Tia, Mago Elf Liam, Nem-nem Niamh, Lil' Bug, and I. (kid names are aliases)
//🙂
//[I just found this in drafts, sitting here unpublished for years.]
On a ferry trip in CA, we were in choppy water with big waves lifting and dunking the front of the boat. Nem was fearful, and clung to a rail at a seat nearer the middle of the ferry. I was at the side of the boat, and a pod of dolphins came and playfully raced and leapt out of the water alongside and in front of the boat. I shouted “Dolphins!” and Nem immediately forgot her fear and raced to the side of the boat to see them. 🙂 One called out with a squeal, which Nem expertly imitated, and it called back to her.
//After admiring a tortoise at the City’s (excellent!) “Sciencepalooza”, Mago decided to buy one with his birthday money. Tortoises are too expensive though, so we found a red-eared slider (turtle) locally in an online listing.
I thought a turtle would be less entertaining. Not this one.
“Turbo” is the name the original owners gave him because he deftly swims around. “Edward” and “Hall” are Mago’s additions. I’m now reconsidering my Mother’s caution (which I never shared) at naming our dog Moses (how I miss that dog!) particularly seeing we have an ancestor by that name. So, yeah . . . Cousin . . . meet your, uh, turtle namesake.
Turbo energetically fights his reflection in the glass (lighting conditions make it an excellent mirror–) apparently another turtle from his point of view.
Just now I’ve found that when I play music, Turbo stands up, pokes his head out of the water, and stays there.
He’s very young.
(And no, I wouldn’t name any child “Turbo.”)
//This cute fella captured our hearts–after he was bound to die by spraying 🙁
Nem cooed at this image. I captured it by moving the spider to the driveway. With the last of his strength he turned toward the sunset, which gave me better light, and since he wasn’t moving, I could set the camera to the nearest manual focus and nudge it as near as possible (angled via tripod mount) to get his eyes in focus.
//
Nemmy’s canopy drape over her bed is a caniky, and a bikini is a vikini. A few days ago she found an earwig climbing her caniky when she woke up and now she keeps waking me up at night with imagined bugs.
In our backyard this evening I saw three baby deer drinking milk from their mama. I ran for my camera but missed it. My neighbor said he saw 8 babies all together one morning recently. I need to spend more time out there.
//Mago: I just had an idea for how to find all the animals of one kind. Find a few of them and sample their DNA and then put it into a computer and have the computer analyze it, and then upload it to a satellite that scans the world for that kind of DNA, and it will find all the animals of that kind.
Me: Hmm, I dunno how a satellite finds DNA.
Mago: I dunno. A very advanced satellite.
//I’m thankful for the bugs
I’m thankful for the animals
I’m thankful for the world
And please bless my cold to die.
Uttered a hundred times on a hundred nights from his bed or bedside.
Incidentally, bug hunting is probably among his most favorite activities. I found a fat pillbug for him today. He found his own smaller one too. His comment later: “Dad, I think my pillbugs have made friends!”
//1. About a week ago while Tia was out on an errand with the kids (I was home alone), I crossed the hall into the kitchen, and when I arrived, I heard a small, high, but loud “EEEK!”, and in the same instant a smallish brown blob (for all I could see) darted from the wall above the stairs very fastly past my boots and made a BANG sound thumping into the folding door in front of the dryer – but that was the last I could see of the mouse.
When I told Tia, she made sure the traps were still set (they needed resetting). We caught the mouse a few days later, and released him the same as the first. I was going to bring the video camera for this but discovered its battery needed recharging, so I couldn’t capture the event. However, it wasn’t as exciting – the mouse was larger, dark brown, and moved more like a squirrel – again past my boots on escape, only much more slowly. Since it was slow I wonder if it was the same mouse I heard shriek ..
//We found our snake on the balcony. What a relief! No idea how it got there.
(And we bought a more secure and spacious glass tank than the ice cream bucket for him to live in.)
//Mago’s grandma Helen caught a garden snake in her garage, and donated it to him (after seeing his interest when she donated another captured friend to other grandchildren). It’s home is a big plastic ice cream tub.
Mago left it in his room with the lid too loose some time earlier today.
Loose enough for the snake to push up.
It has escaped.
In a great big old house that is a small creature’s hide-and-seek dream. Or nightmare. Current theories are that it must be trapped in a heat ventilation duct – it could easily fit down one, but back up and out, I don’t know. I believe it may die – unless it’s much cleverer and agile than I think (it’s around 20 inches long, I’d guess) – in which case it will simply find its way into the wild.
I do not believe it will turn up, but we may try buying a live mouse (re last post, ironically) to put in a snake trap to lure it, on the chance it is still around.
//About a week ago Tia saw, late at night, a mouse run around the corner of the bed and toward a wall. We turned over everything we reasonably could at a late hour (in our tiredness) but didn’t find the mouse.
So the next day she bought some humane mousetraps, a type that merely shuts a door on its prisoner instead of smashing its brains out.
(I shudder – never mind such traps are far easier and less disgusting to manage.)
Over the next few days the kids eagerly awaited the capturing of mice (Nem: “More mouses, please”). One morning Tia found a trap set off, but it seemed so light, and the traps had previously been set off without capturing anything, so she opened the trap door to reset it – and a mouse scurried out and ran and hid in a corner, behind and under some things. She managed then to trap the mouse in a shoebox, which she taped shut.
We set off to Rock Canyon, the kids very eager to see the mouse as we would release it into the wild.
I videotaped this release, which (edited) footage follows, with some walking and playing with the kids afterward. After the mouse’s escape Tia asked me if I’d captured footage of something particular (and very remarkable) about it on tape. I hadn’t noticed, and thought I hadn’t captured it. But it certainly showed in the lens and on the camera’s video display. I only noticed by playing it back frame by frame, and for only six frames (at the frames per second rate multiplied by 5, and to put it more technically, that something like the “blink of an eye“).
You may also miss it on the first pass – this render will repeat the surprise in slow motion. Here is a still – please only show this after watching the video. [spoiler](Link to image file)[/spoiler]
(It also starts off with a relevant silly clip from a video game I played when I was a kid – exported from an emulator.)
For a higher quality video click the link that says “play in new window” after “(hifi)”.
