Here at the Gazette, it's a day to discuss crafty mammals, absent aves, and big honking' fungi. Let's get started, shall we? The strudel and tarts won't wait forever.

We should get the bad news out of the way first: the hawk nestling (remember this link because you'll need it again later) is no more.

A week or so ago we were hit by a pretty violent windstorm. I never learned the maximum straight line windspeed, but many trees suffered significant damage and more than a few were uprooted. A couple of days later, I flew the drone over the hawk's nest to check on the youngster, and this is all there was:

I searched all around the tree and found no sign of the nestling. I suspect that it blew out of the nest during the storm and soon after fell victim to a predator. It's a tough old world out there.

One of the adult hawks -- we've always assumed it had some sort of parental role, but there's no basis for that assumption other than frequent proximity -- continues to perch on a nearby tower. However, we no longer hear the distinctive cries of these beautiful raptors, so they may have moved to another location, now that there's no progeny to care for.

I raised the height on the feeder, thinking that the pole was too small for them to climb. Unsurprisingly (in hindsight, at least), I was wrong about that, and they easily emptied the feeder the next night.

We then decided that the problem rested in the poor infrastructure so we ordered one of those foolproof squirrel guards (guaranteed to also stymie mammals of the racconian persuasion). I braved swarms of mosquitos and stifling afternoon heat and humidity yesterday afternoon to affix said guard to the pole holding the feeder. Last evening, I set up the trail camera to capture what I was sure would be some comedic-but-fruitless efforts to defeat my steel defense.

Welp.

Here's what defeat looks like:

I've apparently succeeded in turning what was supposed to be a feeder guard into a feeding station. I fully expected to see a 5-star review on Yelp applauding my efforts to make dinner a more pleasurable experience for raccoons.

I have several possible solutions in mind, only one of which involves a long electrical cord. Stay tuned; the battle may be lost, but the war continues.

We received almost 5 1/2" of rain through the first four days of June (and 105" of humidity since then). The damp and cool(ish) weather generated a bumper crop of mushrooms and other fungi, many species of which I heretofore had not encountered.

We didn't generate a lot of mushrooms in West Texas, so I'm sort of fascinated by their variety. Here are a couple of specimens that stood out.

I especially like that last one, which was growing on a broken limb in our yard after the aforementioned storm. It obviously had an effective moisturizing regimen.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend, and remember that 2:1 ratio of dessert to vegetables. Life is good!

Last week, NBC's The Today Show ran a segment on dealing with the nasty little critters. Here's a frame from that segment:

This isn't a particularly helpful graphic so let me fill in some blanks for you.

Common places for tick bites? Your skin.

[Important update...this just in! According to most experts, if you're reading this and have no skin, you should seek medical help immediately. You may have worse problems than ticks.]

Found a tick? Here's what you do. You rub salt on it. Wait, that's not right...I'm thinking of The African Queen. Them ain't ticks; them's leeches. But for ticks, the CDC says to use tweezers, and the CDC is never wrong.

How to prevent Lyme Disease? Avoid ticks and anyone who looks (or acts) like a tick. Mask up, if it makes you feel better. Just don't go rolling naked in the meadow. Trust me on this.

If all of this is too complicated and you find yourself covered with ticks, there are a couple of really effective remedies to try.

My recommendation is to get yourself a possum.

Surely you've seen this photo by now:

Is this the tick equivalent of a Golden Corral?

In case you don't recognize the players, this is a trail camera photo of a possum dining on ticks attached to the face of a white-tail buck.  [insert your movable feast joke here] If you find this scene rather disgusting, you've never had ticks on your face whilst having your hands tied behind your back.

This photo was taken in 2019, in Vermont, of all places, but it seems to have resurfaced in a viral fashion. It's a pretty cool example of an unexpected symbiotic relationship between two species which aren't normally associated with one another. It's almost enough to give you hope for the U.S. Congress.

Now, it should be common knowledge that possums play an important role in the local ecology. They eat lots of stuff that can cause problems for us, like snakes (even venomous ones), mice, centipedes, and -- you guessed it -- ticks. They are also highly resistant to rabies due to their low body temperature. So, whenever you're tempted to diss a possum, remember its selfless service to animal kind, and give it a break.

