At the dog pool, Merlin exercises his right to float
At the dog pool, Merlin exercises his right to float
Plus: St. Matthew is buzzing over a huge honeybee discovery; Lessons learned during a morning of bird watching; election held
Good morning! Today is Wednesday, November 6, 2024. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
Editor’s note: Yes, there was an election yesterday, but we know you’re being inundated with results and analysis just about everywhere else. So today, The Ledger is taking a different approach, with an edition designed to reduce your stress level and let you focus on other stories designed to amuse, surprise and delight you. Yes, there is a summary of election results toward the bottom, but let us be your quiet corner in a loud world.
Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by GraserSmith.
Experience when you need it most. At GraserSmith, we exclusively focus on providing personalized advocacy in family matters of divorce, child custody, child support, alimony, property division, and prenuptial agreements. We also offer private mediation options to resolve your matters without unnecessary delay or costly litigation.
As voters head to the polls, canines head to the pools: An east Charlotte business is teaching dogs to swim; $75 private lessons, open swim time and ‘paddle club’ memberships
Jude Dollar teaches Constantine (next to Dollar) how to swim. Merlin (in red) and Scout (with the tennis ball) are AquaPups regulars and use their hour of swim time playing fetch.
by Lindsey Banks
When the Jeep made that final turn off Independence Boulevard on a recent afternoon, Merlin the dog knew exactly what came next.
“As soon as I turn the corner, he starts jumping,” said Joyce Hawkes, Merlin’s mom and chauffeur. They drive 30 minutes from Concord nearly every day to Merlin’s favorite place — AquaPups Charlotte.
AquaPups is an indoor, dogs-only recreational swimming pool. It’s owned by Independence Veterinary Clinic, which is next door in east Charlotte near Matthews. Since 2020, AquaPups has offered swim lessons to dogs who’ve never been in the water, and for pups who know what they’re doing, it’s a place to get some exercise. (It’s also a great way for humans to ensure their dogs will take a long nap afterward.)
No leash is needed to guide Merlin, a 4-year-old Frenchton (Frenchie Boston terrier mix), to AquaPups’s front door. He’s been a member since August. Once inside, Hawkes slips on his red life vest, and the next hour is a blur with Merlin splashing and retrieving his favorite orange frisbee.
Every dog is different in the water, said Jude Dollar, who has been a dog swim instructor at AquaPups since July. The pool sees an average of five dogs per day.
“Merlin’s more of a glider,” Dollar said. Scout, another dog in the pool, is known to “make the waves,” he said.
Scout, a 3-year-old retriever from Dilworth, doesn’t need a life vest. When the tennis ball hits the water, he jumps in paws-first. You half-expect to hear “cannonball” when he’s flying through the air and hits the water with a huge splash.
In just a few strides from his long legs, Scout is back on the pool deck, handing the ball back to his owner, Dean Pinard. He shakes out his fur (beware if you’re in the splash zone), and the cycle begins again. If it wasn’t for bathroom breaks, which dogs are encouraged to take every 15 minutes when they’re swimming, Scout might never leave the pool.
Why take a pooch to the pool? The motivation for canine swim lessons isn’t that different from human swim lessons, Dollar said. Sometimes, owners want their dogs to be comfortable with water and know how to swim when they go on boat trips or vacations at the beach. That’s what brought Merlin in, Hawkes said.
And other times, owners want their dogs to get in some exercise, like Scout, whose breed enjoys being in the water. Like humans, swimming is a great way to build strength and keep off those extra pounds from eating too many treats. AquaPups is the only swimming pool in Charlotte that’s open to the public and allows dogs. Because it’s indoor, it can be used year-round.
“This is the best kind of exercise you can do for your dog’s health,” Dollar said.
All dogs are required to be vaccinated and must complete a 30-minute orientation, which costs $30. After that, a 30-minute swim lesson costs $75. If your dog doesn’t need lessons, then it’s $15 per hour, or monthly “paddle club” memberships are available for unlimited swims, which cost $30 for private pool time or $45 if your dog is OK to swim with others.
You can teach an old dog a new trick: For Constantine, Dollar’s 14-year-old mixed breed, it was orientation day. She had never been in the water before, so Dollar spent the hour assessing Constantine’s comfort and skill level in the water. (AquaPups instructors are the only humans allowed in the dog pool due to state health standards. There are five instructors available, in case your dog doesn’t vibe with a certain person.)
