Whitetail Deer Antler Shed, Lovila Iowa

I was walking though a field the other day and found this little, chewed up beauty.  It was partially buried in the dirt and a lot of it has been chewed up by rodents.  Although this little antler is in rough shape I'm still happy to have found the thing.  Every day is a treasure hunt, friends.

Memorial Day American Toad.

can you see the worm he's about to eat?

An obnoxious and prickly bush was recently cut down and abolished from the garden.  Along with the piles of dirt (from the uprooting) came piles of worms.  Along with the piles of worms came an American toad.  He came to fill his belly with worm meat...yum.  I was able to watch this guy attack and gulp down two earthworms.  I tried to coax him into eating a third (as you can see in the top photo) but he wasn't having any of that.  Too many human smells.

Their camouflage is pretty impressive, wouldn't you agree? 

Train Track Nickel and Dime Smashing.

Want some wholesome/dangerous fun.  Here's the rules.

1. Find a rural train track. If you are in the city/suburbs and the track has a third rail....back off.    Electrocution is imminent.
2. Look both ways to make sure a Union Pacific isn't going to hit you in the face.
3. Place your change on the rail and make note of where you put the stuff.  The change will move a bit when the train smashes them.
4. Return in the morning.  You'll have a bunch of wonderful trinkets.  Also, your money is now useless.  

Yup.  I've been a busy girl.  Today I'm thinking about smashing a quarter, a Susan b. Anthony, a gold dollar with stupid Andrew Jackson on it, and maybe a fork.  Happy smashing, folks. 

A beautiful garden.

 I'm finding a lot of peace in my garden.  All of the colors fill me with an automatic calm.  I suppose you could compare my garden to a Valium....or a fish tank.  Whatever you choose to compare it to, I'm sure that all this gardening is lowering my blood pressure. 

 Here are some of the peppers that were planted.  Three different kinds!  We'll see if they even grow with all of our rabbit activity.  The jerk store garden rabbits don't even eat the peppers, they just bite off the tiny bud and drop it on the ground.  I swear they are just doing this to make me mad.  Oh, well.  I have to remember that they are just rabbits and are not capable of doing something "just to piss me off."

an odd blog contest. winner gets a drawing.

Alrighty, this is probably the oddest blog contests I've ever heard of but here it goes.  I found these hip bones in a field a week ago.  I don't know what kind of animal they came from and I'm curious to find out.  Curious enough to offer one of you fine readers a drawing if you answer correctly.  If you ask nice I'll even send you these disgusting bones!

This is a gross contest.  Good luck.  Happy Friday.

Bumble bees and bad luck.

not the greatest photo but i took it.  all will be explained.

Alright, so it was raining pretty bad the other day.  I enjoy watching the rain so I opened up the screen door and proceeded to admire the weather. Before I could even ogle,  three bumblebees tried to find refuge in my kitchen.  I wasn't about to let that happen and slammed the screen door as fast as I could.  The bees were wet and could hardly fly. One found shelter on the lighting fixture above my head (on the other side of the screen door, of course and in the photo).  Once the rain stopped the bees left.  Remarkable creatures, really.

Ever since I refused entry to those three bees my pod has been having terrible trouble with the creatures.  The day after it rained K was stung on the hand.  The next day Mudd came shooting up the stairs and jumped straight onto my lap.  He had a stinger in his lip.  The dumb fucker tried to eat one.

And the icing on the cake?  Last night I was walking around, checking out the garden and I felt a prick and a BURN on the bottom of my naked foot.  Damn, those stings burn and ache and hurt.  I'm swollen and have to spend the rest of the week walking around on a bee sting on the arch of my foot.  Boo.  Oh, yeah.  My other foot has glass stuck in it.

One foot full of glass, one foot full of venom.  Shoot, that might be a good title for a book.

Iowa Channel Catfish and a common carp.

I did a lot of fishing on Saturday.  This strikes me as odd because three years ago I would have never agreed to do so.  Not because I thought it was wrong (unless people are catching endangered fish or are using explosives as bait) but because I used to be completely scared of fish.  As a matter of fact, one of the first blog entries I made on FLUX BIOTA was about my fear of fish.  I must still be a bit scared because neither of those hands holding those fish are mine.  I still don't like to touch them.

