Monday, February 27, 2012

savin' all my love for you...

save a eucalyptus and save a butterfly....


Sunday I went to church..not the steeple kind of church, the real church....outdoors..and February is one damn fine month to be outdoors...first of all, the birds are singing...then I figured where shall I go...let's check out the Summerland Preserve area...


so I go and it's beautiful and I start taking pictures of plants and birds and rocks and things when this guy with two big dogs comes walking by..a black dog and a white dog..he says good morning I say good morning...he asks what I'm taking pictures of and I say all these beautiful non-native plants that we might miss if they keep poisoning them..he says he agrees and loves the non-natives..then I say hi to his dogs who were big friendly terrier types..the guys says they are non-native..and we laughed..it's nice to know there's people out there who care about the whole of nature....which includes all plants and animals...


ok so that's good.. I got the dogs on my side now..so I go down to Loon Point and check out the area... took a walk by the train tracks..god this place is stunning.....a time warp of old California..I see some butterflies flitting all over the place so I go down to just behind Loon Point parking lot..hundreds of Monarchs flying around in and out of the eucalyptus trees....these are big healthy eucs but I am concerned about all the new plantings of skinny little pines and other native trees..I presume the county of SB is doing this and they've chopped a few eucs..still plenty for me and the butterflies though...

then I see more orange insects flying around the Loon Point lot..wow, this place is an important stop for Monarchs..it's enchanting...this whole area....not quite as full as the Coronado Preserve in Goleta, but there are impressive numbers here...and the beach at Loon Point is cool altho it has a reputation or history for being a nude beach or a gay beach, it's not true...it's just a nice place to hang out and maybe some conservatives saw some naked hippies there in the 70s and freaked out...I mean at one time or another, people have had sex at every beach in Santa Barbara...I had sex one night with a chick in a sleeping bag during the grunnion run at Leadbetter, so I know what I'm talking about..and the reason it only happened once is because of the sand in her panties...hurt so good! and BTW, she instigated it, not me!! I was perfectly happy just to watch the grunion in the moonlight..

ok...now how to get people to stop messing with the eucs....the diseased ones I got no problem with removing..but chopping them down becasue they are "non-native"...no..that won't stand..not at all..so I hereby nominate and designate the Loon Point eucalyptus grove/stand area as a butterfly preserve... I'll call it the Loon Point Butterfly Preserve....it has a nice ring to it!

and why do the butterflies prefer eucalyptus trees..there's many theories and I don't presume to know what's going thru the mind of a Monarch butterfly, but I think it's the eucalyptus oil in the leaves..it gets them high, man

No comments: