HOLY
TOLEDO, BUCKAROO!!! IT'S THE RICKUBISCAM PAGE !!
(sometimes
known as the "rick, don't touch that!" page.)
A
FRIENDLY REMINDER: ALL IMAGES, VIDEOS, AND TEXT ON THIS
PAGE, AND ALL MY PAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY
NOT BE USED ANYWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION
FROM ME.
Images
and
contents on this page copyright © 2001-2025 Richard M.
Dashnau
LAST
UPDATE: 02/13/2025 PREVIOUS
UPDATE: 02/07/2025
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--LET'S SEE WHAT THAT RASCAL RICKUBIS IS UP
TO!
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DOES THE CAPTION SAY "IT'S
LIVE"? IF IT DOESN'T, IT ISN'T.
(Actually, it hasn't been "live' in a long, long time.)
Recent Updates of other pages:
Page or file name
Date of update
Description of update
Grackles
02/21/2025 Added
newly-edited video clips and photos from 2022.
Ibises
02/15/2025 NEW PAGE!!
Moved my images of these species onto their own new page. More stuff
to be added soon.
Grackles
02/15/2025 NEW
PAGE!! Moved my images of these species onto their own new page. More
stuff to be added soon.
Coots and Gallinules
01/31/2025 Added 5
new video clips from 2006, 2009,2011 and 2017 to
this page over the last couple days.
Coots and Gallinules
01/28/2025 NEW PAGE!!
Moved my images of these species onto their own new page. More stuff
to be added soon.
Osprey
page
12/23/2024
Added 30
pictures of an Osprey observed feeding at Fiorenza park on 02/10/2024.
Gar page
(garfish)
12/02/2024
New material from this year. Lots of images, and
some edited videos.
Gar
page (garfish)
12/01/2024
NEW PAGE!! With some much material, the gar fish have a separate page,
pulled from material I've posted on other pages.
Kites page
10/16/2024
NEW PAGE!! Inspired to create
this page because Kites aren't exactly like other
raptors...so they got their own page.
Water Insect page
10/11/2024
NEW PAGE!! Inspired to create this page
due to research I've just done. First time uploads of OLD
pictures, and new materials.
Just
Rick page
09/26/2024 Added
new videos and photos from 2003, driving an ARGO ATV to crush
vegetation at Brazos Bend State Park
Alligator Behavior
Walking etc. page 10 09/05/2024
New Page!
Added new posts with imagery from 2023
Rick's General Oddities
08/27/2024 Added
new video and pictures from August 11 and 20 2024 (long camera
sticks).
Internal Martial Arts page
07/30/2024 Added
new video and pictures from July 2024 (a few days before Beryl).
Piper the Pup's Page
06/19/2024 Added
some pictures and a couple videos from June 2024.
Ichnology page 4
05/04/2024 Added
more material from summer 2023. Cicada killer drama.
Osprey page
03/21/2024 Added a
lot of pictures and a video clip of an Osprey observed feeding at
Fiorenza park 05/29/2023.
Rick's General Oddities
12/13/2023 Added some
pictures and a video of me tossing boomerangs at Scobee Field.
Rick's
3D model Page 5 (gator den; ver. 2) 07/04/22
I
once
used Solidworks at work. Now Solidworks has access I can use at
home, so I'm modeling an alligator den. My attempts are here.
Rick's 3D model Page 1 (gator den) 05/27/22 I once used Solidworks at work.
Now Solidworks has access I can use at home, so I'm modeling an
alligator den. My attempts are here.
2008 2010
Videos of folding bicycles from 2008 & 2010
Update
02/13/2025 -
02/09/2025
Three
snakes having a bad day.
I found the first one near 40-Acre
Lake on Oct.
27, 2024. I photographed the
mangled carcass, thinking that the
details
of the skull might be useful.
One of the images clearly shows the
formidable array of very sharp teeth
that hook backwards towards the
throat. These help prevent
struggling prey from
pulling away, and also "encourage"
it to go towards the throat. Based
on the visible reddish scales, I
believe that the carcass belonged to
a Broadbanded Water Snake (Nerodia
fasciata).
Considering the condition of the
carcass, I believe that something
had spit it up. So, maybe two
bad days for that snake. Being eaten
is bad--but being barfed back up has
got be be worse.
We can compare with this image of
another Broadbanded Water Snake I
saw having a better day on April 17,
2017. The red blotches on the
underside are very prominent.
The next two were having the
same bad day- 02/09/2025.
