Happy Happy Halloween!

I accepted, next-to-the-last-minute, Ann & Brad’s invitation to accompany them and their friends to the Happy Hooker’s annual Halloween Party & Costume Contest. So I was in need of a costume….

I didn’t bring much from home that would make a good costume, so I decided to work on something really scary this year. I went to MalWart (after stopping at every grocery and drug store on the way and they had nothing) to get the perfect hat. Then I adorned it to make it the scariest hat ever seen on the planet.

I didn’t bring any of my stand-by wigs, capes or kimonos (who knew I would be trick-or-treating at my age in Alabama?) but I did bring a funny jacket I bought a couple years ago. It’s black, and I guess I thought it was my favorite suit when I grabbed it and put it in the box……. but that suit is still somewhere in Kentucky. Damn.

So I decided to pair it with the scariest hat on the planet for my costume and I will be…..

Drum roll (can you guess before you scroll down?)

I will be the PANIC BUTTON all the talk shows are talking about when they talk about the economy!  TA DA!

Please mail candy and caramel covered apples to Fort Morgan!

Hope y’all get more treats than tricks!

What’s an Environmentalist to do?

In spite of the fact that Fort Morgan peninsula is famous for the fall migrations of hummingbirds, warblers, and grosbeaks… the mosquito remains our ‘Official Bird’.

The monarch and fritillary migrations are also tourist attractions, but the large population and variety of butterflies doesn’t touch that of the orthoptera here – the loathsome cockroach. I “bombed” the little storage building (where the hurricane shutters and beach toys are stored) for the third time and this morning I still found bugs in various stages of death & dying scattered around the floor. They are evidently immune to all three brands of insecticide sold at Lowes, damn!  And I’m told this mammoth is only one of the varieties we have happily cohabiting here; the Oriental, the German, the American, and the new Green Cuban… damn, again.

But this morning I came up the steps to find Sophie ‘on point’ on the deck. Thinking she was watching one of the migrating doves that have recently discovered the bird feeder, I came around the corner slowly to find she was pointing the window – or rather a 4-inch stink bug sitting on the screen. She gave up eventually and just laid down, and it flew away…. probably down to my little storage building with the roaches so I’ll have to deal with it tomorrow…

Enormous stink bug above Sophie

And those Love Bugs from Florida!!! 

Does my little Kentucky Wildcat realize she is ‘gator bait?

(Postscript 10/25/08  after the game with Florida….. We’re all Gator Bait, damn!)

After Isabelle discovered the yard here is literally crawling with skinks and lizards, she has become an escape artist.  If my hands are full she is out the door and down the steps in a flash.

At the age of 11plus, and declawed, she is not much of a threat to the wildlife here, but I’m afaid she looks like a tasty treat for the coyote and ‘gators….  If she can’t get out she prowls the house, growling and jumping up on the furniture and counter. Ack!

I think Gretchen is right, the Fountain of Youth is in Alabama!

What is she thinking???

Public Protection

They have started reburying the shipwreck uncovered by Hurricane Ike in September to protect it from the public. It’s only about a mile up the beach from my house, so we walked down there again (waded in places where the beach was erroded) yesterday.

One of the locals told me they were bringing in wet sand to cover the historic ship because it was too expensive to move safely and vandals were removing or destroying too much.

One jackass cut through the stern with a chainsaw, trying to steal the massive bronze bracket for the rudder. Fortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity to make the second cut – I hope they caught him.
According to which ‘expert’ you talk to, it is either the remains of the rum-runner Rachel or the Monticello, a Civil War schooner.
This is the story that appeared in our local paper:

