Surprises–September 16, 2013
You would think I would have learned by now. Just because we didn’t get any rain out of Hurricane Ingrid doesn’t mean we didn’t get water. The high water levels resulting from the hurricane, coupled with high tide flooded parts of the pensinula. There is standing water–as in salt marsh water–all around the area. Pretty amazing how that works.
The area is so full of surprises.
With the water came the snakes. I saw two today–the one pictured above and at right, and a second one deep in the brush.
If you stay on the trail, snakes are not a problem. They stick out like a sore thumb, and it’s not like the mosquitoes–they don’t come looking for you. In fact, they are happy to avoid you. But I would not want to go walking through the brush. You could easily get into a bad situation, getting closer to a snake than you ever intended. Stick to the path.
The Tricolored Heron was back to his old tricks of claiming a tree top–the better to see, but the craziest thing happened as I was taking its photo. 
Apparently the deer was about 20 feet from me, completely hidden by vegetation. 
Suddenly it jumped up, and with three leaps disappeared into the brush again. All I have is a fuzzy photo of his white tail – a sight I see often. I decided to share despite the poor quality. You can imagine my level of surprise. It caught me completely off guard.
The baby yellow-crowned came back to the area tonight, so sweet and innocent looking.
Green Thought: “Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.”
― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
