Wahoo!! Finally the weekend came that I was flying down to Clearwater airport to visit my Mother who lives in
Zephyrhills. Well, I am a white knuckle flyer and the trip started kind of rough, storms everywhere, Tampa airport CLO
SED due to the weather but just across the bay it was OK to land in Clearwater
. Turbulence ( fancy word for airplane tossed like salad)on and off for an hour and a half. Landed !! YAY!! Mother and her neighbor and friend Carmin picked me up, it was all better very quickly and we laughed all the way back t
o her house for 30 plus minutes. Carmin is hysterical, and I am thinking about packing him in a bag and shipping him back to TN. He might object though. Thursday night we listened to torrents of rain all night. Friday we did not get a huge break but Mother and I just toughed it out and went SHOPPING, that always makes it better. We also shopped for Tequila and Hot wings, what's not to like? Came back and made wicked pitcher of margaritas ( medicinal purposes only) that we sipped on
all night while working on those chicken wings. Note to self: MAN I wish there was a Publix local to me because they have the best wings in
multiple flavors, they have like a WING BAR, much better than a salad bar. Saturday has slacked off some we enjoyed a day pretty much without rain just overcast and we packed ourselves off in the Impala to the Tampa Zoo (Lowry's Park Zoo I think is its official name). This zoo has been ranked several years by Parents
magazine and others and the Number one zoo in the country. They have several unique exhibits. Some very very rare animals. I have now seen a whooping crane in the feathers, they have one as part of a captive breeding program. They also had a Florida panther named Lucy, several white tigers, orangutangs ( a new baby one born late last year ) all manner of free flight aviarie
s, two bald eagles loose in the park because they cannot fly due to injuries ever again. Several rhinos ( white and Borneo) a GREAT zoo, incredible habitats and they run a manatee hospital that has treated 157 injured manatees since it opened and rehabbed them for release back to the wild. They had Dingoes and two Red Wolves too. The b
ird at the top left is a male anhinga native to FL but I love these birds and have previously uploaded a photo of a female one here. The male is black and white and the females are brown. Oh and has ANYONE ever seen a "flying fox", well the zoo here has a small colony of the biggest bats in the world and they are handsome beasts. Also some incredible alligators probably weighing over 800 pounds ( some of them). I l
ove alligators. They also had a couple of American crocodiles, they were huge too. They had a huge lorikeet aviary ( I want some of THOSE
birds) where you could walk through and they
could fly down and land on you. OK this monkey on the left I did not get the name of so anyone out there by all means tell me what he is. He was terribly cute though and quite the ham. The big gray bird is a shoebill crane from Africa I believe. The last two birds are the rarely seen together due to the distance Mother Daughter birds, makes it all the sweeter.
Today my mother and I went to a local park, what a great 
place. They have boardwalks several miles along the Lettuce Creek which is boundaried by a cypress swamp. Incredibly scenic despite some intrustions by Florida's state bug "the love bug" gack gack gack, those who know me know I hate and fear bugs and these nasty flying mating creatures are no exception. Coolest things about the park 
we got to see an osprey nest. I've never even seen an osprey in the wild much lest with a
nest that had a couple of fledgelings in it. Second coolest thing alligator in the wild. Where there's one there 
are probably many. The gator was arou
nd 5 feet long on his log next to the creek. Photo of the gator is very good, the ospreys 
were across the creek so you'll have to be happy with what I took. If you are in Tampa you need to take a walk , drive or skip down t o Lettuce Park if you like to see truly "wild life". The squirrels here really are expecting to be fed, this little guy was out of luck because I do not feed wildlife, I do what the sign says.
The photos I took of the actual creek I am pretty in love with may have to enlarge them or see about having one of them painted. There were actual several folks canoeing on this river today ( it was around 88 degrees) and while that looks like so much fun I could not help but think about the 5 foot long alligator not 1/8 of a mile from this spot. I am quite certain he has bigger, older relatives that abide here and I would want a big pontoon boat anywhere there might be an alligator.
