Just A Cousin

    Sometimes, extended family can be the closest friends you can have...sometimes.  Sometimes, those same family members can be the very ones that will throw you under the bus if ever a chance occurs.  It all boils down to that old adage of "It is better to have an honest enemy than a fake family."  When things come to light, there oftentimes comes a need to purge...family or not. Seriously, though, family is (in most cases) exactly what is needed to make life livable.  The closeness, the love, the laughter...that...THAT is pure bliss.

  This morning, I found a cousin...not of mine but a cousin to another critter.  Most folks are keenly aware of the adorable seahorses that are found the warmer waters of the world. These fine fish are found near coral reefs and in seagrass beds where they have protection from larger predators.  (Yes, they are fish.)  Here, we have an abundance of pipefish.  Pipefish are the sweet cousins of the seahorses!  Like their cousins they tend to hide among the underwater plants as they go about eating tiny plankton.  I occasionally catch one when I am throwing the net for mullet or bait fish.  I marvel at the beauty and then carefully release the tiny critters.

  It is easy to see the "family resemblance" if you ever take the time to really observe the pipefish.  Their heads and "snouts" are so much like that of the seahorses.  These snouts are specialized to capture small prey that other fish overlook.  Also, like their cousins, pipefish are extremely camouflaged and can go unseen in a bed of seagrass.  This helps them avoid being eaten and also helps them to capture food.  Another way they are like their cousins, is the male pipefish gives birth not the female.  He has a specialized brood pouch which can hold up to dozens of eggs or tiny pipefish!  

  So...there you have it!  Cousins...seahorses and pipefish!  Oh...let us not forget their other cousins...the sea dragons but they are way over in Australia not around my Bayou!

Scorpions on the Bayou!

   Although I come across a myriad of strange bugs here, it is not often that I find scorpions around the Bayou.  Perhaps they are scurrying about the marshes but I have yet to see one and I can honestly say that I am glad that I have not.  Those things give me the willies!  After being on the receiving end of several spider bites, anything that resembles them, is on my "no like" list. I have heard tell that a scorpion sting is painful and I am not a fan of pain.  (I was also told that to combat the agony after being stung, one should immediately wrap the site with a slice of eggplant!  Now, I ask you, who goes about their daily business carrying an eggplant?)  Anyway, today I found a scorpion lurking about the living room and I had no eggplant handy!

  For those who do not know, I do a lot of crafts.  A while back, I created a good many critters from wire salvaged from my broken weedeater. (http://msbayoulady.blogspot.com/search?q=seahorse) This was fun and I have good intentions of stepping back into the mode of bending wire soon but, in the meantime, I have lent my pliers to Darling Daughter!  She is here and is crafting.  One of her creations is a scorpion.  Unlike mine, her bugs are not to be brooches.  The scorpion will be a "shelf-sitter" or knickknack or dust collector ( My niece, Heidi, has dubbed half the stuff in the Little Bayou House as the latter.)  The scorpion is made from a number of pieces of junk.  She bent wire for most of the critter but, also, incorporated buttons, watch hands, alligator clamps and a compass.  The critter is amazing and knows which way is north!

  Tomorrow, she and I will be crafting once again.  Since she and her husband are moving here, I will be storing her crafting supplies in my craft room. We are looking forward to many, many more days of creating and sharing!  I do believe, however, that I will leave the scorpions to her and stick to my seahorses!

Weed trimmer reborn!

  Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am hard on lawn equipment.  Give me any piece and I will use and abuse it until it is literally falling apart!  I have done this to hand tools, lawn mowers and weed trimmers. Each piece is lucky if it makes it through one season without being totally mutilated! Handles of hand tools seem to break with no due stress but it does not end there...I have been known to break the metal blades of hoes and shovels!  Lawn mowers seem to lose their blades, wheels and even gas tanks when in my use!  Weed trimmers...don't even get me started!  I blame it all on inept workmanship during the making of the trimmer...it cannot be all my fault!  Things are just not made like they once were!  That's it!  Inept workmanship in the factory!

Anyway, that said, not all is lost!  After breaking my second weed trimmer in as many seasons of use, Michael started taking the tools apart to see just what was the problem.  Perhaps he could salvage the unit if he did a bit of altering on parts.  That did not happen.  There was no hope for either machine..I had killed them both.  BUT!  Inside he found some great wire! I was watching him tear into the machine and noticed some bright copper wire!  Forget repairing the weed trimmer.  That wire was now destined to the craft room!  I was so elated...Michael not so elated.  He had to struggle to unwind the wire from some weird part of the weed trimmer.  The wha-cha-ma-call-it inside was wound with yard after yard of copper wire but was also armed with some sort of metal housing.  Stupid factory folks had to make it nigh on impossible to unwind their wire!  However...Michael did!  And I now had spool after spool of assorted sizes of copper wire all waiting to become some magical art piece! And it did....

After much working, I was able to turn out a relatively nice-looking brooch!  It is in the shape of a seahorse and is about five inches in length.  The really neat thing about this piece is that with the exception of the pin backing, the entire piece is "recycled art"!  All parts are reclaimed materials that would have normally wound up in the trash!  Salvaged art!  What more could you ask?  This beautiful seahorse brooch was destined for the dump had the vivid imagination of an artist not seen the possibilities in a old weed trimmer, a moth-eaten, beaded sweater and two beads from a broken necklace!  I think my project might just be the beginning of something new for me!  I might just start raiding broken lawn equipment for possible jewelry items!  So see...all is well that ends well!