Category: Bugs

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Animals Bugs Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Dallas Zoo

Dallas Zoo

Yesterday me and my brother visited the Dallas Zoo for the first time ever.

Here are my takeaways – ‘Mini Thoughts’ style:

– It’s an old zoo – established way back in 1888 !
– It’s the largest zoo in Texas – covering 95 acres alongside I-35.
– We were there for about 3 hours.
– It was a hot and humid day in Dallas with heat indices in the mid-90s.
– The zoo is expanding !
– A whole new area of ‘Wilds Of Africa’ called ‘The Savanna’ is under construction.
– The penguins were soaking wet – and hot.
– We got up close to a Western Lowland Gorilla.
– Only a strong window separated him from us.
– He just laid against the window as all of us humanoids watched his every move.
– He would look at us sometimes in a curious yet friendly manner.
– He was most interested in scratching his itches.
– He’s just like you and me !
– Much of the ‘Wilds Of Africa’ exhibit is seeable via the monorail alone.
– So we took the monorail around the continent.
– It was a cool 25 minute tour through the wilds from up above.
– The chimps were not out to play.
– They were in seclusion due to the birth of a new member of their family.
– We walked through an entire exhibit on BUGS !
– Bugs are constantly working at creating a new habitat for themselves.
– The’re never satisfied with what they have.
– Bugs – The’re just like you and me.
– We saw ENORMOUS tortoises crawling around.
– The’re the biggest of their species in the entire world.
– They were just taking their time to get from Point A to Point Z.
– The’re OLD !
– MASSIVE ALBINO ALLIGATOR !
– Check out this recent newspaper article on it.
– I don’t think that I’ve ever seen one like this before.
– It’s 9-feet in length, 200 pounds, and totally white.
– It doesn’t appreciate the Sun, and it’s blind.
– As we watched from a boardwalk above it was feeding time.
– But the albino alligator wasn’t very hungry.
– The other standard alligators around him were hungry though.
– A lot of the animals outside were hidden away.
– They were probably too hot.
– I wondered how those African animals cope with the snow in the winter.
– The zoo is open year-round, and it can get totally freezing here in Dallas.
– Only the soaking wet penguins would appreciate that !
– We had a fun time at the zoo.
– We both agreed that it was bigger and nicer than we originally thought.
– We’ll hopefully visit it again in a couple of years.
– Maybe on my next visit to Texas we can visit the Fort Worth Zoo.
– That would be cool, as I so dig hangin’ out with the animals.
– The’re just like you and me !

Categories
Animals Bugs Driving Shopping Travel

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Everglades National Park

– My ‘2009 Economic Stimulus Tour’ continues.
– For the 2ND Saturday morning in a row I went to Everglades National Park.
– But this time I went to the north part at Shark Valley off Tamiami Trail.
– Me and a buddy got there shortly after 11 AM.
– We took the 2-hour / 15-mile tram tour starting at 12 noon.
– Our tour guide was a crazy lady who was a child of the 1960s.
– She took us on a tour of her ‘office’ – The Everglades.
– She was good, as she definitely knew her stuff.
– She clearly demonstrated that she has an intense adoration for the ‘Glades.
– She was totally passionate about her ‘coworkers’ – the wildlife.
– She introduced us to all of her alligator friends.
– The gators were just chillin’ in the shallow water tryin’ to get some sun.
– Some showed off their teeth as if they were smiling.
– The gators are just like you and me !
– We saw a whole bunch of baby gators.
– It’s breeding season dude !
– If the gator is less than a foot long then it’s less than a year old.
– If the gator is between 5 and 6 feet long then it’s an adult.
– Most gators stop growing in length after that and start getting plumper.
– The gators are just like you and me !
– If you see a gator that’s 8 or 10 feet long then it’s well fed !
– Female gators never lose the ability to give birth to baby gators.
– In addition to the 15-mile tram tour we also did a whole lot of walking.
– I’m talkin’ several miles of walkin’ in the hot and dry Everglades.
– We hit up this tower:

shark-valley-tower

– The 18-mile panoramic view up top was really cool.
– That tower is about 27 miles due west of The Falls Shopping Center.
– I thought that I saw Macy’s from afar.
– The sound of the Everglades – incomparable to anything else in Miami-Dade.
– The smell of the Everglades – it’s pure nature – as natural as can be.
– Man has already destroyed much of what used to be the Everglades.
– But the Everglades is tough – so tough that several million acres still exist.
– I will respect the Everglades.
– I will also visit again sometime real soon.

Categories
Animals Bugs Driving Food Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Everglades National Park

TODAY I visited Everglades National Park for the first time in modern history.

