Categories
Critters

Wary Eye

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I walk at the St. Louis Zoo early in the mornings a couple of days a week. If I get there early enough, I beat both the crowds and the heat. It’s an interesting place to visit, too, in the early mornings.

This week I reached the Red Rock region of the zoo just as the keepers were cleaning some of the habitats. In the Antelope Yards, the zoo creates mixed species habitats, typically combining one or two hoofed animals and a couple of different kinds of non-competitive birds. Big birds, too. In a couple of the exhibits, the birds are the largest animal.

When the keepers clean the habitats for some of the smaller animals, they don’t remove the animals or the birds. I’ve never seen more than one keeper at a time cleaning, either. However, in my last walk, as I reached the second of the Speke’s Gazelle habitats, I noticed two people cleaning rather than one. A few minutes watching and I discovered why.

The second of the Speke’s Gazelle habitat has two large Saddleback Storks in with the gazelles. I don’t know exactly how tall these two birds are, but they weren’t much shorter than the keepers cleaning the habitat. They also have very long beaks.

One of the birds was indifferent to the keepers, but the other one followed the keepers about the area, keeping an eye on what they were doing.

Wary Eye 1

As the keepers would clean, they would keep their fronts facing the bird. After a few minutes I had a hard time keeping from laughing, because the scene was incredibly comical⁚ bird oh-so-casually following keepers; keepers always maneuvering themselves so they faced the bird directly.

The bird never made any threatening gestures or sudden moves until the keepers were almost finished. While moving toward the door to leave the habitat, one of the keepers passed the bird and turned her back on it for just a moment. The bird whipped around so fast all I could do was capture a blur of movement with my camera. However, as soon as the keeper turned her front towards the bird again, the stork went back to its casual, seemingly unconcerned, but unnervingly persistent stalking.

Wary Eye 2
Wary Eye 3
Wary Eye 4

Categories
Photography Places

Mississippi Runneth

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Missouri river flooding is enough to raise the Mississippi, though not to the same levels. The water along the St. Louis waterfront rose to the level of the road, but luckily no further. Enough, though, to drown the area where I normally park, as these two pre-flood and flood pictures demonstrate.
Flooded waterfront in St. Louis
Flooded waterfront in St. Louis

The water level was 29 feet above normal levels, which is one hell of a lot of water. However, unlike the Missouri, barge traffic was still moving on the Mississippi. I was lucky to be on the Eads Bridge just as one moved beneath, giving a nice birds eye view.

Barge on River
Casino
Another picture of flooded waterfront

In September, 2006, the city installed a new statue dedicated to the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. It stands 23 feet tall, and is installed just below the Eads Bridge, along the lower portion of the waterfront. All that showed above the water was Captain Lewis, waving his hat triumphantly.

The top view of the statue shows the swirls and eddies in the water. This is an incredibly dangerous river anyway, but with the flooding, if you fell in you wouldn’t be getting out.

Waterfront
Statue from above
Lewis and Clark statue almost underwater

No one was killed with this flood, though the damage was extensive in the north and west. It served as a reminder that Missouri is a state bound and threaded by rivers, and that we live here at the sufferance of nature.

Categories
Environment Weather

Smile You Being Watched

Saturday I drove on Highway 100 to Hermann, crossed the Missouri, and returned using 94. The weather was sunny and mild, which makes it hard to take a flood, seriously. Luckily for the people of Hermann, and all points east, several levees broke along the Missouri further north and west and the level of water didn’t rise to be a threat. Not so luckily for towns such as Big Lake, which ended up under water.

If this had been 1927, I would have been suspicious of the levees breaking. Back then, people from one town would sneak over to the levees protecting homes and fields upriver along the Mississippi and would seek to blow them up in order to protect their own homes. It’s a measure of how far along we’ve come as a people that no community would even consider such action today, even if it makes sense to do such–flooding a smaller community such as Big Lake to protect larger, such as Jefferson City or St. Charles.

