January 17, 2016. Gators - 0, Snakes - 1.

 

 

January 17, 2016.  Gators - 0, Snakes - 1.  One part of our daily routine is to take the recycling and trash to the collection dumpsters.  Sometime each day, we either walk, bike or both.  Today was a bike day.  We returned to the marsh where "Lefty" the three-pawed gator, is reputed to reside. 

The daylight half moon was framed between two pines as we made our way to the marsh.  Can you see the moon?  We also saw another fallen tree that looked like an alligator from a distance.  Annie reacts in the third picture. 

We passed a family on our way back from the marsh.  We noticed they made a wide arc around an object on the bike trail.  As we got closer, we discovered a reptile, just not the one for which we'd been searching.  I tried to identify the snake by comparing it to other snakes commonly found in Gulf State Park.  It may be an Eastern Hognose Snake, a Gray Ratsnake or a Brown Water Snake.  It might also be a Northern Copperhead, but I don't think so.  I didn't get close enough to see whether it had a triangular head. 

Annie wasn't crazy about the proximity of our bikes to the snake.  It looks bigger in the picture that it was really was.  It might have been 2-3 feet long and it was coiled as if ready to strike.  Annie was persuasive in her directives so we left the snake on the trail, undisturbed. 

The back brakes on my bike went out today.  To be more precise, the brake pads were rubbing the rim of the back wheel.  So, I tinkered a bit with the result being that the rear brakes no longer work at all.  I guess that proves the wisdom of Annie's rule that if something is broken, I am to leave it alone.  Well, I still have front brakes.  Perhaps a future picture will be me, with the bike on top of me, after getting tossed over the handlebars because the front brakes locked up.  That should be fun, don't you think? 

If you are wondering, today is National Bootlegger's Day.  My paternal grandfather would observe today if he were living.  Bootlegging was a part-time avocation of his during the depression.  He wasn't all that successful as a bootlegger.  He consumed as much of his product as he sold.  That business practice tends to reduce a business' bottom line.  Grandpa didn't seem to care though.  It was a business plan that suited him.  Grandpa was not a man with unbridled ambition. 

I guess that's where I get it.  Goodnight.