This is Texas....Parker, Texas that is...

While our house was being finished we stayed at my parents for 5 weeks after Maison was born.  I had visited my parents often and we had stayed there on and off through our home remodeling but I had never been there long enough to notice several oddities in their neighborhood until we were there for 5 straight weeks...

My parents neighbor has a live nativity scene and when I say live I mean living animals that they purchased and care for all year long so that they can participate in the Christmas pageant at the church each year.  Ok...so anyone can feed and care for a few donkeys...right?  Uh, this guy not only has donkeys, he has a camel...are you kidding me?  Who buys a camel for a yearly gig?   Here is the camel hanging out with the donkey...

I mentioned in an earlier post that I took Maison to Bob Woodruff park almost everyday.  After a few trips I decided to venture to the trails that spawned off the lake.  One of the trails went on forever and along the way I found a peculiar sign..."No Horses Allowed Beyond This Point"

I've lived in Texas a long time and have ridden horses most of my life and I have never seen such a sign.  This trail is NOT a horse trail; it is a paved bike, run, skate, etc trail.  I have no clue why anyone would even think to take a horse on the trail much less need a notice not to take a horse past a certain point.  The sign was conveniently located about 10 yards from a huge picnic area and then another 20 yards or so to reach the lake that is always highly populated with walkers, runners, children on the playground...so why on earth would anyone take a horse there?  I thought this sign was so odd...yet the more I walked on this trail and the further I went I now know why it was there.  Apparently some people DO ride horses on paved trails and let them 'do their business' on said trail.  I've run/biked/skated/walked on Plano trails for about 20 years and have seen a lot of 'dog business', 'duck business', and even a some 'unidentifiable business' (possibly squirrel or rabbit???), but never in my life have I seen horse poo up close and personal on a running trail....eeeewwwww!

So each day I either went a different route or went further on the trail than I did the day before...on several outings I noticed people picking pecans.  I'm not talking about 3-4 people...I'm talking 20-30 people.  Most of the trail I was walking on is part of the nature preserve.  I'm not versed in nature law but I don't think that is that legal.  Can you just take pecans from a nature preserve?  Uh, not like a sample but 5-gal buckets by the dozen?  I would have taken a picture or two to document the pecan pickers but there would have been a mass exodus towards the southern border so I decided to limit the pecan picking description to verbiage only.  

After telling my dad about the pecan pickers he told me that Carlos, our gardener, said Texas Pecans are 'big business'.  You can sell your picked pecans by the 5-gal bucket for money.  Who knew???  Apparently Texas Pecans don't go through any sort of processing before they are packaged and sold to the buyer.  Let's just say I won't be buying 'local' in the future...