Mississippi Gulf Coast: Great Beaches, Better Prices

Mississippi Gulf Coast: Great Beaches, Better Prices

As those with whom I am closest are already aware, in early 2012 I made a fairly significant move from Covington, Louisiana to Long Beach, Mississippi. The move was motivated by a desire to reside literally ON the beach, and have the luxury of walking outside and fishing, sunbathing, etc.

For the first six months or so following the move, I was commuting to-and-from Covington from Long Beach, a round-trip that comes out to approximately three hours per day.

Needless to say, it wasn't long before I'd grown weary of the excessive drive time, not to mention all of the lost productivity that comes with it. I decided within weeks of the time I began residing along the coast that I would eventually be taking my talents and my business interests to Long Beach. A little over half a year later, that process is well underway, a commercially-zoned piece of property secured in downtown Long Beach to go with the beachfront condominium in which I've been residing was the missing piece. I am presently in the process of moving all of the inventory and equipment from Covington to my new "home town".

Long Beach is everything I had hoped it would be and then some. While the fishing isn't always great, it's not altogether bad either. There are days when the fish are biting and days when they're not.

Likewise, there are days when the beaches are full of local talent (and/or tourists), and days when the only females on the beach are their with their husbands and/or children.

The change has done me some good. The increased sun exposure has led to significant weight loss on my behalf, which is likely the result of increased testosterone levels, a little-known side-effect of men soaking up the sun's natural rays on a regular and consistent basis.

About a month ago, a beautiful girl came into my life from literally out-of-nowhere, and as much as I tried to fight it I fell in love with her immediately. She couldn't help but comment repeatedly during our first couple of outings together that the physical attraction she felt for me was unlike anything she's ever experienced. While I may otherwise overlook such remarks as pure flattery, I've seen myself in the mirror lately and quite frankly I can see where she's coming from.

The sun exposure coupled with stress and a lot of exercise has me in the best shape I've been in since high school, and the combination of factors has me as happy as I've ever been in my 30 years on earth. I just thank God for the past six weeks (and in a more general sense the past 7 months), and hope and pray that the string of recent blessings continues.

Oh, one other thing worthy of mention is the fact that Long Beach is effectively a ghost town where the pre-Katrina homeowners cannot give away their property, so anyone looking to snatch up a nice house, apartment or condo on or near the beach may want to take a close look at Long Beach. I did, and as of today it ranks among the very best decisions I've ever made.

Help Restore Louisiana's Wetlands & Coastal Ecosystem

I recently created a petition to the United States Congress (House and Senate) and the U.S. President, asking the respective bodies and the individuals in positions of leadership within those respective bodies to please commit to restoring Louisiana's wetlands and coastal ecosystem.

You can read (and sign) the petition here:  https://www.change.org/petitions/restore-louisianas-wetlands-and-coastal-ecosystem

I would very much appreciate it if anyone and everyone reading this would take just a moment to check out the petition, and if you agree with it, please also sign it. It's pretty hard to envision a scenario in which anyone would have any major objections to this goal.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Fun Zappers Hand-Held Bug Zappers Make Killing Insects Fun

I moved into a new apartment a little over a month ago. The apartment is a dream-come-true, however that is not to say it is not without its own share of problematic issues.

Before I get to the drawbacks of living here, I'd like to state a few of the positives in order to put everything into perspective. First, the building is basically a one-room apartment that was converted from a boat house into a livable space. Two rooms if you count the bathroom. It literally overlooks a tributary of the Tchefuncte River near Covington, Louisiana.

The balcony (and the majority of the apartment) was literally built out over the water. What used to be a boat house was built on top of a garage with slightly over half of the building hovering over a boat slip (a human-dug extension of the river/canal on private property that exists for the purpose of parking a resident boat). The part that is out over the water is supported by reinforced wooden pilings.

The problem is that with all of this wood (specifically the shed, the bottom-side of the floor of the apartment overlooking the boat slip, and the inside of the apartment above the ceiling), wasps and hornets have found the place to be a haven of sorts, with an ideal environment for them to build their nests. With all of the wood that is sheltered from the weather but technically not inside the living area of the apartment, the building is capable of supporting several dozen wasp and hornet nests simultaneously.

With the river below (and in particular its banks), the wasps have an ample food supply to support as many colonies as they decide to found.

Needless to say, I wasn't just going to sit back and allow these pesky insects to dominate my domicile. No, regardless of where I choose to reside, I am the master of my domain, and I refuse to allow a pack of stinging flies to take that away from me. Before they had even had a chance to sting me, I had already committed to fighting back and attempting to reclaim what was now my property.

While I was committed to winning this war by any means necessary, if I could achieve my objectives without the use of toxic chemicals and poisons such as wasp and hornet killer, which inevitably are inhaled by the person spraying them more often than I was comfortable with.

A traditional bug zapper wouldn't work, because these were some smart insects I was dealing with, and I just couldn't envision wasps and hornets flying into a hanging bug zapper in such numbers that they were eventually eradicated from the property. I needed a more personalized approach.

Luckily for me (not so much so for the wasps), I came upon a device known as a Fun Zapper. Fun Zappers are battery-powered, electronic tennis racquet bug zappers that can be swung like a tennis racquet in the pursuit of killing bugs. Within moments of laying eyes upon the device, I knew the Fun Zapper was the solution to my wasp problem.

One lazy Saturday I made it a point to kill as many of the flying, stinging insects as I possible could. Between myself and a friend who was there assisting, we killed at least 44 hornets and wasps, and largely rid the place of the pesky flies. Now, my apartment is peaceful again.

I can finally step outside on my balcony without being greeted by angry wasps who get up in my face and demand to know who I am and what my business is inside of their territory. My apartment is now my territory, and I owe it all to this convenient and fun electric tennis racquet bug zapper.

Tchefuncte River Website Now Live

It is my pleasure to be able to announce today that TchefuncteRiver.com, a website about the Tchefuncte River, is now live.  The site was build in just a few days, but from the moment it debuted was already the best and most in-depth resource about the Tchefuncte.

The Tchefuncte River is a small but wide river in southeast Louisiana that runs through the border between Washington and Tangipahoa Parishes, continuing on through St. Tammany Parish all the way to the Lakefront in Madisonville, LA.  The river is at its widest in Covington and Madisonville, where boating and fishing on the Tchefuncte are extremely popular means of recreation.

I have been enjoying this beautiful and scenic river for the past fifteen years.  I fist started going out on the Tchefuncte with a group of friends from St. Paul's School in Covington, Louisiana.  One of my friends' fathers owned a boat, and a group of us would wakeboard, kneeboard and ski behind the boat during the summer months and on weekends during the school year.

I now reside in a one-room apartment on the Tchefuncte.  One day while searching for information regarding fishing in the river, I observed a stark and utter lack of information on the web regarding this pristine resource. I decided to pick up the slack myself, and worked tirelessly for several hours until the website had been completed.

TchefuncteRiver.com is now the official website of the Tchefuncte River, and your first and only source for news, information about the Tchefuncte, articles and photographs involving the river and any events set to take place therein.

Dog Swallows Fishing Hook, Survives

A recent fishing trip out on the Tchefuncte River in Covington, Louisiana nearly turned disastrous when my two year old male pit bull mix Tank found a jug from a previous fishing adventure that was attached to about three feet of twine with a #4 steel fishing hook at the end of it. The hook still had a dead, dried-up shrimp attached to it from a previous fishing trip that was somehow overlooked while cleaning out the boat.

Needless to say, the dog found the jug with the dried-up shrimp on the end of it and proceeded to swallow the shrimp (and the hook). A friend alerted me to the fact that my dog was trying to eat a fishing hook, but by the time either of us could maneuver our way to the opposite end of the boat (where the dog was stationed), he had already completely swallowed it and had moved on to swallowing the twine connecting the hook to the jug.

Fat Lester's Pit Bull Mix "Tank"

In a split-second decision, I decided against attempting to dislodge the hook, figuring that it would be better to have the hook loose in his stomach than stuck inside his throat or esophagus. He is a large dog (90 pounds or so), but it was a large hook, and the risk of exacerbating the problem only increased with the prospect of an amateur like myself attempting to dislodge a fishing hook from a dog's stomach.

Instead of trying to get the hook out, I immediately grabbed the jug and cut the twine where there was slack at the end nearest the jug so as to not tug on the twine and risk setting the hook inside my dog's stomach. From there, I rushed the boat back to the dock and immediately took the dog to the veterinary ER (emergency room) on Florida Street in Mandeville, Louisiana.

After admitting him to the doggie ER, the doctor proceeded to ask me for a full account of what happened, and I was more than willing to comply, providing her with every seemingly insignificant detail of the event. From there, she proceeded to x-ray Tank to confirm my statement that I was sure I had not inadvertently pulled the twine enough to set the hook inside the dog's body. Sure enough, by the good grace of God the hook was still in the dog's stomach.  It had not been set (piercing beyond the barb so as to lock the hook in place), and had not yet entered the animal's intestines. This, as luck would have it, would turn out to be his saving grace.

The fishing hook swallowed by Fat Lester's dog Tank

Because the hook was still loose inside the dog's stomach, the vet was confident enough about the situation to attempt an upper endoscopy to remove the hook. Given that the alternative was a pretty serious surgery to go in through the dog's belly, cut open his stomach and remove the hook, Tank's fate rested in the potential success or failure of the endoscopy procedure.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, an endoscopy is a minimally invasive diagnostic procedure used to examine a patient's esophagus, stomach and duodenum using a thin, flexible tube known as an endoscope that can transmit images from inside the patient's body to a TV monitor for an up-close, zoomed-in view. The device can be equipped with additional devices that can do such things as grab or latch onto small objects inside the patient's upper GI (gastrointestinal) tract.

An endoscope is a piece of diagnostic medical equipment used to perform endoscopies (the procedure defined above involving the lowering of the flexible, camera-equipped tube into the patient's upper digestive tract).

Anyway, the doctor briefed me on the situation prior to attempting the procedure. She informed me that if unsuccessful, she would have to perform surgery in order to save the dog, and I granted her approval to take whatever necessary actions needed to be taken in order to save the dog. She assured me that she would not perform surgery unless the endoscopy procedure failed.

Much to my relief, about two hours after leaving the veterinary emergency clinic, I received a phone call from the vet stating that the procedure was a success, my dog was doing fine and was recovering, and that I could come by the next morning to pick him up and settle up on my bill, which came out to more than $1,300.00. She advised against going to pick him up that night, as he was fairly heavily sedated with buprenorphine and was better off spending the night under the supervision of caring animal health professionals in the event something should go wrong in the hours following the procedure.

We had no such bad luck, and the next morning at 9:00 I went back to the animal ER and picked up my dog, who by then had worked up quite an appetite and was extremely happy to see me.

Thanks Dr. Stockton for helping save my dog!

Dr. Donna Stockton: Veterinarian who saved Tank Dog