skeeter

Yep, the LLC designation says it all......Tax write-off !

We've been seeing this large flock of Cormorants hanging around for over a week now and the surprising long stay-over of the migrating White Pelicans this year. Yesterday, before the heavens opened, we saw the Pelicans and the Cormorants fishing in the same area almost like they were cooperating with one another....that is until some Bass boaters decided to run right through the middle of them ! Anyone else recall the problems the Cormorants caused to the Fishery on Lake Erie ? I hope they are gone before our Bass get on the beds because those birds can and will pick-off any Male guarding a bed.

Strange how this rainfall has varied in a short distance " as the crow flies". 1.07 " in my Davis Vantage VUE weather station yesterday for total rainfall over here at Baxter. I saw a lot of heavy rain on the radar just to my SE but 2" is a lot of variance in that small distance. Yep, I'm showing 32 degrees this morning. Crazy April weather !

Springfield is actually closing Campbell down to traffic from Sunshine south to a small side street located South of BP. No parking at BP itself and you'll have to ride some kind of shuttle buses from off-site parking to their pay-to-attend event.

I'm still trying to find out how long a landowner has to wait for a MDC trapping team to arrive after making a complaint through channels.

Did anyone see or hear our usual huge flocks of Snowgeese travelling South since about November that you always hear before you see them way up high ? We always have had at least four or five mornings during the migration where there are hundreds of them in large flocks sitting out in the middle of the Lake before they decided to continue their journey. We missed them and our Neighbors have said the same thing about not seeing or hearing them.

Several years back we watched a Red Fox creep up from below our retaining wall and pounce on a big Grey Squirrel. There was a battle-royal between the two that went on for at least 30 seconds that looked like one of these special-effects movies where they speed the film up. It ended with the Fox shaking his head as the Squirrel ran off and up the nearest tree. Now if I could just import a few more Black Snakes to thin out these danged five-lined Ground Squirrels ( chipmunks ) that dig, dig, dig under and into everything !

Raptors usually perch on high ambush or lookout points to save the energy expended in soaring especially if winds are not favorable. We see this behavior with Hawks of all sizes on phone poles along roadsides and our resident and Winter-visitor Bald Eagles along the Lakeshore. What has become very common is seeing the numbers of dead raptor-birds on roadsides where they are so intent on diving on their prey they take no notice of oncoming cars/trucks. Have to agree with the ridiculous numbers of loose dogs and there is a pack of about a dozen that runs around the Joe Bald area on TR that has residents very concerned since Fido running in a pack is not the same animal exhibiting typical domestic Dog behavior ! Cats ? Where to start....whether they are feral or house cats turned loose they are natural born killers and are very good at it. Bunnies, songbirds...you name it and they will get it. People are posting a lot of Bobcat pictures on Facebook groups and it used to be you only rarely saw a Bobcat since they were nocturnal.....not any more ! Predator populations have exploded and the wild turkey population around the Tri-Lakes area has become few and far between. When we would fish Wolf Den in the Spring those bowl-shaped hills and ridges around the cove would be ringing with Gobblers sounding off. Haven't heard one there or anywhere else in years !

Our three Irish Setters were ALL "lap dogs". Our 198 lb. English Mastiff tried to be but only did a heavy lean on your legs when seated. darn, do I ever miss all of them !

I hope this biting incident is not connected to the recent attack that the Media reported happened in Reeds Spring where several people were bitten by dogs and the one Woman had to be airlifted to a Springfield Hospital due to the severity of her injuries. Southern Stone County Fire Protection District responds to dog attack on Thanksgiving (ky3.com) Earlier this week there were several reports on the TRL Facebook Group from over in the Shell Knob area about a pack of at least 30 dogs running loose and several people off Y highway around or near Cape Fair chimed in with reports of another large group of dogs running loose around that area. Sounds like it's time to start thinning them out !

How about 6.45 inches on my Vantage Vue weather station at Baxter ! That was in a little less than 24 hours beginning yesterday morning about sunrise. Good old fashioned Ozark Frog Strangler that surely cleared the leaves out of the gulleys. !

We saw the boats transporting the injured victim come past the house with their flashing, emergency lights on and wondered what had gone on since a Tournament had just left Baxter. Wondered if there had been a boating accident involving the tournament since it's still pretty dark at that time of morning and then there's always the Fall-season fog. Saw the two boats with cabins leave afterwards and head down-lake and had never seen either one of them before. What a darn shame. From Dock-in-it's observations it sounds like the driver didn't swing wide enough around the shallow point across from Wolfpen and hit the shore.

I see you use the same feeders we do, the Perky Pet Grand Master. We thought putting out six of them was a lot then read that you use 17 of them....WOW! I guess you know Perky Pet ceased production of this feeder and they were running a clearance sale on them on Amazon ? I had to order two new ones because I disassemble the little yellow button in the center of each feeding-port to clean the mold out from under it and many times the flower does not re-attach correctly to the "bayonet-style" mount on the base and leaks or the plastic cracks off. Just this morning I discovered the first Praying Mantis sitting on one feeder in an attempt to ambush a Hummer and removed him/it...permanently. Most of our flock seems to have departed for points South but I always leave a feeder up until much later in the year and am always surprised by how many stragglers you will see stopping by. Good to see the absence of the Red Dye and wish I could get that across to a neighbor that it is totally unneeded and harmful.