Of course, you might find it impractical to keep a possum around just in case you need deticking. There's one more approach some of you might find attractive, and by "you" I mean "you who are young and single (or perhaps not-so-young and/or not so single; who am I to judge?) ladies who like country music." Brad Paisley could be your possum (with all due respect to George Jones).

We've been monitoring the progress of the red-shouldered hawk nestling that's in a live oak tree down the street from our house (see here and here for previous updates). I launched the drone yesterday to check in on the little guy, and the change from last week is pretty dramatic. He or she was completely snow white then, and now it's beginning to show the typical hawk coloration. (I couldn't get the drone in just the right spot to get the bird's head; it's apparently pretty shy. Darned paparazzi!)

Speaking of birds, Debbie has installed a couple of feeders on our back fence. Well, technically, I installed the feeders under her supervision, but she keeps them filled. Or she tries to keep them filled. They both get emptied pretty quickly, but the most recent one -- designed to hold munchies that are said to attract woodpeckers and similar birds -- has been suspiciously quick to require refueling. I say "suspicious" because we don't see enough birds during the day at that feeder to explain the disappearance of the food.

Now, the feeder is allegedly squirrel-proof, and we haven't seen any of those little rascals even attempt to raid it. But the nightly disappearance of food led us to believe something else was at work. So last night I set up a trail camera on a tripod in an attempt to identify the issue. I'm sure none of you will be surprised by what we found:

Yep, the feeder may be squirrel-proof, but raccoons didn't read that part of the manual.

This morning, I raised the height of the feeder another 18" or so and we'll see how adept they are at breaking into the new installation. Frankly, I'm not optimistic. I think the feeder is out of reach as long as they stay on the fence, but we may have to resort to putting Vaseline on the pole to prevent them from getting to the food by that route. Stay tuned!

Now, back to the youngsters. A few days ago I spotted four (FOUR!) small armadillos nosing around in the vacant lot on the west side of our house. Debbie and I headed out to see how close we could get to them. As it turned out, we could get pretty close...as in right on top of them. They were laser-focused on rooting up worms, grubs, and other insects. 

It's rare to see armadillos during the day. They typically sleep about sixteen hours a day, similar to human teenagers on summer break, and forage for food at night. But we've had a lot of rain lately and that seems to increase the likelihood that they'll be out during daylight hours.

However, it's not unusual to have four youngsters together (although I've never seen it in person before). The nine-banded armadillos we have in Texas always give birth to identical quadruplets.

I put together a four minute video of their antics; feel free to check it out. They're cute little rascals, and fun to watch...but if they decide to use our lawn as a buffet, I'll be forced to induct them into the Fire Ant relocation program. (Bonus feature: See if you can spot the misspelled word! There's never an autocorrect around when you need it.)

Our BC (Before Covid) meal rotation didn't vary that much: cedar plank salmon on the grill, spaghetti (her scratch-made sauce is better than anything we've ever gotten from a jar), the occasional rotisserie chicken or slow cooker roast. The AC (After Covid) menu has expanded considerably, and it's gotten more adventurous. Case in point: earlier this week, we made chile rellenos (I had to look it up to make sure it's not "chiles relleno").

Debbie found some really pretty poblano peppers, and with a recipe in hand harvested from the internet, we embarked on this culinary adventure. And this time, I was an active participant, albeit one serving at the behest of the head chef.

What follows is not a recipe...just a primarily pictorial presentation of pepper preparation as we personally processed the prescribed program.

The first step is to roast the peppers in order to more easily peel them. Two minutes per side under a broiler is sufficient; I was in charge of this task and I left them in a bit too long. No harm done, except the peppers were more delicate which made the stuffing messier than it needed to be.

The roasted chiles were allowed to cool for five minutes under a dish towel (this softens the skin), then they were peeled and sliced open.

Over-roasting makes the peppers dangerously soft and subject to tearing.

The core and seeds were removed with a spoon, and the peppers were stuffed. We used a "Mexican style blend" of shredded cheese and some leftover rotisserie chicken. 

Overstuffed chairs and peppers are both wonderful inventions.

Debbie used toothpicks to keep the stuffing in place. The stuffed peppers were coated with flour and then slathered with whipped egg whites, in preparation for frying.

Ready for the frying pan...

