Saturday, November 5, 2011

Much Ado about Nothing

   I called the SC Department of Natural Resources on Thursday to discuss what might be walking down by the river that could knock over trees. Amazingly, I found out we have bears that wander through the green belt in downtown Columbia. Who knew?? I've never seen a bear where the rivers converge downtown but I suppose it's possible. It seems the bear population in South Carolina has exploded over the last 15 years. There are now 1500 bears above Hwy. 11 and 600 over by Myrtle Beach in Horry County. They tend to follow the river basins down into the lower part of the state, especially the males at this time of year. Evidently a bear was sighted twenty miles north of me on the Broad River earlier this summer. A bear supposedly made it all the way to Lexington last year, meandered over to Orangeburg, before heading back to North Carolina in the fall. The biologist I spoke with thought I was very fortunate to have had one walk by, but I believe that is a matter of opinion. Just this year eighty bears were harvested during our ten day bear season. That doesn't sound like they knocked a very big dent in the bear population of South Carolina.

    The  tree incident may have nothing to do with what took the cigarette a week and half ago, or any other time prior to leaving the bigfoot magnet standing up under a plastic cover. My plans are starting to take shape. Bigtex recommended ground cover to get the culprit used to it before I buried the pressure pad for the camera set up that he will be sending shortly for surveillance. I bought a couple of bales of pine straw today to use over by the air conditioner and around the bushes thinking it would look more natural as that is what is used by the landscaper. I can't wait to test out my stealth abilities crawling under the decks dragging my pine straw bales with me as I try to be discreet tomorrow. Bigtex says the sasquatch are a lot smarter than we give them credit  for and they must not see me laying out the straw. I'm dubious, but at this point, I think being super cautious can't hurt even if it feels and sounds ridiculous. I'm waiting for the neighbors to go to church before I do this simply because I can't think of a logical explanation for why I would be under their deck, should they discover me there, on my way to my brother's deck. I hope I don't run into a water moccasin in the process.

   I took Steve Kull's and Stan Courtney's advice and bought a recorder. I don't think it's going to work for what I want to use it for so I will be taking it back. However, I did try it out and got an extremely loud barred owl call the first night of recording at around 1:30am, so loud that I nearly dropped my coffee cup. I had placed the recorder in one of John's potted plants with the display side down in the pot with the microphone sticking up above the lip of the pot. In my opinion, the bird had to be sitting on the deck for it to have picked up so clearly on the recorder. If it had been in a tree  I believe I would have heard it as I sleep with my window open. There was a lot of footsteps which could be the deer herd that comes through here between 10:30pm and midnight. It was either that, or leaves blowing on the deck.  I was very pleased at what I could hear on the recorder as I was concerned about the white noise caused by the rushing water of the river. That about sums it up for what I've been doing the past two weeks. The roller coaster highs and lows are a little hard to take but I think if I keep questioning things, rather than connecting dots to other wrong dots,  I'm on the right track.

1 comment:

  1. Has anything happened recently? I'm from the lowcountry but have land in the upstate where weird things are happening. Thanks
    wwboles4@gmail.com

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