Bourbon Street Bare - Hurricane Isaac Invades Louisiana



Bourbon Street Bare

Hurricane Isaac visits Louisiana almost seven years, to the day, after Katrina. Unlike the monster hurricane that struck New Orleans in 2005, Isaac is only a Category One, likely bringing lots of rain, storm surge, and flooding, but not the tremendous wind speeds of Katrina. Most of the residents of New Orleans stayed home to ride out the storm. Good luck, Big Easy!

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Bird Deaths in Edmond Oklahoma

Crow in Eric's Backyard

Edmond Crow

I’m a bird watcher and so is wife Marilyn, our backyard rich in birdbaths and feeders. Since I moved to Edmond, I’ve marveled at the species of bird in the area. One thing that always amazed me was the many crows that live near my house. Crows  are social creatures and you rarely see one alone. They are intelligent and I’ve heard you can even teach them to speak.

A month or so ago, Marilyn went out our front door and noticed a crow in distress. It had fallen to the ground and was struggling to stand. Not long after, she found its body. When I got home, I disposed of it, noting that the bird looked young and healthy—except that it was dead.

Since I’ve lived in Edmond, I can’t remember not seeing lots of crows. Since the bird’s death, I’ve only seen one in our neighborhood. Tonight, when I was leaving a local watering hole, I noticed a crow on the grass in front of my car. As I watched, it walked in circles on the ground, its mouth open wide. When I approached it, it didn’t fly away. I didn’t wait around to see it keel over and die.

My first thought was someone must be poisoning the crows in Edmond, and maybe not just the crows. Thinking about it though, I can’t recall seeing so few birds in the area since I moved here. Is there an environmental pollutant killing our bird population, or someone poisoning them, or maybe some bird influenza rapidly taking down the avian population. I wonder. Am I the only one that’s noticed this?

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Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial at Night

Here is a night pic of the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial backdropped by the Devon Tower.

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Mavis' RC Soft Custard - a weekend recipe

Here’s a recipe my mom used to make for my brother Jack and me. We both loved RC’s. Growing up without air-conditioning in hot and humid Louisiana, the cool custard hit the spot on a hot summer’s day. The recipe came from a cookbook she had called Favorite Recipes, compiled by the Pilot Club of Shreveport. Many of the recipes were attributed to someone. This one was not.

Ingredients 

·         1 bottle Royal Crown cola

·         2 eggs

·         2 Tbsp. sugar

·         1/8 tsp. salt

Directions 

Add sugar and salt to eggs and beat. Add the bottle of Royal Crown cola and cook over hot water until slightly thickened, stirring frequently. Pour into custard cups and chill in refrigerator until set. Serve and enjoy.

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Of Moths and Men

My garage is partially connected to my utility room and stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. My kitty Buttercup has a bed on top of my old Triumph TR4 and usually sleeps there every night. I have a lamp with a small wattage bulb that is always on.

Tonight, when I was giving Buttercup a kitty treat, I was greeted by what I at first thought was a large butterfly. It had gotten into the garage somehow and was fluttering around, desperately looking for a way out.

The creature was dark, and the more I looked at it, the more I began to think it was a bat. It was that large. Finally, it landed on a rafter and didn't move. I went into the kitchen, returning with a flashlight to see what I was dealing with.

The creature was neither butterfly nor bat. It was, in fact, a moth. A very large moth. I returned to the kitchen for a paper towel.

Very gingerly, I surrounded the moth and took it outside, unfolding the paper on the shrubbery, beneath a floodlight. It was then I saw the creature was even bigger than I had originally thought, with a wingspan of at least six inches. I kid you not! Shutting the garage door, I returned to the kitchen for my camera.

The moth was still on the paper towel when I returned with my camera but it gave me not even a second to point, focus and shoot. Fluttering off the paper towel, it passed in front of the floodlight, giving me one last glorious view, then fluttered away into the darkness and disappeared.

Even without my picture, I felt honored that I had witnessed such a large, beautiful and stately creature, and glad that I hadn't hurt it in my quest to rescue it from its captivity. I found a pic of an identical moth on the Web.

All of Eric's books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on his iBook author pages, and his Website.