The coated peppers were fried in vegetable oil. They may not look like much, but looks are much less satisfying than taste.

Ready for plating

Charro beans and Spanish rice were the side dishes. I know that in most Mexican restaurants, rellenos are served smothered with a so-called Spanish sauce or with queso, but these had plenty of flavor on their own.

Classic beauty...amirite?

The verdict? The cleaned plate speaks for itself.

Next time, we'll be more careful with the roasting and stuffing, in order to get a more uniform coating of batter. (Of course, the batter isn't required if you prefer your rellenos shamelessly naked.) We may also add some queso fresco to the shredded cheese blend, and use shredded chicken instead of pieces. But one thing is for sure: there will be a next time.

Give it a try. ¡Buen provecho!

More, please. 

Happy Thursday! Today, as you well know, is National Grape Popsicle Day. There are many fine ways to celebrate the day, one of which is to use a grape popsicle to keep your drink cold, as long as it's not chardonnay.

Today, for your reading pleasure, we shall look in on the hawk nestling, explore the wonders of electric lawn mowers, and explain why you should never bring a Canadian to a gunfight. Let's get right to it, shall we?

Last week, in the kind of dramatic reveal that the Gazette is known for, we shared the first photos of the red-shouldered hawk nestling that's growing up down the street from us. I'm happy to report that the little guy/gal appears to be doing well. Here are some more recent photos captured by the drone hovering at around 5' above the nest.

Baby hawks aren't really all that cute at this point in their lives.

It does appear to be growing quickly though. Lizards are good protein sources (I guess).

I bought an electric lawn mower last week. I don't actually need a lawn mower, regardless of power source; we have a lawn service that comes once a week, unless they don't. But they don't mow behind the house, close to the creek, and I like to keep that area tidy. It dissuades snakes from visiting, plus it just looks better.

Anyway, I bought one of these:

It's one of those fancy-schmancy battery powered mowers manufactured by EGO (the green "E" distinguishes it from the otherwise unflattering (if accurate) reference to its owner. This thing is loaded with everything except a hemi. It's got a three-speed self-propelling function, double blades plus interchangeable secondary blades for different cutting parameters (you wouldn't use a paring knife to do a chef's knife work, so why use a regular blade when a mulching blade is called for?), and one-touch height adjustment. It's even got LED headlights in case I want to deal with insomnia by doing yard work. It's also powered by a lithium battery that sort of resembles Iron Man's Arc reactor.

Would you call this the Tesla of lawn mowers? Well, I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't argue with you if you wanted to. (I'm pretty sure it doesn't have over-the-air operating system updates...yet.)

This certainly isn't your dad's electric lawn mower. OK, I don't know your dad; maybe it is his lawn mower...but it's definitely not the one that my dad taught me to use lo those many decades ago. The first lawn mower I ever used was electric, with a long extension cord trailing behind it. I was always terrified of shredding that cord and lighting myself up. It was relatively quiet, definitely underpowered, heavier than you might expect, but basically maintenance free.

I hadn't thought about corded electric lawn mowers in forever, so I was surprised to see that there is still a whole slew of them to choose from. I did a quick search on Lowe's website, and they sell about a dozen different models. You wouldn't want to try to mow the lower forty with one, but I'm sure they're more than adequate for a small yard...as long as you don't electrocute yourself.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the new and improved take on the electric mower. It's got plenty of power -- electric motors are known for their torque capabilities (by way of a factual if meaningless comparison, this mower has more than twice the torque per pound of weight than my wife's Lexus SUV) -- and it folds flat and stores on its end. After all, there's nothing to leak (even though my pal Tommy warned me about the possibility of all the electricity leaking out). And it is quiet enough to use at night without disturbing the neighbors of human persuasion; I suspect the skunks and raccoons might feel differently but I really don't intend to ever find out.

In closing, I offer the following via Twitter. Now, I don't know any actual Canadians -- I mean, there is Céline Dion, but we're not close -- but by all accounts they're a quite friendly and polite species.

At the same time, I suspect that the Canadian military is as bad*** as any country's (after all, they have guys like Deadpool, John Wick, and Captain Kirk as invincible inspiration), so when someone in an apparently official capacity purports to represent them with such a ridiculous image as the one shown below, it's easy to understand why their collective reaction is somewhat more than "that's not really right, eh."

