Cleo's Corner for Christmas

There are 21 days until Christmas and I see people building into panic mode already. Relax folks. Christmas is about giving, so remember to include yourself on your list and give yourself some quiet time thinking about what Christmas really means to you.

Gifting the St. Pete Beach Today Website
It has been several years now since the idea for the St. Pete Beach Today website came into my head. Now, after a year of working on it and learning more about my community than I ever thought I could, I’ve come to the decision that the website is about community, not marketing, and I have decided to subsidize the site. It is the least I can do for all that this community gave me as I grew up with a single Mom who made sure we survived, pay check to pay check, but which would have been much harder without the help we got from shop keepers, the church, fishermen and police, fire and rescue friends. In the picture of my family, I am in the middle with the hot water bottle on my earache! Sally Robertson is also shown with Nancy, Betsy and Tommy.

As a friend said, “It is payback time, Cleo,” and I am happy I can offer this site to St. Pete Beach residents, visitors, and businesses. What this change means is that every business will always be on the map and available to contact, without any money changing hands. They each will have a full presence too—a photo, a menu and a full description. We’ll make other services available for a fee—linking to their website and featuring a story on them being one enhancement. Adding a video is another. But the important thing is that without any money we will all have access to every business and event on St. Pete Beach.

In addition, we will feature local photographers and their photos and/or videos and local writers on subjects from gardening to fishing, cooking to shelling and everything happening in our area. We want this to be “our” website where we can come together, communicate openly and constructively and just plain have fun.

For those businesses who have already paid $110 for a year, we will be writing feature articles about them and highlighting them on the website as well as featuring them in our 10,000 piece mailing that goes out every Friday. We appreciate that from the very beginning these businesses believed in the site. We are most appreciative and we will continue to honor those who help support this site.

Another big change is that any monies made over operating expenses will go towards City-wide projects working in conjunction with other organizations here that want to do good for our community. So send in your stories, old photos, or anything you think people would enjoy and enjoy a very Merry Christmas.

Barking Caterpillars
For the past 15 years I have been birthing Monarch caterpillars in my yard. I have plenty of milkweed plant, the only plant they eat when they are in the caterpillar stage. This year they didn’t come in October as they usually do. Not until the 27th of November did I see any, and then I found 10 on one plant!

Knowing it was going to be very chilly during the night, I brought the potted plant in the house to keep them warm over night. By morning there were 14 and they were seriously overcrowded. I decided to move them outside to plants that had plenty of leaves and as I knelt down to do so, my dog, Rhino, started barking because someone was knocking at my front door. Suddenly I noticed that as Rhino barked, the caterpillars seemed to bark too, many of them lifting their heads and bobbing them as Rhino barked. I decided they are the “barking caterpillars” and the video attached proves my point! Anyone want to hire them for a show???""

	Barking Caterpillar If the video does not start within 30 seconds, click the PLAY button again. If it still doesn't start, RIGHT click here and select "Save Target As" to download the file and then play it from your own hard drive. Sometimes large video files take a long time to load.

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