The first snake had
been struggling for a while before I
started filming. I expected to see
it trying to swallow prey. But
it had apparently gotten its jaws
around a plant! Its
exhalations
made large bubbles as it rested.
When the snake moved again, it
pulled against the stalk. I believe
its teeth were caught. The snake's
teeth were firmly fixed; but it had
had to get free.
The snake re-positioned its body
for a better grip, and then gave a
really hard pull. It finally got
free! The captured video is edited
into this short film.
There were small fish swimming
nearby. I wonder if the snake
accidentally grabbed the stalk when
it went for one of them.To see how
this could happen, we can use the
carcass I
found on the 40-acre Lake trail in
2024 (pictured just above).
When those hooked teeth snagged in
the plant stalk, they would be
really hard to release.
The second snake
appeared about 12 minutes
later--while I was standing in the
same spot! Unfortunately, it had
been caught by a Boat-tailed Grackle
(Quiscalus major). A couple
Grackles had started hunting in the
floating plants and this one
appeared with the snake, and flew
off--just like that! I captured
photos and video, to try to identify
the snake.
The Grackle looked at us with its
dark(not yellow) eyes. The snake's
head is relatively small, and the
snake is light brown on top. There
is a thin dark line near the
boundary between
off-white and pale brown strips. It
was possibly a young Graham's
Crayfish Snake (Regina
grahamii). We can compare this
to these photos of an adult I saw at
Fiorenza Park in 2024.
That snake seemed nearly blind, and
I moved it off the bridge. The video
of the Grackle has been edited into
this short film.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Certain
natural
observations that first appeared on this page have been moved
to my other pages. Go back to my home page, Welcome to Rickubis.com for links to those pages.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update
02/06/2025 -
02/02/2025
Here are
some interesting events brought
about the the very warm weather
(about 70° F after noon) at Brazos
Bend State Park. The
morning was still cool as this lone
alligator cruised in 40-Acre Lake at
9:00am.
About 11:00
am, an alligator was cruising in
Pilant Lake near the Elm Lake end of
the Spillway Trail. It stopped
at a gap in the cover, with its
snout near the bank.I waited to
see if it would come up and
cross the trail. It walked up
onto the grass and rested--which
they often do before they continue
across. When it started to
walk, I shot a quick
burst of photos, then went to
video to record its stately passage
across the trail. One of the
watching visitors had asked the very
common question, "How long is that
alligator?"
I had motioned the folks in the
background over when I saw the
alligator come up. Other visitors
came up behind me. Since almost
everyone has at least a camera
phone,
I suggest that everyone pay special
attention to capture when the
alligator's head and tail are near
the edges of the trail.
We're going
to use that image to estimate the
size of this wonderful animal! Note
that when the alligator's tail was
touching one edge of the trail, its
snout extended *past*
the other edge of the trail. Now
we'll guess the size of this
alligator, with the help of my
"walking staff". It's about 6 feet
(1.8 meters) My staff extends a
little past the center of
the trail, leaving a big gap
to the other side. I prefer lower
estimates, so I'll call that an
additional 4-foot gap. Added to the
original 6 feet of the stick; that's
TEN feet long (and
the alligator's nose extended
past the far edge). So 10-12 feet
long ( 3 - 3.6 meters).
WOW!
I had placed the stick where the
alligator had crossed. In the photos
I could verify by checking this thin
line and the "pebble" as
reference. But when I checked
when the
alligator started to cross, I
couldn't find the pebble. I
discovered that the alligator had
"conjured" the object with some
sleight-of-foot. It took me a while
to discover this, so I
am sharing it here. Even though I
was pretty sure I'd placed the stick
properly, I was happy when I could
verify it with the images. It's
easier to see in the edited
video here.
While
heading back towards 40-Acre Lake
after 2:00pm, I noticed some park
visitors intently watching
something. They had found a live
snake lying on top of the sparse
vegetation,
about 15 yards from the North side
of the trail. I could tell that it
was a Gulf Coast Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis
proximus), and when I looked
through the binoculars I saw that it
was
actually two
snakes! I kept watching, and
discovered I was wrong. There
weren't two snakes after all. There
were THREE snakes! The
largest snake was probably a female,
while
the other two were probably
males. They were probably mating. Or
trying to. I've seen something like
this before, but involving
Diamondback Water Snakes.(pics and video on
this page)
When it's time to mate, the female
snakes advertise via scent. Male
snakes are attracted by this, and
they try to get with the female. The
problems arise when multiple males
get the
same message at the same time.
I could see multiple tails hanging
down in the plant cover, and
intertwined as the males tried to
enter a single portal at the same
time. I watched for
about an hour, pointing out
the event for visitors passing
by. During that time, another
snake swam by and left the water,
but it moved off on a low branch,
apparently going in the
wrong direction. I left before the
snakes did.
03/07/2021 Sometimes, one of the park gators
seems to say:
Just pay
attention to the sign, okay?
04/08/2012---Easter Sunday at BBSP
gets very busy. This year, I had time to put a camera on my bicycle
handlebars and do a quick ride on the Elm Lake Trail before it got
busy. I was
experimenting with doing "virtual" trail tours of the park.
I'm not sure if this works or not, but here is an edited
version of the footage I filmed. A surprise unique to the park
happens near
the 6:47 mark. Links to the video are here (files are about 200mb):
Elm
Lake trail mp4 .
11/06/2013---Piper
the
Pup 
now has
her own page. For Piper-related stuff, you can go here,
but I don't update often.
Pages that show where mom gator has left babies, possibly so
she can forage: 03/06/2016 03/14/2016 12/05/2021
and two times when a mom left after a bellow bout:
02/16/2020 08/28/2022
I have created all the content on *my* pages. That means that I have
either shot the video, taken the pictures, or performed any
demonstrations. That also means that I've edited every image on
these pages, that is, I've cropped,
enhanced, resized, labeled, and otherwise optimized *every*
single image on my pages. That means that I've also edited,
enhanced, extracted images from, recoded (in two or three or four
formats) every *video clip* on these
pages. I've also, for better or worse, composed all the text and
layout on these pages. I've had to learn to use the various
utilities for doing all of this, as well as finding and legally
getting copies of them in the first place. I'm also
responsible for all the hardware used to do this. I also pay
for the server space used for all of this information as well as for
my access to it. It costs a lot of money, time, and effort to put
these pages out here...hopefully to
entertain and to inform. And this is *after* I spend time at my "day
job". People are welcome to the information here, but if it's
used elsewhere, then I deserve credit for my effort. If it is used
for someone else's profit, then I
deserve part of that profit. *That* is the purpose of my notices
about copyright.
I'VE USED MUSIC IN SOME OF MY VIDEO
PRODUCTIONS AND CLIPS. IT HAS BEEN LICENSED FOR MY USE, ROYALTY-FREE.
IF YOU'D LIKE TO PURCHASE LICENSED MUSIC--FROM A HUGE
STOCK OF AVAILABLE TYPES--FOR A VERY REASONABLE PRICE (HEY,
EVEN I CAN AFFORD IT) THEN YOU CAN GO TO:
-------------------------------------------------------------
CLICK
ON THE IMAGE, OR CLICK HERE
TO GO THERE. I'VE BEEN BUYING MUSIC FROM THEM SINCE 2003.
DO NOT EVER APPROACH ALLIGATORS. THEY CAN BE EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS IF THEY FEEL THREATENED, JUST LIKE ALMOST ANY ANIMAL.
DON'T DISTURB ALLIGATORS AT THIS PARK, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.
For the story of my hip
replacements, click here. I've come to think that these pages are
less about me than what I'm writing about, but I've been talking to lots
of old folks (like me) that
wonder how that surgery works.. So, this page shows my experiences with
it.
.Click here for the RICKUBISCAM GALLERY! ----a
chronicle of past rickubiscam images (16 pages starting
from the year 2000!!)
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---
RICKUBISCAM on the RICKUBISCAM on
the RICKUBISCAM on
the....
REPTILE
GLASSES
This gif was made in 2011 (I had more
hair!)
This gif was made in 2011 (I had
more hair!)
This page was born 9/16/1999. Rickubis
designed it. (such as it is.)
Go
back to my home page, Welcome to
Rickubis.com
I'm
on Mastodon for now, but I was never very active on "social"
media.
How many
come by to see the RICKUBISCAM ? Well, lets look at the counter
provided by: WEBCOUNTER.
Counter started June 18, 2001. 1/10/2012
= 10473 || 3/25/2014 10904 || 11/19/2015
= 11137 || 2/16/2017 =
11326 || 6/16/2019 =
11678 || 6/21/2020=11856 || 12/27/21=12199
|| 2/3/2022=12237 || 7/22/2022 12404 || 01/09/2023=12651
7/26/2023=12926 || 12/1/2023=13059
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