have no doubt my fear of heights would be worse if I did not periodically confront it in dreams.

On the internet I found several references to use of lucid dreams to confront the fear of public speaking. The dreamer practices speaking before an imaginary crowd and then feels more prepared to give the speech in real life. That sounds like a waste of a good dream to me. It would be more interesting if you combined another common tactic for overcoming this fear--imagining your audience naked.

According to the internet, lucid dreaming is a skill one can learn. The key is that when something happens that’s impossible--you fly, you meet someone who’s dead, all your teeth fall out--instead of just accepting, you have to realize that it’s an indication that you’re not in the real world. At this point, you may wake up, especially if you were having a nightmare. The trick is to stay asleep and to realize that everything in the dream is a product of your own mind which means you can control it.

I once tried to convince a character in a dream that we could do anything. To persuade him, I took off flying. The character wouldn’t follow me which goes to show that, even in dreams, you can’t control your own thoughts.

If you are interested in learning more, there are many books available on lucid dreaming, many of which provide techniques for learning to dream lucidly. These include at least two by Dr. Stephen Laberge who has done extensive research on the subject. You can also review the following internet sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
http://www.dreamviews.com/
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/si91ld.html

Article: Weird weather and wild horses

2007-01-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

I know every drought ends on a flood. It’s one of my favorite sayings. So it came as no surprise when we got over five inches of rain at my house a couple of Saturday’s ago. Around five in the morning I heard the patter of raindrops with lightening in the distance. By six, the pounding sounded like someone beating a drum on the roof. Thunder and lightening provided counterpoint, like the cannons in The 1812 Overture.

Even so, when I got up around 7:30 and looked out the front window I was amazed to see that Garlic Creek, which runs across our property, had already risen over its banks and flooded the driveway. The creek has been dry these past two years; I’d almost forgotten it could carry water. As I looked out the front porch, raging waters engulfed our gazebo, perched precariously on the far bank and stretched all the way to cattle guard in the front.

For the next two hours I stood on the porch admiring the downpour and contemplating feeding the horses. The two in the back have a run-in where they can get out of the weather. I knew they were huddled there waiting for food. Thing is, it’s in the very farthest corner and slogging through the rain and mud figured to be pretty unpleasant. Nevertheless, I had to do it. The reality proved the premonition. The three in the front had to wait for the creek to go down, I didn’t get to them until well past noon.

The flood seemed like a good sign, with hay up to $10 per bale, we could use some grass growing around here. I can put up with a lot of mud to save some money. But then came the ice and the freezing rain. Those three equines in the front pasture don’t have any real cover, just a few scraggly trees that have lost all their leaves this time of year anyway. Normally they’re fine. I kept a horse in Missouri and in the winter I’d find icicles hanging from his chin and a hard crust of snow on his back. Horses can take the cold.

It’s not like that here. It hadn’t gone down to freezing much even at night before that ice storm. The horses were still wearing their fall coats, more like fluffy sweaters than down parkas. The cold hit them harder than I’ve ever seen. The only thing I could do was clean out the garage and let them hang out in there for the duration. I didn’t like the idea but I couldn’t come up with anything better. So I threw a bunch of hay on the floor, liberally mixed it with grain and invited the horses in.

Horses do not make good garage guests, let me tell you. They messed up the whole place. Food everywhere, trampled-on hay, horse manure. The garage looked like a barn! But I felt a better looking out the kitchen window and seeing their long faces lined up. At least they were dry if not exactly warm.

I could tell the weather had warmed up when I saw only one horse high and dry in the garage. A quick search of the property revealed incriminating evidence. The flood knocked the fence down where it goes over the creek and hoof prints were on both sides. The other two were gone, escaped onto sixty acres of cedar elm, oak, mesquite and juniper.

As I tramped through the woods tracking the rebels, the sounds of falling ice and creaking branches surrounded me. The weight of the ice had knocked down a lot of dead wood and caused low hanging limbs to hang even lower, blocking my path. I called to the missing horses but, of course, they didn’t answer.

Finally I spotted them, frisky as foals, running along the fence behind the neighbor’s house. No doubt they were visiting his horse. Tails in the air, they galloped toward me looking for breakfast. I locked them back up in their regular pen and filled their food bowls. They were knee deep in mud but hungry as horses.

Photo: View out the front porch of my house during the flood.
Photo: View out the front porch looking to the left. Somewhere through those trees is where the fence went down that the horses escaped through.
Photo: View out the front porch to the right. Our driveway runs along that right fence and through those raging waters.
Photo: This is poor little Phoenix with freezing rain in her mane.
Photo: Here is Buzz eating hay in the overhang of the garage. Notice all the icicles.
Photo: Phoenix has taken Buzz's place from the last photo with Buzz and Chesapeake in the garage. They always stand facing out. In fact, I saw them back in rather than go in and turn around.

Article: My father's memories

2007-01-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

One of my projects for the new year is to compile a passel of slides I inherited from my father.

Dad died when I was in high school but we hadn’t lived with him since I was four. He worked for UNESCO as a professor and spent much of his life teaching in Latin America. When he died. I didn’t have the sense of immediate loss that many children would. Instead I mourned what might have been. Dad was living in Sylmar, California at the time, less than two hours drive from our house. Once I had the freedom of a car, I hoped to develop a real relationship with him. His death put an end to that dream and I have always resented him for that.

My slide project didn’t start out as something I did for myself. I was going to compile these memories for my younger brother for his fiftieth birthday coming up in March. His reaction to Dad’s death was different from mine. He developed something of a hero worship of our father, pulling all of his meager memories together to form an image of a man who may never have existed. I knew Stephen had few photos of Dad or of our early childhoods. A photo album would be the perfect gift for him. Then last year Stephen died suddenly.

As Stephen’s birthday approaches, I decided to go ahead with the project. I imagine him sitting down with his kids, who are about the same ages we were when our father died, opening the album and pouring over the ancient images with them. He’d spin tale after tale, weaving what few memories he had into the tapestry of a person, his father, a great man. Even though he won’t be there to do that, I thought he would still want his children to know our father as much as possible. So I began scanning in the slides.

