Our little ten-dollar bird feeder has been a real blessing. We get to see all sorts of cardinals, finches, and wrens. Because our sunroom windows are tinted, we can get really close to the window to observe the birds.
What I wasn’t expecting was to find a lizard—probably an anole—hanging out in our bird feeder one day last week! And what’s remarkable is that the little guy has popped up on the feeder a few times since then.
Swoosh!
What’s it like when a lizard thinks it’s a bird? Do lizards pursue alternative lifestyles? Or is this lizard just beating the heat with some free food?
Remember Gumby? He was that green, bipedal, Claymation humanoid with the orange pony, Pokey. I always liked Gumby and his amorphous, shape-shifting ways.
Apparently, our three-legged dog, Nugget, has beef with the Gumbster. She has a Gumby toy that she loves to shake around. Lately, she’s been pulling Gumby’s soft inner fluff out the poor fellow, and yours portly ends up being the one picking it up. Perhaps Nugget is trying to get me to exercise a bit more.
What Nugget has not been mauling—thankfully—are the birds that come to our bird feeder. I bought a ten-dollar bird feeder at Lowe’s and hung it with a nail outside of our sunroom. Dr. Wife loves the birds, especially Peepers (a female cardinal) and her “boyfriend,” Big Red (a male cardinal).
What’s cool is that the birds are so enamored with their treats, they’ll let me walk right up to the window and look at them. I can get some pictures of them, although they tend to come out a little dark thanks to the UV coating we have over the windows. One day I’ll do a post of nothing but bird pictures (and my self-indulgent commentary).
Today is not that day. Instead, I’ll be sharing a video of a cute bird eating—and of Nugget locked in battle with her Claymation foe:
This week I’ve had an unenviable but easy duty: morning gym carline. It basically involves arriving very early to campus and standing in the cold while the handful of students who park at the gym make their way into school.
I’m not clear what the purpose of the duty is other than to have a witness on the scene should two teenage drivers end up in a fender-bender (of devolve into early morning fisticuffs, but these kids are too sluggish that early to devolve into anything other than sleepy sluggards). I suspect it’s more about the optics—“we have people watching your kids!”—than anything else.
Regardless, it’s not hard. What is hard is getting up that extra fifteen or twenty minutes earlier to make it to the duty in time. That doesn’t seem like much, but anyone who has ever woken up even slightly earlier than normal will recognize the herculean effort required.
Now that I’m in the new house, my morning commute has tripled in length. What was once a relaxed, fifteen-minute drive is now a relaxed forty-five-minute drive. Ergo, yours portly must force his doughy, weary form out of the bed quite early.
That’s all the tedious build-up to this very simple video. On Monday morning a massive crow alighted atop a nearby lamppost while I kept my lonely vigil. It seemed as though he were joining me for this duty, fulfilling alongside his human companion the responsibilities of monitoring the children as they arrived to the back parking lot.
He also had a fantastic “caw”; give it a listen here:
I’ve been catching up on composing and arranging some pieces that have been sitting in my music journal for a month or two. This week’s composition is one such piece, with a distinctly medieval feel.
