I’d hoped for a helgrammite or big juicy rattail maggot, maybe even a crayfish or queen snake from the dark side of a creek rock today, but there was too much call from the garden and too little left for rock flippin’.
But as fate would have it, there were others doing that work for us–like this juvenile raccoon who seemed not the least bit concerned when I stopped the car on the low-water bridge to watch him foraging for a meal. Just so happens the camera was on the seat beside me, and he cooperated long enough for me to get a shot or two–but not long enough to be able to tell if he was finding anything nutritious under the dozen rocks I watched him investigate. His best bang for the buck would be a big, fat crayfish. We find their bits and pieces left over from ‘coon snaking.
Chances are, even failing to find a big crustacean, he ate well. Our creek is healthy, judging from the aquatic insects that are common there, including “water pennies”–I may go out before the sun is full down and see if I can find one of those; that would make an interesting picture.
UPDATE: Check Via Negativa for rockflippin’ entries from around the world. The submissions are still coming in, so check back from time to time.
Stumble it!
8 responses so far ↓
1 Via Negativa » Blog Archive » IRFD 2: Halls of the mountain millipede // Sep 2, 2007 at 8:52 pm
[…] (somewhere in the Caribbean) Pocahontas County Fare (West Virginia, USA) chatoyance (Austin, Texas) Fragments from Floyd (Virginia, USA) - GRAND PRIZE WINNER Watermark (Montana, USA) pohanginapete (Aotearoa/New Zealand) […]
2 pablo // Sep 3, 2007 at 6:46 am
I hope you win first prize for the best photo! Well done, as always!!
3 Sherry Chandler » Rock Flipping Day // Sep 3, 2007 at 7:10 am
[…] for the day have to go to Fred Friendly’s Fragments from Floyd (County in Virginia) for RockFlippin on Goose Creek. When Gin Petty told me about this day, she told me that both poets and raccoons were in the mix, […]
4 Burning Silo » Blog Archive » International Rock-Flipping Day - Report and Updates // Sep 3, 2007 at 10:18 am
[…] (somewhere in the Caribbean) Pocahontas County Fare (West Virginia, USA) chatoyance (Austin, Texas) Fragments from Floyd (Virginia, USA) - GRAND PRIZE WINNER Watermark (Montana, USA) pohanginapete (Aotearoa/New Zealand) […]
5 Silvia / Salix // Sep 3, 2007 at 10:55 am
Oh how cool! A flippin raccoon! It’s so cute too. Well done on a great photo!
6 Cathy Wilson // Sep 3, 2007 at 2:09 pm
That’s a great picture and a fun take on International Rock Flipping Day.
7 Via Negativa » Blog Archive » IRFD 3: Plummer’s Hollow Run // Sep 3, 2007 at 7:52 pm
[…] preceded us that morning, but we weren’t lucky enough to catch sight of them — unlike Fred First, who won the IRFD Grand Prize for getting a picture of something other than a human flipping a rock […]
8 Riverside Rambles — by Larry Ayers » More Rock-Flippers // Sep 4, 2007 at 5:43 pm
[…] (Austin, Texas) Fragments from Floyd (Virginia, USA) - GRAND PRIZE WINNER Watermark (Montana, USA) pohanginapete (Aotearoa/New Zealand) […]
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