Alligator Wrangler

The other day my 4yr. old grand-daughter and I were having an in-depth discussion on the benefits of salt marshes when I mentioned that I wished I had an alligator to photograph. Well the next thing you know she shows up with one. I'm just kidding!!! Her mom took her back to one of her favorite places- Gator Country and had her photo taken on a real, live alligator. I guess it was that Cajun blood coursing through her veins. Go ahead girl!!

Notebook Jottings 2

May 21, 2009

I found this headless female swamp darner on the ground below my gourd racks today. One of the adult purple martins must've captured it for one of its young and dropped it. Adults remove the heads of dragonflies before they feed them to their young so they don't bite on the way down.

April 6, 2008

While walking towards the barn a yellow-bellied racer (aka blue racer) came “racing” from the tall hay nearby and headed straight for the barn. I ran after it and it left me in a wake of its dust. They don’t call them racers for nuttin’. I went into the barn and found its trail in the sand where it entered and followed it to where it escaped under the wall on the opposite side. Gone baby gone…


February 27, 2007

Found several strands of course dark hair that had been snagged by some barbed wire. More than likely it was from one of the many feral hogs that root up the woods. But hey you never know......could be from Bigfoot....


May 16, 2005

I pulled on side of HWY 73 in Sabine Pass to check out a small marsh area. As I stood at its edge little did I know that something lurked beneath the surface of the water. Slowly the reptilian began to rise scaring the literal hell out of me. Moments before I had thought of wading in to explore......


June 27, 2004

I've always been amazed at the arch formations in Arches National Park in Utah. Never did I expect to be standing below one of them (Delicate Arch) one day......

Life and Death

Along side Highway 87 in Sabine Pass, TX (as you may have noticed I spend quite a bit of time in this area) I came upon the sun-bleached, scattered bones of an alligator. The skeleton was not whole only consisting of the lower jaw and a few leg bones. It appeared to have been a large one also, because one of the jaw bones measured near 22". Most of the teeth were missing except a few which I collected. Not far from this site I was fortunate to run into a live four foot juvenile alligator in a shallow ditch.It would slowly rise to the surface and suddenly sink into the muck as I would approach. Its mottled brown coloration allowed it to blend in well with the murky bottom of the ditch allowing it to literally disappear each time it would submerge. Minutes later its beady eyes would break the surface and look intently in my direction. There was plenty of food to sustain it in the form of frogs which were hopping everywhere along the fringes of the waterway.