I have maybe three-hundred images, paper-mounted and color distorted. I haven’t taken as good care of them as I should for they are scratched and dusty. In the margins of many is Dad’s elegant handwriting giving a simple explanation of the image. On one he wrote “Beauty and the children.. Oct. 1955” I stopped when I read that and examined the photo. My mother, with pins in her hair, sits on the edge of a bed talking to her two oldest children. It’s not a very good photo and not flattering to anyone in it. But it is Dad’s life, distilled into tiny bits and frozen forever.

Gradually, as I’ve gone over my inheritance, I’ve realized I should have done this years ago. Not just because I could have given it to Stephen rather than to Stephen’s children but because it has given me something I missed. I missed knowing my father the way these slides let me know him. I missed day-to-day life with him. I missed knowing what he loved and cherished. He took a series of slides of the UC Berkeley campus where both he and my mother attended college. I wish I’d had those shots when I went to Berkeley. I’d like to stand where he stood to take the photo. I’d like to imagine him there as a young man living in a foreign country and meeting the love of his life.

Another group of slides focuses on a trip to Death Valley he took with my grandfather. I’ve taken my children there many times. It’s one of our favorite places. Is that something I got from him? And across all the years, a moment is captured where he plays with baby Stephen and a rubber giraffe. There’s no way Stephen could have remembered that. Except the photo would have given him that instant. He could have looked at it and known his father loved him.

It’s a lot of work scanning and repairing the slides but it is worth it. In a way, I am scanning and repairing my own life.

Photo: A scanned slide that my father took of his five kids in 1962. This is what it looked like before I started working on it.
Photo: The same photo after extensive repair. From left to right: Stephen, Melanie, Sylvia, Cynthia and George.
Photo: A rare shot of the family with my father's parents. Taken in 1955. This is after I repaired it.

Article: Puzzling fascination

2007-01-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

During the course of our New Year’s celebration this year, I brought out my trump card--possibly the most beautiful jigsaw puzzle in the world. I placed the box on the table and waited for my family to cluster around, awed at the vivid image of a classical Japanese painting depicted on the front. We, in the course of a few hours, could recreate that magnificent artwork out of a jumble of irregularly shaped pieces of cardboard. How could anyone resist?

I’d like to say that all settled in and brought the incipient masterpiece to fruition in one glorious display of family unity and shared interest but, to my complete surprise, the assembled crowd quickly dispersed. Some moved off to get something to eat, others to refill their drinks and, sadly, a few just sat down to watch TV. I broke the box open and splayed the pieces across the table. No one remained. Dejected, I rejoined the party that seemed to have moved to a room without a puzzle.

Over the course of the next several days, I completed my gorgeous Japanese puzzle, virtually alone in my efforts. As I placed the final piece into the last hole, I was overcome with a feeling of accomplishment. I stood back to admire my creation. Beautiful! So much bigger and brighter than its portrayal on the box.

That feeling drives me to complete jigsaw puzzles. All I need to do is spend a few--read that many--hours pouring over a thousand or so pieces and I know I can capture it again. I can sit back and admire a work of art that I have created. And it’s not like creating real art, which is a hit or miss affair. As I worked on my puzzle, my son struggled to create a mosaic tile picture frame. He didn’t complete it before he left but I could tell he was already disappointed in it. Real art is like that, it requires talent and perseverance and even then might not live up to expectations. Jigsaw puzzles never let you down.

I did a 3-D puzzle last year. It was a small globe. Although I’m pretty familiar with what the Earth looks like, that was about the hardest puzzle I’ve ever done. Never mind just trying to make it all hold together! If the pieces weren’t numbered, I’m sure I never would have completed it. The two-thirds of the world that’s water all looks pretty much the same on a globe.

Once I did a map-of-the-world puzzle where the pieces were shaped more-or-less like the countries or states they depicted. I’m not sure if that qualifies as a jigsaw since the pieces were not interlocking which definitely added to the difficulty. And some of the pieces were tiny. Those eastern states don’t amount to much even when several of them are combined on a single piece.

The Japanese understand the appeal of jigsaw puzzles better than most Americans. The stores where they are sold often have large displays of jigsaw puzzle frames. In the US, I think most people laugh when they see a framed puzzle.

I left my completed Japanese puzzle out for about a week before I realized no one was going to come marvel over it. When I opened the box to put it away, I found a foil packet and a sponge. I couldn’t read the directions but I assume the packet contained special puzzle glue so I could immortalize my work in the Japanese tradition. It was a temptation.

Pulling apart each piece of my puzzle hurt. How painstakingly I had created this beauty! With such effort I had tried each piece, eager for it to find its home. Now they were so much flotsam adrift in a plastic bag. I closed the lid on their pathetic state of increased entropy. As always, chaos wins.

Photo: Detail from the beautiful Japanese puzzle I recently completed.
Photo:The completed Japanese puzzle in all its glory along with a couple of more memorable puzzles from my past, stored as jumbled masses in their boxes. The Rosetta Stone puzzle was purchased at the British Museum in London where the real Rosetta Stone resides.
Photo: 3-D globe puzzle given to me by my son. Without the numbers you can see on the backside of each piece in this photo, I never would have been able to complete the puzzle.
Photo: This puzzle currently sits on the mantel in the livingroom of my home. It might not look like much to you but it was a major accomplishment for me.
Photo: The map-of-the-world puzzle I did. Luckily it depicted native animals from each region, including the seas. That made it much easier to piece together.
Photo: Detail from the animals of the world puzzle.

Article: Happy New Year!

2006-12-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

The holiday isn’t over for my family. We eschew the standard celebrations to focus on the turning of the calendar. As the glittering ball falls in Times Square--delayed one hour--we blow horns and pop poppers. By 12:10, the floor is completely covered with confetti. Then we sit down to exchange gifts.

