See You Later Alligator

Recently alligators have been making the news and not just on Animal Planet’s Gator Boys show.

I told you about the gator that went shopping at a Walmart in Apopka, Florida.

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Well now we get  word that one turned up in Chicago, in the airport no less. It must have missed it’s flight and gotten lost in the terminal. A maintenance worker discovered the alligator, which is about a foot long, on Friday in Terminal 3.

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With all this attention to the scaly reptiles I thought I’d see just how often they turn up in the news. Quite a lot it seems and going back a number of years.

A couple of really interesting articles that caught my eye were a bit older. This first one concerns a 66 year old retiree that may have a new career as an alligator wrestler.

In some crazy alternate universe called “Florida,” a mild-mannered retiree dived into a pond and fought a 7-foot gator that was making off with his terrier—and the retiree won. Seems 66-year-old Steve Gustafson was trimming an oak tree at his home in a retirement community when he heard what the Orlando Sentinel calls a “blood curdling yelp.” He turned and saw the gator snatch his dog from the shore of a nearby pond. Gustafson then kind of wigged out.

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“For whatever reason, I don’t know, I just yelled, ‘You’re not going to get her!’ and just leaped on the gator—just like you do some silly belly flop in a pool,” he recalls. “The only difference was I landed on top of a gator.” They wrestled, and Gustafson won. At one point, he tossed the gator deeper into the pond to enable him and little Bounce to make it to shore. Both are fine. The gator, however, was later trapped and is bound for Gustafson’s mantel.

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For years it’s been said that there are alligators in the sewer in New York City. It’s debunked periodically as Urban Myth but in searching for interesting  Alligator stories I found this blurb–
Hold the phone: it’s not a croc; there are alligators in the New York City sewer
system—at least in Queens. The alleged urban legend turned out to be the real
thing when Joyce Hackett pulled over to find a group of passers-by and a cop
staring, agog, at a 2-foot-long young alligator tucked beneath a car at an
intersection curb. “It was like the urban legend washes up from the sewer and
says, ‘What the heck am I doing here?’ and hides under a Datsun,” Hackett
quipped to the New York Times.

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So is it “Fact or Fiction”? The Gator’s aren’t telling.

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An Update from Mayor Stubbs

Hi Guys
I have greatly improved over the last few weeks and is beginning to get back to his old self. I may need another surgery to repair a floating septum bone but otherwise I am doing well. I am watching the elections with great and Feel ready to dispense advice on any issue. I am roaming more freely (around the store) and extra precautions have been taken to assure I remain safe and well while recovering. I may come out of retirement and Claw my way back to the top..
Many thanks for your wonderful support
cat

Wyoming

The last state on the list, #50, is Wyoming. You must have heard the phrase “You’re tried the rest, now try the best” or “Save the Best For Last”. I think Wyoming will fill either of those phrases nicely.

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I was surprised to learn that Wyoming is considered one of the Great Plains States. I don’t know why that surprised me but it did.

I almost made a brief visit to Wyoming when we visited South Dakota. If we’d had more time we would have made the drive to Devil’s Tower. An enormous monolith in northeastern Wyoming, it rises from a fairly flat plain so it can be seen for miles. Northern Plains tribes consider it a sacred place and Steven Spielberg had his aliens land on it in Close encounters of the Third Kind.

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Flowing north through Wyoming ranch country is the Bighorn River. A gentle flowing river winding through fields and pastures until it approaches the Montana Border, there the Bighorn begins to cut one of the grandest canyons in the northern  U.S.  Cutting through an uplift of limestone, it creates a ruggedly beautiful canyon. The river’s Yellowtail Dam backs up the river to create Bighorn Lake with bluffs rising 2250 ft, above the surface.

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While in the neighborhood of the Bighorn Canyon  you can enter Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range where you might be lucky enough to spot a band of wild horses . These wild horses are genetically unique and closely related to the original horses imported by the Spanish Explorers.

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Grand Teton National Park surrounds Jackson hole with some of the youngest, craggiest peaks in the Rocky Mountains.

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Jackson Hole is know for it’s winter skiing and snow sports while the surrounding mountains are known for their majesty. Nearby is an Elk Sanctuary where the migrating animals come to shelter and  calve in the spring. By now you know just the Elk will put this high on my list. But Wyoming only gets better.

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Perhaps the biggest draw in Wyoming is Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is the nation’s oldest and probably best known national park, first established in 1872. This is nature’s extravagant  showcase! The largest of America’s national parks outside of Alaska crosses volcanic plateaus, forested peaks, 2.2 million acres of steaming hot springs, crystalline lakes, thundering waterfalls, and exploding geysers. Over 3 million people visit the park between June and September. Expect traffic jams if you visit during these peak months but also expect to see amazing geothermal curiosities and abundant wildlife.

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If you can tear yourself away from the wonders of Yellowstone, you might want to visit the  Big Horn Mountains and the Medicine Wheel. Three roads climb into the Bighorn Mountains, all designated national scenic by-ways but only one will take you to the Medicine Wheel, an 80 foot-wide wagon wheel of stone said to be over 700 years old.

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Wyoming is the old west. From dude ranches to rodeos and cities with names  like Cody and Cheyenne, Wyoming may be last on my alphabetical list but it certainly doesn’t deserve to be the last state you visit.

My final tally for this time in 2013 is : visited 21, Still to go 29.

NaNoWriMo is Here

Don’t know what it means? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t either. I know it always rolls around in November but I thought it was a challenge to bloggers to post at least one  post a day, no restrictions, no minimum, no maximum, just be dedicated enough to post at least once a day.

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For a part time blogger that can be tough but the point of the exercise is to create a new habit..or so I thought.

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I decided to look it up for once and I found out the NaNoWriMo really stands for National Novel Writing Month! It was started to encourage budding athors to pursue their dream of writing a novel, maybe not the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, but who knows what’s locked inside if you never get started.

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Now reading novels is more my speed than writing them but that doesn’t mean I don’t embrace the idea of a month in which we make an attempt to post daily. One of the quotes I found says NaNoWriMo is all about writing something you want to write, just for you, without worrying about others sitting in judgment, so it’s an exercise in truly expressing yourself — which means, if you think about it, there really isn’t a way to fail!

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Pretty cool idea, huh. I know I try very hard to make my posts interesting. When I don’t have first hand experience I put a lot of research into the subject. Sometimes that takes more time than actually writing the post so when, after all that, no one sees it or reads it, it can get kind of disheartening. I’m sure all of the other bloggers out there feel the same way.

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Oh I know, you’re writing for yourself. You don’t care if no one else reads it. Don’t kid yourself. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t put it out there for everyone to see. You’d have a private diary or journal.

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So hop on the band wagon. See if you can post something every day in November, short or long, good or bad, just post something so you can be a part of NaNoWriMo.

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Happy Writing!