Not everyone here is going to recognize the significant faux pas in this photo (there are more than one, but you have to be Canadian to see them all), so I'll give you a clue: those aren't real shooting bullets in the bandolier...they're blanks. This might be appropriate for another Canadian (such as Justin Bieber or Tommy Chong), but certainly not for actual soldiers doing soldierly things like trying to decimate the enemy.

To its credit, the Canadian Armed Forces twitter account took full blame for the mistake, and did so in a humorous manner. 

Sorry folks, we definitely drew a blank on this one...It was a long weekend for Bruce.
CC: @OttawaHealth

-- Canadian Armed Forces (@CanadianForces) May 25, 2021

Incidentally, the reference to "Bruce" in the CAF's response is explained here (and, once again, Ryan Reynolds makes an appearance).

Happy Thursday! Today is National Be A Millionaire Day, which means that most of you should ask your servants to read this post to you so you can save your eyesight for more important things, like counting your caviar or arranging your polo mallets by head weight.

Got a couple of albums I need to tell you about, as I seem to have them on repeat lately. Check out Brent Cobb's Keep 'Em On They Toes, and the recently released and much hyped (and definitely worthy of that hype) The Marfa Tapes by Texas musicians Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall. They're both ostensibly country in genre, but they also avoid the over-produced, over-testosteroned bro-country model that seems to permeate "mainstream" country music nowadays. 

The front page of yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal had a story about how people are not recognizing one another now that masks are coming off. The phenomenon is the reverse of what you might have experienced at the beginning of the pandemic: we didn't recognize folks because they were wearing masks. (Or, even better, we could use that as an excuse. "Oh, sorry...I didn't recognize you with your mask on. Don't you just hate these things?" This line of conversation provided a convenient diversion from the fact that you had forgotten the other person's name. Or so I've heard.)

But I don't want to dwell on the surprising-face-revelation aspect of the story. Instead, I draw your attention to the following excerpt* from the article:

The underlined text in the last sentence is a link that leads to a 2019 article which reports on the pressing issue of how the exclamation whoa is properly spelled. This is a surprisingly active debate (try googling "the proper spelling of whoa"). And it appears that one's preferred spelling depends on which side of that typical fault line you stand: age. Or, I guess, felt age. Or pretend age. Or...well, you know what I mean.

Since nobody else seems to have come up with a rule for when you should spell it woah, and when you should stop spelling it wrong and use whoa, (see what I did there?) I'll do it. If you're over the age of thirty, using woah unironically is akin to wearing skinny jeans, Crocs, and a derby to church, pretending to like Post Malone, and sporting a Maori shoulder tattoo even though you were born in Grand Prairie, Texas, and graduated from SMU with a degree in international finance and work at a credit union. IOW, don't.

Oh, and if you are under thirty? Also don't.

Alert Gazette readers will recall that about a year ago, I began to document the goings-on of the family of red-shouldered hawks in a tree near our house. We monitored them through mid-summer, until the juveniles departed the nest to begin their own lives. At some point, the nest itself was completely demolished, diminishing our hope that the parents would return this year.

However, a couple of months ago we started noticing the beginnings of a new nest in another live oak down the street from us. We periodically spotted hawks in that tree, and there was still an intact nest, but then they seemed to disappear for a few weeks and we thought they'd abandoned that tree in favor of another nesting spot.

Yesterday morning, as we headed out for a run, we noticed a hawk sitting on the edge of what was now an impressively large nest. That seemed to indicate that we were wrong in our assumption about the nest being abandoned.

A ground-level view of the hawk perched on the side of the nest

So, as one does, later in the day I fired up the drone and did some spying. Look what I found:

The adult hawks had been busy, away from our prying eyes, and there was now a nestling. However, there were three of them last year, so we don't know whether fewer eggs were laid this year, or some of them didn't hatch.

By the way -- and I'll warn you that the following photo might be disturbing if you have an huge fondness for small reptiles of the non-serpentine variety -- the small white object to the lower left of the nestling represents what I'm guessing is the remains of a recent meal. The shape appears to be the headless body of a Texas spiny lizard. It's a tough old world out there. 

