To kill a lionfish

We started this month with a wonderfully warm trip to St Thomas with Zach and Tiffany: 

We did tons of snorkeling.   This was Tiffany’s first time, she did amazingly well:

Zach found some not-so-deep sea not-so-treasury treasure:

And we all found tons of fish.    Pretty, flat bottom, triangular shaped smooth trunkfish:

Spotted drumfish, which look like the letter Y when they are little:

Then they grow up and normalize:

Saw lots of lobster for the first time:

A beautiful florescent blue fish also never seen before:

A couple of big 2 foot,  goofy looking puffer fish:

Squid with colorful see through brains:

And some 3’ sting rays:

We also did some sea kayaking:

But the open waters were pretty rough, so we didn’t venture out of the bay too far, despites Helen’s pleas to land in her favorite remote beech for shell hunting:

Tiffany had fun playing with a small gecko lizard, until it leaped up into her shirt sleeve.   It was quite entertaining to watch them try to get it out:

Near the end of their stay Zach spotted a lion fish, which has an interesting story.    Native to coal reefs in Indonesia, they now are an invasive species along the East coast and the Caribbeans, with 10x the population they natively had.    Based on DNA evidence that shows most of them are decedents from just 3 females, the current theory is they came from 6 lionfish that were washed into the Atlantic in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew smashed a public aquarium.   They are pretty, but the spines are venomous:

They lay thousands of eggs a week year round, other fish can’t eat them, and they eat other fish up to 2/3 their own size!   So they have become a problem, so anyone is allowed to kill them.    At least that was Zach’s theory.   He lobbied hard trying to convince the rest of us to go on a hunt.   Tiffany was the most reticent, I think something to do about the poisonous spines and the ‘no fishing or we put you to death on a bed made of by sea urchins spine’ signs that were all over the place (I forgot the exact wording):

She finally gave in and Zach built himself a poor man’s spear gun:

Unfortunately, the fish had moved on the morning of the hunt, Z&T’s last day there.   The fish was back to the same spot the next day, but I didn’t have the same ambitions (i.e. courage) as Zach, so I left him alone.   We tagged the spot with a marker, so in theory the the local dive shop to take care of him eventually. 

We got back home, after barely plowing our car thru deep snowdrifts in our drive at 2 am, to find the science experiment I had left on the kitchen counter proved that egg yokes, unlike egg whites and potatoes, have built in preservatives and never die (the guy in the corner was a Helen crafted monitor to make sure the egg didn’t cheat):

Today the temperature finally got above freezing for the first time since Christmas.   And we have had tons of snow since then, so it was time for some fun:

This is as high as I could get without a ladder, about 10 feet:

Then I cheated and used my 8 foot step ladder to get it up to about 12 feet:

It was still plenty wide at the top, so I was about to bust out my 20 foot ladder.  But then I noticed he was leaning slightly, then a crack developed, then, within minutes, sadness:

Then a storm blew in, so I’ve put my rebuilding efforts on hold for now.   But think of the glory, a free standing 15 foot snowman  … stay tuned!

Angry Bird

You might guess what this mystery photo is, but you won’t guess how it was made:

The challenge with this photo is where was it taken:

 

We had a quick but nice trip to Montana for xmas.    Mom’s village was as pretty as ever:

With hundreds of interesting characters, like these ice fishermen:

We shared buns with puns (insider joke):

And videos of Nick fishing in a toilet (rescuing his iPhone from deep in the trap with string, hook, and a monster magnet):

Mikaylie earned position of top puzzle solver:

And Zach and Mike as top Grandpa-wool-tie wearers:

And many chessmen fought brave battles:

We drove back home just before a big snowstorm hit.    We woke up the next morning to find our crazy-deck-chair-perching fly-into-the-window-every-minute bird was back:

So we recruited the gorilla to scare-gorilla him away again:

But this time it did not make him a scared bird, it made him an angry bird:

And he continued fighting with his clone in the window.   So then we recruited a canary and an owl.     Now he is even angrier, but so far has been keeping off the chair:

If that doesn’t work, my next strategy is to hire the squirrel.   He is like the Mob Boss of our back yard.   He owns it and chirps at me continusly if I happen to venture out when he is out on the wire.   In this showdown, there was no question the birds would move:

 

We spent New Years with Noah, Nick, and Chloe.    N&C wedding planning has begun.  Here I am demonstrating how to in-correctly wear Helen’s Sari, not because anyone is going to wear it to their wedding, but because it is fun:

We learned how to throw playing cards with high speed and distance:

If you do it right, you can slice fruit and vegetables.  Lacking those (and the accuracy to hit them), we found various targets in the house:

Here we almost sliced off the top of one of our cacti … learned it has white blood:

The object in that first mystery photo was created using these: 

A bunch of those snow crystals were melted, re-frozen, then re-formed using the tongue from one of these:

Like so:

We had lots of good snow to play in:

 

But unfortunately it was too cold to build into massive snowmen, so Nick went swimming instead:

Later he thoroughly embarrassed  me by beating me in a chess game with his eyes closed (he wore me down):

But I got back at him by thoroughly beating him in a ski race (I wore him down):

And we all managed to have a good time skiing without breaking any major bones:

Nick invented new sport … how high and far can you trampoline bounce cheese off your shirt in a ski-lodge:

And then there was rest:

 

If you haven’t figured out that 2nd mystery photo yet, turn your head sidewise.   Local gorilla hanging off one of our basement rafters.