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Monkey Faced EEL revisted.

Waaay back in July, I wrote a quick note about a fun day we had pole-poking for California Prickleback Monkey Faced Eels. We just LOVE saying that.

Here is our little post. Poke Poking for Fun and Profit

It was the finest fish dinner I have ever eaten. Wonderful.

This morning I was looking at some statistics about my website and one of the stats shows me what words people were searching for when they popped onto my site. It is usually "bethandwarren" because some people use Google search instead of their address bar.

But right there at the top of the heap is "Pole Poking Monkey Faced eel".

Cool. Now I am a sport fishing destination.

So I tried the same search to see what other options would appear.

Well this site (bethandwarren.com) didn't show up but I did find an instructional video:

Instructional Video: How to poke pole a monkey faced eel

If that link doesn't quite work right, try this one: http://www.videobomb.com/posts/show/6882

(By the way, OUR technique was much easier.)

And here is a little more: Article about the very same type of eel

And last but not least, if these cute little fellers really tug at your heart you should really check out MonkeyFaceNews.com

and in case you were wondering...
the other search phrases that people found my site with: "ant lions", "asheville restaurant reviews 2007", "wyoming land rush built around silos", "farmall super c tractor stories", "zen antlions gardens", "pedro's firework store", "bethandwarren", "pole poking", "beth warren witherell blog", "south of the border fireworks store", "route 95 to florida", "weiderhold antrim", "sperm milking machine", "i have decided to get a whiffle hair cut", "my private little museum". "goat farmers; west virginia", "dysan vacuumcleaner", "barrington bunny", "raven stash", "missile silo stainless steel", "http://www.bethandwarren/", "xxx adult shops in glenwood springs, colorado", "derekforreal.com", "contractions", "vw couch", "antlion kit buy",
"barrington bunny story", "pedros fireworks", "south of the border fireworks"

Do you see your search in there?

Got Gators?

Reverend Rick contacted me to tell me about a couple of spots in Sarasota that we should see. He started reading this Blog after I wrote that little story about him in Florida Men, Part I.
He likes it. When he gets time he pokes further and further back.
I am especially pleased that, because of that story, he now has an official online "handle".

He signed off on his notes with his new name: Dances-with-Gators.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Peacocks in the cemetary.

Now sometimes you see something that is wonderful, but a little difficult to explain.

Dunedin Peacocks

There is a cemetary in Dunedin Florida that has peacocks. I don't know why. They are wild, they fly around, they could leave if they wanted to, but they like it there. There are a lot of them. When you drive in they run up to see you. Once they figure out that you are an amateur without any cracked corn they ignore you. Go ahead, take your pictures and go.

Florida MEN, Part I

We were visiting Rick and Dee in Gainesville Florida. They were alternating shifts of the "ya gotta move here" tour. Dee gives one tour and Rick gives an entirely different one.

I had told Rick that I wanted to see some gators. He told us that in this area ANY body of water that isn't surrounded by a fence will have a gator in it. Cool. I wanted to see some.

Rick took us to a place that he hadn't been to in about 5 years. It is in a section of Gainesville called Payne's Prairie. It has all kinds of wildlife. Many years ago a movie was shot there and they brought in Buffalo/Bison for the filming. When the filmmakers left town they just let the buffaloes roam (this was before the days of "carry in -- carry out"). There are also wild horses, more birds than you could imagine, and gators.

We walked on a path that had warning signs at the trailhead that had some token "gator warnings", like what to do if one is blocking your path and especially the fact that you should NOT be out there at dusk because of an interesting fact about a gator's diet: During the day, gators select their meals according to size (Poodles, no Great Danes), but once it is dark, size doesn't matter, "everything is supper". OK. I will pay attention to the height of the sun.

I was looking forward to seeing a gator or two in their natural environment. Rick brought us to his favorite "gator hole". We peered through the moss draped branches and saw a big gator tail. After we adjusted to that, we spotted more, and more. We backed out and walked partway around this 50 foot round pond. It had non-muddy water that was brown with tannic acid, so it looked like a primitive cup of tea. Very primitive. Prehistoric primitive. There were at least 10 gators in view at any one time and more kept appearing.
Beth kept looking behind her to make sure we weren't being stalked.

I was taking a lot of pictures while Rick, who grew up in the South, kept trying to get me to follow him down the steep embankment to get a "closer look". Since I grew up waaaaay up North, I thought that I didn't really need a "closer look" that had the possibility of being from the inside of a gator. So I took pictures from a safe(r) distance.

