Book reviews

The best reviewer of books with trees in them (and other books as well) is hitting the reviews.

In celebration, I reprint one of the all time greatest book reviews, by Ed Zern,

"Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoorminded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways of controlling vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book can not take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping."

from "Hunting and Fishing from A to Zern".

Cohos

I didn't make it up to Alaska this year for the silver fishing, but I hear the guys that did had a good year. I'm glad they got into them.

Here's a video of my father and I messing around a bit last year, catching fish more or less at will:

Let's be careful out there

I'm cautious around snakes, but not particularly scared of them. Unless he crawls right across my boot, I pretty much always identify a snake, at least as to poisonous/non-poisonous and further than that if I can.

On the other hand, it is a little creepy how little a bush is needed to hide three feet (estimated) of rattler:



Sorry for the shaky and poorly framed video. That guy was nearly three inches across the back of his head and I was pretty distracted checking out all the other weeds in the near vicinity to make sure they didn't harbor another snake. We'd seen another rattler just a couple of hundred yards away, but he was more aggressive or threatened and didn't get his picture taken. Clearly a good evening for reptiles.



Edited to add: there's some interesting information about why & how rattlesnakes rattle in Rigor Vitae's archives.

watched pots

One thing about being gone for a week, you notice some things that have accumulated a bit more. It's now quite dark when the morning's alarm goes off. Another thing, A's garden decided to really put on during our absence. Bunches of tomatoes and nine pounds of green beans, the latter trimmed, blanched, and frozen to brighten up winter meals:







Fifty-five degrees F. this morning. Fall is just about here.

back from

There was water; this is the view from the porch:





The dark stuff in the foreground is turtlegrass, frequented by sea turtles that managed to escape photography.

Various aquatic crabs, including the hermit:



and land crabs by the thousand:



and fish:





So, given the fish, how was the fishing?

Slow, for us:







Fugu, anyone?

More seriously, it was a new place that required some scouting out. About the time we were starting to get some ideas, it was time to leave. We had some success:



Out island of the Bahamas- Long Island. It's really amazing where a long day's travel will take you.

Back from...

Large spiders:



Loud frogs:



Lotsa lizards:



and those critters that dispense with legs for locomotion: