February 3, 2001
It's already 8:30 PM and there's no way I'm going to be able to post 36 pictures, get Barb to correct all my scrambled syntax and mispunctuated ramblings, and still get to bed by 10 p.m., so the date on this is a bit misleading. You may have noticed that sometimes the dates on the page and the dates that the page actually appears on the website are different. Now you know why. I'm lazy and Barb is an excellent proofreader, and occasionally I can twist her arm to get her to put her own slant on something as well.
Well, on the left we have something that my good friend Hector Caroselli sent me. Hector and I have several common bonds. We both love motorcycles, and we both rather dislike working. I'm pleased he's still my friend inasmuch as he's still working and I'm, well, I'm not "really" working anymore. We also are bound by a common sense of sick humor. Only Hector's illness is way out of control as you can tell by this picture. I work at an Air Force Bombing Range for crying out loud, and we have a group of guys who put their life on the line on a regular basis to haul out the bombs that don't go off so nobody will accidentally find them by tripping on them and thus setting them off!! I just had to print this out in 8 1/2 x 11 format to leave lying on the lunchroom table at the "office" so others could confirm just how sick my friend Hector really is. But back to the business at hand. Barb is standing by a couple of hog traps. The idea is that the hog goes into the cage to get the corn and in the process knocks the rope off the stick and lets the door slam down behind him. Now I ask you, would any free-roaming domestic pig that has been wild for who knows how many pig generations volunteer to go into a cage? Yup. They do. With alarming regularity. John and his buddies have trapped 13 so far in a little over three months. Occasionally there are other things in the trap too like wild turkeys and raccoons, both of which are relatively abundant in this area.
Dang, things are already out of sequence. Anyway, on the left you can see the rope leading to the stick. We'll put corn on the ground under the rope, and as the hog is rooting around getting the corn, he or she will get under the rope pushing it up off the stake and releasing the door to slam shut. Dumb pig. Sure do taste good though!! Now, on the right is what we were doing after checking the trap line for the morning. We're tearing down the outhouses that we spotted, marked, took pictures of, and entered into the GPS system for the EPA should they ever want to see what a good job we did of removing the "hazard" of pit toilets. Don't get me started on what I happen to think about the regulations stating that we couldn't have pit toilets anymore. David on the left, me in the center, and John on the right are contemplating the roof we just pushed off the block structure on the right of the picture. There wasn't much holding it on the building! With a few grunts here and there, we pushed it off! Unbelievable that some wind hadn't done it before we got there.
What we're doing--well, what John and David are doing (I'm taking a well deserved break --it was my idea to push the roof off, after all) is knocking the rafters off the beams and pitching everything in the trailer to be hauled to the dumpster. Can't use used lumber around this place! Drives me nuts! But those of you who know me, know my penchant for saving junk to use somewhere sometime for something. And on the right are the three heroes. The potty-busters!! Barb managed to stay out of the way and take pictures.
Well, that's not quite true. Barb did more than just take pictures. She was busy holding her glove for us. The glove with the yellow-bellied lizard that turned out to be a gecko, that eventually turned out to be our resident black racer's lunch. We have a nice specimen of a black racer snake in a glass tank (well, we did at this point--it has since been released and replaced with a little corn snake, but that's another whole story), and to keep it alive we catch lizards, frogs, and other snake food type critters. Only this time we didn't have any baggies to use to keep the lizard in until we could get back to the office, so Barb's glove got used. (Barb adds: Trouble with that was that when time came to remove the little guy out of the glove, he had lodged himself in the middle finger section; Marion, the biologist, had some difficulty removing him from it, but was able to, but only after she first pulled off his tail; that tail, minus body, wiggled for a good half hour in the snake tank before it finally quit. Yuk!) And on the right you can see the result of the end of the day when you turn three old retired guys loose with some tools. That pit toilet is no more. Well, the slab and the stools are still there, but the blocks just fell out (off?) with some gentle tapping with a heavy hammer; we stacked the blocks for later pickup.
Next day, after checking the hog traps (no luck this day either), we attacked the second toilet in Willingham campground. W2. Get it? The last one was W1 and was the first one, and this is W2 and is ..... well, you get the picture. Or will by the time I publish all this. Problem with this outhouse is that it was properly built! And the roof was built to withstand a hurricane. But not three wily old retirees with hammers, crowbars, wrenches and lots of huffing and puffing. But the blocks, well, that was a different story too. They used good mortar on this little house.
And after a proper amount of "humm"ing and "aha"ing, we declared the job done. Or at least delayed until a proper tool, like a bulldozer, could be found.
On the left is a shot of the campground we're working in. The live oak trees are immense, and the Spanish moss hanging from them makes them additionally striking. On the right is a flock of wild turkey hens we "shot" on the way to the dumpster with the fruits of our pit labors. You can see the trailer tailgate and junk in the mirror of the truck.
