Hahahahaha hahahahaha hahahahaha

Hark to the whimper of the seagull. / He weeps because he's not an ea-gull. / Suppose you were, you silly seagull. / Could you explain it to your she-gull?

Ogden Nash

Today's blog post is dedicated to the Red Bellied Woodpecker I saw at Corkscrew Swamp. The full name of the place is Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and Blair Audubon Center, but that's a bit of a mouthful.

But as the full name implies, this place is an animal sanctuary. We got in for free since my aunt gave us her family pass, but I contributed two bucks in order to get a guide. According to the guide, the park has raccoons, otters, deer, snakebirds, herons, egrets, alligators, and more. Their website says there are also bears, armadillos, and even bald eagles have been spotted in the land.

These are the animals I got within 200 feet of (there were some large birds overhead, but they were way off in the distance, so don't count):

• A spider
• Some squirrels
• A dove
• Two bees (one was only seen through a telescope)
• Although I didn't see it, a bunch of school kids on a tour said there was a beetle under a leaf. The kids seemed pretty honest, so I'll accept that.
• Some tadpoles (or maybe just some eddies in the water)
  
• And that woodpecker

Only the dove and the woodpecker were nice enough to stand still long enough to be photographed, and only the woodpecker strikes me as even a little unusual. How do I know it's a Red Bellied Woodpecker and not a Pileated Woodpecker, also found in the sanctuary? It's because of the new camera I bought before the trip. It's not anything spectacular by today's standards (or by the standards of the people who showed up to the park with telephoto lenses nearly as long as my arm) but it does have 5x zoom and 12 megapixels. That was enough detail for me to see the pattern on its back in the photo. All I could see in real life was the red patch on its head. (I'd load the photo, but I'm feeling tired.)

Not that I had a bad time at the sanctuary. But the animals were not cooperating. After we left the park, we saw some much more interesting critters, such as the pelicans flying over the water while we dined at Buzz's Lighthouse.

Today, I also learned that your Blockbusters card never goes bad. The last time I rented something from them was probably 2005, when I checked out some Playstation games. Still, after half a decade and 1,300 miles, it's still accepted.

We were looking for something to watch, obviously. Our choice, "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt," was probably not the best one. I won't talk about the film here, but I will complain about the IMDB's entry on it. As with all their films, the category "Plot Keywords" requires mousing over to avoid spoilers. But I don't think the categories of "Remake" or "Remake of an American Film" give anything away.