Needing Answers To A Bayou Mystery

  Almost eight years ago, I had a rather chilling experience.  A tall pine tree next to the marsh edge had had been killed during Hurricane Katrina (some seven years earlier).  Since the tree was far away from the Little Bayou House and since we had so much else to worry about at that time, the tree was left to rot away on its own.  It was at the eight year mark after the tree's demise that I came across a rather unusual item in the middle of the tree's trunk.  A shard of bone had been obviously "preserved" by the tree's growth and was not revealed until the tree collapsed.  When I found the bone it was gleaming white in the late afternoon sun as if it was calling to me to examine it.  I picked up the bone not knowing whether it was of a bayou critter or if it was of a human.  Holding the bone shard, I had the intense feeling that I should not just toss it to the wayside.  My intentions were to let Darling Daughter, Elizabeth, look at the bone as she had taken courses in anthropology in college. She did not live on the Coast at the time but I felt perhaps she would be able to tell me a bit about my bone find when she made a visit.  Sad to say, in the hubbub of every day life, the bone was stowed away and promptly forgotten.  In a mass "spring" cleanup, I found the bone once again and still have questions.  It still feels wrong to toss the bone without at least making an attempt at identifying its source.

  When I found the bone this time, I asked Son since he was spearheading the cleanup of the storeroom where I had stashed the mystery piece.  He studied the piece for a while and made the remark that it honestly was the right size to be a bone from a human but he had no idea.  Of course, he is a math major and not an anthropologist so his guess was about as good as mine.  Now, that Elizabeth lives on the Coast, it will be far easier for her to examine the bone and steer me in the right direction but, being an old lady, the brain is a bit scattered.  She was actually here today and I forgot all about my questions about the mystery bone and why it was in a tree.  Bayou Mysteries abound and this has to be one of the most intriguing and in a way, gut-wrenching.  I guess I need to find someone that may do DNA testing on it to determine its origin.  Hopefully, it is a critter....hopefully. Why does this bone keep reappearing??

I Really NEED a Bigger House!

  With all this craze of downsizing to a thing called a "Tiny House", many folks are ditching their worldly goods and going with the bare essentials.  That is all fine and dandy.  For that matter, my sister and brother-in-law did just that.  They gave away almost every "luxury" item or nonessential item to live with the basics.  Their new house is absolutely gorgeous!  I could fully go that route if it was just up to me but it is not.  There are others that live in the Little Bayou House and I doubt that neither Hubby nor Son would appreciate being in much more cramped quarters.  We all need our space...even from each other occasionally and, as you can gather from the name "Little Bayou House", our home is not huge.  Downsizing would be pushing it.  That said, I do NOT need a bigger home.  Someone else does.

  This morning, I worked cleaning some of the "winter" from the yard.  Things accumulated over the past few months from, not only our construction work but just life in general.  As I hauled limbs and boards to the burn pile, I noticed something strange was happening in the top of the dead pine that sits near the marsh.  This tree was struck by lightning years ago and now stands like a stoic guard overseeing the entirety of the Bayou.  This is where the osprey sits as she waits for a tidbit from her suitor.  This is where the blackbirds roost to guard their wives as they sit on nests.  This is where the flying squirrels romp in and out the holes left by woodpeckers.   Although the tree is dead, it is full of life.  Today, however, a new resident was in the topmost hole.  What drew my attention to the tree was a blob of brown fur that was poking out of the top of the tree.  At first, I was not sure if it was even a critter or some weird type of hairy mold growing on the tree.  As I toted limbs, I kept watch on the hole and, suddenly, a bit of movement!  Aha!  A critter had moved into the tiny house!

