The Mysterious Freshwater Jellyfish

For years now, I have been perplexed by a memory from childhood.

As I've mentioned before, my family home in Florida is on a lake. When we were kids, my brother and I spent a lot of time in this lake, swimming and boating and fishing, and we got to know the ecology pretty well. We caught Gambusia minnows for our aquarium and dug cattails and hacked back the shoreline jungle -- the ferns and buttonbush and primrose willow -- whenever it threatened to encroach on our back yard. We had an alligator, or maybe a series of alligators, that lurked offshore at a respectful distance.

Well, in the summer of 1979, jellyfish mysteriously appeared in our lake.

They were clear, round, the size of a nickel or quarter, and stingless. We didn't know where they came from. We had never seen them before but suddenly there were thousands of them. We captured two, which we named Bama and Welch's -- after two popular brands of jelly. We put them in our father's aquarium, where they were promptly eaten by his goldfish. Having failed at keeping them in captivity, we settled for enjoying the jellyfish in the wild, through the plastic faceplates of our swimming masks.

After a period of days or weeks, all the jellyfish vanished as suddenly as they'd appeared. The next summer, I went out into the lake looking for them, but they didn't reappear that year -- or in any year since. We never saw them again.

I've long wondered what on earth that was about. Did someone bring saltwater jellyfish into the lake on a boat propeller or in bilge water, and somehow they managed to temporarily prosper? Did someone dump an aquarium, leading to a brief biological experiment that failed to take hold? Did I dream the whole thing? (Now, this many years later, it seems like a dream.)

Well, I got to Googling around the other day, and lo and behold, there are freshwater jellyfish. Called Craspedacusta sowerbii, they're not true jellyfish, but relatives of the hydra. It turns out that my childhood encounter with them is somewhat typical.

"The appearance of the jellyfish is described as sporadic and unpredictable," according to freshwaterjellyfish.org. "Often, jellyfish will appear in a body of water in large numbers even though they were never reported there before. The following year they may be absent and may not reappear until several years later. It is also possible for the jellyfish to appear once and never appear in that body of water again."

They have been found in every state except the northern plains states, as well as all around the world. Reports on that Web site show many sightings in Florida, including one in 2003 in a lake just a few miles from our home.

Mystery solved! I am not crazy!

(Photo: A scaffold in Maida Vale, last week. I'm fairly certain I made a drawing of the freshwater jellyfish in one of my childhood journals, but I couldn't find it -- so you get a completely unrelated photo instead.)

Neighborhood 'Artworks'

Art is all around us here in Notting Hill...

Take bead-curtain Mona Lisa, for example. I've photographed her before, but the other day her beads were hanging perfectly straight, fully revealing her in all her glory. It's interesting that she is a mirror-image of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Maybe the curtain maker didn't want to infringe on Leonardo's copyright -- or The Louvre's? Or is she simply hanging inside-out?

Yesterday morning this huge image of Bob Marley was lying in our parking lot, probably driven there from parts unknown by the night's high winds. The maintenance man seemed unamused. He hauled it away minutes after I took this picture from our balcony.

Until recently, this saucy African or Caribbean market lady watched me walk past each morning on my way to work. Then she suddenly disappeared. I think her window box was replanted and she moved to another, less prominent perch on her balcony.

Pub Quiz Champions!

Last night Dave and I went to the Porchester, one of our local pubs, for the weekly quiz night. We quizzed there once before, in November 2012, but we lost badly. Back then we had only one other team member and we were three Americans. This time, however, three friends came with us, one of whom is British -- so we had more brainpower and we were able to tackle Anglo-specific questions.

We actually won!

There were at least five other teams, so I felt pretty good about that. We won £50 off our bar and food tab, which isn't small potatoes (about $82). I was proud of myself for knowing the two brightest stars in the Gemini constellation, named for famous mythological twins (Castor and Pollux), and I almost knew the treaty that made New Zealand part of the British empire. (I said Wairea, and it's actually Waitangi -- and I've been to Waitangi, so it kind of annoys me that I missed that, but oh well.)

Our British team member came through with answers to questions about both football (soccer) and cricket, and some British pop music which would have left the rest of us high and dry. Dave knew a quote from Shakespeare (because it had been used in a "Star Trek" movie, but still, that counts). All of us, in our own way, contributed to the winning tally.

The tube strike is over today, but I think I'm going to walk to work anyway, just so I can say I walked to and fro for an entire week. Why I want to say this I'm not sure. Just an obscure personal challenge. (Plus it will mean I've saved £28 in tube fares!)

(Photo: Night in Maida Vale, on Wednesday.)

