montanabirders: Park Excitement

Last night at 5 pm I decided to take a bike ride through the state park which is right next door to our RV park. There is a paved road in the park that makes a loop which I had gone around twice. I was wanting to go around again but thought that since it was getting near sundown and there was no one else around, perhaps I should consider my safety and not make the third trip. As it turned out, I should have gone around again. As you leave the park there is a levee that you climb to an area at the top where there is currently some construction, then down the other side and on the road to home. When I got to the top of the levee I heard a collision and saw a black pickup truck with Mexican license plates crash through a security gate that had just been installed. There was a big cloud of dust as the pickup accelerated through the gate, made the turn onto the road where I was riding, wiping out a couple of construction barrels in the process. I was on the way down the hill when I realized the guy was right behind me and closing fast. I hit the ditch and he went flying past me, turning at the bottom of the hill onto Old Military Highway. Shortly after a Border Patrol vehicle came at high speed down Bentsen Palm Drive so I pointed out the direction the bad guy was going. As I was talking to Roy, a Texas Parks employee, another Border Patrol vehicle came flying down the levee in the direction the bad guy had come. Roy & I waved him through in the direction the pickup had taken. Since I am so low down when I am riding my trike I could not see into the bed of the pickup but Roy, who had been standing there talking on his cell phone, told me that the bed of the pickup was full of bundles which were fairly obviously marijuana. Dan & I watched the news last night but there was no mention of the chase. This morning I went back to the park to take pictures and immediately saw a construction worker talking to a couple and telling them about the activities of last night. I told him I had been there when it all happened. He said "Oh you're the one who saw it all". He told me they had caught the guy at Anzalduas, about 5 miles from here. There were also 2 Canadians who walk with their 2 german shepherds who said that in the distance from the state park to the palapa which is owned by the owner of our RV park and that our residents can visit [just a couple of miles away] they had seized 2800 lbs of drugs recently. There is also a path that comes up onto the levee from beside the state park that is seeing a lot of drug activity right now. As if that was not enough excitement, this morning when Dan went outside, there was a trail of blood across our concrete patio...probably not an animal as the drops were from high enough up that they caused a splatter when they hit, and there were no tracks.

All in all, just another day in sunny south Texas. Birding anyone?!?

Coming down from the levee and turning left onto Old Military Highway.....the scene of the excitement!

The construction site where the bad guy turned off the levee wiping out a couple of barrels and coming down the road toward me.

The newly installed security gate on the levee that he crashed through and the Border Patrol assessing the damage. Note the bend in this very sturdy [but not sturdy enough] gate