Here are three four wing-ed creatures for your consideration:
The female cardinal on the left is a frequent visitor to the feeders and birdbath just outside my window. I’m always especially happy to see this particular cardinal because I owe her a debt: She was trapped in my chicken coop overnight a couple of weeks ago, and it went very badly for her.
I’d let the hens out to free range as usual one late afternoon. At sunset, they went into their hen house to roost as hens do, but I didn’t get around to closing the coop door until well after dark. I didn’t see the poor cardinal until the next morning.
During the night, she must have tried to escape — she was all bedraggled and freaked out when I found her. Maybe the chickens harassed her at sunup; I don’t know. What made me notice her in the morning was her mate, who kept frantically flying to the coop and cheeping like mad.
When I saw her flying around, I opened the coop door — which is a full-sized screen door reinforced with chicken wire — to free her. The chickens all ran out, but the cardinal was too crazed with terror to realize deliverance was at hand.
She kept flying from one end of the coop to the other, well above my head and away from the door. She was clearly in a pitiable state, with feathers missing, probably from trying to squeeze out of the coop, but possibly from run-ins with the hens. She only had one sad little feather left in her crest.
Anyhoo, I finally shooed her out the coop door, and she went straight to the birdbath, perhaps to freshen up from the ordeal? She’s almost fully recovered now, though her crest is still a little pathetic, like a badly misused showgirl headpiece bought cheap from a Rockette rummage sale.
The butterfly was resting just outside my tiki bar the other day. It was as big as my hand — a normal-sized woman’s hand, I mean — much larger than Trump’s! I’m not sure what kind it is. Does anyone know?
The other critters pictured are “love-bugs,” which fly around while doing the nasty and can be hell on a paint job if you drive through a cloud of them. This pair landed on my car yesterday while I was fueling up, and I rejoiced to see them because love-bugs this time of year mean summer is almost over, and not a minute too soon.
Open thread!
JMG
Dear Ms. Cracker: I know it’s all about what you’re used to, but I still can’t imagine myself living in a place where people are rightly happy that summer’s almost over.
opiejeanne
The butterfly is a giant swallowtail. We had them in our garden in Southern California but haven’t seen them in Western Washington yet. We did have a tiger swallowtail show up during my daughter’s wedding in our garden in July, which was fun.
Original Lee
Quite appropriately, your butterfly is called a Giant Swallowtail. Pretty cool!
Original Lee
Photo finish with opiejeanne.
Betty Cracker
@JMG: My husband is originally from Buffalo, NY, and he’s lived here far longer than he lived there. But he still can’t get it through his head that summer sucks. He doesn’t enjoy the suffocating heat, of course, and hates that we have to close the house up for months at a time and pay higher utility bills. But his default setting is still summer = good. I guess it’s really hard to overcome that.
Major Major Major Major
@JMG: Out here in San Francisco, summer’s just beginning!
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, how well I remember the love bugs from my six years in Tampa! They used to sell some kind of netting to put over the radiator, because enough of those things can get sucked inside and do real damage to a car. Do they still have those?
But it’s interesting: on one of my recent road trips, I was remembering that back in the day it was very common to have dozens of all kinds of bugs smashed all over the windshield. Not just Florida, but pretty much anywhere in the country. And these days it’s rare to see that — maybe the occasional unlucky singleton, but not the profusion of little yellow-blooded corpses all over the glass.
I do not miss them.
Josie
“because love-bugs this time of year mean summer is almost over, and not a minute too soon. ”
I can certainly appreciate this, Betty, having lived all my life in south and/or central Texas. My oldest son and his wife start decorating for fall and Halloween in August because they are going crazy from the heat, and they think it makes them feel cooler to see autumn colors. My electricity bill was out of sight this month.
