Fire Ant Flickers (#1)

Howdy, y’all! Welcome to the tenth day of the seventh month*, in which we observe National Piña Colada Day. Now, I’m not saying you have to drink a piña colada while reading this, but I’m also not saying it wouldn’t improve what you’re about to read. OK…I’ll wait while you look for that bottle of rum that you’re hiding from the kids/parents/spouse/yourself.

*I did start this post on 7/10; work with me here, will ya?

There are a couple of housekeeping items I need to attend to. First, I’m humbled by the response to my plea suggestion that people take advantage of the new subscription option so as to (1) never miss a Gazette post, or (2) never accidentally visit the Gazette when there’s some new inanity published. Forewarned is forearmed, right? Seriously, though, I do appreciate so much your support!

Second, alert Gazette readers will no doubt recognize that there’s a new post category in town, aka Flickers. This replaces the old and busted Random Thursday category, probably for no good reason other than I got tired of rationalizing why a Thursday article was appearing on a different day. But the format won’t change: it’ll consist of an expertely curated selection of relevant topics that meet my exacting standards for citizen journalistic reporting…and I almost typed that with a straight face. It will actually be whatever sticks when I throw it against the wall. For example:

This is a screen capture of a text I’ve received, not once, but twice. I have no idea why someone thinks I’m from the planet Venus — I mean, I have some guesses — nor why they need my thoughts. After all, between Facebook and Alexa, all of them have already been collected. (And to answer the obvious question: no, I did not click on the link. However, you may feel free to visit it and record your experience in the comments section below.)

It’s been a while since I roamed the Fire Ant estate with camera in hand, but a wasp that was taking a break on one of our windows prompted me to pull out a 100mm macro lens and snap a few pictures.

This is a paper wasp (Polistes sp. — possibly metricus). The red head indicates that it’s a female [draw your own conclusions, but keep them to yourself], but there are a couple hundred species within that genus.

I was actually drawn to this photo because of the reflection in the glass. It wasn’t until I opened it on my computer that I noticed the striking coloration. It’s kinda pretty in a terrifying way. They’re not aggressive although they’ll defend their nests, as you would expect. They are known to be caterpillar predators and from that perspective, I welcome their presence.

I then ran across another pretty visitor, this one in our front courtyard.

This is a common buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia). If you’re itching to understand more about the role that iridoid glycosides play in the metabolism of this butterfly, knock yourself out with the preceding Wikipedia link. (I’m only partially kidding; there’s some pretty interesting science that links those compounds to plant defense mechanisms, but the ingestion of such compounds also provides some protection to the herbivores that consume them. Nature is cool. Here’s more about the compounds.)

Debbie and I went kayaking on Lake LBJ yesterday morning, for the first time in more than a year. We chose wisely; the lake was delightfully bereft of boat and jetski traffic and the water was flat. We paddled from the Horseshoe Bay Resort marina over to the lighthouse (arriving at the point just in time for the carillon (or carillon-like recording) to blast the quarter hour notice.

The lighthouse is said to be the oldest (constructed in 1972) and tallest inland lighthouse in Texas (Wikipedia calls it a “faux lighthouse,” which seems a bit harsh and judgmental).

Here are a few photos from our 3-mile (according to Google Earth) out-and-back trek, which we accomplished in a leisurely 60 minutes.

The Sea Eagle kayak is a great easy-to-pack option, although I prefer to inflate it at home and transport it that way if we’re not going far. It’s also quite capable in the water, whether flat or choppy. Alert Gazette readers may recall that my pal Sam and I, in one of those “hold my beer” kind of moments, took it into some rather active surf in the Gulf of Mexico at South Padre Island, and more or less lived to tell about it.

The biggest drawback is the difficulty of rinsing and drying the kayak after using it. The former is a must given the problem of zebra mussels in many Texas lakes — failure to properly rinse could cause contamination in another lake — and the latter is important to prevent mildew when the boat is deflated and stored in its backpack. It takes me at least 30 minutes to properly ready the kayak for storage after using it. From that perspective, paddleboards are much easier to manage.

The disaster that Hurricane Beryl wrought on Houston and the surrounding vicinity weighs heavy on our minds. It’s going to take a long time for that area to recover.

But, if I’m being honest, those of us living in the central part of the state were hoping that Beryl would spread a lot of that rainfall over a wider area, sparing Houston but giving the Texas Hill Country some badly-needed drought relief. At Casa Fire Ant, we received about 1/8″ of rain; 150 miles to the west, the rain was practically measured in feet, not inches.

When we lived in Midland, the running joke was that there was a dome over the city that caused rain all around us, but hardly ever on top of us. Moving 300 miles to the east didn’t change things, however. Here’s a screen capture of the radar from a few days ago; the blue arrow is Horseshoe Bay. The fraction of an inch of rain we eventually received from this system is the only precip we’ve had in the past three weeks.

In conclusion…