Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

  A couple of mornings ago it was in the upper 20s when Bella and I took our morning amble around the back field to the West.  It was a frosty fall wonderland.  When it is this cold it's hard to get up the gumption to rig up in all my sweatshirts and coats and head out, but once outside I do enjoy it.  The crispy temps keep you on the move, no lolly-gagging, so I get my steps in pretty quick-like.  Otherwise, as you'd know if you've read my ramblings on here long enough, I tend to pause to check out curious oddities and ponder on them.   Like terrapin shells.  Here it is from a different angle, showing the chip and crack in it.  Upon studying it I don't think it was caused by a predator after all on account of the crack extends further back along the carapace.  You can sort of see it...  See how I get distracted.  I took this picture yesterday, not on the frosty morning day. 

 I spied it by the path as I walked by; The shell of a box turtle, Quite empty, but for a leaf Frost-frozen to the plastron. The carapace was chipped. A hungry predator had gnawed it But, foiled by ancient design, Had left it for an easier meal. And so the turtle had wandered on. And time had polished the sharp edges Of the shell that I picked up and wedged  In the burl of the tree.

 It is early Sunday morning.  I am having trouble thinking of something to blog about, though the world is full of subjects.   What, I wonder, has never been blogged about?  Very little, I suppose.  Anything and everything seems to be fair game, and the wilder, weirder and more bizarre, the better.   Well.  Never fear, I am not going to blog about anything too terribly strange.  Let's find a photo from this laptop and see what it has to tell us.   There you go.  It's a terrapin shell in a tree.  No, the terrapin, or box turtle if you will, isn't alive.  It was just an empty shell I found whilst on a walk a few years back.  I wedged it up in this tree, a dogwood I believe, and took a picture of it to post on Facebook for some black/white picture challenge.   My neighbor-across-the-river, Mary, said this is a very good photograph because it involves a great deal of interesting textures.    ...

When I moved here to Missouri I was, and still remain, enchanted with the little terrapins, or box turtles that live here.  In spring and summer to mid-fall, depending on the temperature, they roam around at will.  They live their lives; generally up to 25-30 years, within a one mile radius of where they hatch.    They die for any number of reasons and their shells litter the forests floors all over.   In my first few years here I'd collect the shells and use them to decorate garden beds or whatever.  It is actually illegal to possess to many of them, or to sell them, or transport them out of the state.   At some point in the last few years I ceased collecting them, but just let them lay.  I have been tracking the above shell for the past year or so.  It is where I take Bella for longer walks.  At one point it was under a mossy log.  Then a month or so later it was under a small cedar tree.  That is where it has been for a...

Well, I have had quite a few things I wanted to post this week, but not much time. Here is a start to it. On Monday I took a walk down to the river. I met a couple of box turtles out for a last stroll before winter themselves. Here is one of them. The other was shy. I hadn't been down there since before the ice storm last January and was overjoyed to find my favorite sycamore tree was spared. The picture doesn't do it any justice; it's huge.