“What we have here, my friend, is two and a half inches of ‘early Spring’!”
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“*%$@£*&%$**!!!!”
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“I don’t speak Starling but that seemed a bit rude.”
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Goldfinches seldom came here.
Till three days ago.
Now I can’t keep the feeder topped up.
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“We’re very grateful, missus!”
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A downy woodpecker got to the suet early, before the brattish starlings arrived.
Birds delight me. I’ve noticed lately that when I go out to top up the seed trays and drop carrot by the groundhog hole, the sparrows don’t immediately take flight as they used to.
Now they begin a loud chatter. Probably alerting their flock to the availability of more seed.
I like to think they are singing to me.
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After breakfast, a post office run.
When I decline the offer of a ride, Grant always comes back and tells me he has seen something interesting.
A bird or an animal mostly.
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Once he gave Nibbs a lift.
Driving together one time back in Washington, we saw two dogs running down a busy road. Fearing they would get hurt we stopped.
Next thing you know, the big slobbering and excited dogs were in the car lavishly covering us in kisses.
They were chipped and the owner was soon found. It was a short but fun encounter.
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We picked up another, smaller and less effusive dog in my neighbourhood. This one we brought home where it introduced itself to the foster cats.
Seeing that they got along so well…but we did the right thing and called the phone number on the dog’s collar.
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It would be too chaotic to add a dog to our family and not fair to our aging felines or the dog.
So we enjoy dog moments where we can get them.
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When we drove on the thruway the other day we noticed signs that warned of traffic delays to be expected this coming Monday, because of the eclipse.
We’ve been warned to have supplies of food and water as well. In the meantime some places in the path now have bad weather forecasts, so some of the affected people are joining the crowds of eclipse chasers.
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Hotel prices along the eclipse path have increased.
This is what is being reported, at least.
A great deal of hype, I’m sure.
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I have an appointment that day but fortunately it’s at 9 am and doesn’t involve driving on the throughway.
We’ll probably be safe!
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We seldom drive just to the post office.
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What’s worse than a putt-putt?
An Amish cart on a blind rise.
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What happened to the sign?
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I promise I did not edit the signpost out of these pictures.
So where did it go?
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When we got home we had lunch and as usual I glanced at the headlines.
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Only to discover there had been an earthquake.
In the Tristate area.
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They are known to happen on the east coast but not often, so when they do everyone gets excited.
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Earthquakes are not something we think about much here but they certainly do occur.
In 1755 an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 hit 50 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts.
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In 1886 just south of Charleston, South Carolina there was an earthquake of magnitude 6.8-7.2 which destroyed much of the city.
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And as recently as 2011, the Washington DC area was shaken by a magnitude 5.8 quake.
According to what I have read, earthquakes that occur on the east coast are more serious because the ground is “older and colder” which means that the seismic waves travel further.
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Moving to the west coast in 2000, earthquakes were the furthest thing from my mind. I knew they were a possibility, but it wasn’t a concern.
On February 28th 2001, I was driving home from an acupuncture appointment when I suddenly thought the car had blown a tire, but as I kept going it seemed alright.
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As I came to a traffic light I saw that it was swaying, yet there was no wind.
Then I saw people coming out of buildings, school kids assembling in a parking lot.
“Oh, a tremor!” I thought.
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Arriving home I found my cat Yeti hiding beneath my bed and a few things were scattered on the floor, a picture had come off a wall and smashed.
I still did not realise it had been an actual earthquake until a colleague phoned me. It had been magnitude 6.8. And I had basically missed it!
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At the airport, people had been severely shaken and a concrete wall in one of the stairwells had cracked.
The damage from that quake was estimated between $1 and 4 billion. Several hundred people were injured yet only one died, of a heart attack.
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It’s not that I enjoy being frightened or that I feel the need to brag that I was in an earthquake.
It’s that if you are exposed to an experience, you should be able to appreciate it or participate in it.
If that makes sense?
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It wasn’t until several years later that I began to worry about possible natural phenomena.
Driving around Mt St Helens set me to thinking about the power of volcanoes. As a child I had always been very afraid of them.
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When in new locations, I remember scrutinising the terrain for that ominous shape. I’ve no idea why, but when I had my morphine-induced nightmare, it concerned a volcano and a global flood.
The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 had impressed itself on my mind and the nightmare brought it to the fore.
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Thereafter, I was very conscious of the proximity of Mt Rainier and it disturbed me that there was a tsunami-escape route marked out near my home.
My house was just east of the interstate so I presumed I would be safe, as it was said that a tsunami would wipe out everything west of I5!
Comforting.
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It was Mt Rainier that worried me most and a large part of the problem was going to be getting the cats to safety.
These worries didn’t overtake me or cause me sleepless nights, but deep in my brain there was an anxiety, a sort of constant dread.
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Then one day in June 2018 I decided I was going back to New York. It wasn’t something I had even thought about.
It was what I knew had to do and to avoid the problems of moving in winter, I needed to be there by the end of September.
There was just the matter of buying a house, selling a house and arranging transport for 13 cats. Oh, and financing.
No problem.
Easy Peasy. You could do it with your eyes closed!
You could always get a puppy. It would grow up with the cats so they would probably accept it. Then it might even protect them, (and your house) you never know.
We do have earthquakes in England, but I have never felt one and they are not serious ones. I’m pleased to live somewhere where I don’t have to add tsunamis, volcano explosions, and earthquakes to my everyday worries.
Best wishes, Pete.
I can only imagine the demerits we would get if we brought in a puppy!
An Amish sign thief?
Anything is possible these days!
Goldfinches are also the birds that visit our garden the most — they come in flocks and I also struggle to keep up with the seed! I think I prefer snow rather than an earthquake. There was a terrible storm in the Cape Town area this past weekend (gale force wind and rain) and it sounds like people have suffered a lot of damage. The power of nature should never be underestimated.