Friday, March 13, 2020 – BigPineKey.com

[Bad Bank] It seems many are disappointed with Capital Bank and posting about it here. I have two Florida properties and while at the other property I put in a “Mail Forward” with the post office. First State Bank sent me a letter saying they would not send my bank statement if there is a mail forward active and said they would be charging $15 per month to not send my statement. And when I tried to extract some money from an ATM on the Gulf coast, I discovered that my ATM card was an old one and no longer active–although it had no expiry date! They might have mentioned that before I tried to use it out of town. They wanted $10 to issue a debit card to use. (I don’t think so) To avoid future issues, I will have automatic deposits transferred to a different bank and just close this account with well over $100,000 of my money earning negligible interest. I used to like First State Bank, but that was before they thought I didn’t have a choice and took advantage of me.

[How To Quarantine A House] “You’ll be so lonely,” says Nicole Gadon, 68, who was required to stay inside her house after testing positive for tuberculosis in 2014. If you come down with or are exposed to a pandemic inﬂuenza, the state and federal governments can force you into quarantine and isolation. Often you will be told to hole up in your house or apartment until you are no longer deemed a threat. If you live with others, you will most likely be told to sleep in separate rooms and avoid physical contact. Cohabitants should be tested regularly. Gadon’s husband at the time stayed with her during her six months in isolation. Each day they brieﬂy overlapped in the

kitchen but were otherwise apart. Sometimes the desire for human contact will overwhelm you. One night, early on, when she was gravely ill and felt she might die, Gadon went up to her husband’s bedroom and asked to lie next to him. He declined to let her sleep there for the night. “I really just wanted to be hugged,” she says. Gadon slept next to her cat, Izzy. “Get an indoor pet,” she says. Every day, a nurse came to take Gadon’s vitals, watch her take medication and collect coughed-up phlegm (Gadon needed three consecutive clean tests to go free).
Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands often. Noninfected people near you should wear an air-purifying respirator like an N95 mask, and you should wear a surgical mask. Keep windows open for ventilation. If you need to call the police, ﬁreﬁghters or paramedics, warn them about your condition. Quarantine will strain relationships. “It deﬁnitely puts stress on a marriage,” says Gadon, who was divorced not long after her diagnosis. Don’t be ashamed. Find others who have survived your disease and connect with them online.
Gadon wishes she had said yes when her brother offered to ﬂy across the country to stand 15 feet away on her lawn and keep her company. She wishes she had found a way to see her grown son. If she had to do it again, Gadon says she would let people support her. “Ask for help,” she says.

[Car Show] Sunday March 15th Noon to 3pm, Custom cars, Antiques, Classics, Sports Cars, Street rods and Pickup Trucks will fill the parking lot at Sugarloaf Lodge, mm17. 50’s music, 50/50. on the Club’s new sound system and food and beverages are available at the waterfront TIKI Bar . The Peoples Choice Award will be presented to the most popular vehicle. The show is free to all and children are always welcome. Need more info? Call Dick Moody, 305-942-1758 and for all new members, a club t-shirt.

[“Feeding corn to deer”] The problem is not the corn. The problem is sudden, excessive intake of simple carbohydrates like corn, (or doughnuts, corn chips, and other human foods that are high in simple carbohydrates) for a deer not used to them. What happens is a condition known as

“rumen acidosis” where good bacteria are quickly replaced by bad bacteria in the deer’s stomach system after they gorge on the stuff. I have personally endured through 2 Key deer’s dying from rumen acidosis, in those cases due to their accidentally getting into a BPK resident’s bag of cracked corn meant for chicken feed. Once symptoms are obvious there’s nothing much one can do, and for the deer, it’s a bad way to clock out. Key deer, due to their small size and very specialized diet, are especially vulnerable.
Here’s an analogy that may help explain the difference between deer eating corn with no ill effects, and a deer that gets sick with rumen acidosis: Let’s say you visit a rural village in a third world country. The only source of drinking water is a cistern from which all the villagers drink – so you drink from it as well. Unlike the healthy villagers, you get very, very sick. The villagers wonder what your problem is, since they, their fathers and their grandfathers have used the cistern all their lives without getting ill. The reason is, of course, that unlike their digestive systems that are adapted to the unique substances/toxins excreted by bacteria in their water, your digestive tract has not encountered those substances in large quantities before…and you get poisoned and seriously ill.
In the Keys (and elsewhere), the “villagers” are deer that have been gradually accustomed to corn, and “you” are a deer that up to now has been eating mostly vegetation, and all of a sudden gets to gorge on a pile of corn or cookies. In deer, the sudden excess starch and sugar in their rumen causes rapid growth of Streptococcus bacteria which secrete lactic acid. The deer’s rumen pH drops to or below 5, which kills most of the “good” bacteria and other organisms which normally help the deer digest plant cellulose. Suddenly, the digestion processes stops and damaging, potentially deadly rumen acidosis poisoning sets in. Deer that are accustomed to corn as part of their diet do not experience this initial shock reaction, just like the villagers with their tainted water. It is important to note however that for both deer and man, corn represents mostly empty calories, with little additional nutrition and protein. So even corn-accustomed deer have to find and eat many more plant sources on their own to stay healthy.
For the skeptics who may doubt SOKD’s “science” and our own observations and experiences, we urge you to read-up on the subject on an excellent and very thorough web page put together by a deer hunting organization. Link

[“Excellent bacon n eggs”] I’ll do you one better. 2 pieces of bread with lard spread on them. If that don’t clog you, nothing will. My parents grew up in the depression and this was a common breakfast for them.

I am applying for a fictitious name for my business and I need to advertise my business name to make sure it’s not already being used. Can I do this on the coconut Telegraph? (Ed: Sure, send it in—no charge. Make sure you send it in every time you want it posted to comply with the state’s requirement. We receive 60,000 plus visitors a month. They need that info too.)

Flu From a woman’s point of view the corona virus is similar to all the guys cruising the local watering holes: They all want to stick their probes into their receptor port. Studies have shown that the virus is more particular where it sticks its probe than most guys at a bar. Video

[Flu] According to Morning Magazine on US 1 Radio, there are 7 isolation rooms available in the lower keys. With the aging population here, that should really make people realize the lack of available healthcare here; and they might want to make alternative plans. If the argument that warmer weather kills the virus, you may want to look at Australia and see how that’s going, considering it’s their summer. Be smart, think about your family, be safe. No reason to freak out — just be cautious.

[Fish Pee] Super urinators among fish that promote healthy eco systems. A study led by the University of Michigan found that individual tropical fish were spreading the highest levels of nitrogen, an essential nutrient, throughout the water in their urine. Link

[Flu] Why is this virus different than the one’s the tourist bring down every year? Answer: Because no one is immune to this particular virus and it is highly contagious.

[Flu] March madness?

[US Coronavirus Map] Tracking the outbreak. Track coronavirus outbreaks across the US and in your state with daily updated maps and total cases. Link

[Stock Market] Don’t panic. The market always bounces back. I lost three quarters of my portfolio in the 2000 crash but got it all back 5 times over since then! Sure, I lost a lot of it this week, but I’m still way ahead and know it’s going to go up again. It always has.

Wall Street Plunges in Worst Drop Since 2008. Oil prices crashed and bond yields tumbled. The S&P 500 had its worst day in more than a decade. Trading was temporarily halted Monday morning. Here’s why: Oil stocks cratered after crude’s plunge. Bank stocks also fell fast. Clorox and a handful of retail stocks rose. S.E.C. advises employees in Washington to work from home.
Now is a great time to invest because the stock market always recovers. It always goes up. Any loss is made up for when society recovers from an event.

[“Old photos of Key West”] The poster was lamenting the change in Key West since he was younger and send in a few photos from 1978. They all look the same as Key West looks today. What has changed in any of the photos except that they got yellowed?

I showed a friend the new Cudjoe fire station, painted Robin’s egg blue and gray. Her question, “What color will the firetrucks be?” Please don’t tell me they’ll be floral.

Climate change and the death of American farms and way of life. More than 450 farmers killed themselves across nine Midwestern states from 2014 to 2018. Meanwhile, calls to Farm Aid’s crisis hotline soar. Link

[“New Key Deer Population Survey”] This new method (If you then take 250 deer from the forest and find 50 of them to have leg bands, then M = 200, T = 250, R = 50, and the unknown total number of deer (N) could be estimated as: N = M*T/R = (200)(250)/50 = 1000 deer) might look good in the Texas A&M classroom, but not in real life. The only way to get an almost accurate count is with heat-seeking radar or something like that (I don’t know what it’s called). These complicated formulas are no better than an educated guess. The Refuge’s latest attempt to mark the deer is French impressionist’s disaster.

The next meeting of the Big Pine Computer Club is coming up this Saturday, March 14, 10 am at the senior center. Having problems with an electronic device? Maybe we can help. Open to all. Full Menu > Ongoing Events

[Panic Buying] The media has a lot of power. They showed empty shelves and started a toilet paper panic. It makes no sense but people frighten easily-and now you can’t find any toilet paper because people are hoarding it. It would be interesting if the media started showing empty beer coolers. Winn Dixie would run out of it in minutes.

No more speeding tickets by using this one simple trick.

[Friday Joke] A man and his wife were at a livestock show. They saw a bull with and a sign that said, this bull mated 50 times last year. The wife said to her husband, “You could learn something from that.” Then they saw another bull with a sign that said, this bull mated over 100 times last year. The wife said, “You could really learn something from that.” The husband turned to his wife and said, “I’ll bet it wasn’t with the same old cow.” That’s when the fight started.

