Fire Ant Flickers (#9)

Howdy, folks, and happy Friday! Not only is today the birthday of Vince Vaughn and his alter ego and spiritual pilates partner Lady Gaga, and National Weed Appreciation Day (a personal favorite of Willie Nelson, or so I’ve been told made up), it also represents a milestone in my radiation therapy.

I’m now just past the halfway point in that process: 20 treatments completed (and 2,000+ miles driven)…19 to go (and another 1,900+ miles to drive). I’m taking notes for a wrap-up post sometime after April 24th. I won’t provide any spoilers just yet, but I will say that just when I thought cancer treatment couldn’t violate any additional personal spaces, I find I was very, very wrong.

Anyway, we have more interesting things to discuss. Or, to be more accurate, more different things.

Signs of Spring

We’re officially experiencing spring here at Casa Fire Ant with the first traditional sightings of the season, including a bluebonnet, a hummingbird, a road-kill turtle, and a road-kill frog. [By the way, should I have written “road-killed”? My AP style guide is silent on that subject.] Also, this:

This Texas redheaded centipede (Scolopendra heros) was found in its death throes on our back porch a few days ago. Cause of death is unknown, and the body disappeared before a coroner specializing in Chilopoda remains could be located. I did confirm that the name centipede was overly dramatic and hyperbolic, as I counted only nineteen pairs of legs. Perhaps we should start referring to them as novemdecimpedes. If you do, be sure to give me credit.

I just realized that our signs of spring mostly involve dead things. That’s pretty much the opposite of what spring is about, isn’t it?

Recommendation #1: Food

Alert Gazette readers will recall that Debbie and I are driving to Fredericksburg (aka FBG) every weekday so that I can be irradiated. FBG is known for a plethora of good eating establishments, well out of proportion to its permanent population of just more than 11,000 souls. While we haven’t taken the time each treatment to explore some of the newer (to us) establishments, we can unequivocally recommend one: the Sunset Grill. It’s open only for breakfast/brunch and lunch, and it’s quite popular so you’re advised to get there early. The food and friendly service speaks for themselves, but there remains something of a mystery to us, as demonstrated by the following photo.

I suppose that in a way this also speaks for itself, although it certainly didn’t apply in a literal sense to the woman wearing it. If any FBG experts read this and offer insight as to the meaning, please feel free to educate us.

OTOH…many of the Sunset Grill’s offerings might have the potential to make this statement a reality.

Recommendation #2: Drink

Beginning last year, I significantly reduced my alcohol consumption, primarily for health reasons. I still enjoy an occasional dirty vodka martini, and Debbie makes a killer — perhaps a bad choice of words — margarita, but I’m now on the lookout for non-alcoholic options, and we’ve found a few that are very satisfying.

I say “we” because Debbie actually discovered the offerings from a brand called Sayso. Those products are basically cocktail mixers that come in teabags, and while they’re designed to be mixed with liquor, they’re also really good when made into a mocktail with a beverage like Topo Chico, club soda, or plain water. We’ve tried two different mixers: the Skinny Spicy Margarita and the Skinny Cardamom Paloma. Both are low sugar, low calorie mixers but high in flavor.

I’ve also been exploring the fast-growing world of non-alcoholic beers, and have settled on a couple that I think are excellent substitutes for hazy IPAs.

I first landed on Athletic Brewing Company’s Free Wave Hazy IPA, and found it to be a great substitute for the “real thing.” Athletic Brewing is the industry leader in the non-alcoholic beer sector, and unlike some of its wannabe competitors (who view NA beer as a sad-but-probably-necessary add-on to their traditional beers…I’m looking at you, Guinness and Heineken), it offers nothing but NA beers, and they’re quite good.

But Athletic is getting some real competition of its own. I recently tried Best Day Brewing’s hazy IPA, and I think I actually prefer it to Athletic’s product, although they’re both quite good.

If you’re interested in beer without the buzz, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by either of these.

The Uninformed Biologist

I like to think I’m a pretty well informed amateur biologist. After all, I was a zoology major for five semesters at Texas A&M until organic chemistry thwarted my [admittedly misguided] plans to pursue a career in marine biology. But I still maintain an avid interest in the fauna of Texas.

Given that interest, one shouldn’t be surprised that when I spotted a fascinating creature in the track of our sliding glass door early one morning this week, I had to investigate further. I was actually a bit aprehensive about it, because it bore a resemblance to either an invasive hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium kewense) or worse, a horsehair worm (Chordodes formosanus), a nasty parasite that preys on praying mantises (no pun intended). As explained in this Scientific American article, once the mantid is infected, the worm in effect turns it into a zombie and eventually “drives” it into a body of water, where it emerges and reproduces, and the cycle continues. You can find several short videos on YouTube of the horsehair worms emerging from an infected mantis, but be forewarned…they’re a bit, um, gross.

Anyway, with this on my mind, I photographed the inert creature with my phone, but it was still dark and the photo wasn’t very clear.

So I got my DSLR, replaced the zoom lens with a 100mm macro lens, and took a number of closeup photos in order to get a better look. It was a fairly involved process but I felt it would be worth it to document an unusual sighting.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the amazing phenomenon I had gone to so much trouble to document was not, in fact, an invasive creature that eats helpless earthworms, or a brain-sucking worm that drives praying mantises to suicide by drowning, but a tiny twig from a pecan tree.

I really should stick to snakes and turtles.

Or birds. Yeah, let’s stick with birds. I know a cardinal when I see one.

Closing Shots