It wasn’t always this way. I was raised non-Christian. By that I mean that while we didn’t believe in any gods or supernatural phenomena, our heritage was Christian. My mother’s family was some sort of German Protestant and my father’s was Greek Orthodox. My grandparents even had me baptized. But neither my parents nor later my stepfather were religious. Still we put up a bright aluminum Christmas tree every year and celebrated in the Christian manner.

I continued the tradition with my first husband who hadn’t given religion enough thought to know what he was. When Coral was born on December 23^rd, I put her bassinet under the tree for a Christmas photo. The kids’ father didn’t have much of a sense of humor about social norms and Christmas was on the boring side while we were together. After our divorce, it got more fun. One year I hid the presents and told the kids Santa was sick. The Easter Bunny stood in for him but didn’t understand that the presents were to be left under the tree.

Then I met Rick who is non-Jewish. He is, however, more Jewish than I am Christian. He said it made him uncomfortable celebrating Christmas. He was raised Jewish and his mother and sister are followers of the religion. They wouldn’t like him celebrating Christmas. It didn’t matter to me so we switched over to Chanukah.

Chanukah is a beautiful holiday. The kids loved eight days of gifts. Candle races were a big event each night as we tried to guess which would last the longest. But most nights of Chanukah fall on workdays and Rick’s work ethic is warped. He couldn’t make it home at dusk for Chanukah dinner. After a few years I told him we weren’t celebrating his holiday if he wasn’t there. We were switching back to Christmas.

Rick couldn’t get home in time for Chanukah but neither could he celebrate the Christian holiday. We examined our options. I loved the thought of celebrating the solstice. The official start of winter, to me the solstice symbolizes its end. The days grow longer bringing the hope of summer Coral opposed the move since December 21^st, two days before her birthday, seemed no better than two days after. Even when she was small she resented the proximity of a major celebration to her special day.

The solstice was out anyway because it falls before Christmas so we’d have to face awful crowds while shopping. Also, it could fall on a workday--we knew that didn’t work.

The logical choice was New Year’s Eve. Gift shopping could be done the week after Christmas, taking advantage of sales, and New Year’s Day is a holiday. We set up our own unique tradition. We decorate the living room top-to-bottom with ribbons, streamers, New Year’s banners and a silver ball hanging from the fan in the middle of the room. While we wait for midnight we play games, have silly string or marshmallow gun fights, race windup toys and other crazy stuff.

At midnight we shoot off as many poppers as we can. We clink glasses full of champagne or sparkling cider. We yell and hoot. We turn the fan on and start the ball spinning--normally trailing a heavy cargo of silly string and streamers. Then we get down to the serious business of present opening.

Everyone spends the night at our house. It keeps them safely off the road and allows us to continue celebrating in the morning. The new year dawns on a day of play and family fun. It’s the perfect holiday for us. I hope y’all enjoy yours as much. Have a happy and safe new year!

Photo: New Year's decorations before the comencement of celebrations.
Photo: Everyone has to wear a silly hat. Here are Coral and Celeste comparing choices.
Photo: Monica and Celeste divide up the poppers for the big moment.
Photo: Every year I take a photo of Philip and Coral holding the photo I took of them the year before. The new photo then goes in front of the old photo in the same frame. If you look deeply enough, you can see all the way back in time.
Photo: I'd like to think Celeste regrets her part in the making of this mess but I'm sure she doesn't.

Article: The graduate

2006-12-21T15:06:00.000-08:00

December 23^rd marks a big day in my daughter Coral’s life. It’s her twenty-sixth birthday but that’s not it. It is the day she officially graduates from UT Austin with an M.A. in Linguistics. She’s not going to her graduation ceremony but she has already started celebrating.

Since she officially finished all school related activities on Monday, Coral has made two broad pronouncements. The first is that I should allow her to wear her lip ring in my presence. I will never be happy about that lip ring so I don’t see how that’s going to happen. The second is that she will resent me forever for making her complete her degree. She says the only thing the degree is good for is to allow her to write M.A. after her name. Like all mothers where education is concerned, I know she will thank me in the end.

Coral has had an interesting academic career. She started kindergarten a year early due to the timing of her birthday and our financial situation, I couldn’t afford another year of daycare. She attended kindergarten at a private school where age wasn’t the only criterion for entry and started public school with the first grade. I remember it like it was yesterday.

In the weeks leading to the big day, I explained to Coral about what the first grade would be like. I bought her new clothes and school supplies. We visited the campus with her brother serving as tour guide since he had just finished the first grade and knew all about it. “Don’t worry” I told her, “I’ll drive you the first day and help you find your class.” She humored me for a while but eventually dealt the death-blow of five-year-old independence: “I’d rather take the bus.”

I looked into her steely blue eyes and saw no fear, no uncertainty and no dependence. On her first day of public school, Coral boarded the school bus with other kids from her daycare and went off without a backward glance.

Although the youngest child in her class, she was usually the tallest during those yearly years. School was easy for her. She did well and had lots of friends. The first hint of trouble came between the second and third grades. At that point she announced that she’d decided to take a year off. Since she was a year ahead in school, this would not be a problem according to her reasoning. It was a blow when I explained things didn’t work that way.

After Coral graduated from high school, she wasn’t particularly interested in college. She went to live with her dad, working a little and partying a lot. Then at nineteen she went to Venezuela to do a Spanish emersion program. She came back with a goal. She began attending junior college and got straight A’s. After that she attended UCLA where she received a B.A. with a major in Linguistics and Spanish, graduating with honors.

When Coral started the Ph.D. program in linguistics at UT Austin, I was the happiest mom in the world. She got an apartment near campus and continued to get straight A’s. But gradually her attitude changed. Her enthusiasm for linguistics began to cool. She no longer believed linguists applied scientific methods or critical thinking to their field.

She dropped her plan for a Ph.D. and decided to go for an M.A. Without the love for the field she had felt earlier, even that came into question. The last couple of quarters were particularly hard, not due to the material or the work but for lack of motivation. That’s where I came in. Mothers are made of motivation for their children and I’d been coasting while Coral supplied her own.