The nest is almost fifty feet above the ground, and is well-shielded except for an opening directly overhead that is custom-designed for a peeping drone.

The adult hawks were nowhere to be found...at least not in the tree. But a hundred yards away, perched on an electrical transmission tower, I noticed that one of the adults seemed to be keeping an eye on the nest. 

I wanted to get a closer photo but the drone's battery was almost drained so I had to shoot what I could and bring it back for a landing.

Last year was filled with challenges, but the hawk family served as a pleasant distraction. 2021 has already had its own ups and downs, but my hope is that nature will once again redeem some of those low points. Stay tuned!

Alert Gazette readers will recall that last week I posted several photos from our recent trip to South Padre Island and promised to discuss them at some point. This is that point.

I touched-up each of those photos to some extent because what came out of the camera didn't match my vision for the scene. (That sounds pretty hoity-toity, doesn't it?) I initially drafted a detailed explanation about what I was trying to achieve and how I went about processing the image with that goal in mind. But it came across and pretentious and bored even me -- and I usually love reading my own stuff -- so all I'm going to do here is present the after-and-before photos. The lesson to be learned is that with the right software, the camera is only the beginning of the creative process.

The following photo is of a man fishing in the Laguna Madre, aka "The Bay." Click-and-drag the vertical yellow line to reveal the original image.

The next photo is of some gnarled trees and vines at the Atascosa Wildlife Preserve on the mainland across from South Padre Island. Again, drag the yellow bar to reveal the original photo.

The final picture is of the sunset over Laguna Madre, taken from the deck of a restaurant.

You know the drill; drag the yellow bar.

Today's edition of the Wall Street Journal has a report about the significant increase in cheating in schools and colleges as a result of...well...many things, including the pandemic-induced shift to online classes. I was struck by the lengths that some students are going to in their attempts to improve their academic standings without actually improving their knowledge. Take this quote from the article as an example:

I grudgingly credit those students in the last example for having commendable creativity along with their disappointing ethics. (Unless, of course, the exam was in a drama class, in which case I hope they got A's.)

Most disappointing to me personally was the revelation that "Texas A&M University had a 50% increase in cheating allegations in the fall from a year earlier, with one incident involving 193 students self-reporting academic misconduct to receive lighter punishment after faculty members caught on..."

Alert Gazette readers will recall a recent post describing some of our recent trip to South Padre Island. Here are some additional photos from that trip, and I will devote a future post to some discussion about these pictures. For now, please feel free to enjoy the brevity of this offering.

State-of-the-art gaming equipment circa 1977

More than four decades ago, this electronic football game was a huge win for Mattel, at one point selling more than 500,000 units per week. The little red blips on the screen represent the ball carrier (the brightest light) and the defenders (there were five; one of them has apparently gone to the locker room, possibly with an injury, in this photo). According to the Mattel section of the Handheld Museum (you knew there would be one, right?), the blips or dashes of light are actually the top section of the number 8 on a calculator; the game ran on a modified Rockwell calculator chip.

I put a 9-volt battery into this unit and it fired right up and worked flawlessly, which isn't saying much, but the game is still oddly addictive...a comfortable throwback to a simpler time.

Incidentally, you can re-create the experience for only $139.86 via a rebooted/updated "replica" sold by Amazon.

The whitetail deer bucks around here start shedding their antlers annually after the first of the year...and that's when Debbie starts her search for those discards. It's a race against time, to be honest, because there are a bunch of local critters who dine on antlers. Squirrels and porcupines gnaw on them to wear down their continuously growing teeth, and, along with possums and raccoons, obtain nutrients (including iron, potassium, zinc, and calcium) in the bone that comprises the antler. We've seen entire antlers disappear from our back yard in a few months thanks to the voracious varmints.

She's rarely successful in her searches because we don't actually get out and beat the bushes. But serendipity occasional rears its pretty little head, and it did so a few months ago. She found a beautiful four-point antler and we've been guarding it carefully until we could decide what to do with it.

A week or so ago, I had a brainstorm for an antler centric DIY project. Here's the quite impressive result:

 Everyone needs a hatrack in their garage, right? But I gotta tell you, working with bone is not an easy task, as I learned the hard way.

