Beautiful, ugly inverts

The latest additions to my bestiary occurred this week.

I unearthed a Giant Whiptail Scorpion while I was

clearing the fire lane. The next day I ran across a very

fresh Io Moth near the fire lane while I was picking

up some trash. I didn't have a camera to record either,

but picked up these photos from the Internet.

The chain of events that brought me here

I was listening to a quirky song by John Hammond, I believe, about a series of happenstances behind a personal situation and thought of the forces that brought me to the preserve. If I hadn't been looking for a job and ended up in Polk County and hadn't been at Bok Tower that day and fallen in with a group of birdwatchers and hadn't become interested in learning more about nature and hadn't met some people from the Florida Native Plant Society and if I hadn't been single all of these years that gave me time to learn something about the outdoors and if I hadn't married someone who agreed to live in Winter Haven and if we hadn't picked the neighborhood we picked and if the Ridge Rangers hadn't been organized and if I hadn't had a truck to haul stuff to and from in and if I hadn't been active and interested and if I hadn't had the support to continue the work, then things would probably be a lot different.

Cleaning up for fall

I finally got rid of a small number of tires, courtesy of periodic county recycling service. I also started cleaning up brush from my fire lane clearing work. I will establish a series of brush piles that may provide some wildlife habitat this winter and will add to the fuel load if the powers that be ever relent on prescribed fire.

The Liatris is in nearly full bloom and I'm finally identifying some additional plants, though some are still a mystery. Also, I talked to Donna Stark today and the stool I found some time ago belongs to her, as I thought it might. I'll give it back to her the next time I see her. She persuaded me to volunteer for a display at Tenoroc on Dec. 1.