Life is Fun
By Monday afternoon after the weekend’s rain, water was receding. Again. This time in its wake, it left a mess. Sticky mud. Water rushing across the flat and peoples yards washed mud into the roadways and low spots. Mud here is not mud of most places. It more sand and clay with salt and marine debris mixed together. But for some reason, it is super sticky. Sticky like bog mud. It is fun. It sticks to shoes and dries like concrete. It sticks between toes and takes many swims to come out from under toenails. It sticks to the underside of your car and breaks windows when it falls off on the highways. Fun.
Water lilies. Drainage ditches are infiltrated with the ever invasive water lilies. Beautiful plants. Beautiful, movable plants. Water lilies grow in the water needing no soil to take root. Life is fun for a water lily as they just sit atop the water moving with the water and it goes up and down. Drainage ditches flood all the time as they are designed to do so. However, 17 inches of water resulted in a river in the ditches pushing the lilies out of the ditches and into our driveways. Too heavy to place in the trash, to big to run over with the standard mower. People across the county will push lilies to the county grassland and wait for the large county shredders to come and mow them down. It will take several passes but eventually, they will shred apart. Today, in their bright green foliage and purple flowers they are pretty. Weeks from now when they are yellow and crunchy, they will just be a reminder of the rain and its damage.
Pinfish are fun to catch be it with a toddler pole or a cane pole. They always bite, are easy to catch, and hard to kill. Unless it is by something other than humans. Pinfish are a tasty treat for other fish, birds, and apparently land animals such as raccoons, cats, and opossums too. Being at the bottom of the food chain kinda sucks. Now he is fish fertilizer. Placed him in the compost bin otherwise the gross doggo will roll in him when he becomes good and stinky in just a few days. Few things the doggo loves more than rolling in dead stuff on her neck and chest area. She has come back green, yellow, brown, and of course red. She has come back smelling of poo both human and animals, of rot both food and animals, and once of slight skunk. Rolling in rotting fish would be a dream come true for the doggo. Fun.
Now that the 17inches of rain have started to recede, this old dog can once again walk through the water instead of swim. Walking means running. Oh, how she loves to run through standing water. Reminds her of younger days when she was lots faster at this game.
Running through water is something she has done in years since old age has snuck up on her. Guess today she figured, what the heck. You only live once. Fun, fun.
Rain always brings out the bugs. By the end of the week there were lots of bugs. Mosquitos. Flies. Dragonflies. Mosquitos are annoying at most. Since they are always present, you kinda learn to ignore them. Swat. Swat. Flies drive you mad. Not a fly to be seen until food is popped out. Loud, in your face, and too quick to swat. Maddening. Dragonflies are beautiful unless they are swooping and swooning to mate with the fan. From as little as one (manageable) to as many as ten (argh) fighting for the love of their fan. Bickering dragonflies will drive you crazy. So intense on bickering they land on your head, shoulder, and back waiting for the perfect place to attack intruders. Once they accomplish this and can mate with the fan, if they are too small their heads get stuck and you have to remove them so they don’t die. Dragonfly-ectomy. Fun.
He may not be a bug per se, but he was fun. Having to park at the neighbor’s house for the past few days while the ground dries out is nice. There is no mud to slosh through and it is fully shaded. One day I opened the hatch and a green tree frog jumped out at me. Today while driving, this friendly little green lizard. Don’t lecture, the video is a single push on the phone and this is the only 15 seconds of footage I got while driving. 95% of the footage was of space and the dashboard. The road was more important but it didn’t hurt to try. He would pop up and then jump down under the hood. He did this forever on the road as I drove at 20mph. He popped up once on the highway and that was the end of my little friend. He went back under the hood and never came out. Hope he made it safely to his destination. Guess this lizard decided the highway life was not fun after all. Watching was fun for me. Fun.