At a boat launch along a tributary that flows into the Missouri, I chatted with a fisherman who had come up to check the water levels, and then decided to do a little fishing. Though boats were barred from the Missouri, they were safe along the smaller streams.

boaster on flooded tributory
minor flooding at park
minor flooding at park

Hermann is a charming town with several interesting and old buildings, most in excellent condition. It wasn’t a particularly friendly town, but I imagine the people were stressed from the worries of the flood all through out the week. By the types of shops and the number of hotels, it’s a town that would welcome tourists. It also has a winery, and it looked like restoration of a beautiful riverfront hotel was underway.

The water came up to, and overlapped, the town’s waterfront park and flowed into what was probably a small creek running through the town. The creek’s banks were overflowed, but no homes were damaged or threatened.

Farm fields were inundated all throughout the region. The flooding isn’t a problem to farm land, because it brings new top soil. However, this was yet another delay on the growing season and we’ve had so many already this year.

Along the way on 94, I did see homes that would probably receive some water damage. Most were old mobile homes, with heaps of rusted junk in the yard. One might say, what loss would there be with places such as these, but they were homes for someone–usually someone who can least afford the damage.

flooded farm field

flooded farm fence

flooded flood warning sign

At one spot, where the water threatened to flood over 94, I had stopped by a flood warning sign to take pictures of the river. As I looked down the very short hill, I noticed snakes swimming past–dozens! They had all been drowned out by their ‘homes’ and were trying to find a place to climb up the hill. Even a mild flood has consequences to the native flora and fauna. Consequences both good and bad because such flooding is responsible for the rich soil that keeps the state green, and the animals fat and happy.

Snake swimming for high ground

Old Car

Keep Out

Back in Hermann, across from the waterfront park was a colorful bait shop that was cut off from the road leading to the park. I walked across the tracks and to the front of the building, but couldn’t continue further–there was a locked gate across the path, prevent access to the tracks. The older gentleman who lived there yelled out to a couple of young folk to check his mailbox, because he couldn’t get to it.

The fence had a sign that started with, “Smile you being watch” and all throughout the yard, painted American flags with “God bless USA”.

Hermann flooding

Ye Old Bait Shop

Bait Shop from the Front

I never noticed the levees, as much as I did with this drive. Before, they were part of the landscape–regular hills among the natural, irregular ones. However, when you’re driving along next to a levee that’s protecting the road from rapidly running, huge quantities of water, you notice every single one. What was stunning was realizing that the levees miles away from the roads were built because of the flood of 1993, and that most of the road I traveled on Saturday had been underwater a scant 14 years before.

Categories
Political

Ameren Change of Venue

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Ameren has filed a change of venue in the state lawsuit regarding the Taum Sauk dam break. They want the case tried in Reynolds country, rather than St. Louis. The reasons are obvious: Reynolds County has developed an economic dependency on Ameren.

Despite the extensive natural resource and property damage caused by the Dec. 14, 2005, reservoir breach, Ameren would likely get a fair shake in Reynolds County, said District 1 County Commissioner Doug Warren.

“Other than maybe a handful of people, I think most of the people are behind Ameren in this county,” Warren said.

Ameren paid $732,710 in property taxes in Reynolds County in 2006, said County Assessor Rick Parker. Tax receipts from Ameren represented 62 percent of the tax base supporting the Lesterville school.

I think I have an idea who some of the ‘other than a handful of people’ might be, but perhaps the rest of the people of Reynold’s county need to be reminded of what could have happened if the lower dam hadn’t held: chances are support for a Lesterville school would have been moot.

This is one of the problems with school funding in this state. To provide a good, basic education, each school needs a minimum amount of money, but many rural areas don’t generate enough revenue to meet this minimum need. This puts these rural areas at the mercy of a company like Ameren; who, more and more, is coming across as a strongly manipulative corporate entity, well aware that it can pull chains in Reynolds but not here in St. Louis.

The dam break was an unprecedented act of corporate malfeasance. The company management was aware that the dam was operating in an unsafe manner; but they chose not to forgo the profits that would be lost in order to take the dam offline long enough to fix.

