a dog date

kingsley, chai, and their favorite neighbor layla in my backyard this weekend.

just another spider

i opened up the back of my pickup this morning to find this spider had made its home on my nets. i couldn't bring myself to destroy it cause that's about the coolest web ever, so we worked around it. an hour or so later i opened up the truck again and there was a katydid caught in the web and three grasshoppers approaching it. there must be something mesmerizing in that zigzag pattern.

massacre canyon

today i was at swanson reservoir, west of mccook and right next to massacre canyon. of course, i had to find out why massacre canyon got that name and this is what i learned.

This narrow canyon feeding into the Republican River valley was the location of the final inter-tribal battle in Nebraska and includes, as well, the remains of an important prehistoric archeological site. On the annual summer bison hunt to the Republican valley in early August 1873, the Pawnee established a camp near present-day Trenton. On August 5 the Pawnee broke camp, traveled down river several miles, and then turned north up Massacre Canyon. During the bison hunt the Pawnee were attacked by over 1,000 Brule and Oglala Sioux warriors. Between 70 and 100 Pawnee were killed or wounded compared to only six Sioux casualties. The Massacre Canyon incident was the final communal bison hunt for the Pawnee, and within three years the entire tribe moved to a permanent reservation in Oklahoma.

The archeological site is a notable example of the Woodland Tradition, which flourished along the Republican and its tributaries from approximately A.D. 500- 1000. The site appears to be the remains of a small village containing hearths, storage or refuse pits, and a burial area.

lost and found

haha! i just got a lost and found email from the secretary at the school of natural resources. the items: a women's pair of work boots, a skull and 'some sort of hip bone'. i love my school.

it's a good thing we rode slow this morning

last night at the crazy eights's show in omaha, i was reminded that my friend linda was having her annual birthday ride this morning. she and john have started a tradition of riding her age in miles every year for her birthday and then celebrating with a big brunch afterwards on their patio. and even though i didn't have my bike, clothes, shoes or a helmet (and only slept for three hours) i made it out for the ride. happy birthday linda! and thanks for loaning me your bike! (i've always loved my bike, but riding 60 miles on an upright commuter with a lazy boy saddle made me realize just how much i looove my bike)

jorge & olif

michael rode his commuter on this morning's birthday ride. it's a dutch import and probably the coolest commuter i've ever seen. i'm sure he's quite a sight riding this to work in the morning wearing a suit and tie. like something you'd see on the sartorialist.

for those of you who've wondered

this is what it means when i say i take spines from my catfish. i remove the bone attached to the front of the pectoral fin. this one was larger than the average fish and required a little surgery (on smaller fish it can be done without using tools). i collect length and weight data on every fish i catch and then use a cross section of the spine to determine age (kind of like seasonal growth rings on a tree) all of this considered together is an indicator of the condition, or health, of the fish. with most fish, age can be determined by looking at growth patterns on the scales, which is much less invasive than the spine technique, but catfish don't have scales so spine removal is the only non-lethal way to age a catfish. and it really isn't lethal. i've surveyed some lakes twice this year and found plenty of fish who'd been under my knife earlier in the season alive and well and functioning just fine with only one pectoral spine.
why do i feel the need to clarify this? i don't know. i guess i don't want to be known as a catfish killa' !

this was going to be my catty girl contest entry

but i decided it was too mean to put in the paper. i submitted this instead and saved the mean one for my personal blog where hopefully its subject will never read and be offended by it.


top 5 things to avoid if you want to date me.

5) confirm a first date with a text message asking if I can drive because you don’t have a car.
4) during first date tell me what an enormous slob you are.
3) also, tell me you don’t have a bank account because you want to stay under the radar and then make a show of sliding a benjamin across the bar.
2) follow up first date by asking me to drive you to the mall.
1) and, when my lack of interest becomes apparent due to all of the above, try to impress me by offering to secure an evening at a local hipster hot spot for just the two of us.

sausage

that was all i could think of when we pulled this net up last friday. it was stuffed full of enormous flathead catfish. we had to drag the net to shore and then work the fish out one at a time because they were packed in so tight they couldn't move. i counted fifteen flatheads in this net, and all of them were at least the size of the one i brought on the boat for a photo! I'm guessing they were about thirty to forty pounds each. it was pretty incredible.

knocked up at branched oak

today was my first time ever waterskiing. if you could call it that. i was able to get up on the skis but couldn't stay there long enough to find my balance. it took me a few tries just to figure out how to get up without doing the splits or planting my face in the water. and by the time i got that down i was afraid everyone's patience was wearing a little thin, so i passed the skis on to janna who showed off her ability to move in and out of the wake and look like she was riding a bike the whole time. next time i swear i'll be even cooler than janna. katie, who makes skiing look graceful, did an impressive slalom and chad did a pretty fantastic cartwheel off the tube. i've got some lovely bruises from my stint on the skis and probably also from flying off the tube at thirty some miles an hour. thanks barb and mick for bringing out your boat, and thanks katie and stannon and janna for bringing me along!