Between 22:00 and 01:00 last night there were far more Bass boats on the water by Baxter than what there were "play-boats" during the day. In and out of the mouth of the 2 Indians where they hit the White, every bank had two and three boats on it and they all started frantically flashing their lights every few minutes when a new boat tried moving in on their spot. Then, along comes some Inboard-powered, straight-exhaust speed-freak doing a conservatively estimated 85 mph right up the middle of Big Indian. I was starting to wonder if there was free Beer or that the word got out the fish were jumping in the boat back in Little or Big Indian. Never ever seen it that busy and crowded in over 30 years.

File complaints with Missouri Attorney General's Office and the Springfield Better Business Bureau detailing the dates you made the numerous phone calls, time of day of the calls , time spent on the phone calls, name of Departments and, if you can, the names of the employees you spoke with. Be as specific as possible and detail oriented. It will go on their record as a consumer complaint which will help not only you but others too. I'm not familiar enough with Federal statutes to know if this action comes under F.D.I.C. regulations or not but surely this Academy Bank is insured by the FDIC and they may have violated some law(s) by refusing a depositor's withdrawal request.....OR....they might be getting close to insolvency and did not have the funds available and are trying to cover it up.

It seems the State has huge bundles of cash to spend on new, larger boats for WP. Instead, they should be hiring more Officers and putting them on this Lake to observe the crazies seen every weekend. It seems every year the boats grow and grow in size and this is quickly going down the path that LOZ went down years ago. There's a Fakebook group called "Table Rock Lake group" where people daring to complain or comment about the ridiculous growth in the size of boats are chastised by the Group's Admin. and warned that it is a no-no to say anything about these Battleships in a Bathtub we are seeing. You are not alone with your concerns but shhhhh or you'll get censored.

On our Davis Instruments Vantage Vue weather station at Baxter area, 21.06" for the year...so far, 4.06" for the recent storm total including another .65" since midnight.

They claim on F'book they are "helping" the Bass during the spawn by ridding the Lake of the rough fish that suck all the eggs off of Bass' nests. No idea if that is true or not but I hope they are able to differentiate Bass from their targeted rough fish at night. Looks like this heavy rain and storms is going to reduce water clarity.

Last time these extreme low temperatures lasted this long the Threadfin Shad kill was HUGE ! And these lows are setting new records. -7 F this morning at Baxter. Walking out on a Dock it looked like the bottom was covered in Silver Dollars from all the dead Shad. The Lake is steaming like a cooling Lake does in mid-Winter at a Coal-fired Power Plant.

6 Inches at Baxter and the Ramp is Snow covered over a layer of Ice from three days of the freezing rain/drizzle. -6 F here this A.M. 2/16/2021. Forecast is for 3 to 5 inches more Snow tonight and tomorrow. Local side roads have not been touched. Correction: just dropped to -7 F.

I'm certainly no expert but it seems common sense that a large part of the reason for not vaccinating more people is the astounding requirement that the Pfizer mRNA COVID vaccine has to be kept at 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to remain effective. When Pfizer first announced the vaccine success, the highly-respected non-profit, academic medical center "Mayo Clinic" immediately announced that even they had no refrigerated facilities that could maintain that incredibly low temperature. That has obviously been since rectified but not everywhere else ! By the way, Thank You President Trump for the "Warp Speed" vaccine program you initiated and thank you for getting major manufacturing Companies to agree to divert their production facilities to making the life-saving Ventilators that were in such short supply.

So in other words, the Editors running the KC Star are huge liars just like the ones running the St. Louis Post-Disgrace....why am I not surprised ? Create fear and confusion in order sell more Newspapers and achieve higher TV ratings ! Thank you and others on here with insider information for debunking the Fake News !

Caught plenty of Drum at LOZ years ago but never heard of any in TR until this picture. Oddly, I was reading this just before seeing the pic: AGFC Finds Freshwater Drum in Norfork Lake – Hometown Daily News (hometowndailynewsarchives.com)

There must be more than one boat in use by whomever or whatever is doing this. The boat we watched go back and forth and in circular and wildly varied "S-shaped" patterns for a couple of hours had a fully enclosed, permanent cabin structure on it and all the glass in the cabin was a very dark tint. No person was ever visible. Can't be sure but it seemed like it had a few more and different-looking antennas on the bow of the boat and the roof of the cabin. Thanks for posting the picture.

We typically see the White Pelicans on their way through during Spring/Fall migrations but only very briefly. Saw an unusually large flock of about 35 birds circling above and beyond the neighboring Ridge to land over in the Little Indian Creek arm two weeks ago during that cold, rainy spell. They fly in a different formation than the huge flocks of Snow Geese that pass over since they kind of "stack-up" in single file, one bird behind the one in front and just a little higher. I've never personally witnessed them hanging around...maybe others have ?