Caddis Chronicles

No I haven't been fishing in a couple of weeks, so I'm a little distracted..............my wife would tell you I'm always that way, and maybe she's right.

The first "bird" we'll discuss is of the two-legged species. An older bird, who's wife is of the blue haired variety and one that generally takes an obstreporous view of even the slightest change. On Saturday morning, volunteers assisted Trout Unlimited in planting trees along a section of the Musconetcong River as part of their stream restoration project on this fine New Jersey trout stream. There were about 30 of us, mostly unshaven, unshowered middle-aged men like myself, some of whom smelled of the prior night's drinking activities. When all was said and done, we had planted over 300 trees along several hundred yards of stream bank. (Go to the NJ Trout Unlimited link in the right margin for more info and photos of this gnarly crew - and the two youts that had to put up with us.)

So anyways, this old bird calls the state and tells them he is going to kill all the trees we planted.  He also tells one of the volunteers he is going to spray them with Roundup.  Seems he thinks we did a bad thing planting these trees.  He prefers the grass - nevermind that he doesn't own the property - that grass is his and dang-it, them trees don't belong there, even if they stabilize the river bank.

On Sunday morning I did my usual greeting of the day - slowly opening the bedroom curtains to expose the wilderness surrounding the house so as not to frighten any creratures - and there drinking from our pond was a huge, ten-point buck with his harem of does nervously millling about the grass behind him.  By the time I got my camera, he had moved into the woods and out of clear range.