Constantine’s wise age made her seemingly indifferent to the situation, so she willingly let Dollar fashion her up with a blue life vest. Dollar slowly pulled her out onto the ramp leading down into the pool. Constantine was just along for the ride.
But then Dollar walked her deeper into the pool until her legs were suspended in the water, and he let go. There were a few seconds of panic in Constantine’s eyes, but she quickly recovered and paddled back to the ramp.
Dollar let her rest and explore the pool deck area for a few minutes before leading her back into the water again. She became slightly more confident each time she re-entered the water, but she wasn’t in any rush to get back in. Still, Constantine was an inspiration; dogs are never too old to learn how to swim.
At the end of the hour, newbies like Constantine are generally ready to have the life vest removed and their fur dried.
But pups like Scout and Merlin, who may have been fish in a previous life, have to be coaxed out of the pool.
With sad eyes and downturned ears, Merlin begrudgingly let Hawkes take off his vest, rinse his feet of the salt water, and dry his fur with a towel. He’ll be back tomorrow.
Lindsey Banks is a staff reporter for The Ledger: lindsey@cltledger.com
St. Matthew Catholic Church is buzzing over a honey of a discovery within its walls; 25 gallons of the sweet stuff is expected this summer, thanks to a congregation of bees
Imagine the roofers’ surprise: As workers installed a section of new roof on St. Matthew Catholic Church’s New Life Center building, they came across a beehive nestled between the interior and exterior walls.
And this wasn’t just any beehive — it was 5 feet by 7 feet, and held some 100,000 honeybees, possibly with two queens.
Jesse Holland, a local beekeeper and the owner of BizzyBee Honey, Hives & More, was called in, and he safely removed the bees from the building’s walls using smoke to calm them and a special vacuum to extricate them.
Holland told The Ledger it was likely the hive had been there for 7 or 8 years.
The bees were moved to a hive on Holland’s property for several weeks to adjust before moving into their permanent new digs — an apiary on the church property.
Each of these 10 hives on the campus of St. Matthew Catholic Church in Ballantyne is expected to produce about 2.5 gallons of honey a year. Jesse Holland, owner of BizzyBee Honey, Hives and More, extracted the bees from the church walls and now tends to the hives year-round. (Photo courtesy of St. Matthew Catholic Church)
The honeycomb from the New Life Center walls was cut into slabs and placed in frames to form 10 separate hives, which were placed on the church’s campus, behind a tall metal fence designed to keep out predators. Holland said he added other bee colonies to the St. Matthew colony, and now a half-million bees live together on the church grounds.
The bees are working hard in their new location, and 25 gallons of honey should be ready to harvest sometime next summer, Holland said. He and his team will check in on the hives about once a month in the winter, every 7 to 10 days in the spring and about every two weeks at other times of the year.
The honey will be sold in the St. Matthew gift shop, with proceeds used to support the church’s ministries dedicated to feeding those in need, St. Matthew chief operating officer Antoinette Usher told The Ledger.
And of course, the honey will need a name.
Parishioners are voting on that, and Usher said the list has been narrowed down to two contenders: Holy Honey and Heavenly Honey. —Cristina Bolling
On a morning of birding, the only letdown is the absence of woodpeckers
Birding is a cooperative endeavor, with members of a bird walk pointing out what they see and helping each other spot birds in sometimes hard-to-find places. Janet Palmer (purple jacket) led a group earlier this week with the Mecklenburg Audubon Society.
If there’s a key nutrient missing in many of our lives right now, it’s likely Vitamin N: Nature. We’ve been ignoring the call of the wild that invites us to put down our phones, step away from the laptop, get out of the car, and venture into the territories of creatures that don’t give a hoot about our human stressors.
A good way to get a Vitamin N infusion? Bird watching.
If you’re a newbie like me, a bird walk with an expert may be just the prescription, like the beginner’s bird walk I took earlier this week at McAlpine Creek Park with Janet Palmer of the Mecklenburg Audubon Society, and three other bird watchers.
Together, we watched for warblers among the treetops, witnessed an egret eating a fishy breakfast, heard the constant cries of the red-shouldered hawk and tuned our ears for the squeaky-dog-toy sound of the illusive nuthatch and the typically easy-to-spot woodpecker.
Birding is like a treasure hunt that forces you to engage your senses of sight and hearing and be fully present in a way that not many other activities do.