JMG
@Betty Cracker: Come February, when you’re posting pictures of your tiki bar, and I will be plowing and shoveling snow up to my thighs here in Boston, the balance of nature will be restored.
ixnay
@JMG: Here in Maine we are glad to see the end of summer because (1) finally done with zucchini and (2) it’s only a couple of months before done with tourists. This year, thank Dog, the dryness has led to fewer ticks and mosquitoes. OTOH, the “any deer” meaning one may shoot does, permits, are at record numbers, because of the mild winter. I am anticipating record numbers of hunter deaths.
Love bugs: I lived for several years in Bradenton, and my recollection is that the screens simply did a better job of spreading bug guts all over things, with resulting rust/destruction.
JCT
Just in the last week or two it has become noticeably cooler in the AM out here in Southern AZ. As in, it’s not 85+ when I drive to work at 7AM. So, just like Betty, out here there is much rejoicing, though I will miss the afternoon monsoon rains.
AliceBlue
Here in west Georgia, my big dogwood still has all its leaves, but red berries are popping up on the branches–a sure sign that fall is close. Nights and early mornings are a little cooler. And yes, not a moment too soon.
raven
@AliceBlue: @AliceBlue: The kudzu is fading just a little.
Punchy
I dont know where to start unpacking this post. #1, as a die-hard Cubs fan, I hate all Cardinals, so there’s that. #2, do chickens really fuck with other birds? I would think they’d all just live in peace. Maybe they grew tired of her chirping, which, as a married man, is understandable.
Lastly….bugs procreating while in flight? I thought only skeevy couples on JetBlue did that. Didnt know one could flap wings sufficiently up an down while coordinating all the other naughty bit motions here and there….and now I’ve sickened myself.
rikyrah
Huma dumped Weiner
Finally!
Amir Khalid
That can’t be a love bug. It doesn’t have the number 53 painted on it.
(Ducks.)
Calouste
@Punchy: I’ve seen a pair dragonflies doing it in full flight.
MikeS
The giant swallowtail is a nice pic to get, they don’t often hold still! On another topic i find this unsurprising, a little careless maybe…. Russian Hackers Accidentally Post Different Versions of Stolen Docs. Post-Steal Editing? My favorite is the closing line “But Julian Assange is a good man and I’m sure we can trust him. Right?”
prufrock
Driving south on US 19 from Tallahassee at this time of year always resulted in a love-bug holocaust on my front bumper and windshield.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: I’m just like your husband. I love Summer with all its excessive heat, sweating and humidity and despise Winter. I just cannot stand being cold. Right now, I’m in my office with the heater on because the air conditioner in this dang building is too dang cold. Please kill all those stupid love bugs. I don’t want Summer to end soon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Punchy: Chickens will tear up anything, especially if they can gang up on them. Oh one more thing, yes the Cards suck this year but the Cubs are still the LOSERS WHO CAN’T WIN IT ALL!!! ;-)
OldDave
I looked for a photoshop of a love bug pair with 53s on the side, but failed. I did find this video for those who don’t have personal experience with them.
jeffreyw
Yo bro! ‘sup?
opiejeanne
@Original Lee: I’m usually the one posting later than everyone else. West Coast Syndrome as well as a bit of insomnia. :-)
Feathers
@SiubhanDuinne: I think some of that is that windshields are much more high tech now, with various coatings and shatter resistance and such.
jeffreyw
@OzarkHillbilly: Seen on the Internets
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always mostly liked winter and always loved fall, but it was a couple of years after I finished college, and life was pretty much the same from season to season that I realized that summer really sucks. Heat, bugs, noise and crowds
@Patricia Kayden: I hate heat, but excessive air conditioning drives me crazy. Walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on a godawful hot summers day a few years ago, some of the big stores had their doors open and you could feel the chill walking by. The other day I was in the grocery store, the dairy section, and I got cold standing there. I just wonder about the energy wasted in thousand of grocery stores all over the country, because god forbid we should have to strain ourselves opening a door to get a quart of skim milk or a tub of margarine
catclub
@MikeS:
Yep, I think if even I have thought of that, they will plan last minute releases where there is not enough time for the corrected version to get out ( or for enough people to realize the documents have been doctored) before the election. But in internet time that is like 6 nanoseconds.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Wowzers!! No one can say that she didn’t try to make it work, I guess. Good for her. Now he can tweet photos of his weiner all day long.
bluehill
Jeez, Putin is pulling out all the stops for his boy, Trump.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly:
wouldn’t it be funny of the Cubs win the series and Trump wins the election. for not funny values of funny.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is there a daily, or hourly, prize for both-sides-ism?
because being married to a guy who did something kind of pathetically skeevy but (AFAIK?) harmless is just like being a guy who beats his wife and is a raging, hate-filled antisemite
Victor Matheson
To add to the folks above, that is a Giant Swallowtail, and it is the largest butterfly native to the United States. There are a handful of moderately common moths that are as big (the Luna moth, the Polyphemus, and the Cecropia) but you usually only see those at night.
raven
@jeffreyw: unass this ao mofo
Betty Cracker
@opiejeanne & @Original Lee: Thanks! We get quite a few of them around here. Also Gulf fritillaries.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bannon RUNS Ferret Head’s campaign.
Weiner -does he have an official title with Hillary’s campaign??
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If someone walked up to that moron Haberman on the street and punched her in the nose, I would pay their bail.
Betty Cracker
@Victor Matheson: I’ve seen some sizeable Luna moths up on the Suwannee River.
opiejeanne
@catclub: Rooting for the first since Joe Maddon is the manager and my Angels are stinking up the joint this year; yore right, uth second would not be funny at all except in that peculiar kind of funny. I saw last night that there are new efforts to disenfranchise millions of people across several states, based on the claim that they do not live in the state where they are registered.
MomSense
@jeffreyw:
Incredible photo.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wonder if fewer bugs on the windshield is a side benefit of better aerodynamics. Older cars tended to bash their way through the air, while newer ones try to slide through it. That might result in the bugs flowing over the car rather than hitting it.
Betsy
Ah, September in Florida. DO NOT attempt to drive across Payne’s Prairie in this month
raven
Zorro popped at LAX!
Two bits
Four Bits
Six Bits
a Peso
All for Zorro
Stand up and say so!!!
Betsy
Someone might have already mentioned this, but cardinals can look very mangy, nekkid, and/or bedraggled in late summer, as that’s their molting period. It may have been that the poor cardinalcita had a very distressing caged experience, but was already molting at the time. (to give your hens the benefit of the doubt)
geg6
@JMG:
I live just outside Pittsburgh and I can’t tell you how happy I will be to see the last of summer. Too damn hot and humid. Plus, fall is my particular favorite season.
raven
Tell the people Zorro is back! To defend the defenseless! Befriend the friendless! And to defeat…the defeatless!
MomSense
@MikeS:
I think they did the same thing with DNC docs as some of them also had known Russian hacker metadata.
There was another story today about hackers accessing election systems in two states.
Roger Moore
@bluehill:
It’s at least as likely this is about identity thieves trying to steal people’s personal information in bulk. Voter registration databases have a ton of information that would be useful to identity thieves. ETA: Not that preventing identity theft is an inadequate reason for doing a better job of securing those things.
dexwood
@Punchy:
My hens have killed sparrows and mice. One day. I walked into the large pen where I saw a mouse’s tail dangling from the beak of my Rhode Island Red as she gulped it down.
Betsy
@SiubhanDuinne: Probably due to every lawn and cropland being doused constantly with pesticides? cynical of me, I know. But I have noticed the same thing.
OzarkHillbilly
@jeffreyw: That snake needed to give his soul to Jesus cause his ass was grass!
