A FOX @ Cypress Bend Resort

THIS POST IS DEDICATED TO SILVER FOX in appreciation for all of her help.

Sitting Red Fox

 
  A while back my husband had a business meeting at Cypress Bend Resort, Many LA, which is located next to the Toledo Bend Reservoir,  the largest lake in Texas and is part of the Texas - Louisiana  boarder (Wikipedia - Toledo Bend Reservoir).   Its on the western boarder but is in the central part of the state near Many, LA .

Cypress Bend Resort

Toledo Bend at Cypress Bend Resort

Toledo Bend looking north on LA-6/TX-21

  We were meeting up with people from Lake Charles, Baton Rouge and Shreveport.  This was a convenient spot for everyone and no one had to drive too many hours to get there.  That and the reason it was off season so they could get really good deals on the room rates.
  It was a beautiful location and in a pretty rural spot.  Its known for its golf course.

 Its also close to Hodges Gardens one of my favorite spots to visit as I wrote about it here - Hodges Garden State Park.  I went with my husband to help with the driving because the next day he had to be in Austin Texas and I had already made plans to help him drive there.  (That's a six hour drive away and he was under time pressure to be there by a certain time.)  My husband has learned when there are long drives like that it really helps to have someone else driving so he can make calls while he is out of the office. 

   While my husband was in his meeting I was taking my time, enjoying the scenery and had a leisurely breakfast.  I couldn't believe it when while I was waiting on the food  a real live FOX walked by my window.  It took a couple of seconds to register that it actually was a fox and not some local dog.  And by Fox I mean the animal kind and not a good looking gal.  As I was watching her I thought of Silver Fox and wondered if she had ever seen a fox like this out in the wilderness.  I wished I could share it with her and then remembered I had my camera in my purse.  I tried to take some pictures but they didn't turn out.  I had given up on the fox when it sat down.  She was close to another window and so I quietly went up to that window.  I tried taking a photo and my flash went off.  I turned my flash off and still tried to take some more photos hoping some of them would turn out. The Fox moved and I thought I had lost it, but then it stopped again,  looked around,  and then started to sneak forward.   I noticed she was sneaking forward to get a piece of bread that had been left for the local wildlife.  The night before we had seen some ducks around the greens and I'm sure that bread was out there for them.  The fox was determined to get the piece of bread (maybe she knew it was for her - who knows but it was great seeing her sneak up and get it.).  As soon as she got it she was out of there.

Red Fox sitting

Red Fox  standing

Red Fox sneaking forward

Red Fox being cautious before grabbing piece of bread

Red Fox getting a piece of bread

It was so neat seeing this real live fox.  As soon as I got home I looked it up on Wikipedia and determined it was a Red Fox,.

I was surfing the web and on June 21 2012,  I saw this article about a fox  that was thought to be extinct was photographed on Mt. Hood in the Oregon live news. What really blew me away with this article was to find out how rare that fox is.
   I realize this red fox here is probably one of the invasive red foxes that has gotten domesticated by living so close to humans but it still it makes me appreciated the fact that I got to see one.  Domesticated or not - it was still pretty wild. 

   

 Muse thought: Again I want to thank Silver Fox.  If I hadn't wanted to share seeing this fox with her I might not have been able to get these photo's. 

  

The azalaes are in bloom early this year

   The azalea flowers are in full bloom at The Norton Art Gallery again.  Last year I wrote about the Norton Art Gallery : here.  This year I was hoping to catch them earlier when they were in full bloom. Unfortunately every thing is blooming a whole lot earlier than it has in the past. Normally we find the week before Easter as the best time to see the azaleas at the gallery.  But this year everything seems to be blooming 3 weeks earlier than normal.  This has thrown my good intentions to the wayside since I wasn't counting on that.
   I went by on Monday and they were spectacular, but when I did it I didn't have my camera and I didn't have a whole lot of time to enjoy them.  I thought I would come back the next day but the weather didn't cooperate.  It seemed like when I had the free time to go it was raining out side.  Now due to all the rain a lot of the blooms have fallen off and I've missed the peak again.  Its still a beautiful place and I love the fact that it has a live feed where I can look at them from home on my computer here: Norton Art Gallery live cam of the flowers .  I hope you check them out too.

  The other day I did get some pictures of the azaleas that were blooming in the area.

Azaleas in bloom

Azaleas in  full bloom

Azaleas blooming in my yard

Muse thought: I hope next year I get to see the azaleas in full bloom at the Norton Art Gallery.