And after a hard week of work, it's only right to take some time off, right? Well, maybe our work week is only three days long and our days are usually around six hours long, but we're all retirees, remember. So a bunch of us decided to take our bicycles and go for a ride in the Highlands County Park called Highlands Hammock. Again. Barb and I had been here once before with another couple and had so much fun we wanted to share it with some others. In retrospect I wish I'd included a picture of the caravan that got the eight of us here with our bicycles. Barb and I were in the lead with our bikes on top of the truck (pretty big truck for hauling bicycles!), followed by John and Marge in their GMC Jimmy with their bikes on a rack on the tailgate, and then came Stan and Diane in their pickup with their bikes in the bed, and bringing up the rear was Merle and Jean in their pickup with their bikes in the bed. Plenty of horsepower for the 20- or 25-mile trip to the park that's for sure. Seems we each had different plans for after the ride.
On the left, Barb is sitting on the trunk of The Big Oak, and on the right I caught the group (well, most of them) coming off one of the many boardwalks through the hammock. Usually the boardwalks are needed because of the swamp, or marsh, or whatever you want to call the mud and water that is usually here. This drought that is going on down here is taking its toll on both the natural environment as well as the cultivated one.
Of course, as any RV'er knows, almost anything is a good excuse to eat. And in case you were wondering, the stories told about alligator wrestling are true, as witnessed by Merle conquering one of the local specimens.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and here we are hard at work again. About the only thing that changes more than the weather down here are the assignments we're given. Now we're setting traps for coyotes rather than hogs. Only we don't eat the coyotes. They're caught with a leg trap that has rubber jaws rather than metal. That way the coyotes don't get any permanent damage from the trap. With a couple of people working, a coyote can be made relatively harmless by tying its mouth shut and tying three of its legs together. Then the trap can be released, the animal weighed, measured, a blood sample taken, a radio collar attached, etc. When released, they just scramble away none the worse for wear. Lot less trouble (and less stress for the animal) if tranquilizers are not used. Bobcats get the tranquilizer treatment because they have so many "stickers" all over the place like four-wheel drive claws and really sharp teeth. On the left is Keith, the biologist who is training us waiting for me to finish with the trap-guard. A waxed paper affair that is placed over the trigger of the trap to prevent sand from getting under the trap and rendering it useless. We wear rubber gloves to prevent (or at least minimize) the human scent getting on the trap. These clever song dogs will avoid anything that smells like human.
On the left is Keith admiring his handiwork and on the right we're setting another one at a different location. And again, Barb has skillfully stayed out of harms way and is busy recording locations and types of settings, and doing the really important stuff.
I'm surveying the size of the hole I'm digging to make sure we can put the entire bait (in this case, some road-kill deer) in it and make it look like a coyote had more than it could eat and buried the remainder. The trap will be set near it. And the picture on the right is a shot of the footprint of our nemesis, the raccoon. Doggone little buggers are everywhere and get into everything around the campsite as well as out in the brush messing with our traps.
On the left we have an example of just what the coon can do. It dug up the trap completely out of the hole without tripping it, and what's even more interesting is that to the left of the trap is the hook-anchor, and while this picture doesn't show it very well, there's about 8' of chain between the anchor and the trap! But on the right we have evidence that the little rascals don't always get off scott-free. This one got caught. Of course we set it free. However, as it ambled off into the brush we noticed it had no tail. And a careful examination of the area around the trap confirmed that it hadn't lost it in this trap. We suspect that this raccoon may have been a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. To be dumb enough to loose its tail and, in addition, get caught in a trap like this one had, takes a good dose of stupid.
Now, this is what it's all about. We're tracking tagged coyote #16. I've got on the earphones, and Keith is handling the antenna as we determine just which direction (on the compass) she is from us. We're standing on a known point and will go do this at two other known points, and when we draw the compass lines from each of those known positions (on our map) then we'll know exactly where #16 is. At least that's the theory, and it works pretty good most the time. Enough so that we are able to determine an animal's range, its traveling habits, and stuff like that. Now, on the right look carefully just a little right and up from center. Yup, we're being watched. By a cow. She's peeking through a bush at us to see just what we're up to and trying to determine if we're friend or foe.
Well, she decided we weren't a threat to her so she wandered out onto the road to go about her cow business. And that finished the day and off to home-sweet-home we went.
Well, one thing led to another when we got home, and on the left you can see where we ended up. One couple had finished their "tour of duty" and would be leaving the next day, and we simply had to tell them goodbye and offer advice about which route to take and what to see and all that kind of RV talk. It was kind of bitter-sweet to send them off. It's interesting how quickly friends are made and how close we feel to them in such a short time. I'm not sure I understand the dynamics of all that, but I have been observing it for a couple of years now. I'm sure somebody more scholarly than me has it figured out and can explain it. I'll let them. I'll just enjoy meeting new friends, and feeling a bit sad and lonely when they go on their way. On the right, Keith (in the background) and I are checking the area for fresh tracks while we're considering moving some traps.
And lest you think that Barb was paying close attention to what Keith and I were up to, I submit these last two pictures. These are the endangered Florida scrub jays. I heard them hollering at me while walking around, and pretty soon there were several in a nearby bush scolding me for intruding into their world. All was quickly forgiven when I got the peanuts out of the truck for them. They instantly quit their raucous calling and began to gather around. Keith held a nut in his hand, as there are several here on the range that will come and take it from him. But not today. We had a group of seven of them flying around being nervous about getting closer to us, and it was fun to know that because of the efforts of this facility and the people we work with that at least in this area the birds are making a comeback.