Author: Steve

  If you’re looking for a particular bird, it helps to know which habitat that bird favors.   If you look in the right place you can often find plenty of them.   It’s all about knowing where the birds like to be.   Bronzed Cowbirds.      

    I round a corner and to my surprise. There is a gator lying in the trail.   Not a little gator. This is a very big gator.   Usually I see them in the water like this.   It turns out there is water within about a hundred yards of where I came across this beast.  Not knowing that at the time though, I was totally surprised by this find.  I have to say that finding an alligator on the same trail I’m walking, is significantly more intimidating than seeing one in the water from the safety of a boardwalk.   I decided to walk a different trail that day.  

  Watching college football on Saturday, I was amazed to see a kickoff returner signal for a fair-catch at his own 2 yard line.  Why would he do that; make a fair catch at the 2 and pin his team there, instead of letting the ball careen into the end zone for a touchback?  Then the television broadcaster announced that the receiver had elected for a touchback.  What?  How was that a touchback and not a fair catch?   It turns out, over the off-season, they made up a new rule in college football so anywhere inside their own 25 yard line, the kickoff receiver can signal for a fair catch which is then treated as a touchback and the ball comes out to the 25 yard-line; and no one even checked with me, or informed me!   Who knew?   I had to look it up.  This is part of the overall effort to reduce high speed head-on collisions in football.  

  What is wrong with this picture?   Amount charged        $11,000 Medicare approved   $  1,000   What a strange game to claim ten times what you know you can collect.  Do they have to do that to get paid the right amount?  If they had charged $1,000, what they expect to collect, would Medicare have negotiated them down to $100?  If we didn’t have any insurance would this have cost us $11,000?  

  The Redstart I just sent pictures of, is a migrant warbler.   It only passes through Texas briefly in the spring and fall.   There’ll be a quiz on this later.