Changes

Well, looks like John Lennon was right, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans". 

In the past ten days we have located an excellent site on which to expand our aquaculture facilities here in Texas.

We have a verbal agreement on all the terms, have made a written offer, and put down earnest money and now have to wait thirty days to allow our engineering firm to do a feasibility study to make sure we have adequate elevations and/or adequate cut and fill material to raise the elevations so our piping and other structural requirements have room under the pond drains to be installed properly.

The site is 171 acres and sits right on the shoreline of a beautiful body of water fed by the Gulf of Mexico.

It once housed an open air shrimp operation. That business was closed over ten years ago and the site has been vacant since. 

The location is about 100 miles (as the crow flies) due north of where we are here in Cameron county. From an operational standpoint this new locations works much better for us. We had anticipated finding a site here in Cameron County just north of Brownsville but unrealistic pricing by the owners of the few sites we were interested in forced us to look north.

It will be unfortunate for the residents and other businesses here far south in the Rio Grande Valley. This is a very economically distressed area and the 1,500 -2,000 full time sustainable jobs we will create over the next five years would have been extremely advantageous to this area. 

It just did not work out. We will keep the current 1/4 scale production model in operation growing shrimp and also it will be very valuable as a training facility as we begin to expand our management and production teams in anticipation of a much larger operation at the new location. 

I had hoped to buy a house here on South Padre and use that as my Texas base of operations but now I will be packing up after Christmas and moving temporarily to a hotel in Corpus Christi until I can get the time to look at the available homes for sale in the new area and make a purchase.

One complication has arisen for which I was totally unprepared. 

My possums I started feeding when they were barely two weeks ago are totally dependent on my nightly feeding station.

This island is very hard on wildlife and I am constantly seeing dead animals hit by cars.

If I leave my possums behind they will have to forage for themselves far abroad from my current backyard so long story short, that is not going to happen.

I have contacted a local "licensed wildlife rehabilitator" and have arranged to give her adequate financial support to transport them and spend the next three months to prepare them for  a "soft release' into a real safe state park that does not allow hunting or trapping. 

Possums are very solitary, have a very high mortality rate, and under the best of circumstances only live about three years. They do not do well in captivity as it is very hard to provide them with the complex and varied diet true "omnivores" need, so I am going to leave the mother here. She is old and has made it here this far so I see no reason to uproot her.

The four babies I will trap in "Hav-a Heart" live traps (I just bought two new ones) and hold them in large airline cargo cages until I can transfer them to the wildlife person, who is about 100 miles from here. 

Having been born and grown up in this sub-tropical environment they really would not do well any further north. 

I will also catch the small black cat that counts on my nightly feedings but her I will take back to Maryland later this week and have spayed and get her a home or put her on our small farm in Poolesville, Maryland. 

Before I am done this is going to cost me well over $1,000, which once again underscores my view that "no good deed goes unpunished". (In truth, it is money well spent).

I had an epiphany as I was buying new carriers, "Hav-a Heart" traps, a transport cage for the cat, litter box, extra food, flea spray, etc. 

I really should have been a Catholic. Any religion that lets you buy your way out of guilt is my kind of religion.

I mean, "you do something wrong and then remove the guilt through a cash penance", now really this would have saved me so much angst and guilt over the years.  ("Just joking, all of my Catholic friends"). 

Anyhow, the raccoons are staying, they look great, and they seem to thrive on the seafood diet and trash cans the island offers. 

                                          

But starting tomorrow night live traps will be baited with bananas and grapes (possums love both) and operation "marsupial capture" will commence.

I will keep you informed of my (and their) progress.