Remember when

[Sean Hayden]

Smashed frogs filled the streets and you could always count on having several bee hives nearby to pester with a stick? Where have all the critters gone? Maybe I'm just enraged by a manipulative media, but I swear it's an event when I see a bee these days, and in 10 years my son has only ever brought me one frog.

[laklak]

I think the Chinee ate them all.

[Rum]

I blame Obama.

Amphibians are the victim of acid rain I believe. *sigh* Bees of Monsanto apparently *sigh*

[laklak]

It's illegal immigration, I tell you! All our toads have been eaten by Cuban tree frogs, and our native lizards supplanted by Caribbean green anoles. Don't get me started on hybrid mutant pythons.

[JimC]

Smashed frogs filled the streets and you could always count on having several bee hives nearby to pester with a stick? Where have all the critters gone? Maybe I'm just enraged by a manipulative media, but I swear it's an event when I see a bee these days, and in 10 years my son has only ever brought me one frog.

Our garden is full of bees - Bron chooses plants that they like...

[Seabass]

I wonder how long it will be before the only animals left are humans and ones we like to eat...

[laklak]

Eventually just us and the cockroaches.

[Sean Hayden]

Smashed frogs filled the streets and you could always count on having several bee hives nearby to pester with a stick? Where have all the critters gone? Maybe I'm just enraged by a manipulative media, but I swear it's an event when I see a bee these days, and in 10 years my son has only ever brought me one frog.

Our garden is full of bees - Bron chooses plants that they like...

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the plant life around here hasn't changed much. There just aren't as many bees.

[laklak]

It's changed a fuckton around here. Back in the 60s and 70s there were huge swaths of undeveloped land, even on the barrier islands. There were farms, orange groves, cattle ranches, and lots and lots and lots of mangroves and swamp. Then Disney came in, and that fucking rat jump started the Rape of Florida. Now it's wall to wall highrises on the islands, and bloody ginormous "planned communities" stretching 30 miles inland, all full of pasty fat retired fuckers after Their Little Slice of the Florida Goodlife after slaving away in some rustbelt shithole for 60 years. Guess I can't blame them really, I'd wish them dead but it wouldn't do any good. They just keep coming, that's what they do, that's all they do. All that grassland and wild foliage has been replaced with Floritam sod and whatever plants Home Depot Garden Center sells. Nobody even pays attention when another sleazy asshole developer announces yet another 10,000 home planned community. They've completely destroyed the state. Didn't matter who the fuck was in Tallahassee, Democrat of Republican, they all immediately got down on all fours and presented their personal orifices to the developers and corporate vampires. I'm surprised there's a fucking bee or lizard or turtle left.

[Tero]

I’ve had two species of frogs routinely in wetlands. We have invasive bullfrogs brought ny French fur trappers. They could go. They eat bany shorebirds whole.

I do insects with 4th graders but we let bees fly off from the net. Never had a wasp in a net so far.

[JimC]

Smashed frogs filled the streets and you could always count on having several bee hives nearby to pester with a stick? Where have all the critters gone? Maybe I'm just enraged by a manipulative media, but I swear it's an event when I see a bee these days, and in 10 years my son has only ever brought me one frog.

Our garden is full of bees - Bron chooses plants that they like...

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the plant life around here hasn't changed much. There just aren't as many bees.

There's a real movement here to encourage bees by planting a variety of plants with flowers that bees like, with flowering seasons spread out through most of the year. It certainly helps to have lots of bees in your garden if you want to grow bee-pollinated food plants...

Perhaps you could look up what will work in your area. The more people who actively do such planting, the more bees there should be...

[Sean Hayden]

Good idea, I looked up how to get my yard registered as a wild habitat before, it sounded like a fun goal to shoot for....

Thank you for your interest in becoming recognized as having a Certified Texas Wildscape.
Due to the lack of staff and a current hiring freeze our agency is not currently able process, review, and approve new "Texas Wildscapes" or "Best of Texas Backyard Habitat Certification" applications.
We apologize for this inconvenience.

No excuse not to try for bees though!

[Brian Peacock]

We honest Morlocks must save ourselves, take to the mines and develop underground communities insulated from the environmental devastations to come. Those decadent liberal Elois can fend for themselves topside.

[Hermit]

Thanks, laklak, you bastard. I am not generally one to look back through rose-tinted glasses, but you sent me back somewhere that gives me the sads now.

If you drove south from Sydney for about 230 kilometres, you (used to) finish up in a small, sleepy fishing town. That would be Ulladulla. Just north of the pub is a golf course smack bang against some coastal rocks, and then there's this rocky point. The point possessed supernatural powers. The sea might be flat everywhere else, but with its magic it would generate the glassiest swells with long shoulders. Trouble was, you might have to share the lefts with other surfers. Half a dozen of them were no problem, but if the crowd grew to more than a dozen - yes this did happen - it was time to move on.

So, back into the Kombi, chug down the highway for another 20 kilometres, then hang a left into an unsigned, narrow dirt road. Five kilometres later it terminated at the south end of a small, unnamed beach. After accidentality pulling the no camping sign off the tree it was nailed on you'd pitch your tent on the small clearing of the headland, spread the wetsuit over a bush to let it dry, gather some wood, start a small fire, brew a cup of tea and look forward to the morning.

If the beach break is chopped up you'd walk to The Basin, a couple of hundred metres to the south. I don't know if that was its name, but that's what I and my mate called it. One end of the basin is officially named Bawley Point. I don't know why anyone bothered naming it. It is an insignificant feature and nobody had ever lived close to it. But we loved it. Being protected from the southerlies it would remain glassy when everywhere else got chopped up and mushy. Best of all, we pretty much had the spot to ourselves almost all the time, not counting the porpoises and the rare visiting shark.

One day we walked up to the point to be greeted by a mass of white survey pegs hammered or drilled into the ground. Well, here comes the fucking neighbourhood. That's the last time I visited the place. According to Google Maps, Bawley Point looks like this now:

[laklak]

I was in elementary school on Anna Maria island in the 6th grade. 5 room school house, 5th and 6th grade were taught in one room by the same teacher. It had three tiny towns on it, with scrub pine forest and mangroves in between. No grocery story, one paved road, the beaches were basically deserted except for one area that had some public restrooms. We spent our days exploring the bay and Gulf on a 10 foot skiff with a 2 hp outboard. It was as close to paradise as an 11- 12 year old boy can get. This is it now: