Friends That Matter

   I am constantly the brunt of many jokes about my preference of being alone.  I stay on the Bayou day in and day out.  I stay for weeks...or months...on end with no desire to go into the outside world.  Most people cannot understand why I have chosen this life but it is perfectly simple.  The "outside world" is full of nosy, inconsiderate people just like those who question my life.  They insist that I "need" friends,  that I "should" go places and that life "is" better as they live it...not as I do.  Still, it is my preference so here I stay.  I go only as necessary and not to fill a void in my life.  That void is not there.  My life is full.

  As for friends, I have plenty!  I have the type that matter.  The ones that stand by me, check on me and do not question my actions.  Of course, they are mostly of the critter sort but they matter!  First, there is Bat, the Bayou Prince Cat, that has proven he would lay his life on the line to defend me.  Once he even attacked cottonmouth just so I would not get bitten.  The snake was within inches of my barefoot when Bat darted across the yard to attack.  He is a protector and confidant!  I would definitely say Bat is the type friend that everyone needs...plus, he gives good snuggles!

 There is the barred owl that waits in the branches of the black gum tree to make sure the gardening is going well.  This beauty stands guard at night to keep the vegetable plots vermin free. Most every morning, I call "Good day!" to it before it glides down into the swamp to snooze away the daylight hours.  In the late afternoon, it silently flies in to take its post among the branches to keep watch.  I bid it "Goodnight" knowing my garden is in good hands.

  The dayshift of garden protection is carried out by friend, bald eagle.  Just about daylight as the owl is readying to retreat to the coolness of the swamp, the eagle comes to relieve it of its duty.  The eagle cocks its head in the oddest way as I call to it.  "Good morning, Friend Eagle!  You are welcome here but leave the cat alone!"  (So far, the eagle has only made one attempt at catching Bat.  The cat, thankfully, was wise enough to dart under the pier.) 

  Other friends include the watersnake in the pond, the black racer under the back steps and the ribbonsnake pair under the herb shelf.  All of these are helpful friends as they keep the smaller varmints at bay.  These are good friends, indeed, and all are welcome to stay.

  So...along with the myriad of other critters around, I have friends...lots of them.  They are unassuming, trustworthy and surely NOT busybodies.  They mind their own business and I do mine.  Let others feel the need to poke and pry...to gossip and fret...to go into rages at the drop of a hat...and be everything that I do not want to be.  I shall stay (as my sister-in-law says) the Hermitess of the Bayou.  I shall continue to do things the "old way", keep being the "Keeper of Weird and Wonderful Things" and always be just who I am whether others agree with it or not. 

 

Are You Lost???

   I have lived near or on the Bayou my entire life.  During that time, I learned a good bit about the fish and other inhabitants of the waters and marshes.  I felt relatively sure that given a chance, I could just about identify any fish caught from the pier...until lately.  For some odd reason, the Bay is filled with unusual (for here) critters.  Some...I have even had to go to one of my "fish experts" to identify.  The young man, Taylor, is a friend of Son's from way back when they were youngsters in elementary school.  Taylor loves all things fishing even though he has moved from the Coast.  I rest assured that if I send him a photograph with the query "What is this?"  He will have an answer.  I did just that a couple of days ago. After putting a name to my unusual fish, he mused "I think you have the most diverse group of fish around your pier than anywhere on the Coast."  Well, he may be right.  

  The salinity of the water is sitting right at 23% which is odd for the Bayou.  We are known as having "brackish" water not high salt water.  Salty in the deeper portions but not in the shallows of the Bayou.  So, imagine my surprise when I caught, not one, but three different Ribbonfish...also known as Atlantic Cutlassfish.  I had no idea what those crazy things were!  So...I photographed and sent the pictures off to Taylor!  After getting a name, I also sent the picture to my oldest son, Mark, since he has seen just about every fish imaginable while living on the island for several years.  His response was "What is that doing at the pier?"  I replied that I had no idea but perhaps it was lost!  He agreed and made a similar remark to Taylor's about there being a lot of odd fish in my old fishing spot.  I will say this about the Ribbonfish...STAY CLEAR OF THOSE TEETH!!  That is one snappy fish that can whip and snag a finger right quick!  Thankfully, I was a mite faster because it has a mouth full of wicked fangs!