My plan was to (1) grind a flat spot on the burr (which is where the antler more or less attaches to the deer's skull), then (2) drill a hole and sink a threaded insert into which (3) a bolt would be affixed through a hole in the side of a cabinet, thereby firmly and seamlessly fastening the antler to the exterior of the cabinet. Sounds pretty simple.

The problem is that bones are like rocks in the body* and they're just as hard to cut or drill as rocks (if you've ever watched Forged In Fire, you probably know that the bone chop is one of the most feared tests of durability of a knife). I quickly learned that I could not cut threads into the hole that I drilled (and it took four bits of increasingly large diameter to get the right sized hole). There may be a tap in existence that will thread a rock (or a bone), but I certainly don't have it in my tool kit. I ended up just pounding the threaded insert into the hole and hoping the fit would be strong enough to support the weight of a few caps. So far, it has, so that's a win in my book.

If any of you DIYers who are more skilled than me -- that would be you, whoever you are -- care to advise me on how this project might go more smoothly next time, feel free to enlighten me via a comment.

I'm going to close today with some thoughts about snakes, and more specifically, about snakes and their effects on some folks. And perhaps there's a larger lesson to be learned. [Disclosure: There are no photos associated with this bit of rambling.]

There is a woman who I consider to be a friend, even though I've never met her. Our virtual relationship goes back to the golden days of blogging. She's a wife, mom, PhD educator, and author of multiple novels, as well as a sister in Christ. I have a great deal of respect for her. She also has a significant aversion to snakes.

For a long time, whenever I'd post something about a serpentine encounter, she'd chide me...especially if I included a photo or two. I always assumed her comments were [at least] half-joking and didn't take them too seriously, although I did start to post a warning on social media if I included pictures of snakes and I knew she might read those posts. This practice, again, was something of a wink-and-a-nod bit of levity on my part...a tongue-in-cheek trigger warning, if you will.

However, a few weeks ago, I saw her post something that made me realize that I had been much too cavalier toward her feelings. She essentially shared that she had a deep-seated fear of and aversion to snakes, and that the simple sight of a photo could trigger something akin to PTSD. I then realized that this was not a joke, and that I had been oblivious to a real issue.

There might have been a time in my life where my reaction would be "well, that's her problem, not mine." (I hope I've never been that insensitive, but I'm sure I've been that clueless.) Thank God, I've gained a bit of maturity over the years [quit laughing; I'm sure that's the case. Well, sort of sure.] and I now know that just because I can't quite understand or relate to someone else's feelings or perceptions, those things are no less real than my own. (For the record, I share a similar -- albeit a somewhat less intense -- reaction to spiders.)

So, if in the future you see me post a warning about the inclusion of photos of snakes in one of my articles, think of it as a sort of public service announcement, and know that I am more concerned about the feelings of my friend than I am about adding a few more words. 

I think we each have our own issues that seem trivial or silly to others but which are very real and impactful to our own well-being. I'm pretty sure our world would be a better place to live if we sought to understand and sympathize with one another in that respect. 

I'm not suggesting that we do that if it undermines or conflicts with our genuine moral or ethical underpinnings, but to borrow a quote that's been attributed to multiple people through the ages, we should strive for "unity in the essential, charity in the non-essential, and in all things, love."

My Oura ring provided me with the following bit of information this morning:

Well. 

Of course, my biggest creative challenge on any given day is deciding which white socks to wear, so I wasn't sure what to do with this advice. Then it came to me, sudden-like: "it's Thursday. I should craft a Random Thursday post!"

It's been awhile since I wrote any kind of Random Thursday article (Ed. -- Eleven months, twenty-two days, to be exact), much less one on an actual Thursday. (Ed. -- One year, five months, sixteen days, to be exact) [My editor has apparently discovered the Date Duration Calculator, much to my continuing chagrin.] But it's a dreary, rainy day here in the Bay of Horseshoes, so...why the heck not?

Last Wednesday was Aggie Muster, an annual event where former students of the Best University in the, uh, Universe gather to honor our classmates who passed on in the previous year. It's a pretty solemn occasion, and it was good to be able to do it in person instead of virtually as we had to do last year. 

I did something that I had never thought about doing before: I wore my dad's class ring in his memory, alongside mine.

