Awesome Little Cats

Is there anything better than a couple of young cats for dinner?

Yup, I went fishing today. My stepfather and I first went over to Carter's Lake reregulation dam and tried out luck there with some medium large shad. I'd heard that the stripers were stacked up near the water outlet, but we couldn't cast over there. They were letting a lot of water out and the current was so swift and the bottom so rocky that all we were doing is losing tackle. It was frustrating. Several other fishermen(and women) were catching some drum, but I have always dreamed about stripers (hybrid striped bass)and that's why we were there. So by 11 AM, we packed up and headed to a more peaceful locale, Salacoa Creek Park. It is a county owned park, complete with lake beach and campground. It is a very nice, deep, spring fed lake that looks very clean. At Salacoa, we had the lunch I had packed for us, and then began throwing crickets at the bream. It is just past the full moon, and I think there were a few beds still active. There was a spot right off the dock that produced a fish almost every time the bait hit the water. We must have caught 30 or so between us, throwing them back as they were palm sized bream of varying species. Had we known we would be catching that many, I think I might have saved all of them. At any rate, there was a lull in the action, and when it picked back up, I caught a keeper bream and was walking back to the shore to get my 5 gallon bucket for the bream when my stepfather caught a small catfish on a cricket of all things. I had one line in with cut bait, fishing for cats on the bottom, but wouldn't you know those catfish wanted crickets. At the end of the day, just as a thunderstorm approached, we left with 2 small cats and about 10 average sized bream. It was pouring rain when I got home, and by that time, the bream had died. The cats were still alive, however. To save time, I decided not to clean the bream, instead, I cut them up and fed them to the chickens. It had been about 20 years or so since I cleaned a catfish, and I was a bit out of practice, but finally managed to get 'er done. We had 8 minnows leftover, so they are now happily living in my aquarium, which luckily is set up for goldfish/cold water. All the fish are about the same size. Maybe I will get lucky and they will breed, but I doubt it.

Skyguy has never been fond of freshwater fish due to the size vs. the bones, but his palate is changing. It was only a week or so ago that I mentioned to him that those big river cats were edible, but the best catfish were the small ones. There was no way I could allow myself to fail in the preparation of that fish...I knew if I botched it, he would never try catfish again. Luckily, it was delicious, and we were wishing we had about 10 more of them! Our dinner this evening consisted of the catfish(on the plate 1.5 hours after being in the water), grilled squash with olive oil and garlic brushed on (on the plate 30 minutes after being on a bush), new Red Pontiac potatoes (one day after being plucked from a barrel of dirt), cornbread, made with an egg that was an hour old and sadly, store-bought oil and cornmeal (we will be rectifying that situation hopefully in a few months), coleslaw, made with garden cabbage and carrots, and I made some 'hushpuppy patties' with the leftover batter plus some onions and such(also from the garden). When you pan fry, hushpuppies become hushpatties. :)

I just love to fish, even if I'm only catching little bream. Get about 40 of them, fry them up, and you've got a meal of very sweet meat, even if it is only a few bites per fish. I eat the crispy tails, too, love that! Skyguy never fished or camped as a kid, and he still hasn't caught the fishing bug, but I am hopeful that one day I will have a partner that loves to fish as much as I do. I got him camping, I got him eating Chinese food, I got him loving the country life, I got him growing herbs and veggies, and I'm hoping I can entice him to fish.

Snakes, Chickens, Sex, and Sermons?

We were able to get the jungle under control this past weekend, but we crossed paths with 2 additional snakes..that makes 3 snakes in two days...one King snake and two red rat(corn) snakes. I was down at my friends house this morning and she showed me a single winding track through the grass-the track was muddy, the grass was green, so it was easy to see. The track was several inches wide. The only thing that would make a track like that is a big rattlesnake, or a monster king snake that just ate the monster rattlesnake(like the one we saw in SC). This track definitely has a Wow Factor associated with it. The snakes are definitely out and about.

We have a few more roosters to dispatch, but in doing that, we will end the great 2008-2009 hatching project to replace chickens lost to predators. I started with 6 birds, and now have 6+ roos that need to be dispatched, 30 hens and 1 rooster in the main coop, and one poor battered hen in the chicken tractor. There are 2 or 3 birds in the 30 that might be roosters, too, but right now they are just androgynous pullets. I have a beautiful partridge rock looking roo that I am thinking of keeping. He would be part Partridge Rock(mother) and Blue Laced Red Wyandotte(father). Currently, I have a RIR/BLRW roo. I've forgotten the number of hens a rooster can service, but I think it is somewhere close to 15. I doubt I will keep all the pullets/hens, but I can always raise two flocks separately. I wonder if two roos will fight if there are sufficient hens for both?

I'm quite amazed at the percentage of pullets I hatched vs. roosters/cockerels. I think I've maybe a dozen+ roosters in all the birds I've hatched since Thanksgiving and with close to 70 total birds, that's rather amazing. Even at 15/75-that's only 20% roosters, and I believe the actual percentage is closer to 17%. It's got me wondering about evolution and the role temperature plays in determination of sex and embryo development. I know that with some reptiles, noteably crocodilians(alligators, crocs, caimans,and gavial), temperature of the eggs during incubation does influence gender. I believe that it must be true with some birds, perhaps in my case, the chicken eggs I hatched. The incubator temps were kind of high, 100-101F. In some reptiles, higher temps can switch off male expression genes and create females. The embryo starts off as a male, but when the egg is exposed to higher temperatures, the embryo undergoes a gender switch and the hatchling becomes female. In addition, some animals that appear female are actually male and visa versa, i.e. their sex is ambiguous;they are intersexed. Could this have happened with my chickens? I think it is possible. Birds are descended from reptiles and the sex change thing is related to a changing environment. Perhaps during warmer eons, more females are produced to expand the population, but during colder eons, the embryos remain predominantly male. The planet is currently experiencing a warming trend as we all know....is it Nature's Way-the ultimate survival technique-the Master's Plan- to turn males into females to expand the population while it is warm and to prepare for the cold eon to come? Are my ambiguous, androgynous looking pullets really male?

If this interests you as much as it does me, read this:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/sex2.htm
References are listed at the bottom of the page, but consider this:

"Sex is relative. Among animals, especially cold-blooded ones, males
can be turned into females by increased feeding or a change in
temperature. In the case of warm-blooded creatures, it can be done by
extracting ovaries to turn, say, a hen into a cock. In many species,
sex reversals happen naturally. Quahogs (hard-shell clams) are born
and grow up male, but later half of them turn female. Slipper shells
and cup and saucer shells do this too; they commence every season as
males, but nearly all of them later pass through a phase of
ambisexuality and turn into adult females.
Fish have evolved the quickest sex-reversing capacity of any animal:
some species not only change from male to female as they grow, but a
few, like groupers and guppies, develop the ability to switch
sexually back and forth within seconds. [ I intentionally picked an image of fancy guppies-quite 'flamboyant', huh?] If two female guppies meet
while feeling amorous, one is likely to start turning into a male so
he can mate with the other. Occasionally both shift at the same
moment, which usually results in a furious fight, with the winner
emerging as a female who somehow forces the other to stay male."

If you want a good mental exercise, think about all of this with respect to human evolution, global warming, homosexuality and gender identification. You've probably already figured out that I believe homosexuality, intersexuality, as well as heterosexuality to be natural phenomena. I realize that many of you believe otherwise due to your various faiths, so I don't mean to be disrespectful to your beliefs, but I do believe that there is sufficient scientific evidence and sufficient Biblical contradictory passages to suggest that perhaps we all should have a more open mind to things we don't fully understand or know. I suppose the middle ground we meet on is this:
Matthew 22: 36-40
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The Backwards Aquarist

Both DH and I grew up with aquariums. I had the typical community tank for most of my childhood years. DH had both a community tank setup and

then later a saltwater setup. When we married, having aquaria was a no brainer, and we decided to keep aggressive fish. We've had aquariums of both African and South American cichlids, as well as community AKA peaceful aquariums over the years, but now we are about to venture into uncharted territory: we are going back to basics. We now have feeder goldfish, which are essentially someone else's cull fish. I've bought goldfish/comets for the outdoor ponds and barrels and they have been very hardy, but I've never had goldfish indoors, not even in a classical kiddie fishbowl.

I was going to take the cichlid tank down in order to save on electricity, but my JRose gets so much enjoyment from watching fish. The problem was that the cichlids hid in the rocks and weren't very showy to hold the attention of a toddler. So, I re-homed the fish and removed the heater for our 55 gallon tank. Goldfish like cool water. I moved the rocks around making the change from a natural Lake Malawi style cichlid tank to a kid friendly, fun to watch, colorful goldfish tank. Feeder goldfish are cheap, so I bought 30 small ones as well as a couple of Cory cats(corydoras catfish), one albino and one bronze. I want JRose to be mesmerized by Grandma's fish. As she grows and understands more, the tank will evolve. I can't wait to see her face when she watches angelfish, kuhli loaches, or a black ghost knife, or when she is old enough, watch an oscar eat a guppy. It is all part of the magic. One day, we will give her her own tank.

Keeping fish teaches kids the importance of maintaining a non-polluted ecosystem. They learn about biology, water chemistry, evolution, and even botany if they are allowed to grow real plants instead of decorating with the plastic variety. They can set up a creek tank or a cichlid tank, explore a range of habitats, and of course learn how to raise the fry, or in the case of the mouthbrooding cichlids, set up a friendly breeding environment. It teaches the interconnectivity of life.

Dancing with the Fishes

Today was a great day. We took my birthday money and went to the Tennessee Aquarium. Awesome. Between the River Journey building and the Ocean Journey building, we decided to grab some lunch and noticed a crowd gathering down on the riverwalk. We noticed news cameras, so we went down to see what was happening. It turned out that a group called Project Bandaloop was about to perform a 'dance' from the bridge.
http://www.projectbandaloop.org
It was something to see-definitely not your everyday dance!
At any rate, we enjoyed the trip immensely. On the way home, we stopped at Red Lobster for dinner. It was a nice birthday celebration.