  That said, the shrimp are still plentiful so I have taken to filling everybody's freezers.  I throw the net catching a five gallon bucketful in a short while then give the shrimp to those who cannot catch their own.  With our three chest type freezers filled to capacity, nearly 800lbs of shrimp have found their way to our extended family members and elderly friends. Fresh, free food is always a good thing.  This comes on the heels of an investigation of some shady dealings by some of the shrimpers along the Coast.  It makes me happy to supply these folks with free Bay shrimp vs the foreign shrimp that were being passed off as Gulf shrimp.  Dirty dealings irk me so this is my small way of saying "No" to the underhanded ways of some people. 

  So...bring on the unusual fish, plentiful shrimp and knowledgeable young men that keep me up on what I am catching!  The Bayou is a happy, healthy place right now.

Just Doing His Job

   The other morning, I was busy cutting out some of the smilax vines that had taken over a clump of palmettoes.  This is some chore since the tubers can be massive and, if you leave one tiny bit, the vines will soon come back with a vengeance.  It is a losing battle on this hill.  Then again, perhaps I should leave the vines and chop out everything else.  Those huge tuber clumps do a fine job of keeping the hillside from washing down into the Bayou during hurricanes!  Maybe I need to rethink my landscaping here.  Anyway, as I was whacking at the vines, a familiar whapping could be heard just behind me.  Looking up, I found the guy that was smacking a tree with all his might.  Ahh, you are a good fellow, Mr. Pileated Woodpecker. You keep working on that tree!  I need it down.

  The woodpecker was hammering away on a dead white oak tree that had succumbed to a termite infestation.  Yep, most of our live trees are being eaten from the inside out and there is not much that can be done.  We have been treating the trees but there is no way possible to get to "the root of the problem"...so the termites flourish and the trees die.  It is sad. Still, the woodpecker is doing his job.  As he hammers away on the tree, he is probably getting rid of more termites, wood beetles and carpenter ants than we will ever be able to tackle.  

  I watched and smiled as the bird bore hole after hole into the dead tree.  Since this particular tree is far from anything it can damage by falling, I am leaving it for Mother Nature to take down.  So many critters can inhabit or forage in a dead tree.  The pileated is only one type of woodpecker that visits the tree on a daily basis.  The birds are doing a fine job of literally "chopping" down the tree.  By midwinter, the tree should come crashing down then the termite nest beneath can be accessed and the varmints killed.  Until then...the carpenter ants can feast upon the termites and, in turn, the birds can feast upon the ants.  Win/win situation for those of us who hate termites!  Good job, Mr. Pileated Woodpecker!  Good job.

Being All Scientific and Stuff....

   It is my habit of rising at 4am which gives me plenty of time to do a few "inside" household chores before heading outside just before the sun starts to rise above the pines on the far side of the Bayou.  It is during that time that I can do my best "pondering" plus catch a few fish, shrimp or crabs for the noontime meal.  Lately, however, Mark has been overloading us with fish so I have more time to do that thinking.  A couple of days ago, that thinking turned to a full bit of memories and then turned to curiosity as so many of my ponderings do.  I have to check things out to see just how accurate the old memory is.

  The moon was just a tiny, bowl-shaped sliver of silvery white against the dark sky.  I was just admiring the beauty when I heard some of Pop's words rattling around in the memories.  He always used to call this a "dry moon" because that bowl was holding all the rain.  Hmmm...dry moon.  Well, it did seem to hold some truth because we are having a painfully dry couple of weeks.  The garden definitely needs rain.  That was beside the point just now, however, as I was more interested in that dry moon.