(Ed: I just paid $80 to GoDaddy to give this site an enema. Junk had built up over the last 20 years slowing it down and causing other subtler problems. I don’t know if it’s all better, but I feel better. I did something good to it to clean up the junk files, etc. I learned that since 2002 I have posted 65,749 images on bigpinekey.com)

The Coconut Telegraph was fun 10 years ago. Now it’s all bitching. Damn, the Keys got bad, from relaxed to people that need something to do or say. Sorry Ed, all bitch no fun. Not your fault. The Keys changed as people moved on. It cost too much to live here now. I can’t wait to see when there is no person to fix or wait on the tourists. I’m done too. I lived here long time. I charge $150 an hour. I need to make it $250 an hour to live here. Keep bitching, we will all be gone. Guess it will be back to the Keys when the rich have to fend for themselves. Maybe $350 an hour is necessary to charge. Every person that works here: increase your rate. We work our ass off. They have the money, it’s the cost of paradise.

[Stool Bus] We see more and more of these in the Cudjoe Regional district as the central sewers continue to fail.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Hexagonal Phase, Episode 1. Audio

[Navajo Code Talkers] Showing this video to all Americans is vital for explaining why so many have given their all to keep our freedom and why so many are still willing to do so. Freedom is for all Americans and must be maintained by everyone. Video

[Americana] How are you doing Ruby? Everything is fine up here with the exception of the medical issues. I’ll say it again: getting old sucks. We are having an early spring with some trees in bloom, forsythia, daffs, etc. I’m about ready to start the vegetable garden and herb garden but it is a bit early. How are you doing, hopefully feeling fine. I have to have a sleep apnea test tomorrow night which causes A-FIB which I had and could have caused the stroke. We had severe storms last week and many tornados touched down including an F4 in Putnam City which killed 18 people. Tornados stretched from Nashville to Cookeville and did a lot of damage. Drop me a line when you get a chance. (Ed: We received this email in error.)

[Friday Joke] St. Peter escorts a Senator to the elevator and he goes down to hell once he found out he was a Senator. The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulders. “I don’t understand,” stammers the Senator. “Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?” The devil smiles at him and says, “Yesterday we were campaigning, today, you voted.

[Firehouse Red] I passed by the new fire station for the first time, but I didn’t know it was a fire station. I asked my spouse what they were building. It sure doesn’t look like a fire house. I don’t think that’s right. Things should look like what they are in the public interest. Important safety buildings should look like what they are and not try to blend into the area.

[“Counting deer”] In my opinion the methodology currently used in trying to determine the Key Deer population is totally bogus. There is nothing scientific about their methods. There is one method that is practically foolproof. It’s called Thermal Imaging. This method is used by the military and sporting industry in locating heat sources from anything with a heat differential–tanks, hidden snipers, humans, deer or other game. The devices are available to the public. So if you act want to get a very accurate count get a thermal imaging device attached to a high resolution camera and rent a small airplane and fly over the islands suspected to have any deer population beside Big Pine Key and voilà, the most accurate survey. But then that’s only if you really want to know the deer population once and for all. (SOKD has already offered to to that and was refused) Link

[“Emergency Toilet Paper”] This Scottish toilet paper works well in an emergency. Simply take one sheet, poke a hole in the middle, stick your finger through the hole, clean your butt, then clean your finger with the surrounding sheet. Don’t forget under your nail.

[Coronavirus vs the Flu] COVID-19: No vaccine is available at this time, though it is in progress.
Flu: A vaccine is available and effective to prevent some of the most dangerous types or to reduce the severity of the flu.

[Flu] I wish some medical person would tell us why this virus is more worrisome than the yearly flu the tourist bring down. “At least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected.”
Why is the coronavirus different when dead is dead?

[Internal Medicine] In order to combat the spread of the current virus we are advised not only to wash our hands but to also use a hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is 70% alcohol. I prefer a good 151 proof rum taken internally.

[Patriotism in Sports] Why do we sing the National Anthem before sports games? Here’s why. Video

[“Restaurants from the past”] I wrote the post and did not forget the Big Pine Inn. It burned down a year or two before I moved here. My list was post 84. I did see it once as a Kid in 74 in passing but never ate there. I was tempted to add Little Torch with Ernie’s Island woman, The Sand Bar, Parrot Dice, and Kikis. But where to stop? I am glad that I could bring back a few memories. Full Menu > Big Pine Museum> Big Pine Inn

[Advertising] What is it that makes a business put some raggedy-ass derelict boat out front and think it makes people want to patronize them? Now The Big Pine Rooster has got one!

[Deer Count] The SOKD folks offered to count them using their own thermal imaging equipment, but the Refuge people refused their free help. The refuge people have done similar questionable stuff in the past. I think they refuse good help because they didn’t think of it themselves or they’re beholden to some university or something. I don’t know of any other reason for them to refuse help. Although thermal imaging is not perfect, a trained person is usually able to interpret questionable images; and the deer count would be far more accurate than the convoluted mathematical formula the Refuge proposed.