Finally! A nice day in August

  • Boy, it was a pretty day today. We got an absolutely incred­i­ble rain­storm on Sun­day night — the kind where the light­ning has strobe-light-frequency and the thun­der sounds like quar­ter sticks of dyna­mite going off — and that appears to have sig­naled the tem­po­rary end of the stink­ing heat wave we’ve been deal­ing with. The birds, which had fallen silent in the suf­fo­cat­ing heat, have begun to chirp around again. Not like you’d be able to hear them over the oscil­lat­ing schwa-schwa-schwa of the cicadas. But then, it’s always like that at this time of year. It’s late sum­mer, by gum, and they own the airwaves.

    It’s kind of amaz­ing that they can make so much noise, but then they’re big insects. When I took Clemen­tine out at the end of day, she was amazed to dis­cover an exhausted cicada sit­ting on the side­walk, no doubt look­ing for a lit­tle peace and quiet in which to shuf­fle off this mor­tal coil. No such luck. Clemen­tine is part coon­hound, but she’s still mostly goober. She ran around the depressed cicada, mak­ing “Watch out, here I come again” feints about a foot away from it. This is Clem’s killer instinct at work. By exhaust­ing her­self with­out inflict­ing any real dam­age to her prey, she clev­erly bores them to death.

    But where one life ends, another starts. Or maybe — I’m not sure. When I went out to bring in the trash cans this morn­ing, I spied a lit­tle, white bro­ken egg on the ground. Look­ing up into the tree, I made out a disreputable-looking nest. So do we have birds so slovenly that they lost Junior before he even hatched? (“Sweetie, didn’t we used to have four eggs?” “Shh. Days of our Lives is on.”) Or is this an old nest with an old egg that even­tu­ally just fell as the nest decayed? Another mys­tery of the Wild Kingdom.

    So that’s August 15. Hope every­one had a sim­i­larly lovely Dor­mi­tion Feastday.


    Related posts:

    1. Empty nesters
    2. Wildlife to Grace — buzz off!
    3. It’s hot and I smell like spaghetti sauce
    4. Angry wildlife
    5. Angry wildlife, part II

    August 15th, 2006 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.15.2006

    Cicadas — that’s not a west coast thing. I’d love to hear them.

    A blessed After­feast to you!

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