Florida Roads

I love cows. There, I've admitted it to you all. I don't love them in the way that you want to hug or kiss something but I love looking at them. I like the different colors, the sizes, the young, the bulls; I just like cows. My grandfather had cows when I was young and every summer we would wake up with him before daylight to drive out to the farm. Our job was counting the cows. He said it was to make sure they were all there but now that I'm older I realize it was probably just to give us something to do.

The other big job while we were cow gazing was to name the newborn calves. Granted the next day we barely remembered their names and would often re-name them something different. But it was fun and it passed the time and even now I still enjoy looking at cows. Cows remind me of home, of my grandfather, and of summer days in South Carolina.

While searching for Whooping Cranes in Central Florida last week I couldn't help but take pictures of all the lovely cows and the fields and of the horses. Sometimes a simple farm image takes me right back to South Carolina.

While looking for Whooping Cranes we found quite a few Sandhill Cranes walking about. Sometimes they were solitary but often they were in pairs.

Not everything seen by the road was alive. We found this nice flock of Black Vultures enjoying a dead, probably car-hit, feral pig. Feral Pigs are found in every County in Florida.

Just before the Turnpike and our departure from the lazy Florida side-roads, I saw a snake cross the road. The Black Racer was small and I flipped the car around hoping to get a better look but the snake had already made its way into the grass. However a dead Black Racer was found only a few feet away.

I miss driving the country roads, the livestocks, the farms, even the interesting animals dead or alive that can be found right out the car window. It sure beats the traffic, the buildings, the interstate, and the irritated drivers that I deal with on a daily basis. Maybe I'm starting to understand why most of my high school classmates still live in the same small town in South Carolina where the country roads are at every turn and life is just a little bit slower.