Dad graduated in 1949, 26 years before me. [OK, nice try. You did the math, didn't you, and you think you caught me in either a lie or some Aggie ciphering. Normally, you'd be right, but in this case, the photo is misleading. I actually graduated in 1975, because I loved the heat and humidity of College Station sooooo much. And also because organic chemistry prompted me to change majors. But that's another story for another day.]

As you might guess, Dad wore his Aggie ring continuously until the day he died. In fact, he wore it on the same finger as his wedding ring; the class ring was almost worn through on the bottom from friction with the other band. You might also guess that I don't wear mine nearly as often. It's not a case of not being proud of it...I almost always wear it in public...it's just too big for me to wear comfortably around the house and while working.

Anyway, I felt like it was a pretty good way to honor Dad while attending a ceremony to honors others.

Despite the appropriation of their name for this blog, I have no affection for fire ants. As far as I can tell, their only redeeming quality is that they are said to eat chiggers, and that doesn't come close to offsetting their disturbing tendencies to destroy pretty much everything else they come in contact with.

So it was with some interest that I ran across this article on the Entomology Today website that claims that compounds found on the skin of so-called poison dart frogs might be used to control (a euphemism for "destroy," one would hope) fire ants.

Unfortunately, I also noticed that the article was dated 2014, and seven years later, there has been no massive frog skin induced fire ant eradication.

My guess is that once researchers tried to bring this approach into the field, they quickly found that aiming those tiny arrows was just too hard.

I crack myself up, sometimes.

We've recently returned from an enjoyable visit with our friends who live on South Padre Island. There's a lot I could report on, but I'm going to focus on a couple of things.

First, the beach on the Gulf of Mexico side of the island was littered with thousands -- if not hundreds of thousands -- of tiny stranded jellyfish-looking organisms. We thought at first that they were juvenile Portuguese man-of-war (men-of-war?) owing to their coloration and little dorsal sail, but closer inspection revealed that they had none of the strings of tentacles that make that species so gosh-darned nasty.

Debbie did some googling and discovered that they are actually Velella, a hydrozoan (meaning that they are in the same scientific classification as the creatures we call jellyfish; and they are indeed a semi-close relative of the much larger Portuguese MOWs) that also goes by the name of sea raft, purple sail, or by-the-wind sailor (which seems a bit redundant, but which is an actual nautical term). As you can see, the common names are quite appropriate:

They're really quite pretty when the light catches them at just the right angle, but it's a bit sad to contemplate the multitudes of the little creatures that died because they were washed ashore by the waves and the wind.

[Am I alone in seeing an odd resemblance to some of the glass insulators I wrote about here?]

We also visited a sand sculpture exhibit while on the Island, and while I went in with somewhat lowered expectations, I came out quite impressed with the skill and creativity of the multiple artists whose work was on display. It's something I readily recommend to visitors to SPI; it's even free, although donations are gladly accepted.

I took a couple of photos, of course.

Every Texan should relate to the following photo. Incidentally, and apropos of absolutely nothing, when I tweeted this photo and it got retweeted by a Texas-centric account, Traces of Texas, it got almost 13,000 views, not that I'm counting or fixated on stuff like this or anything. (But a comment I left on one of Beth Moore's tweets has over 25,000 views, not that I'm counting or fixated on stuff like this or anything.)

The next photo deserves a bigger viewing area. Check out the details on this sculpture and see how many references to the madness that was 2020 you can spot.

In closing, now that the Great Caterpillar Invasion of 2021 has mostly ended, I feel non-traumatized enough to share a close-up of an inchworm (aka canker worm...such a disgusting appellation), in the hope that it might convince you (and myself, to be honest) to find a trace of beauty in an otherwise annoying-if-not-completely-overlooked being.

By the way, those two pairs of "legs" shown in the close-up are not true legs...they're more like sticky pads and they're called "prolegs." The true legs are up front (and slightly out of focus in this picture thanks to my mad photography skilz.) Don't never say we don't indulge in education-like material in these here parts.

My dad was a dedicated collector of...everything. He had copious quantities of stamps (we're talking thousands) and coins (a hernia-inducing amount, to be exact). He, along with my mom, "invested" in enough Norman Rockwell commemorative plates to equip a state dinner at the White House. I recently found a stash of date nails (which I never realized was a thing) in one of his storage rooms.