  Sure enough, Pop may have been onto something...at least with the name.  According to all I read, this phenomenon happens only a couple of times each year depending on where you live.  It all has to do with the moon's orbit around the earth and the earth's orbit around the sun...AND...the tilt of the earth on its axis.  Yep...scientific stuff going on there.  Anyway, most of the time we see the sliver of the moon in a crescent sort of like a C but when the orbits do their thing and the moon looks like it is heading right down to the horizon, that C becomes more like a U all because of the way the sun illuminates it.  Some folks call it a "wet moon" while other call it a "dry moon" but it is basically for the same reason.  Folklore has it that when the moon is like a bowl, it is holding the rainwater thus giving a dry spell.  So...wet moon or dry moon, that bowlful of water stays put and does the gardens no good.  Folklore can seem confusing when the tales call things opposite names for the same reason.  Still, both agree that the rainy season will come back when the moon (bowl) starts to tilt and the rain spills out and down to earth.  NOW...it makes all the sense in the world...sort of...maybe. 

  Whether any of this holds true scientifically or whether it is purely folklore is yet to be seen but it sure is dry...and Pop said it so it has to be true.  Good enough for me.  So...my ponderance for the day seemed to totally hinge upon memories from so long ago.  Who needs science when you had Pop to teach you these things?!!!

Hurricanes, Shrimp, Gars and Childhood Memories

   Since Son has completed the repairs on the pier, fishing, shrimping and crabbing have resumed.  It is almost unheard of to have so much activity going on in the Bay and Bayou...at least, in recent years.  The last time that I recall catching this many shrimp from a pier was way back in the late '60s.  Right before Hurricane Camille hit when I was just a kid, Pop was bringing home buckets and buckets of shrimp that he caught with his net.  Then...along came the hurricane and we were in a fine fix.  This was before the handy-dandy generators that are so popular today.  Pop rigged up a homemade "generator" of sorts from an old lawnmower engine to run our pump but it did not supply enough energy to keep the freezers going.  What was Mom to do with a freezer full of quickly thawing shrimp?  Of course...feed the linemen that were trying their best to restore the electricity to our house!  Pop built a makeshift outdoor burner (wood fired) and brought out the huge canning pots to boil shrimp.  Living on a farm, we had plenty of potatoes and eggs to make potato salad and supply other veggies as sides.  Word got out that we had homecooked meals and the hungry workers were soon feasting.  Mom and Pop both said that those were the "best parties" they ever hosted!  Plus, the hundreds of pounds of shrimp did not go to waste!

  Memories of the shrimp feasts came tumbling from the brain as I casted the net for yet more shrimp the other morning.  Our freezers are full.  Our kids' freezers are (or will be once they come) full.  We have supplied our elderly friends with enough peeled shrimp to give them multiple meals.  Plus, extended family members have received their shares.  Still...I catch.  Mark catches.  We both head and peel the shrimp and feed the needs of so many.  It is a good feeling.

  Along with those pounds and pounds of shrimp, the fish are biting so I always throw out a line as I am shrimping.  Mark usually heads out in the little skiff but I stay back on the pier.  While he is catching redfish and trout, I catch nothing but gars!  It seems that young gars are following the schools of shrimp so the other fish are staying a bit further out.  I kept seeing huge breaks in the water just at the shoreline so I figured perhaps the redfish were dining on shrimp.  Nope...gars.  Just gars.  Do I want a gar for anything?  Nope...not at all, so they get released back into the Bay.

  Those gars even brought back a memory of a "fishing trip" with two of my brothers.  They had found a scuttled boat and tried to make repairs.  Well, those repairs were not the best since they were done by two kids.  Still, I was game to go along with the adventure when they asked.  I was plum happy to be going with my big brothers ANYWHERE!  Little did I know we were going gar fishing on the other side of the Bayou.  They had seen some huge gars there and thought it might be fun to wrestle in one.  Also, little did I know that I was to be designated as "chief bailer".  After paddling to their fishing spot, I was handed a coffee can and told to bail out the water that was steadily seeping into the boat.  Ummm...a little girl with a tin can is not much defense against a myriad of leaks in a boat but I was too scared of the huge gars they were hooking to do anything but bail!  Obviously, there was a good reason that boat had been scuttled!  Oh, the things kids used to be able to do.  Back in the day, we were kids.  We had adventures.  We had childhoods. 

