Fishing, a Spaceship and a Priest

  I had a very fitful night of tossing and turning due to a backache.  I awoke at midnight in a fit of agony and only got intermittent sleep thereafter.  Well, there was nothing to do but get out of bed at 4am and head to my happy place, the pier. Walking seems to be the best remedy for any type backache so walking is what I did.  Since it was still quite dark outside, the pier seemed to be the safest place to do any sort of hiking.  Being several hundred feet long and well above the marsh, I felt relatively safe from stepping on a moccasin.  The pier planks seem to grasp any bit of moonlight and are a lot brighter than any path under the trees.  Back and forth, I hiked the length of the pier twenty times and soon was feeling some better.  It was while I was on the pier that things took a turn to the wild side!

  Once I stepped up on the ramp going to the main pier, it became obvious that a heavy fog had laid in overnight.  Ahh, my favorite hiking time!  Things seem so different when cloaked in fog.  The mistiness can sure make things look kind of creepy but. at the same time, beautiful.  This morning, things were slightly different than our usual, winter fog days.  Now, there were leaves that filled out trees making them appear to be huge monsters but, monsters aside, it was that spaceship that caught my eye!

  Yep, the spaceship is what got my full focus once I was on the end of the pier.  It is not often that you can have an actual sighting!  In reality, the "spaceship" was merely the gazebo across the Bayou but it looked a whole lot different when shrouded by fog.  The imagination ran wild and memories were brought back into the open after being stowed away in the dark corners of the brain.  A story about fishing, a spaceship and a priest.  Does it get any better than that?

  One day after an early morning fishing trip, Pop came home with a pretty wild tale.  This was when I was a youngster and before all of the homes and gazebos were built.  As Pop was fishing from his skiff, his good friend arrived to fish near him.  This friend was a priest from the local church.  The story was related of how they were catching flounders and talking when suddenly on the horizon, there appeared a strange craft.  This "spaceship" came toward them and stopped to hover several hundred feet away.  Pop said it was round, had lots of lights but never made a sound.  After it hovered for about ten minutes, the lights started flashing and it shot straight up in the air until it was out of sight.  Pop went on to tell how his friend, the priest, was shaken and asked if it was a spaceship.  Pop, trying to be strong and reassuring, said he did not know but it sure may have been.  Both fishermen decided to ease their way closer to the old pier and wait until sunrise before venturing any further.  

  To this day, there has been no explanation as to what Pop and the priest had seen.  It could have been anything but it left them both with ideas of it being aliens.  This morning's "spaceship" did not fly off into the wild, blue yonder but sat grounded.  I guess my imagination went a little overboard.  But...that Godzilla like creature that was as tall as the trees sure looked real to me!  

Is it? Or is it not?

  Someone asked me the other day if wild onions are edible.  You know, those things that pop up in the lawn and make the place smell wonderful (if you are like me and love onions) when you hit them with the lawnmower or those things that seem to be the bane of every homeowner (except me!) who wishes to have the perfect lawn or those things that, as kids, we all dared our siblings to taste.  Those are all one and the same...wild onions.  Now to answer the question.  Yes.  Wild onions are edible although you may not want to overdo with them.  In a pinch, the lovely little green plants can be added as a flavoring but there is some question as to using them in mass quantities.  I guess that goes back to the "extensive tests have not been done" disclaimer that is tagged on most things. It seems that the wild onions are toxic to dogs so, therefore, contain a mild form of toxicity.  Humans seem to not have problems with it, though.  Now comes the kicker....

  Not all things that look like wild onions are wild onions.  There are things that we always called "crow's poison" that looks remarkably similar to wild onions.  They are green, have small white bulbs and blooms that might be mistaken for the onion bloom.  These are said to be extremely toxic by some folks..  While I cannot attest to this as fact (since I have not eaten one), my advice is "Do not eat them."  Grandmother had a saying "When in doubt, throw it out."  Maybe that does not apply here but the thought is the same...sort of...just don't eat something that causes you doubt. It is, however, easy to distinguish the two.  Wild onions smell like...well, onions.  Crow's poison does not.  It smells like...nothing.  If there is an odor, it is mild and grass like.

Wild onions definitely smell like onions.

Crow's Poison does not have the onion/garlic smell of wild onions.

   My question?  Since it is so easy to grow onions of any sort, why would you need to forage for wild ones.  Onions and chives are some of those things that can be grown from the small root end of the stuff you buy in the store and once you get a start, you never need to replant.  They just grow...continuously.

  Now a tidbit about the curious name of crow's poison.  Plants sometimes have weird names but this one takes the cake.  Crow's poison, from what I was told as a kid by Granddad, was labeled such years and years ago.  Maybe this is just a local thing as another name for the plant is false garlic. Understandable...but crow's poison is a different story altogether.  It seems that once folks found that the plant was toxic to most animals, they decided to make use of it.  Being a resourceful folk during a time when the corner Walmart was not there, farmers smashed the plant to get the inner sap.  That juice was plastered all over their young chicks in an attempt to keep crows from nabbing them for supper. The thought was that if a crow stole a chick, it would eat the toxic gunk along with the chick resulting in a dead crow.  The smashed bulbs were also mixed with grain and left in fields in hopes that a whole murder of crows would die.  The murder was murdered, in that case.  Which is a tad ridiculous as no one calls a flock of crows a murder of crows and not many folks think of killing birds as murder.  (I do...on both accounts.)  So there you have it.  A weird name for a plant, an edible plant that everyone hates,  a toxic plant that may or may not be toxic, a story passed down through the generations that may be just a great tale that contains not a bit of truth.  Lots of fun stuff!

Hunting for the Mysterious!

  I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day and was so enthralled by the tale that Fred was relating about strange things he came across on one of his hikes up the mountain.  Just the way he described the gargoyle-shaped roots and other oddities he stumbled upon made me want to do some exploring of my own. I wanted to experience the unusual, the mysteriousness, the wonderment that he found on his hike!  I set out with all of the eagerness that I could muster.  I was going to find my own "gargoyles" and wizard's workshops!

  My hikes about the Bayou never seem to bring me to mysterious places yet unexplored.  Perhaps this is due to the smothering of progress that limits the extent of my treks.  I don't suppose there are too many wizards that wish to live among so many people.  "Progress" is putting people far too close for my tastes as well.  Gone are the times when I could go for days without seeing (or hearing) any evidence of other people.  I can only imagine if there were any mysterious beings here, they would have sought solitude somewhere else.  Still, I wanted to seek out any evidence just like Fred did!  So, out I went!

  I searched the Bayou high and low.  I searched the creek.  I searched the marshes.  Nope.  Not one "elf, fairy or troll" was to be found.  Just as I was about to return to the comfort of the Little Bayou House, I spied it!  There was as close as I was getting to my mysterious being!  An odd face grinned at me through the grass.  I wanted to race up to it and hug it as I was so excited!  Not really.  The only unusual being that I found staring at me was a face in one of the old railroad timbers that washed in with a hurricane.  Nothing very mysterious about that, now was there?  Still, the log did have a sort of endearing look about it so I will be happy with that.  Sorry, Fred, I found no place as exciting as you did but I must admit that I sure enjoyed reading your tales!  For any of you who wish to have a good read, I highly recommend you visit http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/ and read about Fred's find on the mountain.  Start with "Strangeness on the Moors" and read on from there.  His tale might just make you wish to seek out the mysterious as well!