My problems with Captchas or I should say the lack of them

  I've been having a lot of trouble with Captchas, lately.  For years I had no trouble seeing the captchas, typing them and then leaving the comment. But now it seemed like when Google changed its privacy policies all of a sudden I stopped being able to see the captchas.  I noticed it but didn't really care about it until I tried to leave a comment at Hollis In the Company of Plants and Rocks. so I could be included in Accretionary Wedge -43  .  Then it seemed like no matter what I did, I just could not leave the comment.  I got so frustrated. Normally I would have emailed Hollis or tried some other way to contact her but there was no other places I could see where I could go to do so. That left me trying to figure out another way to get my comment in.  It was puzzling to me because I could leave comments at the Accretionary Wedge  Blog spot, but not at Hollis' place. I didn't know if Hollis would look at the AW since the call for post  for 43 wasn't up there yet and that is normally where I would have left it under its call for post comments. I assumed she wasn't going to see it and thought it best to have a back up plan.   I saw where Silver Fox was able to leave hers so I contacted her and was very appreciative of her help.  She left the comment so that Hollis could get it. (THANKS - SILVER FOX)
  I took some pictures so I could show others my problem because when I just tried copying the stuff it wouldn't show up as I had copied and you couldn't see what my problem was.  I couldn't get it all on one picture - I had to take two but - it shows the words not showing up.

Here's my comment:

 And here's the lack of captchs to type

  I like to follow Slobber and Spittle from time to time, and I noticed Cujo359 has troubles with captchas also with this post  More on Captchas. and also about a week ago this post: Even More on Captchas . I wanted to leave a comment and ran into the same problem I was having with Hollis of no visible captchas to type. This time I was determined to leave a comment and I did by listening to the audio until I got one that I could type and it worked.   As seen here ( I was able to copy these).

5 comments:

Expat said...

About the grouse, the problem was a time-out of the bloody proof that I was not a robot and had to try an even longer version to get the comment posted. The grouse was put on as an afterthought before Publish was achieved. On an even earlier comment, about four tries were made, there is/is not a case sensitivity involved e.g. l and I which are only slightly different than 1 (lower case L or upper case i which can be difficult with the number 1), or S and 5 or a displaced or distorted lower case G. After the thirtieth anniversary of turning 39, the eyes aren't what they once were, plus encroaching dyslexia adds a certain spice of misapprehension, sometimes to great personal amusement. OK, I'll try again with the game: "The characters you entered didn't match the word verification. Please try again."

March 13, 2012 11:50 AM

Cujo359 said...

Well, I find the things annoying anyway. I understand most of the design decisions that went into captchas, but they're still a pain. I don't know whether the captchas used here are case-sensitive or not. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure, though, that if it had and I had figured that out, in a few months' time that answer wouldn't have been valid. Making the page bigger usually works. At least, it works as reliably as anything can.

March 13, 2012 12:27 PM

Cujo359 said...

Oh, and thanks for hanging in there..

March 13, 2012 12:28 PM

Ann said...

My problem with captchas is that lately my screen has been blank and there is nothing there to see to type when it says 'Type the two words'. How do you get an image there when there isn't one and you hit the circle thingy and its still blank? The ? just lets you send a comment to google which they do nothing to help you with. So that leaves listening to the audio. This is frustrating because you don't know if you have to type or hit the number keys. You think you got it right and enter it. But it keeps on saying 'the characters you entered didn't match the word verification. Please try again.'I'm having this problem again and wonder how many times I should try before giving up.

March 15, 2012 6:14 AM

Cujo359 said...

Sounds like you're way ahead of me, Ann. I've never even tried that sound thingy. Guess I'll have to one of these days... Meanwhile, I can think of three possible reasons why you aren't seeing captchas. Depending what site you're visiting, they may or may not apply. 1. The domain ("website") that is actually producing the captchas is down, or its domain name isn't coming up when your browser does a name (DNS) query. There's nothing you can do about that one, I'm afraid. I don't think this applies to Blogspot/Google, though. I believe it does its own. The generated images definitely are served up by Google. 2. You don't have Javascript enabled, or if you're running something like the Firefox NoScript extension, you don't have a necessary domain enabled. This one often bites me. 3. Your browser is set up to filter images (unlikely), or there's a web proxy that's blocking them. If you're at home, then it's at least possible you have a web proxy running on your Internet router. If you're at work, your network admins will know whether they're trying to do such a thing. As for what to do about trying to recover, the thing I usually try to do first, assuming what you've tried has failed: * Start up my favorite editor (for me, that's a terminal window and vi), and copy and paste the comment into it. I emphasize the word "copy", because you don't need to remove your comment from the comment form. That's done in Windows by grabbing all the text, then typing Ctrl-C (a single key, not the string). Windows used to have a utility called Notepad that was perfect for this sort of thing, but it's either hard to find or optional on newer Windows. You need a program that won't try to interpret or convert the HTML tags. * Reload the comments page. Sometimes that clears it. If it doesn't, you have a copy of your comment that you can e-mail.

I'm still having troubles leaving comments, but I wanted Cujo359 to know I did see his comments and I do want to thank him for his suggestions.
Thanks Cujo359
I really do appreciate you writing back like you did & I hope you see this. 

So far nothing worked.  I'm too the point of calling the computer guy to see if he can figure it out, but right now its not critical and I've had other things on my agenda that's been consuming most of my time. It will just have to wait for awhile until I have more pressing problems with the computer.

If anyone else has any ideas I'd love to see them.