Finally it's over. Time to party. Time to reflect. Time to lament the worthlessness of the degree. I don't agree, over the course of her carerr, I'm sure her M.A. will bring opportunities and better pay. In fact, it will s tart paying off soon as she collects her graduation gifts. She's not going to be resenting me then. I'm hoping she'll thank me, if not for the degree then at least for the gift.

Photo: Five-year-old Coral graduating from kindergarten.

Article: Where the action is

2006-12-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

I was driving up I35 in southern Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago when I spotted an intriguing sign. Traffic was crawling due to snow and ice so Sheldon and I decided to follow a whim and headed for Pauls Valley.

Pauls Valley is a cute little town though I’m not sure where the “Paul” or the “Valley” comes from. Part of the town’s charm stems from its many brick streets, more than any other city in Oklahoma. But the real attraction is the world’s first and only Action Figure Museum. The allure of such an unique museum drew us like a magnet.

We drove the snow covered brick streets to the museum eagerly but painfully slowly. We found our destination easily but were intensely disappointment to discover the museum was closed. Closed! Lousy snow. I knew I hated that stuff, all fluffy and sparkling and dangerous to drive in. “Closed due to weather” read the sign on the door.

But what goes up must come down, so Sheldon and I dropped by the museum on our drive back to Texas. Luckily it is open Sundays from 1:00 - 5:00. As we walked up to the door, Sheldon commented that our visit would take all of five seconds. Admittedly neither one of us owns a single action figure, but I knew Sheldon was wrong. What I didn’t know was how wrong he was, we spent about three hours in the museum. Sadly, during that time they had not one other visitor. Maybe it was the weather.

After paying the $6 per person entry fee, we were treated to a guided tour by an extremely well informed man. We saw thousands of figures and he knew what each one was, what year it was made and how many points of articulation it had. Points of articulation are a big thing for action figures, an indication of their value and collectability. Primitive figures have shoulder and hip joints that allow the limbs to swing back and forth and not much else. A good figure has movable wrists and elbows--possibly a posable finger or two--and can grasp a weapon or other talisman.

We marveled at the “Bat Cave” with its multiple versions of Bat Man, Robin, the Bat Mobile, even trusty butler Alfred. There was one of those ride-on toys that you see in front of grocery stores too. When I was a kid I always wanted to drop my quarter into the horse version but here I forked over the money for a ride on the Bat Mobile. It played the music from the old Bat Man TV Show.

The main attraction was the “kid’s room.” Our guide explained that it looked like the room of a 27 year old “boy” who still lived with his mother. Sheldon and I nodded knowingly, we were sure he was describing himself. This display contained more action figures than I imagined existed. The floor was completely covered with an intricate tableau of good verses evil action figures. The wall plastered with figures still in their original packaging. The most interesting item to me was “The Robot” from the TV Show Lost In Space. It rotated, waved its arms and said, “Danger Will Robinson!”

Along with several of those grocery store ride-ons, kids could enjoy a table set up with loads of figures they can play with and a dress-up area with masks, capes, feet or hair of cartoon and comic strip characters. Annoyingly, everything was kid-sized but Sheldon and I cobbled together primitive costumes.

We had a great time and only left because of the long drive we faced and the fact that the museum was closed. If you’re in the Pauls Valley area or you love action figures, I highly recommend a visit. You can find out more at: http://www.actionfiguremuseum.com. Click on the poster to get to the actual web page.

Photo:
Brick street in front of Action Figure Museum. Notice the snow and ice. Those are my tire prints.
Photo:
The front of the Action Figure Museum. That's Sheldon taking video of something that doesn't move.
Photo:
Part of the big room display. The whole thing was cramed with action figures so thickly that you couldn't even grasp what was going on.
Photo:
This is "The Robot" from the Lost In Space TV show. He waves his arms and says "Danger Will Robinson!" when a light is flashed on him.
Photo:
This is a balrog from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This is one of the action figures they are most proud of.
Photo:
Another shot of the Balrog action figure, this time fighting a Gandalf action figure. They are all to scale according to the movie. The Balrog even lights up and makes some kind of roaring noise.
Photo:
This is me dressing up as some kind of action figure. Note how many points of articulation I have.
Photo:
This is Sheldon trying to look "super." Good luck with that!

Article: Oklahoma is not OK

2006-12-07T16:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think I’d like to move to the area of the country north of Dallas and south of Oklahoma City. Probably not many people think that way but it’s something that crosses my mind periodically. Living here on the edge of the Hill Country, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would fancy the dreary, unadorned planes that lie along the northern border of our state. There’s only one explanation: horses.

Of course, horses and ranches abound in Texas, it’s not like north of Dallas has any monopoly there. I’ve got my little plot of land in Buda and a small herd of the critters myself. But, much as I like Hays County, it’s not the center of equine activities that the Red River valley is and sometimes I long to be closer to the action. That happened again earlier this month as I contemplated my drive up to Oklahoma City for the National Reining Horse Association finals.

If you haven’t seen a reining horse in action, you really should check it out. Go to www.nrha.com to find out more about reining and when and where upcoming shows will be held. But the thing is, it’s no coincidence that the finals are held in Oklahoma City. That northern edge of Texas and southern boundary of Oklahoma is where all the big reining horse trainers are. Towns like Aubrey, Pilot Point, and Tioga Texas along with their Oklahoma counterparts are home a disproportionate number of great reiners. I’m not in that league but, well, sometimes I think that if I lived in the right place things might be different.

I know it’s just a crazy dream and my trip last weekend made that blatantly clear. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the show. It was great. Beautiful horses, lots of action. But the weather! Can people really live like that?

The drive started out well enough. My friend Sheldon and I left work early, around 5:00 on Thursday evening and headed north up MoPac expecting to be slogged down in rush hour traffic. It was windy and bitterly cold but the traffic just didn’t appear. When we hit I35 just south of Round Rock, we breathed a sigh of relief. The worst was over and it wasn’t that bad...or so we thought.

