--Karle Wilson
(Mrs. Thomas Ellis Baker)
Starting to sun up and dry out when I got up at an embarrassing nine-o'clock. Could it really have been that late, or was that when we got back from the morning dog walk?
Ed was up earlier--he got a picture of the wild hogs that were tearing up big swathes of ground all over the park. Also, he noticed all of the minnows in the minnow bucket had vanished.Not died, vanished. And the bucket looked undisturbed. Sure, he'd left the lid ajar so the aerator hose could slip in. But there was no way the minnows could have jumped out that little slit of a space. Some clever creature of the night had patiently extracted every single minnow.
We popped over to a bait shop and bought some more. The agenda for the day was fishing at the pier, so fishing we did. Before long the sun came out and we proceeded to bake in the 80-degree heat. The tops of my feet--in sandals for the first time this year--were scorched.
No dogs were allowed on the fishing pier, so I set up a chair and minimal box of tackle at the water's edge. After putting a line out of catfish, I put a lure on my lightweight rod and walked along the edge, casting for crappie. I caught the tiniest of tiny bluegill while spending an inordinate amount of time trying to untangle my lure from the weeds at the edge of the water. At one point I climbed down the few rocks at the edge to get it loose, which resulted in an embarrassing slip on the rocks and fall on my well-padded thighs. Luckily there weren't many people around to notice.
The bird count was small since I couldn't include the annoying singing birds in the tops of the trees that I couldn't even glimpse. There were indigo buntings, phoebees, cormorants, a mockingbird, blue jays, cardinals all over the place. And it was vulture heaven! Most of the birds roosted over on a few dead trees across an inlet of the lake, but when I was walking back to the campsite I looked up through the trees and saw a lone black vulture up close. Its neck looked just like the picture in the bird book--wish I'd gotten a picture.
I took a lunch break with the dogs and finally got to make use of our picnic table--the dirt underneath was powdery mud but the top and seats had dried out. Ed stuck with the pursuit of wild game, along with a man and woman (married?) who occupied either end of the pier and seemed to be there to stay--they were established when we arrived and didn't leave until who knows when? Then I went back and fished some more, which was a little stupid on such a hot, sunny day. I'd have been better off taking a nap.
When the sun finally started to set, the fish started to bite. And people started to arrive on the pier, including a rather large, noisy extended family with children. They were nice folks, but the racket! no matter--I caught a crappie.
Embarrassingly, I didn't know what it was until the people told me. I haven't caught a crappy since childhood and I'd forgotten their mouths were so big. But you can tell by the body shape--rounded like a bluegill. Ed measured it and put it in the live well.
After that things began to wind down for me. The sun set and I grew chilly. I was still getting bites--including mosquito bites--but the final joykiller was the ticks. Word got around in the world of tick that a human body was sitting in a lawn chair on the lake shore, with bare ankles!
At about eight o'clock I left to get a jacket and flashlight, then went back for my gear. I tried to leave the dogs in the RV--no way. Zack barked so loud I imagined people could hear him down at the pier. And the poor neighbors! I gave up, went back and got the dogs, and trudged back at the pace of a crippled Shih-tzu. At least somebody got a lot of exercise that day.
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