Lowfat Hors D'Ouerves For Your Mind

My Dad turned 85 yesterday, which is certainly an achievement, but even better he went out and celebrated his special day by playing a round of golf. What was especially significant was the fact that he played in Massachusetts, where they were getting more snow and freezing temperatures just a couple weeks ago. But the snow is gone and the course is open, so off he went to play the first of dozens of games he'll play before the cold sets in again. Happy Birthday to Dad and Happy Spring to everybody north of the Florida border! You've earned the right to get outside again for the next six months or so and enjoy whatever it is you do. It's been a very long winter for you all!

Last week I had a photo of a college student from Boca Raton who had landed a very large hammerhead shark while fishing at night from a local beach. After I posted my blog, I saw a  video making the news down here that was about a kayak angler fishing in fifty feet of water off the beach. He hooked up with a hammerhead shark estimated to be about eleven feet long and close to five hundred pounds, which dragged him eight miles up the coast before he cut the line. In a 14' kayak! In the video you can actually see how fast this fish is swimming by the speed of the kayak. Besides the fish he had hooked, there was a second large shark following him very closely as he was being towed along. How do you spell CRAZY? To watch this wild ride, go to: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/fisherman-south-florida-sleigh-ride-hooking-hammerhead-shark-article-1.1735078.


Here's a little tidbit for you; according to an article I read this morning, there were wooly mammoths still roaming the Earth while the ancient Egyptians were building the first of the Great Pyramids around 650 BC. I don't know about you, but that's a bet I would have lost. 

And how about the story this week of a 78 year-old man from Tennessee whose son hooked up one of his boats to the back of his pickup truck to carry his Father's casket to the cemetery. The deceased was apparently an avid fisherman and hunter who owned several boats. His five sons thought it fitting that he go to his grave in one of his boats, and so he did. It's true, my Yankee friends, things are done differently down South! And I'm not implying that's a bad thing.

Some of you may have heard about a small island in Japan that is populated by hundreds of feral rabbits. The island is officially named Okunoshima, but the Japanese call it Rabbit Island. The island can only be reached by boat or ferry service, and it is illegal to bring dogs or cats onto the island. The video I saw showed a young Japanese woman being chased by a large group of rabbits up the main street because she had a bag of food to give them. Unbelievable! Now a haven for bunnies, this island was the site of a chemical weapons factory for the Japanese Army during WWII. Talk about a turnaround! For a look at this crazy little place,  check out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561888/When-rabbits-attack-Woman-flees-bunny-stampede-Japans-Rabbit-Island.html.

Any peanut butter addicts out there? Come on, put your hand up if you're one. I know I am, 'crunchy' preferably; I eat way too much for an adult, but I consider it one of life's little pleasures. That's why I laughed when I saw this quote written atop a heavily laden (with peanut butter) piece of bread; "If someone ever tells you that you’re putting too much peanut butter on your bread, stop talking to them. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life." So true!

In one of the wilder stories coming out of Florida, it seems that the Burmese pythons and anacondas living in the Florida Everglades have taken over as the dominant predators in the food chain. They are now eating alligators because they've wiped out most of the animals and birds they were previously dining on. With an estimated 100,000 pythons loose in the Everglades, it seems that they've decimated the local populations of raccoons, rabbits, foxes, opossums, and bobcats, as well as the wood storks that were once so common. Yikes, glad I live a couple hundred miles north of that picnic!

Have a great week! Enjoy the outdoors when you can, and when you can't there's always TV for a little action fix. The Final Four this weekend,  the NHL and NBA are wrapping up their regular seasons and Major League Baseball' s back in full swing; a sports junkie's smorgasbord. Don't like sports? Oops!

 

As always, please share this to your timelines or forward to your friends if you enjoy. Thanks!                           Mark T. Bradbury, Author     Literary Associate of Little Pond Publishing Digital Publisher | eBooks | Marketing   For information on my eBook, Serpent's Curse, please follow the link: http://littlepondpublishing.com/book-titles/serpents-curse-by-mark-t-bradbury/   Serpent's Curse is now available as a paperback from Amazon.com . Here's your chance to buy it if you haven't already! Sorry for the delay!