Tag: draining the san antonio river

I spy what you are reading here….

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A 1911 postcard shows the beauty of the land in Brackenridge Park formerly owned by Helen Madarasz.
A 1911 postcard shows the beauty of the land in Brackenridge Park formerly owned by Helen Madarasz.

Time for the semiannual big-brother spy report on what posts you have been reading most during the past 12 months. As usual, you are all over the map, seemingly encouraging me to continue randomly sending postcards from San Antonio and back home no matter where we wander.

The mysterious murder of Helen Madarasz in Brackenridge Park rose to the top, which makes me wonder why ghost-hunters have not latched onto the story of Martha Mansfield. There are still some who pine to hear the San Antonio Song, a post from five years ago, but a few new posts squeezed into the top dozen. Hope some of you have found your way to dine in our favorite restaurants in Oaxaca, but my personal favorite entry about food in Oaxaca is on grasshoppers.

The number in parentheses represents the rankings from six months ago:

  1. The Madarasz Murder Mystery: Might Helen Haunt Brackenridge Park?, 2012 (2)
  2. Artist Foundation unleashes another round of creative fervor, 2015
  3. The danger of playing hardball with our Library: Bookworms tend to vote, 2014 (1)
  4. Remembering everyday people: Our rural heritage merits attention, 2014 (5)
  5. Seeing San Fernando Cathedral in a new light…, 2014 (7)
  6. Please put this song on Tony’s pony and make it ride away, 2010 (3)
  7. Picturing the City’s Past Just Got Easier, 2014 (6)
  8. How would you feel about the Alamo with a crewcut?, 2011 (10)
  9. That Crabby Old Colonel Cribby Condemned the River to Years of Lowlife, 2013 (11)
  10. Weather Forecast: 11 Days of Confetti Ahead, 2015
  11. Photographs from the 1800s place faces on the names in Zephaniah Conner’s Bible, 2014
  12. Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Favorites on the food front, 2015

Thanks for dropping by every once in a while. Love hearing your feedback.

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A massacre along the river…

postcardsfromsanantonio4 Comments

It was a massacre.

A trail of body parts all along the river. Leftover scraps from a gluttonous feast.

Yesterday morning left the crawdads facing much the same fate as turkeys on Thanksgiving eve.

We finally had rain. A deluge in fact.

The flood gates were thrown open, once again sparing the downtown river bend from flooding.

But, after it’s work was done, Gate No. 5 failed to close.

The river bend did not flood; it was drained.

So water was diverted to concentrate on refilling the bend, an effort circling us back to the crawdads in our stretch of the river. Downstream went almost dry.

A feast day for egrets and herons. The crawdads didn’t have a chance, plucked from the muck in rapid succession.

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Fortunately, the water is back. When I walked along Eagleland this morning, most of the birds were so stuffed they had no need to show up for breakfast.

Tomorrow it will be back to work for them. But will there be any crawdads left?

According to one crayfish man, nature knows how desirable crawdads are. Hatches average more than 100 each. Here is his graphic video depicting them at birth:

While there are peak seasons, crawdads will have sex any time. So, if Mother Nature can doll up those remaining females tonight, we could have another new crop in two to four weeks. Those overstuffed egrets better hope so.