Still No Tube

The tube strike is entering its second day today. Apparently mobs of people have been delayed in stations around London, but I couldn't testify to that from personal experience. I saw nothing out of the ordinary when I walked to work yesterday morning, except that some of the security gates were down at the Westbourne Park tube station -- where there was supposedly "limited service" -- and the Maida Vale station seemed closed. I saw no crowds. Then again, I didn't pass through any of the major transit hubs.

I like walking to work, as you know, but it is oddly, cumulatively fatiguing -- it's five miles each day if I walk both directions, and I've walked both directions so far all this week. (Monday and Tuesday I walked by choice, which might have been a mistake given the strike yesterday and today!) I might be ready for the tube by tomorrow, when things are scheduled to be back to normal. (There's another 48-hour strike set for next week, though.)

I always wonder about these sorts of strikes. They seem counterproductive, don't they? When we had a subway strike in New York in 2005, most people seemed to get angry at the union. Of course I suppose it depends on the bargaining and the circumstances. Here, the proposed closing of customer service windows in tube stations is the sticking point. Personally, I'm not sure I'd miss them, but some people feel they're important for safety.

I got a terrible night's sleep last night. (Surprising given all that walking!) I woke at 12:30 a.m. for a couple of hours, and then again briefly at 4 a.m. I'm going to be the zombie librarian today.

(Photo: Maida Vale, yesterday.)

No Tube, No TV

Yesterday I came back to my desk early from lunch. I'd eaten but I still had half an hour left in my ridiculously long lunch break, and my coworker persuaded me to take a walk rather than just sit down and go back to work. (I know this sounds like a work environment from another planet but I swear that's really what happened.)

I don't love walking in the neighborhood around the school -- like many wealthy neighborhoods it has very little character. Lots of hedges and walls and big white houses and uninteresting, gentrified businesses. But I walked in a new direction and after several blocks, I did find some photos, like this one of a pub that wasn't quite on my radar.

So, moral of the story -- and as I often say -- there's always something to photograph. I'm glad my coworker made me go outside.

Olga was funny on her walk this morning. She was very insistent about going in a different direction, and eventually she led me straight to the vet! I hope she's not trying to tell me something. (I think she just likes the vet. She often gets treats there.) Then, when we got back to our apartment complex, I let her off leash (like I usually do) and she immediately ran behind a hedge and ate something very crunchy. I could hear her crunching it. I have no idea what it was, but it hasn't killed her yet. Bad girl.

The tube strike has apparently taken hold, at least according to the headlines -- so I will definitely be walking to work today. I tried to turn on the TV this morning but it's giving me a message that says "no internet connection detected," which is weird because a) it's obviously untrue and b) our TV doesn't come through our home internet connection. I suspect our building's reception has been disrupted by this morning's high winds.

It's going to be an interesting day.

This Week's Superstitions

Dave and I came across this black cat on the way home from The Shard on Sunday. A very handsome creature! Fortunately I am not one who suspects that black cats bring bad luck. (Does anyone really believe that?)

Not that I've had exclusively good luck of late. To wit, I paid my tax bill from New York State. Hopefully I've put that behind me now. I may still go after H&R Block to see if they can pick up the tab for the interest, as I understand may be possible. After all, if they'd done my 2010 taxes correctly, I wouldn't have had to pay that interest, would I?

A few years ago I posted a photo of a feather that came in our egg carton. The other day, it happened again. I'm going to invent a superstition that says it's good luck to find a feather in your eggs.

I came across this silly sticker on one of my walks with Olga. I think it's definitely good luck to find a silly sticker, even one that's slightly weathered and tired and rained on...

...or perhaps faded.

We'll need good luck this week in particular. We're supposed to have a tube strike beginning tonight and lasting through Thursday. Transport workers are protesting the closure of station offices and the elimination of jobs. It's a good thing I can walk to work!

Top o' The Shard

I've posted a few photos of The Shard, the 87-story spire of glass that is now the tallest building in Europe. It's easily visible from all over London, but we'd never been inside. Until yesterday, that is. Taking advantage of yet another rare sunny day, Dave and I decided to go up in The Shard and check out the view.

It's not an inexpensive outing. The tickets are £30 apiece (about $50), which is frankly insane. But we figured, why not do it just once? Dave wondered if they'd give us a drink, at least.

The answer is no. And despite the fact that the observation deck is named The View, Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg were nowhere in evidence. (Dave gets credit for that joke, too.)

We did have an excellent view of the Tower of London. I wondered what its inhabitants from centuries past would think if they could see The Shard.

And farther afield we could clearly see the white gleam of St. Paul's Cathedral.

We couldn't see as well to the far west and south, because the sun was low and everything was a bit backlit -- so I didn't get good photos of Westminster Palace, Battersea or Elephant & Castle. But oh well.

All in all, I'd say it's an incredible view, but it ought to be about half the price.