  A raccoon had decided that the abandoned woodpecker hole was large enough for a nap.  The coon was wrong.  It was far from being enough room for a nap.  Part of its coon's back stuck out of the hole and its head and right ear stuck out a hole on the other side of the tree.  The coon literally overfilled its tiny house!  Sleeping the day away in this cramped position did not seem to be the brightest idea but, somehow, the raccoon seemed happy.  Come tonight, the coon will be on the prowl and will most likely seek a different nook to take its daytime snooze at sunrise.  Sometimes, you've just got to "upsize" instead of trying to downsize.  Tiny houses are not for everyone.  It is hard to fit a raccoon in a flying squirrel's nest no matter how hard you try.

Destructive Little Critters!

  Occasionally, a strange beetle or other creepy-crawly critter will catch my eye as I wander around the woods or creek bed. The fallen logs and leaf mulch are a haven for the critters and, if one has a keen eye or is just interested, one of the insects can be spied.  This afternoon, I, once again, escaped the confines of the sick house and made my way down through the mire to the creek.   Tomorrow, torrential rainstorms will pound the area making this particular hike inaccessible.  Most of the area will be flooded making it unsafe to tread there as footing would be unsure.  Once I found a sunny spot beneath the leaf canopy, my search for any critter life began.  Most of the insects are still dormant but telltale signs of their past activities was rampant.

  On a felled pine limb, the bark was crumbly and easily removed.  Slowly peeling back the outer layer, a network of tunnels was revealed.  A good bit of the sealed tunnels was intact.  Sawdust ladened excrement "roofs" laid neatly above each burrow.  This was the work of the woodborer larvae as they chewed their way through the wood.  These larvae can ruin more of the pine wood forests than any other critter.  

  As I sat inspecting the damage done to this one piece of wood, it made me almost thankful that our woods are not heavy with pine trees.  Hurricanes took their toll on the tall trees plus we have recently had a number of lightning strikes on the remaining few.  Perhaps these particular beetles will find little to infest and die out on their own.  Destructive little creatures!

Highlight of the Day!

  In every art class that I ever took (and it has been eons since I have), the instructor always stressed shading and highlighting.  It was drilled into my head that if you wanted a painting to look nice, you needed to use both.  Both techniques would accentuate the one thing that you wanted to feature as the focal point of the picture.  Okey dokey.  I am good with that as far as instructions go but, also as most folks will tell you, I have a hard time following "rules" when it comes to things like that.  My oldest son explained it to me one time as we were watching a line of ants traveling from their food source to their nest.  (This was right after he had joined the military.)  "You see, Mom, I am going to be like these ants. I will follow orders and stay in the straight line.  Ants are so organized."  As we were talking, a single ant came scurrying willy-nilly around the rest.  This ant was making circles and loops.  It was going up blades of grass and then retracing its steps.  We sat and pondered that single ant until he looked at me and said, "That, Mom, is you.  You are the one ant that marches or scurries to the beat of a different drummer. You are always out of step, out of sync and always a little bit weird."  While most mothers might have been a bit miffed, I sat there thinking how right he was!  He nailed it!  

  The weather, of late, pretty much keeps the sky covered in clouds.  It was those clouds that brought back memories of both the art classes and of the conversation with my son.  First, the offbeat side in me found beauty in a dead pine tree.  Not that the thing ranks any better than other trees, it just happens to have a bit of odd appeal to it.  I like that.  Today, the Master Artist was following all the rules of art class when He decided to highlight the old tree.  Set against the dark clouds, the tree would have been difficult to see, much less photograph, but with the help of highlighting and shadows, the tree stood out with flare!  A break in the clouds perfectly outlined the old tree.  This made the beauty of the dead tree even more intense. The tree's one gnarled branch reached out as if it was trying to shoo away the threatening clouds.  (That, in itself, was ironic as it was a similar storm that took out the tree in the first place.  One strong bolt of lightning killed the tree several years ago.)

  While I never learned to follow the rules pertaining to art, I did recognize the method behind the madness.  A simple thing like a break in the clouds did wonders to accentuate the beauty of the old tree.  It goes to prove that while some of us know the way, we do not always follow the same path to get to the end results.  And that is ok. It takes all sorts of folks to make this world an interesting place.