Hoot

 

One recent evening, my wife happened to look out the window and spot a visitor. She at first blamed me thinking I had placed a plastic version of the visitor on a fence post as a joke or a deterrent to our rabbit problem. That is, she thought that until the head swiveled 180 degrees and stared at her. During the springs and falls, when our bedroom window is open, I have heard it talking many a night.

Barred owls are quite common here though I don't see them very often so it is a treat to see one. I am positive that with our mulch, there is more than one mouse living in our garden and as we found out a couple days ago, one rabbit too. My wife was walking between rows of vegetables when she stepped on something that gave a yowl causing her to jump back. A small rabbit took off fleeing the garden and hiding in some shrubbery next to the house so I don't think there was serious damage.

Finally, we heard about a new restaurant in town which was right up our alley. My Alabama brother introduced me years ago to shrimp boils and since then, I do them several times a year up here. We mostly do shrimp with some garden potatoes, onion, corn and some smoked sausage though if I find some crab legs that aren't outrageously priced, I'll throw in some of those too. Although not physically hard to prepare other than carrying a large pot of water to pour down the sink when done, it does take a fare amount of time to prep the ingredients and add them at the appropriate times so everything is done at the same time.

So when a shrimp boil place opened up in town, it seemed like a perfect place to get our shrimp boil without the mess or work involved. We stopped in one day for lunch only to find out their published hours online were incorrect or recently changed and so we tried again a few days later. While the food was very tasty and we enjoyed having the option for more exotic ingredients like crayfish or mussels, it was very expensive. We ordered a standard shrimp boil with a pound of mussels added and shared it between the three of us. We weren't terribly hungry and so it was satisfying without over stuffing us. I'm guessing we might not go back there again. Places that serve very high priced food here in town don't tend to stay open very long here in town, especially a food that can be quite polarizing to tastes such as shellfish.