Frank was just asking ‘what’s new?’

Back in 1995 or so we decided we wanted to have a fish tank.
We did a little research and settled on a 50 gallon freshwater system and got started.
It was cool stocking it with fish and setting up the plants and rock and stuff.
We had plecostomuses (plecostomusi? plecostomooses?) and other catfish, hatchet fish, neon tetras, you name it. We even had some African Dwarf Frogs in there.

We maintained it, cleaned it, added fish when some would pass away. We even nursed some fish back to health after the developed some kind of scale eating fish rot.

During that time we moved twice, the second time being when we bought our house in 1998. The aquarium moved with us and that my friend is no easy task.

After several years our interest and dedication to the tank waned. Fish that passed on to the great beyond were briefly mourned as they were flushed into the hereafter, but were not replaced.

Eventually all that remained were 5 bottom dwellers. Some catfish and a loach.

We were ready to give up being fish tank owners. The problem was that I simply didn’t have the heart to take 5 perfectly healthy fish and just flush them away, but having a 50 gallon tank seemed like overkill for that small number of fish.

I decided to buy a cheap 10 gallon aquarium and transplant the survivors so that they could live out their lives with minimal upkeep in an out of the way corner of the house.

Before long old age took it’s toll and 3 of the five remaining bottom dwellers passed away, leaving us with the loach and a catfish which both survived up until about a year ago.

Now there is just the loach. We call him “Loachy” and on one of his active days he looks like this:

For the most part, though, he tends to literally lay around the bottom of the aquarium on his side looking very dead:

Sometimes, like in the picture above, he is in among his rocks. Other times he’s just laying around out in the open on the white gravel.

Let me be clear, he’s not sick. He’s lazy. This fish has been sleeping or resting on his side since the day we got him oh so many years ago.

He’s the last fish, and when he’s gone we’re done.

I don’t know how long he’s going to live.
I will tell you he was in the original group of fish we bought when we started.

That means he is 11+ years old if you just count the years we’ve owned him.

For all I know he’ll go another 11 years.

Dog on a motorcycle

People often ask me why I always carry a camera with me all the time.

This is why:

Dog on a motorcycle
Click to enlarge

I was sitting at the bar of The Big Top Lounge on Main St. having a drink with some friends. We were just killing some time before the Astros game last night.

I just happened to look out the window and saw this guy waiting at the light at Alabama. I was able to run out the door, camera in hand and snap two quick shots before the light changed and the dynamic duo sped off, presumably to fight crime.

Technically, not a great picture, but in terms of subject matter you just can’t plan for something like this.

Butterfly

Cynthia called to me from the other room. She said the largest Swallowtail butterfly was in our back yard and I should try to get a picture. I was rather dismissive as my camera was not ready and I thought by the time I re-inserted the memory card and got the battery out of the charger it would be gone, or that when I did get outside it would fly away. Cynthia was insistent so I thought I would give it a try.

Not only did it not fly away, it seemed to pose for the camera.


Lens: Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di.
Focal length: 75mm
ISO: 800
Sutter speed: 1/250

Borris Ziggy the spider

Cynthia has always been partially defined by her absolute terror when it comes to spiders. If one was spotted her skin would literally crawl. She could, in some instances, start to hyperventilate.

Something has changed.

Cynthia has taken a great deal of interest in the spider I posted previously.

So much interest, in fact, that we have researched it and found it to be a Venusta Orchard Spider. Cynthia has become rather fond of this little fellow and named him Señor Ocho.

This is actually quite mind boggling. And it gets better.

The other day she went into the front yard to check on Señor Ocho and discovered his web was apparently abandoned. She was actually kinda sad he was gone. As we scanned the area to see if Señor Ocho was anywhere to be found we noticed another web with some striking characteristics. It was also empty but the new web really fascinated Cynthia.

We went inside for awhile. Before the sun set Cynthia took one last look around the yard and, to her delight, spotted Señor Ocho smack dab in the middle of his web where he belonged.

She also noticed that the other web was now inhabited…

This fella is significantly bigger than Señor Ocho and actually kinda creeps me out. But Cynthia got real interested and we did some research on the guy and discovered he was of the genus Argiope. Specifically Argiope aurantia. An orb weaving spider more commonly known as the black-and-yellow argiope or the black-and-yellow garden spider.

Cynthia has named him Ziggy.