Do you remember when we used to hear frogs?

I watched a PBS NOVA special on the plight of frogs. We are losing frogs - they are in danger of mass extinction. There seems to be a worldwide infestation of a fungus that lives on the skin of frogs and slowly kills them by blocking oxygen. Frogs breathe through their skin, at least in part, and the fungus causes them to suffocate. Except for a small part of Panama, the fungus exists all over the planet and will probably invade this last safe area soon. This is very sad. Scientists are capturing the endangered frogs and keeping them in captivity in special breeding programs in the hope of finding fungus resistant strains of the different frog varieties. There have been some successes but the picture is bleak in most cases.

As a kid, frogs were one of the most common wild animals we encountered. The local ponds were full of tadpoles. We would collect frog eggs and keep them in a jar just to watch the tadpoles hatch out. I used to capture frogs and toads and baptize them when I was in a particularly religious mood. Maybe there will be a few frogs in heaven.  I remember the childhood debates we had about toads and whether we would get warts if we touched them. It never kept us from touching them. Toads would almost always pee on you when you picked them up. We figured that the pee was what made the warts.

Frogs ruled the night. The sound of frogs at night was ever-present. This was really true in a rainy springtime and early summer. Bull Frogs were the Potentates of the frog world. They were huge and very loud with a low booming voice. Tree frogs were peepers up in the trees. They were a background chorus for the mighty Bull Frogs.


When I was ten I had two pet salamanders that lived in a washtub in the back yard. Salamanders are similar to frogs and are now facing the same hazards. Mine seemed quite happy in their washtub world but salamanders apparently like to migrate. They must recognize some cosmic message that tells them that it is time to move on. One night my salamanders got the call and were off on an adventure. I know that one was eaten by a garter snake before he got very far. I won't go into how I know that. I just hope the other one made it to the local salamander rendezvous unscathed.


I remember seeing flattened frog and toad corpses on the road when I walked to school. They were probably on their way to an important gathering of amphibians when they met their Maker crossing the road. There were so many frogs and toads that it seemed like nothing would ever make a dent in the population. Frogs and toads were everywhere.


We would go spend a couple weeks at my uncle's cabin on the Big Piney River and at least once he would fix up "a mess of frog legs". These were usually Bull Frogs whose legs ended up on the plate. They looked like little peoples' legs. You would go out at night in a boat and paddle quietly waiting for a Bull Frog to sing out and then you would sneak up on him and blind him with a flashlight while the other person gigged him with a nine foot harpoon. The "Gig" had three points so you were pretty much bound to get him if you were any good at all. The impaled frogs were sort of stunned but seemed almost not to notice that they had been run through. Of course the points were barbed so he couldn't get off the gig and he soon ended up in a burlap bag on the bottom of the boat. It takes quite a few frogs to equal a "mess".


Not too many years ago we had a small tree frog who came to our screen door at night to eat the moths and bugs that were attracted by the light. We named him Edgar after one of our favorite baseball players, Edgar Renteria. Edgar was a hit with both my daughter and the family cat. Jill delighted in his nightly arrivals and would look for him and be disappointed if he didn't show up. Purro, our cat, was also delighted to see him but for other reasons. Purro would sit or lay quietly by the screen door and watch Edgar until he couldn't stand it any longer and he would swat the screen and Edgar would jump. One night Edgar got inside somehow and Purro pounced while three humans squealed and dove for the cat. We saved Edgar and put him back outside much to Purro's aggravation. Edgar, or maybe Edgar's kids, came back every year for a while but eventually disappeared. Even Edgar Renteria was eventually traded to Boston.

We have a little frog pond about 400 feet away back in the woods. We used to hear frogs at night but not anymore. Occasionally we will hear a peeper up in the trees or even close by on the deck (Edgar? Is that you?) but not very often. I will occasionally see a toad in the yard. Toads are more adaptable to dry conditions and sometimes would venture into the garden. I haven't seen a salamander in decades.

I hope that someday our kids' grandkids will still get to discover and enjoy frogs.

July 30th = Memories

The end of July brings back the same old memories: hospitals, doctors, EMTs, waiting, worrying, praying...funeral directors.  Wow, it's been five years.