ETA: been working on a civil war era barn. every now and again we find a mouse nest, the mice scatter and the chickens go crazy tearing them up.
opiejeanne
@Roger Moore: In the Western states I think it’s the result of the long drought, possibly enhanced by spraying crops. We drive I-5 between Seattle and Los Angeles round trip several times every year and we are just not seeing the bug-smash on our windshield that we used to, nor are we seeing the clouds of little yellow butterflies. I remember everyone pulling over to the side of the freeway in Orange County (Costa Mesa area) because of the blinding masses of butterflies, just the one time, around 2002.
In Southern California we don’t hear meadowlarks any more, nor do we see “horny toads” (horned lizards). Not enough open land for either in most places we frequent these days, I suspect.
Gindy51
@Roger Moore: Our bigger car gets tons of bugs but the Prius is almost bug free and we live out in the sticks where bugs rule.
JMG
September is the month that on average probably has the nicest weather here in New England. Of course, October is for the trees (not so much this year because of the drought in Boston) and Halloween. After Election Day, things tend to go downhill fast.
Betsy
@Patricia Kayden: Yay! If there’s one thing I detest, it’s the press conference where the wife, looking grim, Stands By Her Husband while he makes HIS public statement and apology.
How does *that* work? Any self-respecting person would be all, “We may be reconciled, but YOU are on your own out there.”
Same category as “Candidate’s Wife Has Job To Do On Campaign Trail: Showing His Softer Side” To hell with this thing where women are somehow responsible for men’s personal lives.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Once you start thinking of chickens as mini-velociraptors, it all makes sense.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s good to remember that chickens are not naturally vegetarians. My sister keeps chickens. A neighborhood cat catches the mice that get into her chicken feed, and the chickens eat the cat’s leavings. She likes to say you can have free range chickens or you can have vegetarian fed chickens, but you can’t have both.
Betsy
@Betty Cracker: I miss those — with their shiny aluminum-colored spots! And the Zebra Longwing, floating through a Florida backyard, so exotic-looking.
Gindy51
@dexwood: Just think of them as mini raptors…
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: Chickens will eat chicken! I’ve never fed my hens leftover chicken — it just seems WRONG! But my father used to keep chickens and feed them all the scraps, and if one of their own was Sunday dinner, her former companions had no compunction about devouring the leftovers.
Uncle Cosmo
@raven: +1E+10 for the Zorro, The Gay Blade reference! (I think they have every line in the script on the flick’s Wikiquotes page…)
jeffreyw
@MomSense: Thanks! More luck than skill.
WaterGirl
@raven: I love that movie!!!
low-tech cyclist
By any definition I’d accept, you’ve got at least two more months of summer.
WaterGirl
@raven: You can do this all day. :-)
OzarkHillbilly
@catclub: If the Cubs finally win it all, we will know the Rapture is here. If Trump wins it all, we will know the end of the world is near. If the Cubs do win, I will celebrate it. If Trump wins…. Well, that laughing jibbering quivering pile of clothes in the ally might look an awful lot like me.
dexwood
@Gindy51:
Oh, I do. And, Betty at 56 points this out, too. I think I read that chickens truly are velociraptor descendants.
Olivia
We were at Clearwater Beach in May one year and the love bugs were just thick. If they are at their worst now, I have another reason other than the heat to not go to Florida in the summer.
tybee
@Patricia Kayden:
you and i must be related.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore: I prefer the free range kind. Cuts down on the feed bill.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did Clinton hire Weiner to be the CEO of her campaign? No. The parallel fails. Not that anyone will care.
raven
@WaterGirl: It helps to watch the AX popo jump his ass.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Heh, I have the same aversion to chicken cannibalism and I am not squeamish about very much.
Big Ole Hound
@Major Major Major Major: Here in the East Bay we have been getting your cold fog so mornings cool afternoons in the low 80s ….perfect.
Joyce H
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In Trump world, AKA the alt-right, everything a man does wrong is his wife’s fault. Unless they’re not married, in which case it’s some other woman’s fault.