Here are a few of my favorite observations:
🦅 Bird-watchers are huge list-makers, and yes, there are apps for that. As we walked, Palmer ticked off the birds we saw on an app called eBird, which kept an accounting of what we were seeing and hearing and can be shared with others in real time.
Avid bird watchers keep all kinds of lists, Palmer said, like lists of birds they see in each county and lists from every trip they take. Palmer said one friend keeps a “bathroom window list” of birds she spies from her bathroom window. Laura Blakesley, another veteran bird watcher who was on Palmer’s bird walk, said her husband keeps a list of birds he sees “doing the wild thing” (having bird sex).
Mecklenburg Audubon Society does a “Christmas bird count” that involves volunteers going out all over the region to count birds in various places, and ends with a “tally up dinner” afterward.
Another app Palmer used was Merlin Bird ID, which used her cellphone microphone to identify what bird was singing or chirping. She also used Merlin to play recordings of certain birds’ songs so I could learn to identify them. (Merlin is so accurate, Palmer said, that playing certain chirps too loud on the app could scare away wood ducks that are easily spooked.)
🦅 Some birds distinguish themselves by their cries, others by how they fly. Woodpeckers have an undulating style of flight because of how they pull their wings back, which makes them easy to spot in the air. (Although none revealed themselves to us during our walk.)
Palmer and Blakesley say they never tire from the winter wren’s song. “They’re not that flashy looking, but their song in the spring is just so beautiful,” Palmer said. “Hike up Profile Trail on Grandfather Mountain. This will be your soundtrack.”
🦅 Squeeze every drop from the experience by watching for the “parking lot birds.” Palmer and Blakesley both said they’ve had some great bird sightings while walking to their cars after a bird walk — including seeing the incredibly striking pileated woodpecker, with a flaming red crest and white stripes down its black neck.
“It’s hilarious when you go on some trips and you’re looking for a bird and looking for a bird, and then you finally come back to your car, and there it is, in the damn parking lot,” Blakesley laughed.
It’s a good lesson in bird watching as in life — the best things could be just overhead, but we’ll miss them if we stop paying attention.
🦅 Bird watching is a welcoming pastime. Anyone is welcome on a Mecklenburg Audubon Society bird walk (you don’t have to be a member), and while there are beginner bird walks like the one I took, new members can join on any walk.
Walks are typically limited to about a dozen people, so emailing a walk leader is important (their email addresses are on the list of walks on the website). Newbie birders shouldn’t be shy to tell the leader that it’s their first time, Palmer said. Binoculars are helpful, and some leaders will have extra pairs for new bird watchers to borrow during the walk.
We spotted more than 20 types of birds during our 2-hour trek, but we never did see a woodpecker, much to Palmer’s surprise and disappointment. I took it as a sign to keep the binoculars handy and head back out another day. —Cristina Bolling
In other news…
Election results as of 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday:
President: Republican Donald Trump was voted back into the White House.
U.S. Senate: Republicans regained control of the U.S. Senate.
U.S. House: Control of the U.S. House remains uncertain. In the Charlotte area, Republicans Mark Harris and Tim Moore won, as did incumbent Democrat Alma Adams.
N.C. governor: Voters elected Democrat Josh Stein.
Democrats won races for lieutenant governor (Rachel Hunt), attorney general (Jeff Jackson), superintendent of public instruction (Maurice “Mo” Green) and secretary of state (Elaine Marshall).
Republicans won races for auditor (Dave Boliek), agriculture commissioner (Steve Troxler), insurance commissioner (Mike Causey), labor commissioner (Luke Farley) and treasurer (Brad Briner).
N.C. Supreme Court: Republican Jefferson Griffin narrowly leads in the race for associate justice, which would give Republicans a 6-1 advantage on the court. It could head to a recount.
N.C. constitutional amendment: The referendum on citizen-only voting passed.
General Assembly: Republicans are expected to control both houses of the state legislature again, although they might have fallen short of a supermajority. In hotly contested local races, Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham appeared to narrowly win re-election in south Mecklenburg, Democrat Beth Gardner Helfrich won a House seat in north Mecklenburg and Democrat Woodson Bradley leads in a south Mecklenburg senate race by 27 votes.
Mecklenburg County commissioners: Democrats won all races, maintaining their 9-0 advantage.