I try not to think about it. I have so many good memories that I can fall back on. This picture is of Joie and me at the Carlson Winery near Grand Junction, Colorado.We spent a week there looking at property and trying to decide if we really wanted to move there. Turns out that we didn't, but we had a good time.

One of my favorite pictures of Joanne. She is sitting in a meadow high up in the Big Horn Mountains...late July, 1975.Wildflowers (mountain lupines) were blooming all through the meadow. We were on a backpacking trip...much to the amazement of her friends and family. That trip pretty much sealed our fate. Anyone who would follow me through the wilderness wasn't going to give up easy and we were together for the next thirty-two years.



This year I'm a little distracted by my aching knee. Somehow I'm managed to get arthritis in my left knee that demands attention. I found Joie's cane and I'm hobbling around with a lot of pain. The doctor told me to wear a knee brace and take a anti inflamatory prescription. That was ten days ago and it is worse now. I go back to the doctor in a couple days. The xrays show 'bone spurs' and the space where my ligaments and cartlage should be has narrowed...hence the excruciating pain.


The Summer Olympic games are going on in London. I was looking forward to it but the news/sports coverage is so bad that I've pretty much given up on it. I watch some of the novelty sports. I watched field hockey...played indoors...and that was interesting. Rowing was interesting. Basketball is mostly NBA players. If I wanted to watch NBA I'd watch NBA. They should do the same thing with basketball as they do with soccer -- limit the teams to certain age groups. I'm tired of gymnastics and swimming.  Track and field will start in a few days.


If I seem a little grumpy I have good reason.

The Dog Days

The Dog Days are upon us. Sirius, the "Dog Star" must be working overtime although I can't see Sirius or the constellation Canis Major from my usual vantage point. The Romans blamed Sirius for the hottest days of summer. Then there is that other dog reference regarding the heat of the day..."mad dogs and Englishmen...."   I don't blame the dogs, they are miserable, too. It has been so hot and humid here in the middle of the continent that things seem to be grinding to a halt. Human activity is curtailed as much as possible during the day. After a while your brain fries or just starts to dry out. I stopped for gas the other day and it took me three tries to get the car turned so the gas pump was on the same side as the gas cap. The old fried brain couldn't figure it out. I'm guessing that the economic statistics for this summer will reflect a lack of commercial activity just due to the heat. It's not likely to get better any time soon. They forecast four of the next five days will be over 100 degrees here. We've already had about twenty 100+ degree days in the last month and almost no rain. We had rain on July 8th and on June 11th...that's it. We have the humidity as well as the heat but no rain.

I stay holed up inside as much as possible during the day but after dark it gets almost tolerable so I venture outside. I'm a sky watcher. Sirius and Canis Major are on the other side of the house and concealed behind some trees so I can't shake my fist in their direction. That's fine because I have plenty to watch. The night sky is busy if you happen to live in a place with little or no light pollution. Planes flying coast to coast pass overhead. There is an old Trivial Pursuit question asking where Richard Nixon was when Gerald Ford was sworn in as President.  He was almost directly over my head fleeing to San Clemente. I try to guess where the planes are going with a rough map stored in my head. Perhaps Dallas to Chicago? Denver to Cincinnati? There are some that come from the west and then turn 90-degrees to the right and head south directly over my head. I live about an hour east of an Air Force base so some of those planes are military flights. On weekends they fly east and then make a big U-turn and head back to their base. I guess those are training flights. We used to see Stealth Bombers but they are pretty rare these days. You could hear them before you saw them so I'm not sure how stealthy they are.

Meteor showers are always interesting. I was born during the Perseid meteor shower, one of the best of the year, so I have a long-standing birthday ritual of going out and watching for meteors on my birthday. I've seen a bunch. They come in colors occasionally. Sometimes come in in pairs, side-by-side. Sometimes they break up and pieces go off in different angles. Sometimes they leave a glowing trail. Experts say they are only the size of a grain of sand. I find that very hard to believe.

