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Squirrels cause a variety of problems, some worse than others. The following is not one of the worse ones; in fact it was rather amusing. And not just amusing once things had settled, but it was amusing while it was happening.

We have a shed in our yard where we store things like the wheelbarrow and snow shovels and garden hoses (in the offseason). One of the things stored in the shed is stuff for grilling – charcoal and lighter fluid.

Last fall, when I was putting the stuff away, I must not have rolled the bag of charcoal up. Or maybe it unrolled itself during the winter. Either way, when I went to get the charcoal for the first grilling of the season, the bag was open.

Another thing to note is that the squirrels like our shed. It’s a nice sheltered place.

Anyway, I took the bag over to the grill and dumped some charcoal into the grill, and I saw this:

The squirrels had decided that the bag was a good spot to store walnuts. I picked the walnuts out of the grill, tossed them off to the side of the lawn, lit the grill, and went on.

While we were waiting for the coals to settle down, we noticed a squirrel going to the bag of charcoal. Over the next several minutes, he went to the bag, grabbed a walnut out of it, took it somewhere, and repeated until the bag had no more walnuts. Saved me some work later. But I suppose he caused me some work earlier, so squirrels are still overall a nuisance.

Do you remember those kids’ activity or puzzle books, with word searches and logic puzzles and spot-the-differences and find-the-hidden-objects and such? One of the staple items in that type of book is the trace-the-line puzzle. Usually it would be of a matching sort of thing (help the animal follow its rope to its favorite food) or of a avoid-the-dead-ends sort (which rope will let the explorer pull himself out of the pit?).

Little did I know back then that those puzzles were training kids for adulthood. The books tried to make it fun. If they wanted to make it more real and less fun, it would be something along the lines of “which extension cord should you unplug so you can move the fan to another room? If you choose the wrong one, you have to reset the clocks on two devices.”

The other thing the books don’t train you for is that you can’t just follow the rope/cord/line back to its source and then you’re done. You have to physically move the various cords to extract the one you need, and the other two cords do not easily let go of the one you want.

I propose the kids activity books should include a life lesson on the rope-tangle page, something like “Remember, if the explorer had used a rope organizer, he would not have the problem of needing to untangle them.”

This is the third of a three-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to Florida here.

Day 7:
This day was Universal Studios Epic Universe (USEU) day. We had been seeing ads for it, and it looked fun. And we had some friends who went, and they liked it. And we don’t take our kids to theme parks (unless you count one trip to Cedar Point), so at least they can have had the experience.

We took the shuttle from the hotel to the park, and had no problems with that. The park was crowded, but the line to get in moved along well enough.

Thanks to the Universal Studios app, we could see the wait times for all the rides on our phone, so we headed first to the one that looked decent enough to ride and had a short-ish wait time. It was in the Isle of Berk.

Most of my experience with amusement parks has been Cedar Point. I like Cedar Point, but one thing that USEU did better than Cedar Point is that they have a lot of shade for people waiting in line and they also have drinking fountains along the way. Maybe in the Florida heat that’s more of a necessity than Ohio.

The different worlds were well done, with the right props and settings, people who stayed in character as they were walking off their post back to the break room, and different music in each area that set the mood. The music really was a nice touch, it was always there, not blaring, and even if you weren’t paying attention to it, it sub-consciously had an effect.

And there were plenty of props – some animate, some inanimate – to keep your attention, like this sheep in the Isle of Berk.

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This is the second of a three-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to Florida here.

Day 4:
The main activity this day was the Everglades airboat ride. We told some locals about it and they told us “Due to the recent dry spell of weather, the inland waters got too salty for the alligators, so they moved into fresher water. Once we get a good rain, they’ll come back.” Wildlife 2, us 0.

But we bought our tickets and made the drive down anyway, the airboat ride looked fun with or without gators. And it was. Note: you may get sprayed with dirty water when the driver spins the boat, so don’t wear nice white clothes to an airboat tour.

Most of the tour looked like this, going through channels in the mangroves.

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Like many Michiganders, we headed south for our spring break. Our destination was Florida. Normally you don’t want to go to Florida during spring break, as it is overrun with crazy college kids, but this was our high school’s spring break which was a couple weeks after most college’s spring break weeks.

It takes long enough to drive there that we decided to take two days to drive it.

Day 1:
Not a lot to report here. We took the boys to a Waffle House for the first time. It was fine, and now they can say they’ve been.

Our destination this day was just outside Atlanta. We got there with some daylight left, and we had been sitting in the car for several hours, so we took a short hike after dinner.

There was a small parking lot and trailhead by the Chattahoochee River. We picked it because it had the remains of an old mill on site, which the boys liked scrambling around.

Then it was evening, then morning the next day.

Day 2:
Our second day was a little more exciting than the first day. Still a lot of driving, from Atlanta to Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay was not our actual destination, but it was on the way and I wanted to see manatees and TECO has one of the better manatee viewing areas.

TECO is an electric power plant that uses the water from the bay/channel for cooling. The result of cooling the power plant is that the water in the channel gets the extra heat and makes it cozy for certain wildlife.

