It is currently raining outside. Hard. I wonder if the squirrel nests in our oak trees are waterproof. Maybe the squirrels curl up into a ball as well, and their fur is oily enough to repel any leakage.
I'm glad the hurricane named Irene is going to miss Florida. A bunch of them hit our area in 2003, I think it was. I don't really want to live through that again. Stressful, disruptive of life. Multiple days without power (hot, humid days), roads a mess, much property damage to our area, whole acres of nearby pine trees mowed down....
During the worst of the winds I remember watching my neighbor's 70 ft oak tree reacting to the waves of moving air. One minute it looked like a drenched oak tree, the next it was bent over, like a leafed-out sapling did when I purchased it at Lowe's and drove home with it out the window. Unreal. Even limbs one-foot-plus in diameter can bend.
One time, when I had ventured out the front door (into the relative protection of a covered L-shape nook), I saw a large clump of leaves blow down onto our driveway. A startled squirrel climbed out, looked around. And fled. Crazy.
As a lover of nature shows, and a hiker and camper in areas with bears, I have many times heard, "Never get between a mother and her cubs!" Thanks to recent research, it seems better advice would be: "Never get near a hungry male bear!"
Over at the Discover Magazine Blog site I learned:
In a survey of all the black bear attacks in North America over the last 110 years, scientists have found that 88% of the bears involved were in hunting mode. And 92% of those predatory bears were males. [source]
Good to know. Though it's not likely to change my hiking or camping behavior. For as it was, I did everything possible to stay clear of any bear, male or female, mature or immature. Sure, I love nature and enjoy seeing as much of it with naked eye as I can, but something as dangerous an unpredictable as bears -- I give a wide birth.
[Bear habitat? It's a forested ravine in mountainous northern New Mexico, near an apple orchard. I wouldn't be surprised. While I have picnicked there during the day, without reservation, I would be cautious if spending the night in a tent.]
[recycled material - first appeared here]
The first time I encountered a UFO, I was fourteen years old. It came whizzing toward me fast and low and hit me in the knee. The collision with my knee brought the unidentified flying object to a dead halt. Unidentified it was no longer. I'm sad to report that it was not a Roswell weather balloon. That wouldn't have hurt as much. When the tears cleared from my eyes, I discovered I had been struck by a Dr. Scholl's wooden clog, size 7. It was my sister's. The left shoe had been propelled at me by my younger brother, with whom I had been fighting. My knee was bruised for weeks. UFOs can really be dangerous.
I was on a backpacking trip in the mountains of Vermont the second time I encountered a UFO. A friend of mine, Walt, and I were making our way along a soggy trail, deep in the forest. The trees were dripping, and the stones that punctuated the trail were damp and slippery. Walt had recently taken up the hobby of moss and fungi identification. As we walked he kept his eye out for new species.
Walt suddenly cried, "Oh my god!" He crept under pine limbs and knelt in a low spot beside the trail. I followed. With great excitement he took out his magnifying glass and examined the strange specimen. Over his shoulder I could see what he had exclaimed about. Although it was not a flying object--at least not at that moment--it was definitely unidentified. Walt said, "I have never seen anything like this!" He was almost afraid to touch the small, perfectly round lump that glowed an other-worldly green.
Then we were laughing. Walt had gently touched, then pulled from the muck, a half-buried tennis ball. We kept laughing as we continued our trek. But then, as we fell into a striding silence, questions surfaced. How had the ball gotten there? Could any human have hit a lob from the valley courts all the way up the mountain? Was it a sign?
The most recent time I encountered a UFO occurred where I now live, in Florida. I was at the kitchen sink when I heard a tremendous "ZAP" and the sky brightened. Then came a "POP" and the lights in the house dimmed. Out of the corner of my eye I witnessed something fall to earth.
I walked outside toward the telephone pole from which the object had fallen. Not far away I found something lying in the grass, tinged with burn marks. Smoke hung in the air. Although the creature was small, its eyes were large and black--a sure sign of an alien if ever there was one.
And then it moved. The creature lived. After a few stunned moments it got to its feet and hopped to the base of an oak tree. It climbed to a safe height, rested, then made its way into the canopy and out of sight.
Since then I've paid more attention to the startling number of creatures, just like the one that fell to earth, living in my trees. It seems they only come down to taste the scattered seeds beneath our bird feeders, and to dig in my wife's flower gardens. Doing research, no doubt. When I walk outside to try to talk with them, they vanish. I don't know if I'll ever completely understand these bushy-tailed semi-terrestrials, but we do share the same universe.
Lately all's been fairly quiet on the UFO front. Eerily quiet.
Wait a minute, I spoke too soon. As if reading my mind, something just shot by my head and disappeared into the branches near the hammock upon which I recline. It was fast. And tiny. Have aliens mastered nano-technology? I think it wanted to communicate with me. I distinctly heard a "chirp, chirp."
There are American goldfinch and Carolina wren in the area, but seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I did, it didn't look like anything I recognize. It's a mystery! Maybe, just maybe, I had an encounter with something seen never before: a titanium-billed Martian rockpecker, perhaps?
Now that would be something.
Barred owl on riverbank.
P.S. There's a new Carnival of Evolution out at Quintessence of Dust (love that blog title).
Saw this "beast" on our youngest citrus tree last weekend. Not only is it ugly, but it was destroying leaves by eating them.
But we didn't destroy the beast. We searched online for its identity, and learned it would become this beauty:
[this image not mine: source]
Because we so love giant swallowtail butterflies, we transferred the beauty-to-be onto an established orange tree. That tree could afford to lose a few leaves. Not much of a price to pay while waiting for a beast to become a beauty.
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