Learn Something New Each Day!

  It is a goal of mine to learn at least one new thing daily.  Whether it be the correct spelling or meaning of a word, the position of a country on the globe or a new crochet stitch.  One new bit of knowledge will be added to the old brain.  My daughter tells me that this is a good thing. She claims that keeping the brain active will help me in my "later years". (Sorry, Darling Daughter, I am already in those later years but I appreciate your loving concern!)  Today, however, I gained TWO bits of information of undisputed accuracy.  

  First, even though it is probably a wise idea when building a house on a bayou to raise it up a few feet, sometimes it has adverse effects. There are folks go so far as to put their houses on stilts far above the waterline but, here since we have such a high hill, a few feet of "security" was all that was necessary.  The Little Bayou House sits up on pillars that are several feet tall.  This helps during storms or when piping needs repairs.  No problem.  BUT...but there is a downside to having those few feet of space between the ground and the underside of the house.  The downside is that critters can (and often do) decide that our floor should be their roof.  Some enterprising critters take to calling the area home and build lovely nests under our house.  Others come for other reasons that are not so sweet and honey-dripping homey.  So, the first bit of info that was instilled in the brain, today, is that building the house up off the ground can be as detrimental as helpful.

  The other bit of knowledge gained has been long suspected but never confirmed until today.  Humans of the male sort cannot smell. Nope.  It just does not happen.  While we have all been taught that there are five senses, men only have four.  Their capabilities stop after vision, hearing, touch and taste.  Nowhere in the history of mankind has there ever been a man who could smell!  Oh, sure!  They have a keen sense of smell for delightful aromas just not for stenches.  A pan of lasagna draws them like a magnet.  Pineapple upside down cake can be detected from the distance of two miles.  Even coffee is on their list of "smells".  It can wake them from a deep slumber.  Good smells are where it stops though.  Let the garbage can reek?  Have sweaty socks on the floor?  Let an apple go bad?  Nope...they cannot smell it.  I have figured that good smells are usually associated with eating so it is all good.  Bad smells yell work so "I don't smell anything" is a common answer to the question "Does something stink in here?"

Hopefully, it was not this possum that died under the house today!

  That said, I learned two things today.  Both are tied together with one simple, albeit nasty, incident.  A critter did, indeed, waltz himself under our house sometime in the past few days.  This critter did not come to nest but did come to stay....forever.  I kept smelling something.  I cleaned the trash cans, mopped the floors, did laundry, scrubbed the bathroom and checked the apples.  Nope.  None of those.  The smell got worse.  What started as a mild, odor soon became a gagging stench.  Alright.....SOMETHING had to be done!  "Son, do you smell anything bad?"  was met with "Well, it does not smell good."  Which was an evasive answer if I ever heard one.  So I took it upon myself to check outside.  While Son dug out some shrubs, I searched for a stench.  I found it.  When I rounded the northwest corner of the house, bottle flies swarmed out from under the house.  Yep.  Those are a clear indicator of something putrid.  SON!!!!  

  The poor fellow had to stop what he was doing, grab a flashlight, crawl part way under the house and remove a dead critter.  For the second time this year, a possum had decided that the space under our house was the perfect place to  give up the ghost.  Ugh!  The heat of the Deep South did not do us any favors with this critter.  

  So my advice to you is to learn something new each day.  Learn two things or even three if possible.  We have to exercise that brain!  I have just taught you two all important facts.  Do not forget them!  They may just come in handy some day.

Off limits

  The pier is off limits.  For several reasons, I have more or less closed the pier.  Visitors are not allowed but not too many will be complaining about the fact.  Things are just not conducive to having anyone there at the moment.  First and foremost, we are watching the Gulf with the expectation of a storm to be whipping into our area sometime in the next couple of days.  While this should not be a bad storm, I am just more comfortable not having "sightseers" dawdling about on the pier during any inclement weather.  Makes more sense to not be there unless direly needed.  Also, I guess emotions got the best of me when I was out today lugging up all the fishing gear, crab traps and heavy wooden benches. Where are all the "wonderful" folks that use the pier when it comes time to protect the pier.  Not here, that is for sure.  Not one....not a single one....came to offer a helping hand.  I did it all.  While Mark and Son frantically tried to replace the windows in the living room and build walls around them, I carried all of the stuff up the hill.  This was done with a injured right arm.  Now the arm is throbbing something fierce. But, you do what you have to do to prepare for any storm and this one is no exception.  So....the pier is closed. 

  The other reason that I have called the pier a no-fly zone is...well...that it has flies and it smells bad....really bad.  Three times in the past two weeks, we have found something deceased had floated up and become lodged beneath the pier.  Three times, we have had the disgusting job of removing said corpse and disposing of it.  Not fun.  The first was a leg of some animal.  It was rather large and furry.  I have still not determined just what animal lost its leg and how that leg found its way to our pier. It was rank.  Then a rather large catfish was found in just about the same spot that had previously been occupied by the weird critter leg.  The catfish was half eaten and rather putrid. Then, yesterday, a six foot long gar was wedged beneath pier in exactly the same spot!  What are the odds of that???  The gar was so deteriorated that it literally fell apart when we tried to remove it.  The stench was unbearable but worse than the smell was the number of flies that had been drawn to the huge fish. The flies did fly things and maggots were literally crawling everywhere.  Yep...nasty. Way nasty!  

  So, for the time being, the pier is closed.  Sad to say, the dead critters have given me a reason to close the pier until my emotions calm a bit.  It is better that the stench drives folks away than me getting angry.  Life is too short to carry anger around in a hand basket so, I will let it be.  However, the pier is off limits for a while.