Garden Orangutan!

Time to freshen up the blog!  We racked up a new follower today (nu nu nu nineteen)!

Let's get to the meat of the post...

That's right folks.  Someone has trumped the Garden Yeti with a tree sitting Orangutan.  And this beast is large.  Only issue is that you have to fly to Atlanta to see it.

Thanks to Rob, Katy, Dirk, Kim, Eric & Jody, the rest of the weekend is classified except for the best documentary on the planet.  White lightning highly recommended for the event. It truly is a sight to behold and that's a true story!

If you do fly to ATL, you may get a treat if it's snowing out.  Seems the baggage dudes made a snow penis on the bag ramp outside of our plane.  They did throw a snowball at my window (and hit it spot on) after I took the photo.  Hilarious.

Cute southern animal photos...

Ferris:

Ethel:

Uno:

Howard:

Nothing Like Flying Into The Donut Hole!

Or maybe that's actually a Bagel.

Boy Oh Boy.  Things could be worse but, our flight to Hotlanta was cancelled.  Re-booked an hour and 15 minutes later (not bad).  We'll see if they don't cancel this one too.

Roma In Havana And The Blair Audubon Society

Thank God for cars in the great state of Florida.

We headed out yesterday to grab some grub and see where Dad volunteers at the food bank at the Guadalupe Social Services in Immokalee FL.

We hit the Roma In Havana Restaurant for some Cuban and Italian fare.  Mom had a Minestrone soup and some rice and black beans (multicultural lunch).  Susan had the Tilapia salad and a side of black beans.  Dad had the Italian fare, the mini Stromboli (rather large actually).  And I had the Cuban sandwich no pickles.

Served us well for our trek.

 

Then we hit the food bank.  Dad is doing some great work here and it never ceases to amaze how desperate the life of a migrant worker really is.

Seems that some of these fellows share a trailer at the meager price of $100/month each and crowd in around 8 to make the payments.  So, $800/month for a condemned unit seems like a fair price for the lord of the community. To make matters worse, the freeze hit the vegetable crop and killed it.  Thus, there are very few dollars to pay "the man".

Oh, and if you have some extra cash, there is a Casino right across the road from the squalor.  The great American Dream as we say.

Next up, The Blair Audubon Society, which is in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.  Great walk and we saw some great scenery and... wait for it... Birds!

Here are some photos from the walk...

Snake in a hole...

Danger!

Air Plant...

First Hawk Sighting...

Tree Ribbit...

Tiny Oil Slick...

Strangling Vines...

Spanish Moss...

Swampaliscious...

Great Blue Heron...

Anhinga...

Fern type plant...

Purple Berries...

Berries redux...

And to top it all off, pictures from the sunset from the folks place...

Estero Florida Walk About

Turned out to be a nice day in Florida despite not being super warm.

Headed out for a walk with the Mamacita and took some photos...

Speaking Of Silver....

Once Susan got back from taking the pup for a walk, she convinced me to head out to Silver Falls before we met up with our pals Bill & Maria from Silverton.

Awesome day and awesome sights had by all.  Here it goes...

Falls Video....

Struts Around Towns

Jacq and Josie for Doppelganger week on Facebook...

Holy mercury batman, the silver hit 60 yesterday and DC was supposed to get 28 inches of fine powder. A veritable global warming denial and affirmation fest!

Pics from the amazing morning while Susan took the Hugo out for a walk about...

Koi Bog Wandering

Made it up to see Marilyn yesterday and it was a great day out.

Here is a shot of the Koi pond and the fish are starting to wake up from the winter. It's been so warm for January this year with ZERO days at or below freezing.

 

One more awesome shot of Mt. Hood...

 

We also walked the Hugonot and took some neighborhood shots.  He seems to be doing fine but, we were worried he was not drinking enough water.  The vet advised us to give him chicken broth to hydrate him and he went for that like flies on fecal matter.  We are optimistic at this point.

The Good, The Bad & The Hugo

Poor little guy.  He ate something (we think it was stuffing from a duck dog toy) that caused some issues with his GI tract.  The good news was we did not have to open him up to fix it!

However, as a side line, we discovered via the x-rays, that he has a congenital spinal issue.  His T12 vertebra is malformed and could cause some issues in the future.  Certainly arthritis down the road and at worst, he could break his back.  The good news here is it does not seem to bother him for now.

As you can see from the x-rays, around his mid back, there is a crook caused by the bad disc...

Kinda cool to see the pooches bones, just wish his spine was in better shape.

The vet said he should curtail his jumping and if anyone knows Hugo, this is what he does best (next to snuggling of course).  It would be way hard to keep him from launching off the back deck.  She is also looking into possible proactive treatments we could possibly do (fuse the disc in question) to solve the issue and reduce the worst potential effects.  We shall see.

Here is a more random picture of an animal mouth visual device...

Possible lesson here is keep your teeth clean!