Thankful for the Thanksgiving sunset in Alabama

       Although I do love it when Sophie and I have the beach to ourselves when we walk in the morning, I must admit I have enjoyed this week.  

      By Wednesday there was at least one car under almost every house and it was heartwarming to see the families and friends coming together at this special place for their Thanksgiving holiday.    Sophie and I met more neighbors, laughed with the children playing in the surf, and shared updates on the shipwreck and Governor’s house.

     Our Thanksgiving dinner featured shrimp & flounder instead of turkey and ham, and afterwards I spent Friday nite with Sam’s family, Saturday afternoon at Brad & Ann’s learning to appreciate football (loved Georgia Tech, a little rattled by UK), and Sunday nite playing Scrabble with Dianna & Arthur.

    It was a wonderful weekend…. can’t believe I have to go to work tomorrow!

Don’t feed the alligators!

Lucky shot of CJ in October

“The ‘gator you know is safer than the one you don’t know,” Sam and Alberta told me when I had my ‘alligator awareness’ lectures. 

Both of these remarkable women are fierce defenders of the wildlife in our lagoons, and they will never forgive the ‘tourist’ who fed Clyde until he lost his fear of stupid humans and was then considered ‘dangerous’. He was subsequently captured, taped, and executed.

None of the natives ever thought Clyde was dangerous, but he was fed chickens by the tourist whenever he appeared, so he started appearing whenever he heard humans playing near his home, and that did scare some rational people.

Photo of an optimistic Clyde submitted by Alberta

Clyde is removed from Surfside

But the photos of his capture are absolutely heartbreaking. 

These alligators were here before we were, and they will probably be here when we are long gone, so it is obvious we need to learn to coexist with them.  So…..

Don’t feed Clyde Jr.  (we call him CJ).  No excuses, we’ll turn you in to the authorities without regret, and that’s a promise!

CJ is the little ‘gator who moved in after Clyde was ‘eliminated’.  He is shy and has never been seen on the bank.

Perhaps you are happy to be here for Thanksgiving and think your children/grandchildren would love the show of feeding an alligator…  but please just send them out quietly with binoculars and they will learn how to observe nature with respect, and your neighbors will continue to respect you.

Because… the ‘gator you know is safer than the one you don’t know.

Alberta and friend!

Blue Angels

The Blue Angels have returned to their winter roost in Pensacola and they have been practicing along the gulf shore this week. It is absolutely amazing to watch them swirl, swoop, and dive in tandem as they thunder overhead.

A pair of angels

I tried to take better photos, but most are just blue sky because they are gone before the shutter even blinks.

There have only been two planes every day, so I guess they are training the replacement for the pilot who had his wings clipped in October?

Two Blue Angels grounded for inappropriate relationship

PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) — A spokesman for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels says the stunt-flying team will be down one jet the rest of its season after removing two members from duty for having an inappropriate relationship.

Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger, a spokesman for the team based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, said Thursday the squadron will finish its last three air shows next month with five jets.

Dunkelberger would not identify the two members but said the relationship was between a man and a woman. All six of the F-18 stunt pilots are men, and 23 of the 133-member squadron are women.

Dunkelberger says a military administrative hearing will be held to determine further disciplinary actions, which could include removal from the military.

 Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

UPDATE:   Monday, November 24, 2008

A disturbing trend has emerged, the Blue Angel pilots evidently work the same hours I do, darn….

Blue Angels on the gulf 11/24/08

Today I was headed to work when they started the amazing airshow I could have happily appreciated from my deck if I were unemployed. 

And today there were four heart-stopping pilots blazing across the gulf while we watched in awe….

Poor Sophie stopped thinking they were big alien birds, stopped pointing, and just watched.   It was absolutely goose-pimply

Soft-shell Sarah is still crabby!

Sarah molted again this week. By accident I watched the process and it looked excrutiatingly painful, like reverse childbirth…

Ouch!

The new Sarah was so much larger than the shell she left behind that it made me wince.

Because the MalWart aquarium has begun to leak (of course, it has been used almost 2 months now… planned obsolescence of cheap plastic crap) I had come to the conclusion that it was probably time to liberate the inhabitants.

And the water temperature has dropped, so it’s not much fun to stand in the surf with a plastic jug trying to fill it between the waves while Sophie wraps the leash around my knees.

 Then yesterday I saw Blue’s exoskeleton floating around the edge of the driftwood. 

But the surf was too rough for a release today, so I braved the waves and managed to collect enough water for a partial change.

When I removed the driftwood & shells (with tongs, it’s Sarah Vicious now) I was startled to see the new Blue. He is almost the size of a good appetizer!

Blue and Sarah sunning while I change their water

There was no evidence of poor John or the other smaller crustaceans who once shared this little ecosystem. No surprise if you watched the RNC this fall!

Blue was so funny I decided to hang on to the aquarium a little longer. (I actually dropped a penny in the tank for size comparison in the photo and they both attacked it…. took it out with tongs).

Although I absolutely love the 10 channels of PBS I get from Mobile and Pensacola with the converter box Buck & Lane gave me, this little aquarium is soooooooo much more interesting than television.

So I guess I’m headed to Bruno’s tonite for shrimp for the workweek…. Wonder what Sarah and Blue want for their Thanksgiving Dinner?

The Governor’s loss is nobody’s gain…

Our walk past the abandoned Governor's home

Mr. Ross was modest today when the early morning walkers in Surfside complimented him on his appearance on the TV news last nite. “I didn’t recognize myself,” he said, “I didn’t know I looked so old.”

Bill Ross is, actually, 81 years old, and he has the lonely task of ‘maintaining’ the deteriorating beach home that was deeded to the Governor of Alabama. He loves the property and he was devastated when the renovation after Ivan was stopped.

The guarded beach-front property is obviously valuable.  Although Kiva Dunes has now grown to reach the far border of the property, it is still isolated and is evidently over 2 acres of prime beach-front real estate. Who wouldn’t kill to have the opportunity to restore this fabulous home?

I honestly don’t understand why the state fought in court to keep the property and then continues to let it deteriorate. It seems to me it would be a perfect property to lease or rent for corporate or state meetings with access to a fabulous beach with a golf course access if the Governor declined to visit. It would be income for the state instead of a sad eyesore on the beach. N’est pas? What are they thinking?

Mr. Bill Ross, the loving Caretaker of a forgotten Alabama treasure

Of course, there is no appreciation for preservation of excellence or any foresight in local government today, clearly it’s just their own instinct for self-preservation that influences their vote.

God help our children and our heritage….

Here is the website for NBC’s investigative report .

If you see the gate open and the El Camino in the drive, stop in and thank Mr. Ross for his almost thankless task of ‘maintaning’ the Governor of Alabama’s Beach House…    http://www.nbc15online.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=0e465d8f-aacb-43c8-acdd-4f1acbe99587#BBECDEEMBEDEDPLAYER

I don’t know how long it will be active, but I’ll try to download it and save it for Facebook

Lemon Lime?

Well…  Three weeks ago we were happily picking these ‘limes’ off my little tree and slicing them for margaritas and Allison’s refreshing Lime Vodka.

Homegrown Lemons or Limes?

Today I’m wondering if they were really limes or just unripe lemons?

The taste is actually sweeter than a lemon…

 And I was intrigued by the pricey “Prickly Pear Margarita” listed on the menu last weekend.   The cacti are common here, and something has been eating them, so I ‘googled’  the fruit and discovered they are a well-known cure for a hangover. What a perfect drink! 

Picked Prickly Pears

I picked some this morning and learned the spikes will go through leather work gloves, and the seeds are like pomegranate, but milder and slimier. I think we’re headed to the SongWriter’s Festival tonite, so I’ll let you know how this works.

Update

Prickly Pear Infused Vodka

Peeled Prickly Pears

Peeling prickly pears probably takes longer than distilling the vodka… but thanks to Betsy’s assortment of pliers I managed to peel enough to (hopefully) infuse several bottles. In spite of the leather gloves, however, I still got enough prickly hairs in my fingers yesterday to make life miserable.

But the vodka is already turning a lively shade of pink and smells a little like melon.

This could be a successful experiment and interesting Christmas present!

Best In Show!

Betsy

When Betsy and Terry Kephart were down in October they took the ferry across the bay and she snapped some photographs at Bellingrath Gardens. She then selected one of her masterpieces to enter in the famed Creative Harvest Art Show.

She WON BEST IN SHOW this week. I am so proud and so excited! (this jpg is without the matting and framing, sorry)

I think this proves, without a doubt that everyone, and everything, is better in Alabama!

Sarah with several friends (proof there are at least 4 species)

Sarah is now hand fed - she attacks my finger

I made the mistake of putting raw shrimp in the aquarium last week and within one day the water was cloudy and the wormwood worms were dying.

I’ve made several partial water changes, (I’m sure my neighbors think I’m nuts when I stand in the surf and fill my plastic water bottle while Sophie, the eternal optimist, runs around my legs chasing those gulls and sand pipers.)

 

Sarah's neighbor, John

Today I have delared the little aquarium healthy.

Just look at these guys, I have at least 4 species of crabs (please don’t tell Melinda they are just spiders under water)

Betsy…..   I promise to feed them regularly and change the water 3X weekly, but I absolutely will not buy a new aquarium for these crabs, welk, coccina, worms, etc.    I know I said that about the turtles,  (named and released as Betty & June  2 years later at the LeBus pond), but I really mean it this time…..

 

Blue is larger than Sarah, but very shy

This little brown crab lives in the neighboring driftwood

Oops…

My new neighbor, who good-naturedly tolerated the misguided efforts of the Fort Morgan Militia a few weeks ago, returned this weekend to work on his beach house.  He now has functional electricity, so he brought his wife, children, and very impressive bulldog.

I noticed the lights when I returned home from watching the Alabama game at Brad & Ann’s Saturday evening (OMG – what a game), so I resolved to walk over and introduce myself and apologize again Sunday.

They were all as nice as he was when I first met him…. his son and daughter were delightful and extraordinarily polite. His wife, Teresa, is a Social Worker in Baton Rouge and was extremely forgiving of the Fort Morgan Militia.  Sophie and I had a terrific visit.

But when I got home I checked the internet before I emailed my boys about the new neighbor and..…

OMG! 

He is the Strongest Man in the World!   I am so thankful he didn’t see my little electric car when I pulled in behind him to record his license number and Sam called the police that Saturday nite in October.  He admitted he was already aggitated because of the electric problems…

The truth is, he is a very, very nice gentleman and his wife and children will be welcome additions to Surfside in Fort Morgan.

I’m so glad they all have a sense of humor…  And Sophie is glad their Mississippi State bulldog isn’t threatened by a Wildcat setter!

Update on our neighborhood shipwreck

The remains of the Monticello, uncovered by Ike, have been recovered by the state to protect it from vandals. We walked down this morning and met several groups of people looking for it – but it just looks like another man-made sand dune now.  I guess they’ll plant sea oats soon to protect the dune that protects the ship…

Shipwreck protected from the public

How sad that the actions of a few assholes cost so many innocent, interested visitors a valuable lesson of history about this wonderful, historic area…

What kind of lesson have we all learned from this?