We made good time all the way up to Ft. Worth. We stopped for dinner in the northern suburbs and it was there that we got our first real sign of trouble. A thin dusting of icy snow covered the median and lawns. Dallas and Ft. Worth don’t seem so far away, it always amazes me that it snows there. Sheldon was for turning back, even though he lived in Minnesota for three years he seems to be afraid of the snow. I pointed out to him that it wasn’t snowing now and probably hadn’t snowed since the morning. The roads should be cleared.

The drive from Ft. Worth to the Oklahoma border probably took us two hours even though it’s only about fifty miles. The roads became progressively more and more icy. We assumed that, as a state, Texas wasn’t prepared to deal with winter weather. Things would get better once we entered Oklahoma. Again our expectations proved false. The eighteen miles from Marietta to Ardmore took another two hours. We were now traveling in a caravan of mostly eighteen wheelers and going a whopping five miles an hour. We decided to stop for the night.

The morning dawned crisp and very cold but the sun was shining and I thought the ice would soon melt. It didn’t. Another five long hours passed before we reached Oklahoma City. We left the freeway and traveled on some smaller highways after leaving Ardmore. Most drivers don’t have any qualms about tailgating even when they’re driving on ice and can’t possibly stop. It seemed safer to drive on roads that weren’t as clear of snow but had a lot less traffic. We mad a couple of short stops too, mostly to gawk at “winter.” The snow and ice made for a beautiful landscape.

That drive was all I need to remind me of why I live in Central Texas. Pretty as it is, I can't stand the snow. And while I saw some horses out romping in their snowy pastures, the one time it snowed here my horses huddled beside the barn just waiting for it to pass. If I ever do achieve the level required to participate in the OK City NRHA finals, I know now that I won't be able to go. As bad as it was driving a car, I can't imagine pulling a horse trailer.

Photos:
An ice-encrusted tree at a rest stop near Ardmore, OK.Close-up of the tree. It sparkled like glass.
An ice-coated barbwire fence.
Sheldon loves the snow. However he wore his riding boots which don't give much traction on ice.
My little vehicle, Grisie. She hates the snow too.
This is what Grisie and I saw on Friday morning. Trucks and cars stacked for miles and hardly moving at all. You'll notice that I took this shot while driving.
Once we left the main highway, we saw some interesting sights. Like this stack of old cars outside a junk yard in Lexington, OK.
How clever to make an old Volkswagon into an enormous black widow spider!

Article: Enchanting day at Enchanted Rock

2006-11-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, saw some of the most beautiful weather of the year. I can’t understand anyone spending that day shopping. Since my son Philip’s nuclear family went to his fiancé’s grandmother’s house for the holiday, he was free to spend the day with me. We decided to get up early--though not as early as the shoppers--and head to Enchanted Rock State Park.

Enchanted Rock is a gigantic granite dome located on RR 965 north of Fredericksburg. According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife website (www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/enchanted_rock), the dome rises 425 feet above the ground and is one of the largest batholiths in the United States. A batholith is an underground rock formation that has been exposed by erosion. There’s a lot of impressive erosion going on at Enchanted Rock. The rock looks like it is sloughing its skin.

Since the weather was so nice, Philip and I decided to take my little Jeep Wrangler with the windows off. We used the back roads, traveling through such towns as Sandy, Willow City and Eckert. The miles wore by in a shifting tableau of cattle, small streams, goats and live oaks. This area is spectacular with wildflowers during a good spring but it’s a very nice drive any time of the year.

Eventually we wound our way to the park. Our fantasy that everyone else would be shopping or sleeping off their Thanksgiving “cheer” was shattered immediately. There was a line of cars waiting to get it. Luckily it moved fairly quickly. Once parked, I got my camera gear and water packed up, and off we went to climb the dome. Unfortunately everyone had the same idea. A long trail of colorful dots, the bright shirts of fellow climbers, wound up the side of the great rock.

In my opinion, the point of hiking is to get some time alone with nature. Given the number of people on the so-called Enchanted Rock, that wasn’t going to happen. But there was another granite dome right next to it, not quite as large but way less populated. We decided to head up that one.

The domes are not hard to climb. They’re fairly steep but the rock is rough and there’s plenty of traction if you have a good pair of sneakers on. I stopped at multiple places to take photos of the jumbled rocks that litter the smaller dome. It was at one of these stops that I focused my camera down slope. This reminded me that I’m afraid of heights. Suddenly the rock did not feel secure at all. I might plummet to my death at any moment. Luckily Philip has absolutely no such fear. With his guidance and occasional hand-holding, I made it to the top.

The view was wonderful. The air was clear and cloudless. Scrub forest stretched over the hilly countryside below us with little sign of human disturbance. Some trees even displayed a Texas version of fall color. We sat on a boulder and watched a spiny lizard while butterflies and birds flitted by.

Later we made our way carefully down the least steep section of the rock and into a canyon with a small stream. Dragonflies danced above rippling water. We continued our hike around the back of the dome, past a stock pond and a scenic overlook and finally to the parking lot. We’d spent about four hours in what Philip jokingly calls “the tawdry beauty of nature.” Now it was time to head back home.

We used to go out to Enchanted Rock all the time when the kids were little. Now it seems we don’t have time to do things we used to enjoy. As we left, Philip commented that he is going to bring Celeste, his eight year old daughter, out as soon as possible. Maybe all we need is a little reminder about what is important in life.