When we were done at that hole we continued on a pleasant walk past bird watchers with binoculars. We watched long beaked birds poking in streams. We listened to large quantities of "cooing" birds that stayed out of sight. Very pleasant.
Then we came upon a much larger pond. It had gators too. Not as many per square foot as the small hole but it seemed to be enough to eat a large quantity of anything.
Rick, being a Southerner, felt obliged to go down and introduce himself. Beth and I stayed behind taking pictures and trying to convince Rick to throw us his car keys before he went any further.
It was going to be a long walk home.
As he got closer and closer to the edge, more and more eyes kept appearing on the water. Now I want to clarify something here: Us Northerners don't think of eyeballs as particularly dangerous by themselves but, in my opinion, eyeballs that seem to be attached to a huge set of teeth, hundreds of pounds of muscle, and perhaps most importantly, a large stomach that may be feeling hungry at the moment, should be allowed a certain amount of "personal space".

Rick is a Southern-Preacher-Man. He might have connections that I don't, but I think that his "Southern-Man" was leading the way at the moment. The "Preacher" part wasn't involved.

It takes a long time to step through the grasses and brush when you are trying to avoid stepping on water moccasins, so I didn't try to rush him or distract him, although I DID keep pleading for the car keys. He has a good arm, I knew he could get them to me, but I also knew that if he was busy being eaten, he may not have the presence of mind to put his house guests first and pull his keys out of his pocket.

When he was down there by the water, he kept pointing out various gators that were popping up here and there, just looking at the menu, I suppose.

Suddenly Rick snapped his arms over his head and screamed!

The gators all splashed into the water at the same time. The water was churning and there were NO gators to be seen. The Southern-Man was happy. He looked around with a posture that said "come on, you want a piece of me?". I jsut wanted his car keys. Beth kept checking behind us.

Rick climbed back very carefully.

We had a nice stroll looking at birds, turtles, and other gators in the marsh.

We went back to Rick's house. When Dee (Rick's wife) looked at the pictures I thought that she would be angry and bawl Rick out for being "such a knucklehead/macho/typicalman", but no, she's seen him do this a LOT of times. If she was walking with him, she wouldn't even slow down to watch him confront the gators, she just keeps walking.

But then again, she probably has her own set of keys to Rick's Mustang.


(Click on the picture to see a slideshow)

The Raven and his stash.

Tuesday August 14, 2007 in Wyoming.
(Backtracking: Typed and edited 2007-11-10)

Beth and I were just finished with Another Roadside Attraction and were walking back to our car.
It had been a very busy day of seeing Bison/Buffalo, odd trees, odd geologic formations, and a variety of other once in a lifetime experiences. We were tired, because once in a lifetime experiences tend to make you tired. We had seen enough to process for one day.

We had just seen Old Faithful do it's famous geologic burp, we had strolled around the dome looking at all of the very hot springs and mud pots that were at this site, and we had dilly dallied around long enough for the hoards of people to empty out of the parking lot after The Big Event, which of course, is the burp.
We were feeling pretty smug because we had avoided having the ice cream that was tempting us. Well actually Beth had said no when I wanted to get ice cream, but it has the same net result. So we were walking out to the parking lot arm in arm when we saw a raven on a landscaped sandy divider doing some work under a tree.
He was having trouble keeping a round stone on top of a little mound of black sand, it kept rolling off and he rolled it up to the top several times with his big three inch beak and it would just roll back down. He gave up and strutted away to hang out with another raven about twenty feet away.

I had to poke into the sand to see what he had hidden while Beth kept an eye on the birds. Both of them opened their mouths and became very agitated that I wasn't observing proper raven protocol and was actually attempting to steal their stuff. They didn't attack, but they sure wanted to. I found that he had buried some kind of white sticky candy which was now thoroughly coated in black sand.

We were not only impressed that a bird would bury some food until later, but that it would mark it with a stone so he could reclaim it later.

As soon as I stepped back, both birds started running to the candy. The one that owned it was going to reclaim it while the other one was being the “wing guard” to keep us away.

This very large bird dug it up, turned his back on us, and tried to bury it again.
After glancing back at us a few times he realized that we weren't leaving anytime soon, and so he attempted to eat it. It was too large and way too sticky to do that, so he repositioned the glob in his beak and flew away. His wing man flew off in the other direction, and we headed towards our car.

The bird with the stash

2007-08-14 Wyoming Yellowstone Birds Wildlife

Florida Wildlife

Welcome to Florida!

