Some of you are old enough to remember Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons and how the narrator with the deep voice told you the title of the episodes…and some of you had a deprived childhood and never got to see Natasha Fatale, Boris Badenov, Snidely Whiplash, fair maiden Nell, and her intrepid rescuer Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.

Anyways…as you saw on the news Hurricane Milton went across Florida on Wednesday and…despite all the doom and gloom you saw on the news about the Storm of the Century, the ever powerful category 5 storm, and the complete inundation of the entire Florida peninsula…it wasn’t and isn’t really that bad, the news always shows you the worst bits they can find because clicks ya know. 

I’m not going to tell you there was no damage, and I’m not going to tell you it was all fairy dust either…just that it’s not nearly as bad as the news might lead you to believe. True…it was a cat 5 way out in the gulf but had weakened to just cat 3 by the time it was close enough to land to matter…and the storm surge wasn’t nearly as high anyplace as the original overhyped news reports predicted. And yes…there was damage along the beaches and on the barrier islands but barrier islands are there to protect the mainland to some extent and personally I don’t think they should be allowed to be developed as that takes away from their purpose…but rich people ya know. In Lee County where we are and south…the major issue was tornadoes from one of the storm bands. There weren’t any super strong ones but there were probably 20ish smaller ones, and those damaged homes…particularly manufactured ones and RVs…and knocked down trees and power lines in some areas. North of us in Charlotte, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties there was a bit more damage but again it isn’t really the catastrophic civilization ending aftermath you’ve been seeing on the news. 

They just can’t help themselves I guess.

Anyways…around our place we got winds of 60ish and maybe 3-4 inches of rain total and the worst parts happened way before landfall. Most of the storm was north of the eye with just a couple of bands around the south side and as the biggest of those came ashore Wednesday morning it spawned the numerous tornadoes and lightning storms we saw. We didn’t even lose power as the local electric cooperative cleared away trees from the feeder lines to our substation at the front of the neighborhood and the lines to the houses are underground. Nonetheless…we had water and food and flashlights and generator gas just in case and Neil put the shutters up and brought the lanai stuff into the garage. Yesterday morning he undid all of that and we’re pretty much back to normal today…and bonus, it’s cool today so we have the doors open for awhile to get some fresh air into the house for the first time in probably 4 months.

The worst part of the storm was that…once again…an October storm screwed up a planned trip for Neil and Connie. They had tickets (actually for this afternoon) to see the Saint Saëns Symphony #3 Organ again at the Philadelphia Symphony…they’ve heard it there before and the organ is quite excellent. They were supposed to leave Wednesday AM (the day the storm got here) for the 2 day drive up and were going to stop by Baltimore to see an old friend for dinner and then by the human kids for a couple of days. However…they didn’t know how bad the storm was going to be and didn’t want to risk losing power and the freezer full of meat in the garage so they canceled the trip. Ian cancelled a trip similar two years back for a performance of the symphony, a visit with some RVing friends in NC, and a visit to the human kids…so we’re not planning any more trips in October. They thought about trying to get plane tickets for yesterday after the storm went past…but both the airports here didn’t open until Friday morning and the performance is at 1400 so they couldn’t get there anyway…bummer. 

Ok, enough of that…let’s get on to the last full day of the workshop in Costa Rica.

The plan for the day was to head about 60ish miles northwest actually off of the Osa Peninsula for a boat ride on the river so off they headed about 0700 up and over the mountains to exit the peninsula then northwest on the famous Pan American Highway a bit before turning back south to the river as near as he can tell it was the Rio Sierpe from looking at the pictures of the boat launch place and the Spanish signs posted there. They then spent a couple hours on the boat going a mile or two up and down the river and off into some side channels in search of critters. After that…lunch at the boat landing and they went back to the resort for the farewell dinner of the workshop.

Amazon Kingfisher

White Rumped Swallow…he got a nice takeoff sequence here. This guy was really fast…these were all at 1/3200 of a second shutter speed to freeze the motion.

Green Heron…exactly the same species as we have in the US. Determined to be likely the female as you’ll see in a bit.

Giant Lubber Grasshopper…about 4 inches in size.

Crab of some sort…google says it’s a Red Land Crab despite the fact that it’s in the water.

Green Kingfisher…and I’m confused as there’s not really any green on it. I guess you could call the almost black part a greenish dark gray but Ima not seein’ it.

American Crocodile with a butterfly near it. The guide said that the butterflies drink the tears of the crocodile as their source for drinking water.

Interesting things found on the net.

Australian population…98% lives in the white area and only 2% in the yellow area.

This is the San Francisco Garter Snake…it’s on the endangered species list and even Neil who thinks there is no such thing as a good snake agrees that this is quite the attractive species.

Cyas.