Olivia
@SiubhanDuinne:
You need to come drive through rural Minnesota in the evening. Your windshield will be plastered nicely with all different kinds of bug guts. My favorites are the lightning bugs because they leave little bits of glowing goo that continues to pulse for awhile after impact.
MikeS
@Betsy: That is a big part of it. Insect populations have be documented as having significantly dropped in recent years. Even though many people might cheer at that, the are a critical part of most terrestrial ecosystems, and their loss will be felt through out, especially with birds who even if they are seed eaters as adult feed their young on highly nutritious insects. See Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy.
Trollhattan
Betty’s story reminds me of a bird rescue I was lucky enough to do last winter. Flocks of swallows pass through a couple times/year and I’m lucky enough to be entertained at my desk as they swoop and sing around our building during their brief stays. Last fall I took the stairs instead of the elevator one evening and discovered the swallows pack themselves between the building facade and some chain-link fencing covering the decorative openings, probably to keep warm overnight. Dozens of little swallow bellies are pressed against the fencing, which faces the stairwell. Started taking the stairs nightly to watch my little friends and one evening discovered one had worked its way inside and was on the floor, evidently exhausted from trying to get back out. (Not so easy, is it little guy?) Eased my way past the railing and out to where he was (16 floors up and I have a bit of acrophobia) he eventually let me pick him up after failing to fly off.
Now what? Find a box and release him downstairs? No need, as I found the metal fencing was bendable and after opening it a bit could guide him through and with some remaining energy, he flew off. Having had a good, close look I ID’d the little guys as bank swallows. Wow, do they ever travel a long way! They have a song sample at the Cornel link. Charming
Immanentize
Speaking of baseball winners and losers —
My hometown highschool baseball team (Maine-Endwell, New York) just won the Little League Championship of the WORLD! And the President himself called to congratulate
So maybe the Cubs can do it?
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Andrea Mitchell tried to get Ann Coulter comment and she declined, she just said she was surprised it took so long. Mark Murray pushed back on people saying this was not germaine by saying anyone who signs onto a high profile position with a campaign is fair game. Who knew, I seem to recall being told that the spouses of candidates were off limits. I know that Michelle and Hillary were exceptions, but Laura and Ann’s pasts were ruled off limits. Murray is not sure how long this ‘Breaking News’ will be a distraction for the Clinton campaign but it will take them off message because Trump is using it to further his claim that she lacks judgment.
Calouste
@Immanentize: The Cubs win the Little League World Championship? Possibly…
Immanentize
@Calouste: Hah! Maybe!
Living now in Red Sox nation, we just want Pappi to be happy…
Trollhattan
@hovercraft:
Had Bannon’s GF-wife bean on him then there’d be a slender parallel and likewise his past would be a non-story. She’s horrible because she’s finally leaving him? Right. It’s like they’re trout fishing using bowling balls for bait. Sad!
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Based on Trump’s tweet, they are going to use this to get the “Huma is a traiterous muslim brotherhood supporter” in the press and go with the “Weiner had access to state secrets” as well. Will it fly? Who knows? Although the latter is a replay of the “Dick Morris gets his toes sucked while putting the President on Speaker Phone” scandal of the 1990s. Somehow, Dick made out o.k. in that scandal (remember when he was on OUR side?) and the yuck factor stuck to Clinton.
Betty Cracker
@Trollhattan: Good on you for saving the bird!
Linnaeus
Summer is my favorite season, and I’m always sorry to see it end, but heartened that there will be another one.
JMG
Is Trump aware Abelin’s soon-to-be-former husband was once a Congressman and hence had access to all sorts of classified information as per his Constitutional duties? As for assuming spouses tell each other everything about their work and lives, that’s silly based on the evidence of his own life. Again, this is one of those issues that will delight people who’ve already long decided they will vote for Trump, and the sex-obsessed media, but by the day after Labor Day, will be a “who was that again?” matter to most people.
