I dropped the kiddo off at school this morning, like I do most weekdays when it’s not summer. I was driving away, reeling from the teenage-pheromones contact buzz and listening to NPR’s breathless coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, and it occurred to me for the millionth time that we — all of us — are generally able to ignore the specter of death due to a lifelong practice of internal terror management, using whatever ways work best for us.
None get out alive, and the unlucky are separated forever from those they love in an instant by extraordinarily violent means. Sometimes it makes screaming headlines; more often it goes unnoticed by all except those directly affected. But the pain and despair are the same.
I saw this crane family in a median strip on the highway, two fuzzy hatchlings and their parents:
Of course, it all looks fuzzy because I suck as a photographer and was using a camera phone while stopped on the highway and watching for oncoming traffic in my rearview mirror. But trust me — the babies are adorable fuzz balls on stalky legs following sleek, elegant, purposeful parents who stand more than three feet tall:
Did seeing this lovely crane family turn my morbid thoughts to life and spring and hope? Well hell no, actually: For one thing, the damn cranes were on the median strip of a highway with a 45 MPH speed limit, so I worried that they’d be flattened by a school bus or dump truck.
But the cranes were focused on the moment, attentive to the task of finding the next juicy bug, with the adults helping the chicks learn to ruin flowerbeds and putting greens while navigating swampy landscapes with all the attendant hazards. Their kind — and ours — will continue about the business of daily life until the earth chokes to death on emissions, is rendered barren by an asteroid or is incinerated by the sun, whichever comes first. There’s some comfort in that, I suppose.
Please consider this an open thread.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
celticdragonchick
Fuzzy chicks are entirely too cute. :) I guess I need to start watching out for baby geese here in Greensboro.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I see you’ve learned photography at the prestigious John Cole School of Photographic Arts and Hand Tremor Research.
It’s almost baby season for out local herons and egrets. That’s always a good time. Cute little fish-eating bastards.
John Weiss
Crappy photos, beautiful birds. Thank you.
wenchacha
Thanks for some non-human nature.
Ben Franklin
President Barack Obama today announced the designation of a Presidential Delegation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to attend the Funeral of Baroness Margaret Thatcher.
The Honorable George Shultz, former Secretary of State, and The Honorable James A. Baker, III, former Secretary of State, will lead the delegation.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/15/president-obama-announces-presidential-delegation-united-kingdom-great-b
With Cheney and Kissinger this makes a veritable group-grope of war criminals.
Annual conventions should follow.
Violet
Had a baby mockingbird on the edge of my front porch last week. Saw the parent bird looking all protective and couldn’t see why I was scaring her/him. Finally saw the baby, who looked like he’d just left the nest. Stood very still for a few minutes and parent mockingbird showed up with a bug for the baby, who did the wide-mouth, head up, flapping wings move. Baby still had plenty of baby fuzz. So cute! I went inside to let them be.
TooManyJens
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Excellent.
liberal
Drove west on I-80 in Nebraska a couple weeks ago (before the big chill and snow came). Tons of sandhill cranes in the fields.
jeffreyw
Don’t ask. Homer is a sensitive kitteh.
Schlemizel
here is a live cam of bald eagles in MN – the first chick just hatched yesterday
http://mnbound.com/live-eagle-cam
ArchTeryx
@Violet: Good move. Some mockingbirds are utterly fearless – there’s been records of mockers that have turned grizzly bears away from their nests. Grizzly bears!
Their relatives can also get absolutely fearless around nesting time, too. Once, I made the mistake of poking my head in a peeping bush, only to discover a family of newly fledged Gray Catbirds. And a moment later, I got my head creased by one of the parents doing an all-out divebombing of me!
ruemara
I think it’s a wonderful shot. Love the fuzzy chicks. This is as close as I got when I went out shooting.
Violet
@ArchTeryx: Yeah, mockingbirds can be fierce. I could see I was bothering the parent bird, but I could not see why. Once I saw the baby, I knew I needed to move along right quick!
j
Joe Walsh, ex congresscritter (R-Deadbeatville), held a Teabagger rally yesterday in Daley Plaza. He was claiming over 5,000 Baggers would attend. The Sun-Times generously reported that “about 200” showed up, although he was pushing the shit out of it on his AM radio show. Here he is screaming at the non-existant “crowd” for their lack of turn out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEnTGtP2YOI
I like the church bells ringing during his rant.
The bloom is off that rose, you betcha.
ranchandsyrup
Our malteseses made a little trip to the groomer yesterday. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranchandsyrup/8655956624/in/photostream
HeartlandLiberal
Here in southwest central Indiana a new wetlands habitat is being returned to its natural state, after over 120 years of failed attempts to turn it into farmland. It is called Goose Pond, you can Google it, near Linton, Indiana.
A friend and I went on a day long tour of the area about a month ago, at the height of the Sandhill Crane migration. We saw what the DNR guys estimated were about 8,000 or more cranes, all poking around in the cornfields near the ponds and wet areas, or flying circles around us up and down in large groups.
We say about a dozen whooping cranes, of which still only about 700 or 800 exist, despite decades of trying to save the species. Our guides pointed out one bird, and informed us it is one of only three known of the species which were hatched entirely in nature. Turns out that naturalist monitor the birds closely. When they nest, they sneak in and steal their eggs, and fly them off to a facility where they are carefully incubated. When the chick is about to start pecking its way out, they rush it back to the mother’s nest, replace the fake egg with the real one, then watch the parents’ joy as the bird hatches from a distance.