Here are my takeaways in 15 words or less:

– My ‘2009 Economic Stimulus Tour’ (of tourist attractions) continues.
– I kicked it off with an 8:40 AM visit to the Starbucks in Florida City.
– The first sign I saw at the park – ‘EXTREME FIRE DANGER‘.
– I was hoping that I wouldn’t see any out-of-control wildfires.
– The National Park Service doesn’t spend a lot of money on road maintenance.
– The top layer of the main road is peeling off exposing the concrete below.
– It was a nice day at the park – sort of cloudy with a refreshing wind.
– There weren’t a lot of people at the park today.
– I was part of the very few that wore shorts.
– Dude it’s not mosquito season yet.
– The’re still hibernating / incubating.
– The skeeters need the water, and there wasn’t much of it out there.
– The ground was so dry that it was cracking like scorched earth.
– It was the dryest winter season ever recorded since mankind’s been tracking it.
– If there’s no water in the solution holes then we must be in a drought.
– That’s because those holes reach the water table.
– I spent the first 45 minutes of my visit at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center.
– That’s a nice place, as I could have spent twice as long there.
– One sound you don’t hear inside the park – lawnmowers !
– It may not be mosquito season, but it certainly is bee season.
– They were buzzing (scaring) all around me in certain areas on the trails.
– None stung me, so that’s a good thing.
– I probably wouldn’t be here writing this if I had sustained a bee sting.
– If there’s a lot of people gathered then there must be a HUGE gator there.
– The gators were just chillin’ in the shallow end of the water.
– Some were tanning themselves on the shore with their mouths wide open.
– Gators are just like you and me !
– The Gumbo Limbo Trail reminded me of a place I played at as a kid.
– It was in the mid-1970s, and it was in the woods alongside my old ‘hood.
– Chuck and Keegan were two childhood friends of mine back then.
– They ran a territory on one side of the creek known as ‘Wolf Pack State’.
– I ran the territory on the other side of the creek.
– The Gumbo Limbo tree has peeling reddish bark.
– The Gumbo Limbo tree is just like you and me – a tourist with a sunburn !
– Everglades National Park formed out of Royal Palm State Park.
– It’s a vast wilderness – just like the U.S.A. once was.
– It smelled really good on the Mahogany Hammock Trail.
– The Everglades overall smelled really nice.
– It’s nature’s air freshener.
– Even the residue skunk smell was quite alright.
– You don’t know what nature sounds like until you visit the Everglades.
– All you need to do is sit down, keep quiet, and just listen.
– Noise pollution is not invited out there.
– Trees still provide abundant life to plants long after their death.
– Trees learned that from their Creator – Jesus – who does the same.
– It’s 60 miles on the dot from my home to Flamingo.
– I walked every half-mile trail from the park entrance to Florida Bay.
– This was the longest officially-sanctioned ‘Walk-A-Thon’ in history.
– I used no insect repellent at all.
– It wasn’t until the final trail in which I started to get bitten by bugs.
– It was also one of my favourite trails that I walked on.
– The bugs were alive and biting on the West Lake Boardwalk.
– I even saw a rare mosquito come close to my arm.
– A few ENORMOUS flies bit me.
– Now I feel like I really visited the Everglades !
– The bugs were there because the boardwalk went through a mangrove swamp.
– The ground was actually moist too.
– After that final trail I headed back to civilization / America’s Riviera.
– I made a pit stop at Mamma Mia.
– That’s right I ate there for the 2ND time in 7 days.
– It’s my new favourite sit-down restaurant in Homestead.
– I feel right at home there.
– I ate the mother of all MASSIVE meals big and small there this afternoon.
– That’s how I roll on a Saturday afternoon in late-April.
– My 111-mile round-trip excursion ended 7 hours after it started.
– I didn’t realize that I got a suntan / slight sunburn today.
– I realized it when I shaved after I got home.
– It stung a bit.
– It also didn’t help that I shaved directly over a few small insect bites.
– This day trip was so worth it.
– I’m visiting again next December or January.
– You can count on it !

Categories
Bugs Food Home

The Great Ant Invasion Of 2009

TODAY I actually bit into (and had a small piece in my mouth) of an ant-infested chocolate donut !

Yesterday morning at Publix (where shopping is a pleasure) I bought two boxes of Entenmann’s donuts (on sale for $3 per box). I ate 3 out of the total 16 donuts yesterday, and I was about to eat 3 more this afternoon when I realized what I was actually biting into. Long story short the remaining 13 donuts went into the garbage and then ultimately into the dumpster outside.

I don’t typically have a problem with ants (or any other bugs in my home for that matter), as Orkin treats my home once a month for pests. I guess the 13 chocolate donuts sitting on my kitchen counter some 33 days after the last regularly-scheduled Orkin treatment was simply a recipe for disaster !