Mary G
This really is a full service blog – I’ve learned that chickens eat meat including live mice and about love bugs today. Nice respite from He Who Must Not be Named, and Wiener’s wiener.
Doug R
I heard an awful commotion outside a couple of evenings ago. So I flipped on the balcony light switch and ran out on the balcony just in case it was one of our cats in trouble. No cats but raccoons were coming out of the woods that separate our apartment building from the townhouses next door and two were in the bushes still fighting. When the fight was over about four raccoons headed north, after one hissed at one of the fighters who was now doing a dog like whimper and had red marks on its side. Two more raccoons came out of a tree about five feet away from me and followed the exfighter south.
So raccoon gang fights on a Saturday night.
Bg
We get giant swallowtail in our yard a lot. They like our wildlime tree and the biscayne bay prickly ash, but I hear they like any kind of citrus. Their larvae look like bird poop.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
Congrats! I’m not a big sports fan, but even so the news about the championship surprised me because there had been so little about it previously. I guess the Olympics kinda drowned out Little League coverage.
Hal
Weiner is widely thought of as a scum bag, and I doubt someone with Trump’s problems with female voters is going to gain ground by going after a woman whose husband can’t keep his dick off the Internet. Also, being a skeeve does not make one a sex addict. Just because he cheats repeatedly, even if it’s emotionally and not physically, doesn’t mean he’s a sex addict. That seems to be a label we attach to famous people, particularly men, who can’t be faithful.
raven
BOOOO!
Gene Wilder, the star of classic comedies like “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and several of Mel Brooks’ films, has died, his family told The Associated Press.
Wilder was 83.
Poopyman
Well shit.
Brachiator
@Peale:
Actually, the yuck factor stuck to both of them, as far as I was concerned. And somehow, it just seemed natural that an odious piece of slime like Morris would ooze over to Fox news.
Brachiator
Oh, no.
He was a very funny man. Loved him madly.
khead
@raven:
A lot of the focus will be on Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, but I have a soft spot for “Silver Streak”.
SFAW
@Poopyman:
Fuck Alzheimer’s
Major Major Major Major
@Big Ole Hound: our main exports are pixels and fog.
SFAW
@Mary G:
You mean Betty’s governor?
Trollhattan
@raven: @Poopyman:
Noooooo! :-(
ETA My dream dinner companion couple would have been Gilda and Gene. Can you even imagine? Here’s wishing they’re greeting one another in the “great beyond.”
kdaug
Gene Wilder died.
SiubhanDuinne
Such sad news. I know lots of people, including lots of famous people, die every year, but 2016 has really been a sumbitch.
RIP, Mr. Wilder. You gave enormous pleasure.
WaterGirl
Tears for gene wilder. I hope he and Gilda are together once again. He lived her so.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I watched some of the Sunday news/opinion shows, and it was an orgy of “both-sides-ism.” I wanted to throw something at the tv.
But the sad thing is that voters look at some of the political campaign this way, not because of reporters, but because of how political ads and campaign surrogates frame the issues. A random group of voters, Trump and Clinton supporters, equally felt that both sides were flinging mud.
I suppose that a campaign strategist might say that fighting dirty works even if your own man or woman gets a little slime on them, as long as your opponent is knocked off message and ends up looking worse.
low-tech cyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Both-sides-ism needs to be classified as a religion, kinda like the religious right once tried to do with secular humanism. Then we could talk about how the MSM’s religious belief system is interfering with their ability to report the news honestly.
cleek
our windows killed a dove and a hummingbird last week.
surely this means we’re going to hell.
NCSteve
My feeder has been sheer madness this year. Last year, it was all titmice (snicker) all the time. First the Carolina chickadees, then the titmice muscled in and that was that.