Last night I caught sight of an Iridium Flare, which is caused by sunlight reflected off of a satellite. There are a bunch of Iridium communication satellites with large reflective panels that catch the sunlight and cast a beam of light out of the pitch black sky back down to Earth. The flare lasts only a second or two but it is extremely bright -- maybe -8 in magnitude. Sirius, that "Dog Star", is the brightest star in the sky with a magnitude of -1.4 so an Iridium Flare can be several times brighter than Sirius. The full moon is magnitude -6 and the Sun is -13 so a bright flare can fall in between the moon and the Sun in brightness. Iridium Flares look like someone turned on a flashlight and then turned it off again. Actually there is so much stuff orbiting the Earth now that it can be confusing and dangerous.  A Russian satellite collided with an Iridium satellite at 22,000 mph and left a bunch of orbiting debris that is something of a hazard to astronauts.  Some of these things are predictable...you can go to web sites and check out when the International Space Station will fly over your house or track other highly visible objects.

For right now I'm hoping to see some thunderstorm lightening on the horizon heading this way. It could not arrive too soon.

Fiat 500 -- Just a Whim

I got a post card in the mail that invited me to come to Columbia to test drive a Fiat 500. Thats about 35 miles just to test drive a car...but they offered me a $25 Visa debit card as an incentive. Since I was going to Columbia anyway I decided to maybe take them up on it.

I picked up Donna (we were heading to Boonville for lunch and a winery visit) and we decided to try driving the Fiat. This turned out to be more interesting than I thought.

Let me begin by saying that I once owned a Fiat that was a horrible car. There is no end to the horror stories I could tell. When it rained the ash trays filled with water and water came out of the radio speaker.  No kidding. Also, the car wouldn't start if the temperature was under 30 degrees. It developed a habit of refusing to turn off...it kept running even when I had the ignition turned off and the key in my pocket. Maintenance was a chore and the local mechanics had no idea how to fix it. The wiring chart was in Italian. But...it was a fun car to drive.




So, I was skeptical that anything with the Fiat name on it would be worth looking at.

After seeing it I would say that I was cautiously impressed with it. It is the 2nd smallest car on the market in the US. Smart car has one slightly smaller.




It looks kind of retro and that was apparently intentional. You can see some of the old-time Fiat DNA in it's design. This was a two-door hatchback. I didn't take a good look at the back seat. The hatchback opens to a space big enough for maybe two suitcases behind the back seat. Rear seats fold down and make a lot more cargo space but they don't fold flat so it is still sort of a balancing act.







I can recall riding around in a little Renault
and several old VW Beetles when in high school and this was sort of reminescent of that...which is the retro idea kicking in. The salesman said they thought young people would be the market for them but they are selling to baby boomers instead.





It was surprisingly roomy inside. Donna and I are not petite people and the saleman was normal size...not a dwarf...and we all climbed in and were comfortable. The seats are like sitting in a chair...you sit up, not on the floor.

Seats are adjustable and the steering wheel is adjustable so it is easy to get comfortable. There isn't a "chicken bar" handle on the passenger side, which would be useful. Headroom was OK. Leg room was OK.



The dash board and steering wheel look like something out of the 1950s but the instruments are up to date. Some of the controls are on the steering wheel. It has "bluetooth" voice recognition technology for some stuff...which I know nothing about.








There is a lot of digital information staring you in the face but the speedometer is the traditional analog needle pointing to your mph speed. The steering wheel is small but it can get in the way of seeing the digital display.

Somewhere in here there is a four cylinder motor. It is front wheel drive. You can't really see the front hood - or much of it - when driving or sitting in the front seat. We drove the automatic 6-speed. We had three people in the car and had the AC blasting at full power and the car took off like a shot. We had no problem on the highway. At slower speeds it seemed like it had to labor a little to go up hill in residential neighborhoods. Steering was super responsive and caught me off guard the first few turns until I got used to it. It "turns on a dime with nine cents change". Apparently it can get up to 38 mpg which is good but not great considering the size and the competition. Fiat bought a big chunk of Chrysler and this seems to be their re-entry into the US market. They were offering 60 months zero interest and the base price was somewhere around $16,000. They want to get some of these on the road. You would need to add some options. The tiny spare tire is an option...a tire patch kit is standard.

While I liked it and it was fun to drive and I was impressed I'm still a skeptic. My prior experience was so bad that I'd want to see some performance info and maintenance data before I got one. Donna drove it and she liked it as well but she drives a Honda and is very happy with her experience and maintenance that she was also reluctant to say she would want one without more of a track record.

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