Last night as we recovered from our travels, we marvelled at the weird pockets of apathy in airline security, in light of thefact that the woman seated next to me on the plane pulled a swiss army knife from her pocket and cut up fruit for her son, David. The flight attendants seemed unconcerned. Husband suggested that perhaps the mother was a member of the Swiss Army, and therefore got to carry her knife. I don’t know why we’re giddy and jetlagged, we never left this timezone.

Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that David (my young neighbor on the plane) was remarkably well behaved and even offered me an oreo cookie.

Not a whole lot to report about the rest of the trip. All those sandhill crane mating dances we saw over the summer? They obviously work quite well. We saw lots of crane families strolling about the place, as each nesting apparently results in 2 eggs.

There are definitely at least 3 gators in the river by mom’s house. We know this because they’re most distinctly different sizes. We have names for them now: Lil’ Gator, Medium Gator, and Jesusmaryandjosephsomebodyclosethegaragedoorquick.

Here’s a nifty online guide to the snakes of Florida.

Randomly, here’s a great site I just found about endangered snakes and other such snakey info.

I hate snakes. Why did you let me look up those sites and look at all of those pictures?

Last night I saw the most bizarre and spectacular wildlife display ever.

I saw the mating of dance of a pair of sandhill cranes in mom’s backyard. They actually bow to each other before they start. They pogo straight up and down a good 4 feet into the air like they have spring-loaded feet. They make this noise and they swoop and they sway and they bow and then they do it again.

These things are huge (bigger than a great blue heron and much more beautiful and graceful) and they’re all over the place here. There are a few families, I see them early in the morning back by the cow pasture. Sandhill cranes are monogomous and mate for life, but there’s a lone widower male wandering about. We call him Bob Crane.

Now I understand why everyone thought it was so comical yet sad when Bob fell in love with my brother’s truck. He’d apparently dance for it in the driveway for hours.