A train of people heading up the official "Enchanted Rock".
The view looking up the rock we chose to climb. Notice the two standing rocks. I had Philip climb those for a photo.
Here are the standing rocks up a little closer.
Now there's Philip on top of one of the rocks!
Taking this photo reminded me of my fear of heights.
Our rock had a lot more boulders on it. This is looking toward the Enchanted Rock.
Here's Philip on the top of our rock with the back of Enchanted Rock in the background and a view of the Hill Country.
Some of the boulders congregated on the back of Enchanted Rock.This shows how the skin of the rock is being sloughed.
A bit of Texas fall color.
A dragonfly we saw near a stream at the base of the domes.
This is the stream where we saw the dragonfly.
The sun sparkling on the water of the pond. It looks late but I think it was about 2:00 pm.
The forest around the base of the granite domes.
Philip admiring the view from a scenic overlook on the loop trail.
It was around this area that my brother Stephen and I caught three water snakes one day. Stephen made me catch them because water snakes always bite.

Article: Cephalopods

2006-11-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science recently. There’s a lot to see there, including the amazing Body Worlds exhibit which shows partially dissected human cadavers in various poses. The cadavers have been plasticized so they don’t smell. That was what brought me there in the first place. It was interesting but I’ve already seen my share of cadavers.

What really got my attention was the Strake Hall of Malacology. I didn’t even know what malacology was, although I was somewhat familiar with some of its members. Malacology is the study of mollusks. The most familiar mollusks are, of course, snails. Or maybe it’s oysters or clams. I suppose that depends on whether you like seafood.

There are over 100,000 species of mollusks and the museum had a fantastic display of their incredibly beautiful shells. With over 100,000 species of mollusks there are a lot of shells to display. The thing that interested me most in the exhibit was a small aquarium housing two very cute mollusks. How can a mollusk be cute? Have you seen a cuttlefish? They are amazing animals. These two were swimming placidly, their eight arms streaming down from between their eyes and their two tentacles holding them stationary. They followed my movement with big, intelligent eyes.

Cuttlefish belong to the group of mollusks known as cephalopods, made up of four groups of animals, the cuttlefish, squid, octopuses and nautiluses. Most people only know cuttlefish from cuttlebone, the calcium supplement provided to pet birds. The cuttlebone is the last remnant of the ancestral shell shared by all mollusks but now only obvious among cephalopods in the nautiluses.

The cuttlebone is not what fascinated me as I stared into the aquarium. What most amazed me was the way the two captives were changing colors. Cephalopods are known as “the chameleons of the sea” but this does not do them justice. Chameleons can display some impressive color changes but they take minutes to accomplish. They are totally outclassed by animals such as these two cuttlefish. They changed colors so fast they were actually flashing. And each was trimmed with a narrow strip of neon purple.

On the wall of the museum was a mural showing a sperm whale battling a giant squid. Giant squid get up to about 45 feet long but at least half of that is in the tentacles and arms. They don’t weight much and will always lose a battle with a sperm whale.

As I watched the two little cuttlefish, I was saddened by the knowledge that they couldn’t be very old. The very oldest of cephalopods, those that live in nearly frozen artic waters, are thought to live up to six years. Most other species live between one and three years. Amazingly this includes even the giant squid and its slightly larger relation, the colossal squid.

Cephalopods are possibly the most intelligent of the invertebrates, animals without backbones. They have been shown to use their incredible color-changing capabilities to communicate with each other. Associated with their chromatic abilities, cephalopods have very good vision and large brains. If it weren’t for their short lives and generally solitary habits, they might someday rule the world! Well, maybe not. The lack of bones and the inability to function on land will probably save us from a cephalopod take-over even if the overcome their other obstacles.

Web information:
http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/

Mural at Houston Museum of Natural Science of a giant squid and a sperm whale.
One of the two cuttlefish at the museum.
I believe this is a face everyone can love.

The second cuttlefish showing a darker pattern.

Article: Adventures in medicine

2006-11-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

When I broke my wrist last year I thought I had a standard condition. Haven’t doctors been fixing broken bones since Hippocrates? If they can’t get that right, how can they possibly do complicated procedures like organ transplants? I was in for a rude awakening.

I suppose every break is a little different and mine was particularly bad. I broke off the distal end of my radius and shoved the broken shaft of bone into my wrist. My hand twisted and the palm collapsed in on itself. Still, I’d heard of worse. I was in shock when I got to the ER but that doesn’t explain my confidence in the medical profession. Brain washing by such TV shows as ER and Marcus Welby explained that.

It took several months before I realized things weren’t going well. How long does a broken wrist take to heal anyway? My physical therapist recommended a medieval-looking device called a supination split. I was to wear it while sleeping. How could anyone sleep with that contraption of metal, and Velcro wrapped around their arm? You have to be very tired.

Four months of the split convinced my doctor that it wasn’t working. Time to try something new. How about a surgical procedure called a Suave-Kapandji (SK)? How about cutting my ulna in two, pinning the wrist end to my radius and letting the section attached to my elbow just ‘flap in the wind’? “It takes some getting used to,” my doctor said. I was worried. Is it okay for a bone not to be connected to anything on one end? You don’t really need it, the doctor explained, it’s extra like your appendix. Call me skeptical, I decided to get a second opinion.

I went to a doctor recommended by my doctor. You wouldn’t go to your mechanics best friend for unbiased advice would you? I assumed doctors were above that kind of thing. Even so, Dr. #2 did not completely agree with Dr. #1. Could do an SK, he said, or could just cut a section out of the ulna and pin it back together, a procedure called an ulnar shortening.

I needed another opinion, someone who would agree with one of the previous doctors. But Dr. #3 came up with a completely new procedure--radial reconstruction. He would take out the pin Dr. #1 put in, cut the radius apart and restore it to its original length using a bone graft from my hip. I was stunned. How did my hip get involved? Time for another opinion.

Dr. #4 took a cat scan of my wrist. He examined it closely and proclaimed there was nothing wrong that a good shot of cortisone wouldn’t fix. Dr. #1 had already given me cortisone but Dr. #4 said he didn’t do it right. He must not have done it right either because it didn’t work again.

There was only minimal agreement in the diagnosis I’d gotten. Drs #3 and #4 were both adamantly against an SK. Both said an ulna shortening was possible but probably wouldn’t help. Since I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life getting more opinions, I decided to go with Dr. #3. His procedure could be done in two parts, first remove the pin then reconstruct the radius. Removing the pin sounded reasonable.