Bonds: Voters approved all bonds in Charlotte and Cornelius.
➡️ You can view all election results in North Carolina at the State Board of Elections website.
You might be interested in these Charlotte events
Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:
SATURDAY: Queens University of Charlotte Open House, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Queens University of Charlotte. Get a glimpse into life as a Royal. The Queens University Open House is your opportunity to meet Queens campus staff and faculty, hear directly from current students about their experiences, explore our beautiful campus, and learn more about the enrollment process. We have a jam-packed day scheduled for you and your guest(s), so please plan to stay for the entirety of the event. Free. Register here.
MONDAY: An Evening with Major General (Ret.) Garrett Yee, 6 to 8 p.m., at Duke Mansion, 400 Hermitage Road. Join the World Affairs Council of Charlotte for an exclusive private dinner on November 11 with Major General (Ret.) Garrett Yee, Vice President and General Manager at General Dynamics Information Technology. Major General Yee will lead an insightful discussion on the critical intersection of technology and military operations, exploring how advancements in digital infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity, and defense technologies are transforming modern warfare and global security strategies. $160 (WACC Member Rate) or $200 (Non-Member Rate).
WEDNESDAY: Innovation Barn Fall Festival, 5:30 to 8 p.m., at the Innovation Barn, 932 Seigle Ave. The Ultimate Sweet & Savory Eco-Festival: Buzzin' Honey Harvest & Fin-tastic Fish Fry Bonanza Featuring Crispy Tilapia, Honey-Infused Delights, Zesty Salads, and Desserts — All While Championing Sustainability and the Circular Economy with Every Bite! Join Us for a Bee-autiful Feast of Epic Proportions that Combines Delicious Food, Eco-Friendly Fun, and a Celebration of Local, Sustainable Practices! Free to attend but a ticket is needed for a plate. $35-$250.
➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.
In brief
Tax incentives floated for big Providence Road development: Officials with the city of Charlotte are exploring the idea of offering $19M in tax incentives for infrastructure for a proposed mixed-use project along Providence Road in south Charlotte. The proposal by Levine Properties, Northwood Ravin and Horizon Development Properties is to redevelop 113 acres near the Providence Square shopping center and include around 2,000 homes and a grocery store. (Biz Journal, subscriber-only)
New football team learns lessons in resilience: In its first year, the Ballantyne Ridge High varsity football team has lost all 10 games and been outscored 523 to 23, but its coach says the team has focused on resiliency. “It’s a grit that these young men have on a week-to-week basis,” he said. “Resilience is something that’s hard and you don’t know you need it until it really hits you in the face. And these guys have been punched in the mouth a lot this year.” (WFAE)
In The Ledger’s latest Mountain Updates newsletter: Asheville officials are pushing back their estimate for restoring water service — and taking an alternate approach to getting the system fixed.
In The Ledger’s latest Ways of Life obituaries newsletter (🔒): Shameeka Henderson ascended through various roles during her 25 years at the Arts & Science Council, and colleagues described her as a “voice of reason” and a “peacemaker.”
Panthers trade another receiver: The Carolina Panthers traded wide receiver Jonathan Mingo, a former second-round pick, to the Dallas Cowboys. He’s the second Panthers receiver to be traded in the last week. (WBTV)
Trip to Germany for government and business leaders: Eight members of the Charlotte City Council and six city staff plan to travel to Germany for an economic development trip that coincides with a Carolina Panthers game in Munich this Sunday, the Charlotte Observer reported. Business leaders are also going, including representatives of law firms Parker Poe and Moore & Van Allen, the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and American Airlines, as well as one Mecklenburg County commissioner, the Charlotte Business Journal reported. It also reported that the Panthers are hosting “50 executive level guests from team sponsors including Atrium Health, Bank of America Corp., Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina, Bojangles, Daimler Truck North America, Molson Coors and Ticketmaster” in Munich.
Need to sign up for this e-newsletter? We offer a free version, as well as paid memberships for full access to all 4 of our local newsletters:
➡️ Opt in or out of different newsletters on your “My Account” page.
➡️ Learn more about The Charlotte Ledger
The Charlotte Ledger is a locally owned media company that delivers smart and essential news through e-newsletters and on a website. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing, or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.
Like what we are doing? Feel free to forward this along and to tell a friend.
Sponsorship information/customer service: email support@cltledger.com.
Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman