Another turtle

I was doing dishes yesterday, when I looked out the kitchen window and saw this massive turtle crawling across the front yard. Mom and I went out to inspect and we both came to the conclusion that this was the ugliest turtle we had ever seen. Not that it mattered, because his size and the "I'll bite your hand off if you get near me" look on his face instantly made him cool. I went and got my camera to take some pictures and he put his head as low to the ground as he could, as if to say, "The lower I get, the less you can see me." He never full on retracted into his shell though, which suggests to me that either: (a)he's a bad ass and isn't afraid of anything, or (b)he's too old to give a !@#$, i.e. "Great. More people staring at me. Again."

While taking pictures I discovered something very odd about this turtle that made him look a little bit diabolical. His eyelids were white! First of all, I never thought of turtles blinking before. Second, shouldn't the lids match his face? I don't know the scientific reasoning behind this but it is an oddity indeed. Quite frankly, it made him look possessed.

Grumpy old turtle.

Half blink. Weird, I know. I guess he was keeping an eye on me. Ha. Haha.

Possessed turtle.

I took this from inside the house, hence his bravery at sticking his head way out, which by the way, his head was effing huge! It reminding me of Jabba the Hut.

When I first saw him, he was full on moving across the front yard. After he came in contact with people and we went back inside, he proceeded to sit there and wait. And wait. And wait some more. I guess he was making sure we weren't coming back to bother him? So then he'd move two feet, and wait again. He ended up crawling into our front garden where he spent the rest of the day. We went back outside with Babe later in the afternoon and she'd want to get close to sniff it but we had to keep shouting, "No!" because the curmudgeonly turtle was totally giving her this, "Closer...come a little closer, that's it, look into my eyes, just a little bit closer..." look. I think he wanted to inhale her whole or something. He probably could have done it, too.

I couldn't find him this morning. Hopefully he went on his slow merry way. Although, I have this sense of foreboding that he's probably still in the garden waiting silently to strike.

Green Lynx

So, I get home, get out of the car, walk to the back door, open the screen door and have myself a very good scream. Why? A huge ugly hairy spider I have never seen before in my life was hanging out on the edge of the door. So gross.

It's called a Green Lynx Spider. It likes to live in the plants and live off of insects and will bite a human when threatened. When bitten, the human will feel pain, burning and itching accompanied by swelling of the bite area in a diameter of 7 to 10 inches.

I, of course, only learned all this after I felt compelled to swat the thing on the floor and capture it under a glass vase. What if it had been a brand new spider species never discovered before?! ($$$)
I needed to capture it alive. Though now that I know it's common, I don't know what to do with it. I could kill it but I don't want to hear the crunch, and I could let it go but I don't want it to go make spider spawn that will infest the front garden.

Maybe I'll go put it in Amber's front yard. Muahahaha.

{eye roll}

So, dove hunting season started this week. My brother, K, brought down his 4 year old son, C, for his first hunting trip. My dad, K, and C all went out together for a lovely all morning kill-fest. They all took a break in the middle of the day. In the late afternoon K and C were playing NCAA football on Play Station, dad decided to go out hunting again - by himself. About 30 minutes later K and C head out to join him for round 2 of "kill birds that are life partners". Ten minutes later I get a call from my dad. For brevity d=Dad, k=me. The following is how our conversation transpired:

ring-ring!

k:hello?
d: bring me more shotgun shells
k: i don't know where the shot gun shells are
d: look in the kitchen
k: not there, i think they're in K's truck
d: where's K?
k: i thought he was down there with you
d: oh, damn, there go some more! {that would be doves flying over his head}
d:i need more shot gun shells! i only have a few more!
k: i don't know what to tell you

d: {blah blah blah, ramble ramble}
d: uh-oh
k: what?
d: hang on
{pause}
d: i'm standing next to a rattlesnake

k: what?!!!

d: {shotgun pops going off}

k: dad?!
d: it's ok, it doesn't have a head anymore
k: oh, well that's good

-end of call after more chitchat and assurance that i indeed do not have the shotgun shells-

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you my father. The man who has the inane talent of getting within life threatening distances of poisonous reptiles. This was round two, by the way. A couple of months ago he stuck his hand within five inches (unknowlingly) of a rattlesnake that was taking a nap in the flower garden. This time he manages to be standing within a couple of feet of one. At least he saw it, at least this snake, too, was napping, and at least he was armed. The snake was about four feet long, and had maybe 15 rattles on it. At least we don't live in India where cobras decide to nap in people's laundry baskets. Gosh.

What's That Noise?

Let me preface this by saying that I am afraid of tornadoes. Really afraid.

