Screech Owl in the Front Yard

As I pulled in the driveway tonight upon arriving home from work, my headlights lit up the spruce tree beside the house. There, sitting quiet as could be, was a tiny screech owl. He's about four inches high. I called Debbie on the cell phone and told her to quietly come out and see. She came out and softly approached him. He didn't fly away, but merely turned his head to stare at her. He stayed long enough for me to go inside and get the camera. He even stuck around for about four or five nice photos with the flash going off. When he finally flew away, it was, as you can guess, completely silent, no flapping or anything -- not a sound. He never screeched.

Okefenokee Pics

Now that she's back in the lower 48, Catkim called in her promised graduation present: to go canoeing in the Okefenokee Wilderness. She left hubby back in Fort Benning, and drove down to Grandma's. The next morning she and I spent an extraordinarily enjoyable day exploring my old stompin' grounds, the Suwanee Canal area of the Land of the Trembling Earth, south of Folkston. Below: Yes, he's real. Yes, he's alive. No, there's no fence or anything. This is the wilderness. We came a lot closer to many of them, but I didn't get pics from the back of the canoe -- I kept the paddle in my hand for safety purposes in case we had to skedaddle or something. Cat has some great pics of the lizards up close and personal. This was one of the bigger ones we saw. He's probably about 12 feet long, I'd estimate. This is the entrance to Chesser Prairie. Notice how low the water level is, even for December. Below: Oh, carry me baaack, to the lone prair-ieee. The pictures don't do justice to the wonderment out there, miles and miles and miles away from any civilization. This pic is taken just outside of six-mile hammock...

...where we stopped for lunch. We only saw two other people, both fishermen, all day long.

Below: Open water of the canal. It's only about two feet deep here. Gators on both banks all up and down this 3-mile stretch. Cat got some great pics of a pair of raccoons and a close-up of a green heron.

Gorgeous bald cypress trees standing in the water. They are one of only a handful of conifers that lose their needles in the autumn.

The call of the wild. Egrets, herons, kingfishers, eagles, we saw it all. Except snakes.

Spanish moss. Yes, that's a gator at the water's edge. We saw over 100 of them in the first hour and a half (within a mile and a half of starting out), then we quit counting...

It was cool (about 60 degrees) and bright sunshine, perfect weather for gators to come out of the water and sun themselves.

And so they did.

Four days! Four whole days!

My new cell phone outlasted its 1-year warranty by... FOUR (4) days! It gave up the ghost today, and the lady at the store said it was purchased on November 22 last year. Four extra days past the warranty. Whoo hoo! It would really be nice if someone, somewhere, would take enough interest in these malfunctioning electronic gizmos to actually send them to a factory repair center to find out exactly what it is inside them that goes wrong when they've been sitting around me for a few months. Like many people who have received strong electric shocks in their lives, I can't seem to keep a piece of electronic gear anywhere near my body for very long without it ceasing to operate properly. A few weeks, or a few months, or at absolute best, one year and four days, seems to be the limit, whereas other folks keep their equipment working for years and years. But alas, no one cares. "Just buy a new one", they tell me. Like the beaver said when he saw the stream...

Florida water...

Grandma, standing on the Main Street Bridge (officially named the Alsop Bridge) in Jacksonville at sunset back in early October.

Fall in the Shenandoah...

This fall wasn't spectacular, color-wise. In fact, this fall probably would rank in the bottom 2 or 3 worst autumns since we've been here. But I was able to find a couple of nice shots, while on a 12-mile hike from the bottom of Madison Run Fire Road, into the Madison Run Wilderness area, up the fire road to Skyline Drive, over the Rockytop Loop Trail, and back down via the Austin Mountain trail. Yes, this is a black bear, running away from me. You have to look hard to see him. That's his year in the top center of the picture. The pictures are out of order, since Blogger doesn't upload them in the order I specify. This is sunset over the Shenandoah Valley, from the Furnace Mountain Trail on the south side of the Madison Run Wilderness Area.

Some spots of color here and there.

The fire road is uphill all the way, six miles, from the base, to Skyline Drive. The trails coming back, however, are up and down, up and down, and relatively steep, too, although the net altitude change is about 1800 feet.

In spite of having a freeze a week earlier, this wildflower was still in bloom.

Some more color...

Looking southeast towards Trayfoot Mountain.