The fish up top is a tiny, tiny channel catfish. I caught about 5 of those and they were set free. Channel Catfish are known for their slimy texture, delicious taste, and ability to stab you with their fins.  This is why I don't touch fish, unseen dangers like tiny spear barbs on their fins or poison!  The fish on the bottom is an introduced species called the Common Carp.  They are gross and are related to the goldfish you kept in a bowl when you were a kid.  They are not as evil as the bighead carp, silver carp, or black carp that are currently destroying the ecosystem of the Des Moines river.

EDIT (may 29th): the common carp is not invasive to iowa.

Save the drama for your Llama.

handsome llama #1.

handsome llama #2.

I was driving around and happened upon these "handsome" Llamas.I don't have much to say about the encounter...except I laughed quite a bit.  Enjoy.

A Smashed Penny from Minnestoa!

My good buddy, Big T, just got back from a school trip.  Where were they? Minneapolis.  Damn, I love that city.  And since T's a good guy he already knew that I collect smashed pennies. He brought me back one that prominently features a moose and another with a wolf.  That made me a happy Jane.  I love animal themed smashed pennies.

Oyster Mushroom?

There is a pile of elm wood on the side of the garage.  It's good to have a stockpile of wood.  Its even better when your stockpile begins to grow edible mushrooms.

These oyster mushrooms were found growing from the fire fodder on Cinco de Mayo.  They were quickly plucked and eaten after they were fried in butter for five minutes.  Delicious!

A jog. Some pyrite (more fool's gold), and a deer tooth.

I'm not a health nut but have been trying monitor my less then admirable qualities.  I've quit smoking and after a rage filled month of horrendous mood swings I think I'm on the up and up.  I've cut down on fast food and have even jogged the entirety of a 5K without stopping to walk.  I was sore for three days.

So, just to keep on with the keeping on, I went for a jog with Mudd after work.  It was super humid and uncomfortable but we did it, we jogged a mile.  During our cool down walk/stretch I found some more fool's gold on the ground amongst the limestone.  This time I found pieces of pyrite that were separated from the limestone and they were shaped like tiny cubes.  I was pumped when I found them.  I also found a deer tooth...not as cool but it went into my pocket.

Have a good weekend, jerks.

Wood tick, paranoia.

I feel like to only time I'm inspired to write short narratives is when something has gone terribly wrong.  Of course this isn't always the case...but it has been for the past month or so.

If you are a contemporary of mine and were asked to write a short list of things that disgust me it would go something like this

1. The sound that hands make when they rub across carpet (the sound of snow pants swooshing together is equally nauseating)


2. Asian carp (look it up on youtube, I'm horribly afraid and disgusted by these animals and I'm sure there will be a long blog post about how much I hate them in the near future)

3.  TICKS!

I hate ticks.  Hate them.  There are no reasons for their existence.  Wood ticks are horrible parasites that will crawl up your leg unannounced, attach to a warm part of your body, and then begin stealthily leeching the blood from your unaware veins.  They are disgusting, blood filled, disease carriers and everyone should duct tape their pants to their legs to prevent an encounter.

With that being said.  There was an encounter last night.

This spring has been a ticky bastard and I've had several encounters.  For some reason I let my guard down last night and played fetch with Mudd in tall grass.  I threw a stick, he joyfully leaped like a deer into the weeds, and fetched the stick.  This went on for some time. 

Eventually, the dog grew tired of the game and trotted inside for a Jane-cuddle-session.  As I calmly pat the dog and watched tv I noticed a bump on his neck.  A TICK!  Of course I couldn't touch it so I screamed for Kyle to come and yank the tick off Mudd's neck and cut it's head off with an exact-o blade.  I thought the ordeal was over after the beheading.  I pet the dog some more.  Another tick and the same reaction from Jane.

So, we sit down and tick check the dog.  My heart is pounding.  Kyle found a tick on his ear and tried to grab it but the tick literally disappeared into thin air.  Of course, I'm freaking out because the bastard was somewhere loose in the carpet.  I was asked to "chill out" because a loose tick is going to find blood.  Ten minutes late I heard Kyle chuckling as he watched a tick crawl up his hand.  THE TICK FOUND KYLE!!!  I was horrified.

All in all we found 7 horrible ticks on a 15 pound rat terrier.  It was terrible.  Booooo.