Dr. #3 examined the cat scan taken by Dr. #4. Diagnostic tests are nice, he said, but have no correlation to symptoms. People with good diagnostics can have debilitating symptoms while people with no symptoms might have terrible diagnostics. Then why do they call them “diagnostics?” They don’t diagnose anything.

During surgery, Dr. #3 noted extensive scaring involving the pin and the tendons and other tissues surrounding it. A week later I was able to rotate my arm freely. Two weeks after that, I got full range of motion back in my thumb. Within two months all of my major complaints were resolved. My doctor expressed surprise but gave me a clean bill of health and discharged me from his care.

Turns out I didn't need a radial reconstruction or ulnar shortening or the horrendous Suave-Kapandji. But I might have had any one of those. In science there's usually a right answer. In medicine you just have to cross your fingers--if you can.

X-Ray of my wrist right after the break.X-ray of my wrist with the pin installed.My pin lying on top of the wrist it once held together. I'm thinking of making it into a bracelet. Me the day I broke my wrist. That "cheese" really helped support my arm so I could sleep.

Article: A child's story

2006-11-11T19:28:00.000-08:00

If pride comes before the fall, my niece Tiffany is in for a long plummet. Who can blame her? Her six-year-old son, Harlan, is an extraordinary kid. Oh, he’s a handful alright! That boy can run from dawn until dusk and not be winded. But he’s got moments that more than make up for it. A couple of weeks ago his face might have been framed by a halo. After reading Tiffany’s blog on Harlan’s recent angelic behavior, I decided to interview him for this column. At a family gathering, I dug out paper and pencil and sat down with Harlan.

I’d never interviewed a six-year-old before. It is quite an experience. Harlan’s energy level is through the roof. He couldn’t sit still--on the couch, on the floor, demonstrating the actions of his story by running across the room--it was hard just to follow him with my eyes. Luckily I knew most of the story from Tiffany’s blog...or did I? As the interview progressed, Harlan’s version differed from his mother’s on several counts.

The basic facts were consistent. Local firefighters visited Harlan’s school to teach fire safety. Impressed, Harlan came home to quiz his mother on various safety aspects, for example where their emergency meeting area was and when the batteries were replaced in their fire alarms. He remembered everything the firefighters told him with some help from a check list.

Along with the list, he had some crayons and a sheet of paper with a fire engine and a firefighter on it. The paper explained that it should be colored and entered in an art contest at Buda Fire Fest a couple of weeks later. Harlan set to work making his coloring the best ever. Since the original paper had writing on it related to the festival, Harlan cut out the relevant pieces and glued them to an identically sized white poster board. Using the crayons provided (and some markers of exactly the same colors) he filled the sheet with a dramatic scene illustrating fire safety.

“Why did you want to do such a good job coloring?” I asked Harlan. “I wanted to win a bike,” was the unabashed answer. Harlan did, in fact, win the coloring contest and a bike. I asked if he didn’t already have a bike and he said yes, but it had scratches on it. He wanted a new bike.

“But your mom told me you were giving the bike away,” I said. “Yeah, that was her idea,” Harlan replied. His halo seemed a bit tarnished. “No, no, no,” Tiffany interjected. She proceeded to have a long debate with Harlan about exactly whose idea it was to give the bike away. Finally Harlan said, “Yeah, it was my idea. I wanted to sell it...” The halo vanished. Tiffany jumped in. He didn’t mean sell, he meant donate. A silvery glow framed his face. Harlan, bouncing on the couch, added he’d rather have the video games anyway.

This was the first I’d heard of any video games. They became a major source of contention. Tiffany insisted Harlan’s dad brought them up after Harlan, on his own, decided to donate the bike. Harlan was vague on exactly when the games entered the picture but seemed sure it was his mother’s idea. Finally both agreed on Tiffany’s version of the truth.

The next issue was whether Harlan rode the bike. His first story was that he’d ridden around at the Fire Fest. Tiffany refuted this so he changed his story to he walked it around. But he also fell off. How could he fall off when he wasn’t riding? Thus began a long, confusing story. It didn’t help that Tiffany constantly interrupted in order to “clarify.” I could see why criminal investigators only talk to one person at a time. I asked my niece to just let her son talk. I was interviewing him after all. Realizing she couldn’t restrain herself, she graciously took her two-year-old outside to play.

After much questioning and many stories I determined Harlan did not know the difference between sell and donate. Money doesn’t mean much to most six year olds. His halo fit solidly back on his head when I realized he wanted to call the fire station to find the exact right person to give the bike to: it should go to a child who lost his bike in a fire. What a sweet kid! But then why does he have such a devilish grin?

Harlan with his drawing and prize bike.

Harlan's more devilish nature is exposed.

Article: Traveling for work

2006-11-09T18:24:00.000-08:00

There are good things and bad things about having a job that involves travel. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this past week as I find myself in Kawasaki, Japan. Looking out of my hotel window, the city stretches on forever, blending seamlessly with Tokyo—the largest city in the world—to the north and with Yokohama—the second largest city in Japan—to the south. It is not a pretty sight.

Of course, the fact that I live in Buda is a good indicator that I’m not enamored with cities in general. But Kawasaki is particularly ugly. It would take some time to count the number of smoke stacks I can see from here. Kawasaki is not mentioned in the Lonely Planet guides to either Tokyo or Japan. No tourists come here; the city has nothing to draw them. In a way that’s nice. In all of its ugly, industrial squalor, Kawasaki is authentically Japanese. But it is also boring and depressing.

Each morning I travel from my hotel to work on the extensive and efficient train system that circulates the citizens of the metropolis throughout its great expanse. I am lucky to be able to travel a little after the main pulse of rush hour. Still, the station is so densely packed that it is difficult to move. The Japanese walk quickly, efficiently, not bothering much about what or who surrounds them. I find myself dodging constantly. On a crowded street in the US, I think people would move out of my way. In Japan, this isn’t true. I have been bumped many times.

