The great-tailed grackles bid us a fond farewell
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Well, not to break the news too abruptly, but Greg and I are leaving Phoenix. I know we just got here about a year ago, and we’re not usually so quick about it, but for a lot of reasons that won’t fit conveniently in a blog post, things didn’t work out for us here. In two weeks, we’ll pack up our act and our cat (which are anagrams of each other, I note for no particular reason), and move to Las Vegas. That will put us closer to Greg’s folks and my mom, and a little farther away from the surface-of-Mars heat. It’s all good.
So I wanted to capture a little audio tribute that I’ll probably miss. The great-tailed grackles migrate at this time of year, and the trees in our complex get their fair share in the morning and evening. Grackles make the most unbelievable assortment of caws, chirps, pops and other mechanical sound effects — I don’t know how they do it. But when there are a squillion of them in just a couple trees, this is what it sounds like (to get the full effect, you should turn your volume up as high as it will go):
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So we’ll take that as a farewell sort of thing. We’re sure to find some interesting birds — both feathered and unfeathered — in Las Vegas, I’m sure. But I have liked having a kind of boisterous aviary right outside the door.
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I hope you have a safe and uneventful move. But, what about Clementine? Did I miss something?
You did miss something. Or two things, rather — THIS POST about Clementine and THIS POST about our new cat.
Long story short, we left Clem with her adopted family at our petsitter's. She had a farm to romp around in there, and other dogs to play with and a family that just fell in love with her. We couldn't make her leave all that to come to our little apartment and a hot desert place where she wouldn't be able to stay outside for long during the hot months. It was a hard decision, just because it was like leaving a part of us behind.
We got a cat a few months back, since we're going to be in apartments for a while. He was a little difficult at first, because he's very opinionated, even for a cat. But I think we've worked out some of the rules, and he's figured out that he's got a good gig. And so I think we're all living happily ever after.
now that you mention this I vaguely remember you writing about that before. I'm glad she's in a happy place.