<<Ike uncovers historic ship on Baldwin County beach
Friday, September 19, 2008 By Guy Busby Staff Reporter
FORT MORGAN – A mystery ship uncovered over the decades following storms appears to be a Civil War schooner run aground in 1862 while trying to sneak past the U.S. Navy to enter Mobile Bay, according to one local expert.
 The ship reappeared earlier this month after waves created by Hurricane Ike eroded the beach about six miles from Fort Morgan. After examining photographs of the wreck, Shea McLean, marine archaeologist with the Museum of Mobile, said the ship is most likely the Monticello, a two-masted schooner run aground and partially burned on June 26, 1862.
 ”Based on what we know of ships lost in that area and what I’ve seen, the Monticello is by far the most likely candidate,” McLean said Wednesday. “You can never be 100 percent certain unless you find the bell with ‘Monticello’ on it, but this definitely fits.”
 McLean said the ship is a sailing vessel and does not fit the description of the steamers that have also been suggested as candidates for the wreck.
 The Monticello was run aground and burned while sailing from Havana to Mobile, according to U.S. Navy records.
 The wrecked ship is 136.9 feet long and 25 feet wide, Mike Bailey, site curator at Fort Morgan, said after examining the vessel this week. The Monticello was listed in shipping records as being 136 feet long, McLean said.
 The ship has design features that fit with those of a vessel built just before the Civil War, said Glenn Forest, an archaeologist who examined the wreck this week. Forest said a full identification would require an excavation of the site.
 The ratio of length to width of about 6-1 fits those of clipper-built vessels constructed in the 1850s. He said the bow’s angle of about 45 degrees and the straight narrow stern also fit the design of that era.
 He said that no matter what the ship turns out to be, the wreck should be moved and preserved to protect not only the vessel, but nearby buildings.
 ”It’s a valuable artifact,” he said. “They need to get this thing inside before it falls apart or another storm comes along and sends it through those houses there like a bowling ball.”
 Forest said a 40-foot segment of a wooden shipwreck damaged several houses on Dauphin Island during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
 This week, much of the wooden hull filled with rusted iron fittings lay exposed as curious beachgoers looked over the vessel.
 ”It’s interesting, I can tell you that,” said Terri Williams of Gulf Shores. “I’ve lived down here most of my life and I’ve never seen anything like this, and it’s been right here.”
 Bailey said a report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2000 determined that the remains were of the schooner Rachel. The Rachel was built in Moss Point, Miss., in 1919. The vessel ran aground near Fort Morgan in 1933.
 Bailey said that while some blockade runners ran aground in that area, the wreck appears to have components, such as steel cables, that date from later than the 1860s. The cables, then, suggest that the vessel is probably the Rachel, rather than the Monticello.
 After the ship was partially uncovered following Hurricane Camille in 1969, re searchers from Mobile College, now the University of Mobile, were told that the ship was the Monticello, according to a Press-Register story from Jan. 11, 1970.
© 2008 Press-Register. All rights reserved.  >>

Fort Morgan Militia

My funny neighbor, Samera St. Claire (Sam),

waiting for the police

travels a lot and is rarely here, so it was a nice surprise when she drove up this weekend and invited me over for cocktails and a lecture on alligator awareness.

We were sitting on her back porch watching the lagoon for Clyde and an unnamed cooter (big turtle) when we noticed a large truck driving slowly, erratically up and down the road. It was absolutely the only traffic all evening, no one was home on this end of Surfside. After the 4th pass the truck pulled into the drive of a house under construction and a large man got out, leaving his lights on, he went up the stairs. Lights went on inside the house and as he went up and down the stairs we could hear the motor of the truck still running.

Although we hadn’t even finished our first glass of wine, we decided we couldn’t allow burglary in Surfside, so Sam called the police while I zipped down the road in my little electric car, pulled up behind the truck and wrote the license on my hand.

By the time the police arrived, over an hour later, the truck was long gone and the officer wasn’t interested in my license number. We finished our wine and I went home and locked my doors, for the first time.

We were indignantly repeating this story to the neighbors in the ‘Butterfly House’ the next morning and they agreed they had seen the same truck a couple weeks earlier. When we heard construction noises coming from the house, it was decided that since I still had the perpitrator’s license on the palm of my hand, Sophie and I would walk over and meet the owner.   

Clyde

Of course, as I got closer I realized the number on the truck parked there matched the number on my hand, but he had seen us and it was too late to turn back.

What followed was a very funny discussion with a very large man looking down at me from his kitchen window. He had arrived from Louisiana to work on the house over the weekend and found the electricity wasn’t working properly. Then, because he had poor reception, he drove up and down the road as fussed at the electrician. (He had been doing this all summer, totally unaware he was terrorizing the neighbors every time he used his cell phone.)

He was not in a good mood that night, and he is recently retired from the Atlanta Falcons, so it was probably a good thing he never even noticed my little car behind his truck and was gone when the police finally arrived.  But he had a good sense of humor about the whole situation and said he was glad the Fort Morgan Militia (motto: Redoutable Et Fougueux) was ever vigilent and almost sober.

I don’t think his wife will be allowed to play with us….

The girls have moved to the beach!

  I have attempted this blog (on advice from my handsome son) to spare my wonderful friends time wasted in downloading photos and reading emails after we’ve already talked on the phone. If I keep this current, you can just check periodically to see if I am alive, in jail, or gainfully employed. I’m living my dream in paradise, but I miss my boys and my amazing friends. Please visit soon and visit often, it’s 73 degrees and sunny today!

Betsy guilted me into maintaining the driftwood creatures we collected on the beach, when I changed the water yesterday I poured in 1 gallon of fresh seawater with zillions of almost microscopic baby shrimp – it must have been a tasty snack, the crabs are molting again today!