We walked down the boardwalk to the end and saw that the channel is separated from the rest of the bay, all the way out. I think so that manatees that come for the warm water don’t end up in a boating area.

But despite all the great reviews and the whole setup, we did not see any manatees. All we saw were some fish, like this:

Someone at the viewing area told us “Due to the recent hot spell of weather, the channel got too warm for the manatees, so they moved out into deeper water. If you had been here a week ago, you would have seen a lot of them.”

So no manatees for us. We bought a manatee trinket at the souvenir shop as a reminder of this occasion.

On the plus side, the manatee viewing station also had a stingray tank, where you could try to pet a stingray as it swam past you. Maybe they called them just rays, because they’re not the stinging type. At least we got to do that.

Then we continued on our way to the house, had dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 3:
This was our first full day in Florida. Our plan was to go to Sanibel Island and enjoy the beach. And maybe find some interesting shells.

For those of you not familiar with that area of Florida, there are lots of beaches, and almost enough parking. And the parking is not free. It was only about $5 per hour, cheaper than most cities, but you do have to have your phone to pay online.

The groups of islands in that area are connected via bridges for the most part. Here is the view getting onto Sanibel.

We chose Sanibel because we heard it had a lot of shells. What was interesting was there wasn’t much sand – the beach was all tiny bits of broken shells. But the boys did find some shells, including a couple that were alive. Most of the good shells had been taken, the beach was full of other people also looking for shells.

Our first stop was right after the bridge, at the lighthouse.

I thought the lighthouse was rather bleak. I later saw pictures of what it looked like before the last hurricane and it was not so bleak back then.

And here’s what the beach looked like

For lunch that day, we had packed a lunch. We found another beach, this one with some shade, and sat in our beach chairs and watched the ocean. Here’s the view from our picnic spot.

We ended up driving to about 3 different beaches, trying them out and seeing if the shells were better anywhere.

Then we drove back to the house for dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, played Phase 10, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

To Be Continued…

Here is a random assortment of photos from recent weeks, mostly wildlife but not all.

First up, many people are saying this year is a bad year for ticks. I would rephrase it to say it is a bad year for people, due to ticks. For the ticks themselves, this is a good year.

Either way, we normally find a few ticks per year, and they’ve always been dog ticks, which I find is a relief because they are listed as transmitting neither Lyme disease not Alpha Gal.

On a side note, I wonder if an alpha male gets Alpha Gal syndrome do they cancel out?

Back on topic, I usually can feel them crawling on me and pluck them off before anything happens. Somehow this one ended up on my leg during the night, as I woke up to a severe itch on my leg. It was not a typical itchy feeling, something a little more substantial, and that caused me to look at what was causing that.

The burny itchy feeling was caused by the tick’s bite, which is a good sign because that means I can’t get bitten without noticing it, so I’ll be able to remove any ticks before the 24-hour window expires. And when I pulled the tick off, I saw it was not a dog tick. I got my first deer tick.

Any ticks I find, I stick them to tape, then fold the tape over and press it so the tick is really stuck, then throw it away. I don’t care what tape – Scotch, painter, duct, etc. In this case the closest thing at hand was blue painters tape so that’s what the background is.

Next up, Some Wife decided the bathroom needed a refresh, so she found a sink/vanity on Facebook marketplace that she liked and we picked it up. For the few days that we had it but I hadn’t pulled out the old sink yet, it was sitting outside. It was in a sheltered area so it didn’t get rained on, but it was not otherwise protected from anything.

I saw this frog was appreciating the coolness of the porcelain and decided to hang out on the sink for a while.

Next up, bagel day! We do not have a pet in our house, but we have the next closest thing, which is sourdough starter. Gotta feed and water it regularly. Some Wife ends up baking something sourdough-ish about once a week. Usually it’s a loaf of bread – sometimes plain, sometimes chocolate-chip, sometimes feta-dill, sometimes cheddar-bacon. But this particular week we did not bake bread loaves, we made bagels. Here it is near the end of the boiling process.

Last up, a lone wild turkey. We get wild turkeys around our yard. It’s always fun hearing them. Them, and the cranes. Or herons. I can’t tell cranes and herons apart but I know what the ones we get sound like.

The wild turkeys are in flocks, sometimes 5, sometimes 12, or any similar number. But occasionally there will be a lone turkey wandering by himself. The first few times we saw a lone turkey we thought he was lost, like he got separated from his flock and was looking for them. But knowing how some flocks/packs work, now I wonder if he’s an adolescent male who broke off on purpose to start his own flock.

I was working in the kitchen and heard a noise at our patio door. Birds do occasionally fly into our patio door so I thought it was that again. After the second time, I went to see what was going on, and I saw the lone turkey, pecking at our window. He saw me and started wandering away, but I was able to get this picture of him.

I was thinking, “Don’t you want to lean way over and check on the grill?” But no, he wandered away unharmed.

I expect this to appeal to chicken farmers in Louisiana, but I’m posting it here for all to see in case someone else might be amused too.