All My* (Furry Little) Children

Bartleby is working through her psychological trauma today.

The little half-Siamese in the sophisticated gray formal attire (I'm going to have to think of a name soon. He's here to stay.) has this thing about food. Specifically, he acts as if he hasn't had any in ages despite being fed two or three times per day. When kibble is brought out to him, he charges his plate and will butt aside the hand carrying the food in his attempt to get at it frequently scattering it across the floor. At least he's not above eating what he scatters, something Bartleby refuses to do although she will deign to consume dropped bits if they're replaced on her dish.

He also has an obsession with getting into the house although every time he dashes in he immediately turns around again and runs out just as fast (mostly because his plate is still out in the lanai and almost the only time we open the door is to bring him food).

Now, since the arrival of the gray until a couple of days ago, Bartleby has been the front door cat and the gray has been the back door cat. Over the weekend the gray (dammit, he needs a name!) started showing up at the front, each time to be reminded to go around back. This morning I was standing on my side of the lanai door with the little gray on the other when Bartleby wandered in from the backyard.

They were less than three feet apart when they noticed each other. They've sort-of noticed each other before, but always with the glass door between them so I don't think they ever really appreciated the reality of the other's existence. They did now. The gray knew exactly what Bartleby wanted and planted himself by the door. Bartleby sat down.

After a couple minutes standoff, the gray wandered back to his table perch where he snoozes the afternoons away. Bartleby began taking tentative steps toward the door and I started to crack it open. Immediately, the gray pounced and raced to the door. He's a speedy little bugger. Bartleby sat.

Again, the gray wandered back to his perch. This time, however, I went and got a handful of food. I slid open the door. Bartleby and the gray raced for the opening. Bartleby arrived first but the gray was so close behind I couldn't slide it shut without squishing him. He was in and literally right on her tail. She started to freak out despite being half-again larger than he but I slid the door open, stepped out into the lanai and began pouring kibble onto the gray's dish. In a flash, he was out knocking my hand away, inhaling the food and I was back in with the door shut.

I filled Bartleby's dish, then, but she ate only a few bites before retiring to the kitchen where she just sat. After a while she came out and sat near her dish very carefully facing away from the lanai, a useless gesture since the gray was already sound asleep on his table. She went to the end of the hall by the laundry room and sat on a box down there for a while. I offered to let her out the front door and she finally took me up on it after I placed a small snack in the foyer and topped up her outside water dish.

It may take a bit but, given time, I think she'll get over not being an only child. I did.

*"My" meaning my brother's since he's the one decided to adopt them both.

America's Game

Pre-season games start today. O.K., there were a couple of  -- vs. college games and one intra-squad game earlier in the week and the Pirates played the Braves yesterday but (including a couple of split squads) there are eight games today and roughly that number every day from now to the end of March.

(Jet Blue Park, Ft Myers. Boston Red Sox)

I love baseball. It's a generalist game. Unlike say, basketball, where height confers advantage above and beyond skill, or football, where sheer mass can be sufficient, there are positions and strategies that favor almost every body type, size, speed, agility, etc. Big and slow? No problem. You're a first baseman. Otherwise small and weak but good reaction time? Short stop. Left handed? Right handed? As a game that turns on statistical variations almost any little deviation from the norm can be made into an advantage.

(Steinbrenner Field, Tampa. New York Yankees)

It's a game of strategy. There are batting and fielding and pitching coaches but there's a reason the guy in charge of the team and the plan of the game is called the manager. While there is a core roster of players, who plays that day and the order in which they come to bat depends on the strengths and weaknesses of the batters and the opposing pitcher. The pitcher's choices of pitches depends on the batter, the count against that batter, the current score, the innings left in the game, whether or not other opponents are already on base, the number of outs already recorded and the player due to bat next. And that calculation changes with each pitch. And both pitchers and batters can be changed at any time if the manager sees a potential advantage.

(Digital Domain Park, Port St. Lucie. New York Mets)

But mostly, it's a game of occasionally running after and throwing a ball, or hitting a ball and then running around that provides an excuse to get out in the sunshine and warm breezes on a green field and mostly stand around talking. In other words, a rural summer day.

That's what makes baseball America's game, the nostalgia for an idealized lost past and the innocence that went with it.

And beer*.

*At least through the seventh inning stretch.

Bartleby the Vanguard

Back during the Great Depression when many unemployed men took to the roads and rails, hoboing around the country, they developed a set of mostly uniform signs, a code, they would scratch on fence posts, trees and even porch pillars, advising or warning the next guy to come along where to go, where to stay away from, who to beg from and who to avoid. 

I think the local cats may have a similar system and have placed their code somewhere on our property.

Or maybe it's a coincidence the sign for a soft touch (Kindhearted Lady) is a cat.

We have a new visitor in the lanai room. He (I'm presuming here) is young and sleek, a rich velvety gray except for white socks (knee highs in the back, anklets up front) and a white bib which tapers to a point before opening up again on his stomach making it look very much, when he sits up, as if he's buttoned his jacket. I believe he's at least part Siamese being rather low to the ground and slinky with a smallish pointed face and relatively large ears. He's very handsome.

He's also extremely vocal and cries to come in continuously once he knows there is someone around to listen. And bangs on the sliding glass door, pawing at it as if to show he knows how it works.