  It is pretty funny how certain things can pull memories out of the cobwebs in the corners of our brains.  When you are doing something repetitively like throwing the net, the mind wanders and recalls delightful things from the past...or, more likely, I am just getting old and wishing for times past.  Either way, the fish, shrimp and crabs are plentiful and I plan on catching and sharing as many as I can.  Perhaps along the way, I can share a few happy memories, as well.

And the Bayou Takes....

   The last post I did was a few weeks ago simply because time and energy did not permit me to lollygag about on the computer.  Hurricane Francine did not hit here directly but did deal us a blow as far as damage to the pier.  My favorite place was in shambles and was clearly not a safe place to be.  While "The Bayou Provides" (previous post) still holds true, it also takes.  It takes time and effort to deal with problems that arise simply by trying to coexist with whatever the weather throws at us.  Son has been working tirelessly to repair the damage to the pier while I am putting the same effort into cleaning up the debris line left behind by the tidal surge.  I am getting too old for this!  

  The damage to the pier seemed, at first, to be only a surface matter but, once Son really looked, there were some underlying problems.  Some of the basic structure points had come undone so his job got massively larger.  The poor fellow has been redoing a lot of the bottom joists and stringers that had come unbolted.  Renailing planks further up the walkway became my job.  Finding our lost pier pieces became a family affair with us walking the shoreline in search of planks from both our pier and my brother's.  (He received much more damage than we did.)  We have yet to find the sturdy bench that Son had bolted to the pier.  The table remained intact and actually helped keep the pier together...somewhat...but that bench is elusive!  Where, oh, where did that thing float ashore?  Son was in hopes of finding it but did say he would build another if the need arises.  I miss my bench but, I have to admit, I have a great son!

  So...the Bayou also takes.  It and the weather make us ever aware of "what could happen" if the two collaborate to hit us with a fierce blow.  It takes effort.  It takes time.  It takes stamina (something that is wearing thin with me.)  And...it takes my bench to parts unknown!  Come back, traveling bench!  On a side note, if anyone sees this wayward bench, let me know! 

The Bayou Provides

   While life on a bayou is probably not for everyone, it seems to be perfect for me.  Most would rather be highly involved with their social lives and the hubbub that comes with it.  Again...not me.  I prefer the solitude that I can find here even to the point that I let the land and bayou provide for most of my needs.  While the garden is in a lull due to a recent drought, the water is teeming with "foodstuffs".  That is where I am spending the bulk of my time...on the pier.  Mullet, drumfish, redfish, trout, flounders and crabs are all within reach and shrimp!...yes, shrimp are plentiful this year!  A massive influx of shrimp this far from the salty Gulf is rare so all of the locals are taking full advantage of the occurrence!  We are throwing the net just about every waking hour and are filling freezers for future use.  Free food is always good.

  A thought bleeped through the brain yesterday as I was hauling in yet another netful of shrimp.  What in the world is this old lady with a bad heart doing down here on the pier?  I think I am pushing my strength to the limits this summer.  Just last week, after a great checkup with my doctor, I got the orders to "Just keep doing whatever you are doing as it seems to be paying off in great ways with your health."  I wonder if Doc knows that I am spending hours at a time throwing a net from the pier?  Still...I shall follow Doc's orders and keep doing what I am doing.  If nothing else, I shall eat good!  *Just a note here...yes, that is my gloved hand holding the shrimp to show the size.  I normally do not wear gloves but after throwing the net close to a hundred times each day, my hands were taking a beating.  Bleeding fingers are not a good thing. The gloves have come into use!