I arrive at work around 10 o’clock in the morning and enter a building that is a patchwork of many industrial buildings each grafted onto the next through a series of long, narrow hallways. In order to find my way, I keep track of the colors of the floors: gray, then left at the dark green, up the speckled stairs, right to the blue carpet hallway, turn left onto more dark green, down the long hall with the parquet wood to more dark green, across an enclosed bridge with flowers on the window ledges, more dark green, left at the patched up brown floor, through a sliding door onto gray carpet and finally I am there. Across the street the company has two brand new 50 story towers. I wonder what they are like.

I work with six Japanese engineers here. They all seem nice. I am giving them a tutorial on how to use the tool our company provides. Only one does much talking. Even though Japan is an industrialized nation, and even though these people are highly educated, they don’t speak English. Even the best English speaker of the group has a lot of trouble conveying his questions.

The thing that makes this at all possible is that many of the engineering terms have no Japanese equivalent. As they talk among themselves, I can hear these words, complex and multi-syllabic, weaving patterns through their speech. The Japanese language is composed almost exclusively of single consonants followed by single vowels, like the word Kawasaki itself. When an English word such as processor or software enters the sound stream, it is obvious.

By the end of the day I am tired and it is already getting dark. The train is packed, I am lucky to find a seat. I wander around near my hotel looking for someplace to eat. The streets are packed. This is the shopping district and everyone is out shopping. I open a wooden door and enter a tiny restaurant. The entire establishment would fit in a child’s bedroom at home. The proprietor almost certainly does not speak English. I use the few Japanese food words I know and sit patiently waiting to see what will appear. So far I’ve been lucky, The Japanese eat some things I would refuse for ethical reasons but I have yet to be offered anything like that.

Next week I am taking a few days off to go to Hiroshima and visit a national park. I am going to see things that tourists see and do things tourists do. I will see the other side of Japan. Unlike most tourists, I will carry with me something of an understanding of the life of Japanese working people.

View from the Kawasaki Nikko hotel.The Kawasaki train/subway station during a bit of a lull.

Article: Life goes on

2006-11-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

Shopping seems to be the national pastime of Japan. Every city has a massive shopping district where the entire populace spends the evening hours strolling, talking, eating and drinking. The noise and crowds take some getting used to. Walking along the narrow streets requires constant vigilance to prevent collisions with people or being hit by the thousands of bicycles that wend their way through the crowds. It’s a mystery how they do it.

This weekend that mystery was compounded by my location. I’d gone to a town in southern Honshu, the main island of Japan, to try to escape from the bustle of Tokyo only to find myself immersed in the same press of crowds in a city only marginally less densely populated. I hadn’t expected that. Sixty years ago this city was utterly destroyed by American bombing during the last days of WWII. It was projected never to exist again. Yet here was Hiroshima, not just raised from the ashes, but completely devoid of any trace of the nuclear event that killed half of its citizens.

The next day, I walked from the train station to Peace Memorial Park located at the hypocenter of the atomic blast. Along the way I came to a small memorial. A fraction of a hospital building had been preserved and placed so passersby could marvel at the bent steel frames of the windows. Beside it was a small fountain. Beneath the fountain, visitors had left bottles of water.

Water is a symbol of the suffering of the atomic bomb victims. An estimated 80,000 people died within a few days of the bombing. The lucky ones died without knowing what happened but many, many suffered both thermal and radiation burns. These people, their skin hanging like threads from their bodies, begged for water as they died. The stories of survivors chronicled at the memorial all relate this same horror.

Peace Memorial Park’s green lawns, flower beds and rows of shade trees belie the prediction that nothing would grow in the shadow of the bomb for 75 years. Looking around, it is hard to imagine the devastation and suffering. The story is told within the walls of the museum, in the names of the victims recorded in the cenotaph (an estimated 140,000 by the end of 1945 and now around 200,000 as a result of cancers and other illnesses related to the bomb), in the thousands of paper cranes cram the memorial to Sadako Sasaki, and the A-Bomb Dome.

Little Boy, the name given the nuclear device that destroyed Hiroshima, detonated 600 feet above the building that is now the A-Bomb Dome. Everyone in and around the building died, incinerated by the nearly instantaneous rise of 7,000 degrees F generated by the bomb. Most of the remainder of the city was flattened to rubble, but the shell of the A-Bomb Dome remarkably survived and is now preserved. Staring through the framework of the dome at the high rise buildings behind it, I wonder two things: why didn’t they preserve more and why did they rebuild here at all?

I guess I know the answers to both questions. The Japanese are amazingly resilient, as all people can be when they are driven to it. This was their home, the home of their parents and their parents’ parents. That history cannot be discarded. At the same time, the constant reminder of death and destruction does not lend itself to healing. The people needed to move forward. Some would have chosen to preserve nothing to remind them of that day, others warn that such things cannot be forgotten least they be repeated.

A crowd of uniformed schoolchildren passed behind me on a tour of the park. They were laughing, jostling with each other, hardly looking at the dome. Certainly not thinking of the people--possibly their own ancestors—who suffered here. Not thinking that the ground under them was once radioactive. Do these children ever worry that their city might be attacked again one day? Has the threat of nuclear weapons from North Korea registered on them?

I guess a bigger question is has it registered on us? I wish our politicians would all visit the museums of Hiroshima.

For more information on the museum and park:
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/
Drawings made by A-bomb survivors:
http://www.blackshipsandsamurai.com/GroundZeroColl2/index.htm

Photo: Inside the Memorial Hall.

The walls show a 360 degree view of Hiroshima not long after the bombing. The mural is made of 140,000 tiles, each representing an individual who died. The object in the center is a fountain to sate the thirst of the victims.

Photo: Hiroshima cenotaph
The cenotaph holds the names of all of the victims of the atomic bomb. Modern Hiroshima rises in the background.

Photo: The A-Bomb Done
The bridge in the background was the actual target of the bomb.