This year, I’m up to twenty species. But the delights have been a mated pair of cardinals who’ve dominated the thing in their skittish yet insistent way. Dad feeding mom who hangs out on the fence while he chows down. And a few weeks ago, they showed their fledglings (a male and a female) where teh free foodz was. Later that day, Junior shows up, with his head still covered in gray feathers and spots, looking more like a parrot than a card. And his sister just starts hanging out on my deck. Just sits on the rail next to a pot of chives or pecks around on the floor, utterly unworried by the proximity of humans right nearby in the house until finally Mom shows up and is all like “what in the world are are you doing????!!!!! Get yourself home right now, little missy!!!!!!” and flies off with her, for all the world like a mom who busted her teenage kid at a place that serves alcohol. Now its a regular family affair. One or more of them are out there at it all the time, though Mom is still feeding little missy.
Had pitifully injured house finch show up yesterday. It looks like it managed to maybe escape from a cat or a snake managed to eat it and has been partially blinded. It just sat in the feeder and ate and ate after I came out to grill a steak, even after all the others flew off and let me get very close. Eventually, it had enough and managed to fly back into a tree and kind of sense its way to a branch.
And in a world filled with innocents raped and slaughtered by war and madness, I’ve been worried about that damn bird all day.
RIP, Gene Wilder. The part of me that makes me and agnostic rather than an atheist hopes you’re with Gilda.
bemused
@Betsy:
Sen David Vitter’s presser with his wife by his side sticks out in my mind. I kept looking at her dress and wondering is that really a leopard print fabric. I could be wrong but it sure looked like it and if so, it was a odd choice considering the setting.
Patricia Kayden
@Doug R: Raccoon gang fare will end with Trump’s Presidency. Believe me!
Patricia Kayden
@tybee: Ha! Summer Lovers Unite!
ixnay
@OzarkHillbilly: We stopped feeding meat scraps to our birds when a skunk showed up to join in.
Betty Cracker
@NCSteve: Excellent comment.
ThresherK
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now swallowed that latest AP story on the Clinton Global Initiative hook, line and sinker.
I don’t listen to her more than a few times a month. When did she just stop giving a shit and get all Cokie’s Law?
Betsy
@NCSteve: House finches suffer greatly from Finch Eye Disease. They also serve as a reservoir for the disease, so it infects other (native) birds in the finch family (cardinals, goldfinches, and others). Supposedly it’s not in itself lethal, but it impairs sight long enough that the birds may get picked off by a predator before they can recover. Once I saw a Cooper’s Hawk snatch a fluttering, blinded House Finch out of midair, like a canape off a party tray. Sorry about that.
Oh yes, meant to clarify that House Finches are native to the western U.S.; non-native invasive in the east.
ruemara
@ThresherK: always remember, her show is broadcasting from an RT studio.
In today, my life is complicated news, I’ve officially resigned from my job and I’m all accepted in the new job. So the tech division of the same place wants to interview me for a video job. What.
debbie
@jeffreyw:
That’s not a photoshop? I’d think the snake would be coiled for self-defense.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: The tech division of the OLD job wants to interview you? Are there still the same crazy bosses at the tech division?
P.S. Congratulations on giving notice!
ruemara
Tech division of the new job. We’re too small to have a tech division.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: Is that even kosher? For one division of a company to try to steal a new employee from another one of its own divisions? Or maybe it’s one big, happy family there? What are you going to do?
steverinoCT
I was stationed at the Orlando Navy base in the mid-eighties, and hated those love-bugs. We’re walking around in white polyester uniforms, and these bugs would land on your back, and you’d sit and squish them. Now you have a big ugly stain on your uniform. Bleah.
oldswede
@NCSteve: We have had several pairs of cardinals visiting our feeder. What I have seen in past years is that the parents will lead the young to dinner for a very limited time only. Once the parents decide it’s time for the youth to make it on their own, no more mr. & mrs. nice parents. The young ones are chased away from the area and are not allowed back. No coming home to mooch off mom and dad.