I'm visiting my friend, V, for a few days in Blooming Grove, Texas, which is somewhere in between Hillsboro and Corsicana, (the part of Texas where it actually rains). We have had great fun so far. We stayed up late last night watching Fast and Furious, the fourth one, and eating Chili's left overs. Yum. So we go to bed at 2 in the morning, I think, with thoughts of getting to sleep in until late. Yay.

Yeah, not so much. V's mom comes in the room to wake us up at 6 in the morning and tells her that there's a tornado warning in Navarro County and that she should probably turn her computer off so it doesn't get zapped by lightning. Okay.
I'm waking up and I ask V, "Where's Navarro County?"
She replies, "This is Navarro County..."
Lovely. So she turns her computer off, and we're laying there letting that information simmer. I see lightning, hear thunder, and my blood pressure is rising by the second because the word "tornado" was mentioned. I also hear this faint distant low rumbling noise that doesn't seem to quit.
Not thunder.
I say, "Do you hear that?"
"Yes..."
We get up to see what's going on, I'm starting to get into full panic mode, the house is dark, rain is falling on the tin roof. I walk down the hallway to go see what it looks like outside from the living room window and freeze. I barely hear it over the airconditioning vent that I'm standing next to. A tornado siren.
Vanessa came up behind me and I said, "Do you HEAR that?!"
The siren had just quit.
She says, "What? The airconditioning?"
The siren starts up again.
"No, THAT!"
We hear it loud and clear, now, and look at each other and our eyes get real wide and my heart feels like it wants to jump out of my chest and I don't know what to do. Yes, the thought of hiding in the bath tub crossed my mind, but I looked outside and it didn't seem too ominous...besides the purple lightning, loud thunder and sheets of rain.
I go to her mom's room where the weatherman is on the TV going on about the thunderstorms in Dallas county, but admits, yes, there is a tornado warning in Navarro County and briefly shows the weather map that is full of red, yellow and green colors. And then we lost satellite. But only for a few minutes.
Her aunt and mom are sitting on the covered front porch watching it rain, because they had the informed impression that the worst of it had already passed us. Which it had, thank God. But I wasn't convinced yet and proceeded to let my heart beat really fast and my entire body to shake uncontrollably. Really scared, I tell you. At one point I thought I was going to be sick. As I said before, I really don't like tornadoes.
I called my mommy long distance so she could look up a weathermap on the internet and assure me that the storm had passed through the area. And to tell me that it would be okay. Which it was. All ended well. The storm went away and I layed back down and was able to fall back asleep eventually to the sound of falling rain on a tin roof.

It wasn't the worst experience ever. The wind wasn't even blowing that hard and the thunder wasn't that loud. But hearing that tornado siren in the dark of night really scared the heck out of me. If by some miracle you've never heard a tornado siren before (the movie Twister? come on) I invite to listen to one here. Tornado Siren

R.I.P.

I killed a bird today. I don't think it's murder, because I didn't intentionally set out to kill the thing...I swear. So would it be manslaughter? Birdslaughter, rather? If they had court hearings for roadkill I might be convicted of vehicular birdslaughter.

I was driving at 10 in the morning, which is a rarity. I wasn't entirely awake yet. I'm driving along, minding my own business, when I see this bird flying. It lands in the road in front of me. It hops into my lane to grab something, a bug, something to build a nest, I don't know. The distance between us is getting shorter and shorter. It turns and looks right at me. Our eyes meet. I think he was entranced by my Gucci knock-off sunglasses because he just sat there staring at me wasting precious seconds. My right front wheel hit him right when he decided it would be a fantastic idea to take the heck off.

This all happened in a matter of 3-4 seconds. Yes, I cringed when it hit my wheel. No, it never occurred to me to swerve. There wasn't a whole lot of room anyway. I wonder if it was grabbing food for some babies? Did I just orphan a nest of baby birds? Did I just rack up a child endangerment charge? Hopefully the baby mama bird will be able to be a single parent. Oh, Jesus! Do they mate for life?! Did I kill her one true love?! I need to quit thinking about this.

I forgot to check if there were feathers stuck in my wheel. Hmm.

Zoology

I went to the Fort Worth Zoo a couple of weeks ago with the fam...

Blue and Yellow Macaw "love birds"...

A young adult lion who was looking at me like I was dinner...

A giraffe that looked like he had a serious pain in the neck...

I can't tell you how much I would love to be this hippo.
To be fat and happy sitting in a cool clear pool of water avoiding the 100+ degree Texas heat all day...priceless!

The Turtle and the Hound

Babe and I found a turtle in the yard. He/She didn't want to come out to play.