The Excitement for the Day

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida

 

There was a sad report on the news this morning.  A 51 year old woman was struck and killed by lightning while walking on a nearby beach.  Unfortunately, the Tampa Bay area is the lightning capitol of North America, and we usually see several fatalities each year.   Most of them are on a sunny day.  Denis Phillips (our favorite local meteorologist) has recently been warning about staying inside if you can hear thunder, even if the skies are blue.  Lightning can travel 13 miles, so please don’t take any chances.  

 

Yesterday was the day our neighbor was having his park model mobile home moved.  He found another park that he liked better, so he decided to have it moved.  It’s not quite as easy as moving an RV.

We are just to the left of the park model.  

I had a good view of all the action right from my living room window.  That’s little Noogie you see in the foreground. She was a little irritated that I made her move to take the picture.

Some of our neighbors brought chairs and had a party at Pat and Ron’s.   It was very hot with very little shade, so I went outside every so often, but for the most part I preferred staying inside in the air conditioning.

Pat and Ron will be moving into this site when they come back from their summer travels. 

The prep work took several hours.  They had a crew of a few guys unhooking the pipes, electrical, and tie down straps.

I mostly stayed inside in the air conditioning, but went out occasionally to check on the party.

One of the workers came over with a large handful of eggs, asking us if we knew what they were from.   I didn’t think to get a picture, because I was more concerned with trying to save the eggs.  The eggs were underneath the house, and under the plastic moisture barrier, laying right on the dirt.

We quickly concluded they were most likely snake eggs, and decided to put them underneath the shed that was staying here.   Of course a few people probably wanted to smash them since they were snake eggs.

Nope…not on my watch!  Just because you don’t personally like snakes, that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to exist. 

 

After several hours, the crew finally had the home ready to move, but the tires had made a rut, and they were stuck.  The big truck tried and tried, but he couldn’t get the house to move.

They finally decided to have attach their other truck to the big truck, and give the big truck a little assistance.

They finally got the little house moved onto the street.

They were finally on their way some time after 2pm, and the party broke up.

Here is the after picture of the empty lot.   That’s us on the left.

The park is going to make a campsite out of this site, which will require adding some concrete. 

 

and our new “view” from the living room window.

Someone said they saw a little mouse scurrying around underneath the park model. I sure hope he went into the woods and not into our rig!

 

I spent some time  later on, taking some picture of the locals.

The blue beak on the Little Blue Heron showed up nicely.

These pictures are all taken with my little Canon.  My new lens for the big Canon will arrive today.  I’m anxious to see how it works.

 

After our rains last week, the frog population really seemed to multiply.  Before the rain, we could hear a few bull frogs and some tree frogs, but not too many.  After the rain, it was obvious they had multiplied.  It was almost too noisy to sleep at night for all the croaking! 

Not too good of a thing for someone that’s deathly afraid of frogs!

The otters may have been around before, but we’re thinking they moved in after hearing all the noisy frogs.

They certainly seemed to be feasting on something and now the frog songs have drastically diminished.  I don’t think I’ve heard the bull frogs at all for a few nights.

They were really busy on something on the bank, but I doubt it was a frog.

I have a feeling the otters will move on when the frog supply is gone.

Mr. Cardinal looks pretty posing in the greenery of the bald cypress.