Florida - Day 12 - visiting friends in Lake Wales

Lake Glenada RV Resort, Avon Park

Saturday, 28 January 2023

That's Jimmy in front.  You can see what his eye looks like now.
I live in utter dread that while they're horsing around up here they'll claw the TV screen.

today's route

As I was driving north from Avon Park, I saw a group of floats lining up for a parade and wished I could stay for it.  Local parades are fun.

I stopped for gasoline - $3.53/gallon.  Gas is really expensive here in Florida.  I thought it was supposed to be paradise here, at least that's the reason Gov. DeSantis gives for so many people moving to the state.  In the 12 months beginning June 2020, Florida led the country in number of US residents moving here: almost 221,000.  (But during that same period, more people died here than were born.)  Don't know if the Census Bureau has more current data yet.

I drove back north through Frostproof and continued a few more miles to Lake Wales and the home of an old friend of mine.  I met Dem when we both worked for the Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation about a hundred years ago.  I'd managed to find him because he's a lawyer.  I've learned to look for lawyer friends in the membership lists of the various state bars, with the trick being you have to know which states to look at.  I knew Dem once lived in Florida and that his mom also lived here, and I thought with her being about my mom's age maybe he'd done as I did and moved back here to take care of her.  Whether he did or not (I never got around to asking), he was indeed in the Florida Bar list.  So several emails and phone calls later, I was able to meet him and his wife Gail.

Our visit lasted for hours and I'm afraid I may have talked too much - I'm not used to talking to people any more and tend not to know when to stop chattering.  They're both heavily involved in a family literacy program that sounded very rewarding and very successful, though also very challenging because it depends on grant money that's not always easy to find.

When I finally got ready to leave, we saw 3 Sandhill Cranes in the neighbor's front yard.  They walked across to Dem and Gail's yard, where they jumped/flew and turned around in the air many times, sometimes all 3 birds together.  I'd read somewhere that they do this sort of thing in courtship, but I hadn't realized both males and females would do it.  At least, I'm assuming there were both sexes there, though they looked alike to me.  I assume that because why would 3 males do that little dance without a female around?  Whatever it was, it was really neat to see.  Dem and Gail said they often saw cranes around.

We stopped again in Frostproof, "The Friendly City" (if you vote Republican), to walk in that park again, and then went on back to the campground.  This time I ran into a real problem when I tried to park the RV.  The next-door neighbor, Jeff, thought he was mad at me for the way I parked yesterday, which he said was completely contrary to park rules and taking up part of the site allocated to him.  I apologized but said I'd never talked to anybody in the office and it was the neighbors down the street who helped park me like I did.  From what he said, the park rules would make it impossible for me to park the RV in this site - and he agreed that previous folks had had a lot of trouble, because of the awkward location of that big tree.

In lieu of an apology, I asked his advice about the water (don't hook up, he urged me, because the water system is likely not safe - private system, old, pipes break and don't get flushed out after repairs), and where on earth a dumpster was because I hadn't been able to find one.  By the time we were  through with all that he was practically mellow.  ("A soft answer turns away wrath.")

Once all that got straightened out, I thought we were good for the evening - and then Bucky got out.

He was out from about 6:50 until 10:10.  Miles past my bedtime.  Luckily he mostly stayed under the RV, but several times he tried to make a break for the mobile home on the other side, so I had to be constantly vigilant.  After a while Jeff's wife Kathy came out and helped me and brought a wad of turkey meat to try to tempt Bucky to come out.

He spent much of his time on top of one or another of the pieces of the RV's workings underneath, making it hard to see him sometimes and worrying me that he'd get stuck up in some inaccessible cranny.  Meanwhile, mosquitos started buzzing around in my ear and generally making me feel insecure.  How can there be mosquitos in January?  It's so rude.

I spent 3 hours crouching, kneeling, lying on the ground, walking around and around the RV trying to find him and to cut him off from other escape routes.  It was exhausting.  And eventually Kathy pointed out Bucky was looking like he was getting tired too.

But he wouldn't come out and he wouldn't come out - except to make another break for it to the neighbor's.  Then back to the protection of the RV's undercarriage.  And then the miracle happened.

Jimmy woke up and started their standard nighttime play routine, which involves galloping up and down the RV, up and down, jumping on any piece of furniture that happens to be handy and then back down to gallop some more.  This is not exactly the pitter-patter of little feet here.  Despite being only 5 pounds or so, Jimmy sounds like the thundering hordes.  

Well, Bucky could hear all this galloping no problem and knew exactly what it was because he's usually part of the horde.  And he came out from under the RV and stood on his hind legs to look through the screen door.  But when I'd come close, he'd run back underneath again.  I'd've left the door open except I was afraid Jimmy would run outside too.  

Finally I went inside myself, sitting in the seat by the door so I could keep an eye on Jimmy, and leaving the screen door open.  And finally finally Bucky came inside.  And when he was well and truly in, I closed the screen door. 

And he made a beeline for the litter box.  Apparently in all that time he spent on the ground under the RV, eating grass and rolling around, it never occurred to him it could be used as a bathroom.  So weird.  But he was in.

I went next door to thank Kathy and let her know he was inside, and then I tried to clean up all the little kitty treats and other food that we'd thrown around while trying to get him out.  And then it took me almost another hour to finally settle down enough to get some sleep.  I'd been worried the entire time he was out and that's a lot of worrying.