No one was killed, but that’s either because a miracle occurred or we had the most amazing luck: pick one.

What did happen is that something very special that belonged to the people of that area–to the people of the state–was forever destroyed. The replacement might be wonderful in itself, but it will never the same. The community will, also, never be the same.

Ameren is playing a ‘big city folk’ against ‘rural folk’ game, basically playing to the economic fears in that area. Unfortunately, our good governor and state legislature aids and abets this by playing their own games with school budgets.

I feel sorry for the folks in Reynolds County, but I also feel sorry for we in St. Louis, and Missourians in general: justice has been given a price tag by people smug in their assumptions of who will, or won’t, pay it.

Categories
Critters Photography Places

Wintering

Recovered from Wayback Machine.

Time was slipping by to catch the wintering eagles. I haven’t spotted a one on any trip, and the season will be ending in a few weeks. Today, then, I headed to the Lock & Dam 24 in Clarksville at sunrise–supposedly one of the most popular eagle fishing areas.

Clarksville is a very charming little town located directly on the Mississippi. It’s celebrating its Eagle Days this weekend, but today I was the only person looking for the birds in the viewing stand built above the locks. It was a beautiful day: sunny and clear skies and the Mississippi looked deep sapphire blue located just above the confluence of both the Ohio and Missouri. But cold! The winds were so cold and dry, and my eyes teared up so much, when I got back into the car, I had rings of salt around them–something that’s never happened before.

There were flocks of seagulls and other birds, but no eagles.

flock of pelicans, seagulls in river

I was disappointed, but the rest of the view was so nice that the trip was more than worthwhile. I love funky small town, and Clarksville is that. It’s not very big, but many of the buildings have all the gingerbread of their Victorian beginnings, and there’s plenty of places to explore.

photo of Clarksville steeple church

Still, I was after eagles, so I stopped by at the Lock & Dam 25 near Winfield, on the way home.

This Lock & Dam has a park near it, and a slough that parallels the Mississippi river, but the actual locks themselves are behind barbed wire and fairly stringent security.

Locks

I couldn’t see any eagles at first, though I did see white pelicans, the ubiquitous seagulls, and other birds. Finally, after walking around about an hour, off in the distance, I saw one eagle. One, and too far to photograph.

And cold! It was so bloody cold! As nice as it was to be by the river, I was becoming numb. I was getting ready to leave when I noticed a man standing by the bridge over the slough, camera pointed to the trees near my car. I hadn’t even noticed–the eagles were in the trees.

Bald eagle in tree

There were six adults and one juvenile. They would take off every once in while, circle about and fish, though I didn’t manage a photo of any of the birds catching a fish. Actually, I didn’t have a chance to get any really great photos of the eagles. I’m not used to bird photography, and my inexpensive 400mm doesn’t take the best of photos. Add this to the bright light of midday and fast moving birds, and an elegant blur is the most one can hope.

eagle in flight

I am inspired, though, to get better at bird photography, including buying a better 400mm lens someday–maybe even a 600mm (yeah, dream on).

I had a wonderful time taking pictures of the birds. Especially when one headed straight over me, with me frantically trying to adjust the exposure, focus, and take pictures. The following is my favorite of the eagles, even though it’s not that sharp. To me, it shows the essence of eagle. I call it, “I am the fish”.

bald eagle directly overhead

My three favorite photos from the day were not of eagles, though. I like the one I took of the VFW Hall in Clarksville. I am thinking of starting a collection of photos of VFW halls in the various places I visit, because each represents the community in some way. They are the true Americana of America. The day the VFW halls disappear is the day when our country will have lost much of its heritage.

VFW Hall

I also liked two photos I took of seagulls. One was at Clarksville, and features a boat full of fishermen in front of a flock of gulls taking off.

fishing boat in front of trees surrounded by seagulls

The second was at Winfield, and again showed a flock of gulls taking off–backed by a dark and tangled wood. If the eagle represents pride, nothing represents joy of flight more than seagulls.

gulls in flight