Plus, thanks to global warming, about 200 pelicans had made their way this far north from the Gulf, and were happily floating around on one of the huge ponds. To call them ponds does not quite touch it, each one is many acres in size, large embanked areas of water over several thousands of acres.
It was a worthy day to be alive.
Linda Featheringill
@HeartlandLiberal:
That’s sweet. Some people do good things.
PeakVT
Via Atrios, a key pro-austerity paper goes down.
Redshirt
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I LOL’d.
I can’t blame Betty here though, as these were no doubt action shots from a moving car. Cole has no such excuses.
Yutsano
PEEPERZ! ON STALKZ! SQUEEE!!
Dcrefugee
Betty, I live outside Sarasota. I’m fortunate enough to have a lake in my backyard, with an island in the middle. This is the second spring running I’ve had a pair of Sand Hills nest on the island.
Last year, they had two hatchlings; at least one survived long enough to leave the island, which is connected to the yard by a wooden bridge. This year, only one hatchling, but we managed to retrieve the second, dead egg, which is now a poolside decoration.
Very soothing to watch these cranes nesting and sharing their lives with us pitiable humans.
Hillary Rettig
For those lacking access to cranes, puppies and kittens will do…
Another Halocene Human
To those who offered words of encouragement or advice last night when I asked about how to help my friend get her birth certificate, a sincere thank you.
I think we will try faxing the forms, and I like the suggestion of asking a congresscritter for assistance. I’ve never done this before, though. How do you suggest I go about it? Should I take her in person to the local office? Make a phone call? A letter to the local office?
Mnemosyne
In case anyone was still a doubter, what you’re looking at there are a coupla real live dinosaurs. Apparently the evidence is now so clear that paleontologists refer to extinct species as “non-avian dinosaurs” to differentiate them from the living dinosaurs that surround us.
Another Halocene Human
@HeartlandLiberal: Wow, that’s really wonderful.
Southern Indiana is really beautiful country. Pity about the politics.
Punchy
Bob’s grandkids having trouble getting acting gigs, eh?
BTW, ya know where you never see fuzzy chicks? Brazil.
/rimshot
Another Halocene Human
@PeakVT: The UK going down wasn’t proof of concept enough?
Fuck me, I ate crow in 2009 after Barack Obama and Timmeh saved the US economy (saving a lot of Timmeh’s cronies in the process and you’d think they’d be grateful, but if you’d notice they all hate him now, bwahahahaha, no honor among thieves). I was sooooo pissed at Obama because I wanted to see bankers falling from the 40th floor but guess what, doing the conventional, Keynesian thing worked, Bernanke, with the impossible situation Greenspan left him with, pulled it out, unlike crash #1 we saved the economy but failed to institute meaningful reform except on the consumer side. I think it’s better than systemwide collapse and reform after it’s all done but the shouting.
Though I’d like to see financial reform. Don’t know how that happens.
Another Halocene Human
@PeakVT: They used EXCEL!?!
Fuck me.
Talk about the emperor having no clothes.
scav
Similar gleam, just got off the phone with some one who’d spent a large chunk of yesterday with Elephant Seals and knew of nothing else nor wished to really — no blurry photos to contribute, so imagine very large females (molting) and juveniles lolling about ponderously. The Bulls (?) are off somewhere else, presumably eating. Those that wish to can make the mental detour to Hearst Castle, it’s reasonably close.
Another Halocene Human
These fuckers fucked around in Excel, dropping cells as they went, until they tweaked shit to say what they wanted it to say based on some arbitrary notions and their own mistakes (which… Excel).
I used to do that shit on the job when I was bored AS AN INTERN IN COLLEGE.
Are you FUCKING kidding me?
These blokes are a disgrace to their profession.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I remember when I first heard that theory in college (hey, I went to crappy public schools where the word “evolution” was banned — what are ya gonna do?). Mind=Blown. But I am utterly convinced of it now. If you spend any time observing birds (and being The Chicken Lady, I do!), the only surprising thing is that no one figured it out sooner.
@Dcrefugee: Nice! They are among the loudest critters on earth, aren’t they?
Susan S
Ah, Ms. Betty..that was just perfect. Thank you..Seattle does not have crane babies mid-freeway.
StringOnAStick
I’ve been watching a herd of female/seriously preggers elk in the open space behind our house for the last few weeks. At least I know they are seriously preggers just because it is that time of year and that’s why they are hanging down here in the CO foothills instead of higher in the mountains. They never really look pregnant; they hide it well but soon there will be little wapiti’s in with the mom’s.
We’ve just come out from yet another big spring snow event; this morning dawned on completion of another 16″ storm, interspersed between days of 50 to even high 60 degrees. OK, that latter part is fairly typical for here, and after what had been a below normal precip winter (again), it is nice to see all this moisture. Last year at this time we’d already had some major forest fires nearby. Now I’m wondering how the mommy elk are able to deal with this wet/cold weather. I guess like how they always do – they just keep keepin’ on.
JoyfulA
Great essay, Betty, that would make a fine sermon.
PeakVT
@Another Halocene Human: It’s a little late to make a difference in the UK, but with the R&R paper discredited there is absolutely zero theory underpinning austerity now. That’s a good thing because without a plausible lie, austerity can only be discussed in terms of its actual accomplishments, not what it promises according to some research paper.