The Critter Home

Flour Bluff, Texas

Herds of running amuck mullet were everywhere when the truck got me to Packery Channel this afternoon. There were fish of some sort slashing into the gaggles of bait fish often everywhere you looked. This will be fun was my thought. My thought was smacks gone nuts. It was hurry up time from the excitement of the impending fish catching.
Finally the fumbling arthritic fingers got the line strung into the guides on the rod. Next a jig head was clumsily tied onto the line. Now get casting. Several casts later it was obvious my offering was not right. Ok. Back to the truck and grab an assortment of lures. Stuff them in my pocket, grab drinking water and start working the shoreline. It is a long shoreline to work.
After a couple of hours of thrashing the water to a froth, still no fish and getting very hot. Time for a new endeavor. AH HA. A nice long walk on the shoreline out to the end of the jetty. This would be my second time to go out there. Twas not to be.

By the time my feet got me to the start of the jetty, my water supply was half gone. An Old Fat Man absolute rule is when you take the drink that makes the water half gone you turn around right then. Period end of thoughts. You turn around and start back. That rule has saved me more than once in the past.

On the way out to the jetty was this bit of brush on the left of the path. If you look carefully you can see the critter home under the bush.
For those who are vision challenged as my eyes have become here is the close-up of the critter home.
That little devil has a good spot. The fishermen probably provide plenty to eat for the critter between food dropped and bait left on the surface of the concrete blocks. It is doubtful that the snakes in the grasses about fifty feet away try to bother it either. If a snake showed itself, the hordes of seabirds would converge on the snake and make short work of it. That is something I have seen a couple of times and the birds are just plain mean and competent at snake killing.

On the way back there was some sea turtles feeding along the seashore of the channel. They are very elusive for getting pictures of them. They come up very gently, stick their head up for some air and slide back down hardly making a ripple. By the time they were spotted on the surface you had about three seconds to aim, hit the shutter and wait for the incredibly slow digital camera to take the picture. This following picture was the result of 28 attempts at “getting the shot”. They were about sixteen inches long.
The last drops of water from my bottle were consumed about a hundred yards of hot dry soft sand from the truck. The second bottle in the truck was quickly a large amount less full when my hands got hold of it. After the A/C of the truck had cooled me down, it was realized that it had been a great time of trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.