My brother has started feeding him. He also put out a box stuffed with a towel which the cat has started nesting in. It is an extremely affectionate and friendly kitty and much more reactive to his surroundings than Bartleby. I warned my brother that this is how crazy cat collectors start but he just shrugged and said he'd had two before. The visitor and Bartleby are aware of each other and Bartleby, at least and in character, couldn't care less.

It's only a matter of time now.

And then a little more time after that, when the gray is well and truly assimilated, before another comes along and sees the signs.

"Camp Here"               "Kindhearted Lady"               "Sky's the Limit"
(O.K.. the gender's off. The result is the same.)

What To Do If You See a Tegu

Forget the Cuban Tree Frogs. Forget the Burmese Pythons (1500 hunters could only find 50 of them over the course of a month). Behold the Tegu.

A four foot long, strong-jawed, sharp-toothed, burrowing, invasive, eating machine laying up to 35 eggs per year. Thanks Argentina!

Although they're mostly around Miami and St. Petersburg at this point, there's been at least one credible sighting right here in town.

So, what to do if you see a Tegu? According to FWC: 1. Take a picture, 2. Note the location, 3. Call it in.

I do love that the exotic species hotline is 1-800-IVE-GOT1 and the web address is ivegot1.org

The Perfectionist, or, The Architect Recycles Her Edible Structure

Bartleby threw up all over the floor last night. At least she was considerate enough to do it on the tiles just outside my brother's room and not on his bed or rug. She'd been acting kind of standoffish the day before, not wanting to be touched at all and I think feeling ill may have had something to do with that. She also drank inordinate amounts of water and just before the incident was doing laps through the kitchen and living room which I now surmise meant, "Let me out, quick! I'm a gonna barf!" I'll know better next time. For the record and considering the sheer volume I had to clean, I believe the cat is hollow.

Afterward, that is, I after I cleaned up all the evidence and she'd had a chance to eat again, she became very friendly, crawling up into my chair and sleeping in my lap for two hours.

Which is not the actual story but merely the lead-in.

As I was walking out to the trash with my hazardous waste bag, I bumped into a spider web. Now, this is a frequent occurrence there being a persistent little arachnid constantly stringing strands between my car and the orange tree. Actually, what I collided with was the lower of two horizontal guy wires about three feet apart, a thick strand, twine as opposed to thread, forehead high, stretched across the walkway from the garage to the oak, a good seven feet long and taking some (slight but noticeable) effort to snap. Snap it I did and when I looked up the bottom third of the web had swung up and was stuck to the middle with a large brown spider tangled up in between.

I felt bad about that but it was dark, even with the walkway lights on, and the web hadn't been there four hours ago when I'd come home. I was hoping, since it was a beautiful web, regular and symmetrical (until I collided with it), that the spider would rebuild it, but, when I went back out to look a couple of hours later (around 10:30 or so) only the top supporting cable was left, and this morning even that was gone.

It seems like a lot of silk to eat, but then, it was a lot of silk to spin in the first place. I presume she'll try again someplace else with traffic more appropriately sized to her abilities.

Schadenfreude. Warm, Sunny Schadenfreude

I'm sitting here with all the windows and doors open, a warm breeze wafting through from the 80+ degree sunshine outside, watching the Weather Channel folks going all weak in the knees as they swoon over Nemo and wondering if I should feel sympathy for my friends posting snow depths and pictures of the building snowpocalypse on Face Book.

Probably.

Fauna, Successful and Otherwise

Something I did not know.

It seems the white ibis that flock all over the place around here (just this morning two dozen of them were walking across the street out front and caused more than one car to slow to a crawl to avoid them) are officially endangered. Now, after ten years and with a population estimated at 90,000, that may change.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission will be reviewing the entire list of threatened species and might remove protection from the ibis and and snowy egrets. While a local population of 90,000 doesn't sound "endangered," removal from the list could open up habitat to development starting the cycle all over again.

On the other hand, some of these beasties on the list are critically endangered. The Sanibel Island rice rat is so rare nobody could find one for three years and, now they know its not extinct, may need to have some whole new islands built specifically for it to populate. (They're small as rats go and, apparently, disease-free.)

The Everglades mink and Florida panther both live in the swamp and are equally threatened. There are probably fewer than 200 panthers and nobody knows how many mink.   Every year a dozen or so panthers are killed by cars or other panthers. Still, the population is ten times what it was 40 years ago, so that's something.

Meanwhile, the Great Python Hunt is coming to an end this weekend. Total estimated Burmese python population: anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000. Total kills in the GPH: 50 or so.

That'll help.

Cocktails on the Poop Deck* with the Admiral of the Ocean Seas

(Nina on the left, Pinta on the right)

Two of Columbus' ships, the Nina and the Pinta, are on their way here. Actually, they're already up north in the panhandle and will be coming south, first to Naples, which is south of us, and then slowly working their way back up the coast to Fort Myers across the river, and then around the peninsula to Punta Gorda and Palmetto to the north before heading off to Mississippi. This is not their first visit.

Our local public radio station, WGCU, is offering a special meet-and-greet the captain and crew drinks-and-dinner fundraising program aboard next week. Sure beats their recent one day/one hundred thousand dollar not quite successful "let-us-fundraise-today-so-we-can-shorten-the-fundraiser-week-later" event.

Nina was built using traditional methods and claims to be the most authentic Columbian ship replica ever. Not sure if Columbus ever enjoyed Texas barbecue, though.

*(I don't know where the cocktails will be served. I just like saying "poop deck.")