Today is my day off from Domino's. It has been pretty nice so far. It was convenient for me to have my day off during the tropical storm... brought back memories of free days off that weren't scheduled due to storms and hurricanes.
This is also the first storm in our new house, which is directly across from a pond that had dried up from our recent two-month long drought. So, I decided to blog again because I want to remember today and last night.
The storm hit last night. It wasn't anything major for Gainesville. I drove home from work and the roads were very wet. I even hydroplaned a few times on some of the roads. All of Gainesville's creeks were full and flowing again, and I got to drive past just about all of them in my trip from Main St to Fort Clarke BLVD along NW 16th AVE. It was a cool, slow drive.
When I pulled into my neighborhood, I had already noticed a lot of death on the roads... more road kill than usual, but in the slow streets of my neighborhood it was crazy. There were frogs jumping everywhere! The ones that weren't jumping around on the road were already road kill. After I smooshed several dozen I realized that I should drive really, really slowly to give them a chance to hop out of the way. That worked out pretty well, but I am thinking that I probably still killed several dozen more.
When I got home Joy was in the garage and was opening the garage door up for me. She was happy and excited, and her ears were covered. Thinking nothing of it I quickly turned off the car and got out and heard how loud these frogs were. They were everywhere! It was deafening. I can still hear the occasional frog now, but there are dozens of beautiful, tropical frog eating birds in our neighborhood and specifically in our pond. They cleaned up our street in under an hour early this morning, so the frog carcasses weren't the problem that I thought that they would be. Then they started working on the feast that was everywhere else in our forsesty neighborhood that has about half a dozen retention ponds.
These birds are gorgeous, and the tail end of the tropical storm is also really beautiful to watch, so Joy and I spent some time at the front of our house and in the garage just talking and watching the scene in our pond area. This is what we loved about our house, and now that the pond is back, it is even cooler than we had expected.
One of the thoughts that I had during all of this is that there really is a "better" reason for the question, "Why does this happen?" that people often ask of hurricanes. They really do jump-start the life cycle in Florida. The night of the storm the frogs came out in such numbers that it seemed to be a plague of frogs. At first we thought they were mating, but after running around in the rain and investigating a little closer with Joy, we decided that they weren't really doing much mating. So, we thought that they were just happy that the rain was back and having a big party to celebrate and thank God for the rain.
The egrets, cranes, and other tropical birds came this morning. They have been eating frogs all day. There are still tons of frogs around too. It's crazy. Then I imagine the gators will be coming out at dusk tonight and dawn tomorrow to eat a few of the birds.
In Florida, this same jump-starting happens when there is a fire. Some of our trees can't even germinate without fire, and many of the birds that live among these trees live and plan their lives around the fires that happen all the time in Florida.
I love Florida and how all of nature works together in a harmony of cause and effect relationships. The sad part is that I live here, and more and more people continue to migrate here and interfere with the harmony.
Today is my day off from Domino's. It has been pretty nice so far. It was convenient for me to have my day off during the tropical storm... brought back memories of free days off that weren't scheduled due to storms and hurricanes.
This is also the first storm in our new house, which is directly across from a pond that had dried up from our recent two-month long drought. So, I decided to blog again because I want to remember today and last night.
The storm hit last night. It wasn't anything major for Gainesville. I drove home from work and the roads were very wet. I even hydroplaned a few times on some of the roads. All of Gainesville's creeks were full and flowing again, and I got to drive past just about all of them in my trip from Main St to Fort Clarke BLVD along NW 16th AVE. It was a cool, slow drive.
When I pulled into my neighborhood, I had already noticed a lot of death on the roads... more road kill than usual, but in the slow streets of my neighborhood it was crazy. There were frogs jumping everywhere! The ones that weren't jumping around on the road were already road kill. After I smooshed several dozen I realized that I should drive really, really slowly to give them a chance to hop out of the way. That worked out pretty well, but I am thinking that I probably still killed several dozen more.
When I got home Joy was in the garage and was opening the garage door up for me. She was happy and excited, and her ears were covered. Thinking nothing of it I quickly turned off the car and got out and heard how loud these frogs were. They were everywhere! It was deafening. I can still hear the occasional frog now, but there are dozens of beautiful, tropical frog eating birds in our neighborhood and specifically in our pond. They cleaned up our street in under an hour early this morning, so the frog carcasses weren't the problem that I thought that they would be. Then they started working on the feast that was everywhere else in our forsesty neighborhood that has about half a dozen retention ponds.
These birds are gorgeous, and the tail end of the tropical storm is also really beautiful to watch, so Joy and I spent some time at the front of our house and in the garage just talking and watching the scene in our pond area. This is what we loved about our house, and now that the pond is back, it is even cooler than we had expected.
One of the thoughts that I had during all of this is that there really is a "better" reason for the question, "Why does this happen?" that people often ask of hurricanes. They really do jump-start the life cycle in Florida. The night of the storm the frogs came out in such numbers that it seemed to be a plague of frogs. At first we thought they were mating, but after running around in the rain and investigating a little closer with Joy, we decided that they weren't really doing much mating. So, we thought that they were just happy that the rain was back and having a big party to celebrate and thank God for the rain.
The egrets, cranes, and other tropical birds came this morning. They have been eating frogs all day. There are still tons of frogs around too. It's crazy. Then I imagine the gators will be coming out at dusk tonight and dawn tomorrow to eat a few of the birds.
In Florida, this same jump-starting happens when there is a fire. Some of our trees can't even germinate without fire, and many of the birds that live among these trees live and plan their lives around the fires that happen all the time in Florida.
I love Florida and how all of nature works together in a harmony of cause and effect relationships. The sad part is that I live here, and more and more people continue to migrate here and interfere with the harmony.