This little fellow with eight shiny eyes and green iridescent pincers was discovered by Beth. I was working out in the yard when the announcement came about a spider sighting. When I didn't respond quick enough, a second alarm was raised. I came in to see Beth just pointing up at the wall. I got out the dustbuster, sucked it up and took it out to the yard as part of my catch and release program.
I dumped her out onto the sand and squatted down to get a good look at her. She hoisted herself up on her large front hairy legs and studied me with at least four of her eyes while I studied her. Then she ran. She ran straight to my boot and started climbing. I flicked her off with a stick, she regained her composure, looked around at her surroundings, and ran to my boot again.
Now I figured that she was afraid of being outdoors, which wasn't likely, or she really appreciated that I didn't squish her and merely vacuumed and released her and wanted to climb up on me to express her eternal devotion and servitude to me, which wasn't likely, or she was attempting to kill me.
Just to confirm my suspicions, I set up some obstacles just to prove that I wasn't merely in the way of where she was going. She was smarter than your typical lab mouse. She could zip around anything in her path and return to my/her boot with NO learning curve involved.
I wanted to just leave her and return to the house but something told me that I should try to identify her because... oh, for example, the emergency room doctor wanted to know which anti-venom to use. I also didn't really want to turn my back on her. So I did something that I don't like to do. I "dispatched" the beast. She didn't like it. I then carried her back to the porch so that I could take a picture, which you can see above. Go ahead, look, she won't bite... WATCHIT! She moved! did you see that? oh, I guess not. Sorry to scare you.

I went to some websites that list all of the poisonous spiders and snakes in Florida. There are not as many types as you would think, about four types of spiders and six types of snakes, but they are all very common. Actual death from a spider bite in Florida is rare, but "very painful, large cone-shaped depressions of dead skin tissue" is more common. Yeah, that's not so bad, that must be why they have so many handicapped parking spaces down here, so you can drag around your necrosis addled leg.

She wasn't on the list of black and brown widows and the recluse spiders. So I looked in the "non-poisonous things that just bite just because they think it's fun" section and there she was. I think she is/was a BOLD JUMPING SPIDER . She did seem a tad bold. The pictures I saw of her kind were of plain, boring, run-of-the-mill, hairy, tarantula-looking spiders. NONE of them were as flamboyant as she is/was with her iridescent green pincers that just shout "I am veeerrrry dangerous". In fact, there was no picture (on this site) of a spider with shiny colorful pincers. Maybe she still had her Halloween costume on from the night before. Or maybe she is/was a mutant spider imported from an exotic place like Warwick Rhode Island that is planning to destroy Florida's economy by killing the tourists.

I was glad that I followed Doug's advice and was wearing boots and not my Tevas that I have worn ALL summer long.

Florida: Wear boots while in the yard, always.

Here is a nice easy to read description: Bold Jumping Spider

Patterns

Pole-Poking for fun and profit

Our hosts took us Pole-Poking for California PrickleBack MonkeyFaced EELS.
There was a very low tide (-1.1) scheduled for Sunday morning at 6:55 am.
We had to get up at 4am and hit the road.
We got to the coast at about 6:30 and the fog that is usually there at that time of the morning wasn't too heavy. We take our long bamboo poles and hiked down to the water.

You pick a rock and start poking your pole into any hole you can find.
The pole has a two inch long string with a big silver hook on it, we bait it with squid and the EELS really like it. I poked around for a few minutes and I caught the first one of the day.
No reeling in, no worry about your line breaking, just call someone with the burlap bag and we bag em, unclip the hook from the pole (carefully, they bite), twirl the bag shut and you are ready to start again. Put a new hook on, load on the bait and go back to the same hole. Very satisfying.
We all had fun, and they are cooking up the EELS right now. They invited some more friends over and we will see how it is.

Wendy started pole-pokin about 40 years ago. Her dad saw someone doing it and found out the details. The fisherman was Portuguese and was glad to explain the technique. They made poles and started practicing. Sometime later another Portuguese fisherman showed them the finer points of pole-poking technique and they became very competent from then on. The top secret hint: THAT ROCK. Wendy has returned to THAT ROCK for forty years. The system works, don't mess with it.

2007-07-01 Pole-Poking for California PrickleBack MonkeyFace EELS

I have uploaded a very large group of pictures because the scenery was so wonderful.

Click HERE to see our photos.

Click HERE to find out more about the California PrickleBack MonkeyFace EEL.

A very rare photo opportunity

This was a treat!
I was able to snap this photo of a Yak emerging from his Yakburrow. Most people are unaware that we have many Yaks in this country but they spend most of the daylight hours underground. They only emerge for water, mating, and to do their daily exercise routines. I happened to have my camera ready just as this handsome fellow was climbing out of his Yakburrow.

We were driving along when we saw another ostrich...

Ok, just another day of awesome views and I was trying to take pictures of old cars from the sixties when right next to the road was an ostrich. We stopped the car, I got out and was trying to take pictures while he was trying to ignore me.
Then beth pointed out that the ostrich wasn't the only critter in the field.

2007-06-22 Multi-Farm near Sonora

While I was taking pictures, Randy & Gloria stopped to take pictures too,

Greetings from Redhook!