I've [re]discovered all of these things and more while cleaning up the old homestead in preparation for selling it. The value is mostly sentimental -- although the coins are at least worth their face value -- but there's one collection that might actually be more valuable than I first though: glass insulators.

I have no idea where Dad acquired them, but he had lined up almost 200 insulators along the rafters of their carport, and they had remained there for decades, collecting dust and the occasional spider or wasp nest. They looked unimpressive, but some quick research revealed that if cleaned, they might be attractive to other collectors, or perhaps antique dealers or similar resellers.

So, I climbed a ladder and carefully boxed them up (a typical glass insulator weighs more than a pound so the four small moving boxes were over fifty pounds each) and stacked them in the bed of our truck for transporting 300 miles back to our house.

I then set up an assembly line of sorts to clean them. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that there is a vast number of resources devoted to glass insulators, and this one provided the clearest options for safely cleaning them. I chose the acid method, and found some oxalic acid -- sold as "wood bleach" at a local hardware store. I diluted a gallon of the acid with three gallons of water in a plastic five gallon Home Depot bucket. This was to be the method of removing decades of haze from the glass...or so I hoped.

But before dropping insulators into the acid, I used a garden hose to remove as much dust, dirt, and evidence of insect habitation as possible. Someone -- my Dad or the previous owner -- had numbered some of the insulators using plastic embossed label tape, and I had to use a knife to scrape those labels off. Once this preliminary step was complete, I carefully dropped about 20 of the insulators into the acid solution and let them soak for 24 hours.

At the end of that time, I transferred them to another five gallon bucket filled with clean water to rinse the insulators. I then fished them out one at a time and carefully dried each one with a microfiber towel. Insulators have a fair amount of nooks and crannies so this was a somewhat tedious process. However, the results were, in my opinion, stunning. I didn't take any "before" photos, but here are some "after" photos. [If you pretend you have serious cataracts in both eyes, that should allow you to visualize (or not) the unclean specimens.]

This is just a portion of the total number of insulators in the collection.
Hemingway was the most prolific manufacturer of glass insulators.

It ceased operations back in the 1970s

Some of the insulators were of a smaller variety. The internal threads identify

these insulators as "pintype" or "pin" insulators. They were screwed onto

metal or wooden inserts to hold them in place on poles (see below).

One of the insulators was still screwed onto this wooden pin,

broken off the cross arm of a telephone pole.

The blue color was unique; only one such example was in the collection.
The internal rings are referred to as "petticoats" or "skirts." Those "bumps"

around the base of the insulator on the left are called "drip points,"

and they are designed to draw moisture away from the insulator.

This is the sole example of a porcelain insulator in Dad's collection. 

According to an expert that I consulted, this is "probably" 

a U-52 style insulator, worth perhaps $10.

I find this all very interesting from a historical perspective, but also because I never realized that the population of glass (and porcelain) collectors were so well organized. Indeed, the National Insulator Association is a 501(c)(3) "educational and scientific organization" with more than 1,700 members, mostly across North America.

There are also multiple price guides of varying quality designed to help you determine the value of an insulator. I purchased one such guide which can be accompanied (for an additional fee) by an online browser-based graphical user interface to make it easier to locate a specific design. The challenge is that there are literally thousands of variations to sort through -- the price guide lists almost 80 different colors, for example -- and it will take a keener eye than mine to definitively identify any given model. 

Below is an excerpt from the above-referenced price guide showing the description of a single model of insulator.

Feel free to enlighten me as to how to distinguish among the three

listed shades of cornflower blue or the four shades of aqua. I've obscured

the prices to protect the investment of the publisher of the guide.)

What's the bottom line for all of this time and effort? Well, aside from learning more than I ever thought I wanted to know about glass insulators, I hope to find a buyer (knowledgeable or otherwise; the latter might even be preferable if they have cash to burn!), and monetize the collection on behalf of my mom. I suspect that good quality, clean insulators probably retail for an average of $10 apiece in antique stores; creative hobbyists might also be willing to pony up at that level. (This also assumes that there are no really rare, really valuable collector-worthy specimens in the group, and I'm not sure I'll go to the effort of trying to find out.) I would be happy clearing 50% of that average. So, if you know of anyone who might be interested, feel free to send 'em this way!