Save.

My Mom was thrilled a few weeks ago when phoebes built a nest above her porch light. She kept me informed of the progress and today said that the female had left the nest. Awesome...eggs had hatched!
We went over to Mom's for a visit, and we watched the male flit about the yard.



I hadn't noticed them visiting the nest at all, so I walked around to the front porch.
Two babies, on the cement under the nest.
"Mom....MOM! Get a ladder!"

I picked them up....one was ice cold and still. One was barely moving and also cold.

Oh God. Maybe a day old? Had been laying on cold cement for who knows how long? Okay. Don't panic....warmth. It needs warmth. I cupped it in my hand and started breathing warm air onto the baby. I kept it up while Mom ran for the ladder.
As I was warming the baby with my breath, I noticed tickling and pinching around my lips. I looked at my hands and saw feather mites running about. Great. Feather mites on my mouth.
(there have been a lot of gross things near my lips lately)
Instead of freaking out, I blew my lips like a horse to blow the mites off in between warm breaths to the baby.

I climbed the ladder and looked at the nest. The side had been pulled, like a larger bird had tried to get in. Starlings? Blue Jays?
I felt in the nest...no other babies....but got a few more mites.
I placed the baby back in (and at this point it had warmed up enough to really be moving and had started to peep....thank God)

We vacated the porch and went inside to let the parents get back to the nest. After a few minutes, I wondered if the phoebes were too freaked from the attack to go back.
I will say thank GOD for Julie Zickefoose...I remembered this post, where she helped a fledgling Carolina Wren find its family by using an iPod to call them back.
I grabbed my iPod, complete with BirdJam (Hi, Jay!!!) and did the Eastern Phoebe call.




Both of the parents popped up in the yard. Come on, guys....you have one baby left.
We waited anxiously and quietly in the house, until we observed the female visit the nest several times, until she finally settled in to brood her one remaining baby.

Thank you, Julie...and thank you, BirdJam.

Will Julie be proud of me? :)

(For the record, I washed off the mites.)

I wanna go back, and do it all over....well, maybe not

I really love Facebook. I have reconnected with so many people from high school, it's been like Old Home Week. If you asked me, I would say that I would never, ever ever want to go back to high school. The drama? The hormones? The acne? The utter lack of control over your life?
No way. But it's fun as all get out to sit down with someone who shared all that turmoil with you, and it's a joy to find out that you still connect.

Heather was a very good friend back in the day. We shared our share of trouble, but always seemed to come out okay in the end. A bit wild but deeply good person, I missed her more than a lot of the gals I hung with. She had a car and could drive during a time I was being too wild and crazy and my parents wouldn't let me drive. That little red Ford Escort took us so many places...

We did concerts....sneaking out....driving late into the night, deep in the wilds of rural Indiana...sleeping in First period History....or was it Geometry?
I can't remember. We slept through it.


One of my fondest memories of Heather is the Poison/Warrant concert in 1990. We were seniors and you couldn't tell us a thing. We looked forward to that concert for ages....and we knew we wouldn't be going to school the next day. Something my Mom still doesn't know.
Shhh...don't tell her, okay?

Yes, we were into Big Hair bands. We rocked out, then spent hours with one of the tour drivers at a restaurant (was he really a driver, or was he just some dude trying to pick up some hot groupies?), and got in about 6 am.
Her mom was all screechy at us (which moms are very good at)...

Heather's Mom: "Do you know what it's like to sit up all night and worry?????? Do you have any idea what this is like??????'
Heather: "We had fun....."
Heather's Mom: "Well, I'm glad you had fun, but now I have to get ready for work and screech and screech and screech and screech......"
Heather: "I got Jani Lane's sweat on my hand...."

All the while, another friend and I were trying desperately to crawl under the couch....and not laugh out loud.

She lives in Los Angeles now, and I haven't seen her in over 15 years. She's in town this week and I wasn't about to miss out on good ol' Heather.


We caught up on each other and our families, and before I left we took a self-portrait....
















...and she licked me. That's my girl.

Butterflies of India

Why I don't go to Krohn's Conservatory in the Winter, I don't know. I could soak up the warm humid air and marvel at the lush plants and flowers sorely lacking in the frigid landscape outside.
But nooooo...I always go when it's HOT.

Every year, the Conservatory hosts some butterflies from around the world and this year it's Butterflies of India. (the amount of butterflies from different countries is usually pretty small...I think they just want to dress up the building with a "theme"...and this is the only time you have to pay to see any part of the Conservatory, so they can dress it up as much as they like.)

They breed and raise the butterflies in a nursery then release them into the atrium, which is decorated according to the year's theme.
The more aggressive or "potentially dangerous if released" butterflies are kept in a mesh cage, while the others are free-flying. And it's hot and humid inside the Atrium. Makes the butterflies happy and the people moist. Well, at least all that sweat makes us irresistible to the butterflies.
My favorite (and the hardest to get onto your fingers) is the Blue Morpho. A native of South America, these things are massive as far as butterflies go. They look like...birds.



My ID sheet is way out in the car and I don't feel like getting up to get it.
(the kids' first official day of summer break wore me out....so sue me.)
Soak in the bright, colorful goodness of butterflies:

Okay. I know this one...Common Buckeye. (No. Not THAT buckeye.)


One of the 'dangerous' butterflies...



This thing was huge. Bigger than my hand. Almost as big as both my hands put together.









(everyone of those 'eyes' is a butterfly)


The Atrium decorated with the Indian theme


Tributes to Ganhdi.....

Shiva....

...and Ganesh.

It's not hard to get the butterflies to sit on your fingers. These are captive-bred butterflies, genetically inferior and also, I bet, battered and exhausted from the show.
But the kids think I'm the Butterfly Whisperer anyway. I would reach into the flowers, bring out a butterfly and then entice the butterfly to walk onto their fingers.
Makes for happy bug girls.

The weekend (i.e...your thumb can make a good comparison object)

For all my complaining about heat, I do like Summer. Lots of time spent outdoors, critters to encounter.

First critter:
The biggest tick I have ever seen, which I plucked off my brother's dog:


Oh, man, that is so gross. I did a full body shiver after I flung it into the weeds.

(My thumb for comparison)

Next, a great spangled frittilary that I enticed onto my fingers:

(You can see pollen on my fingernails!)


Taking my camera's life into dangerous hands....a macro shot of Storm the barn owl:

"Dude. I don't know what that is in my face, but I will totally kill it if you bring it any closer."

Frozen critters:

Ever wondered what the food freezers look like at RAPTOR? Well, here ya go.

A former critter...the hugest screech owl pellet I have seen:

(Thumb for comparison)
They are usually the size of a large marble.

Another former critter...I am addicted to pellet-pulling:

Great horned owl pellet and bones



Rat vertebra. Looks like a set of brass knuckles.

Isabelle became a Brownie yesterday:

(I hate that I have to cover up the Troup numbers...but you know there are pervs out there.)


I'm proud that Isabelle stuck with this throughout the school year.
I think she's proud of herself, too.

What lies beneath...(an impromptu anatomy lesson)

The summer is stretching in front of me like a road with no end. Lorelei's been out of school for a week, and Isabelle's last day is Friday. I have to keep two smart energetic children occupied for three months, and that takes more than just parking them in front of the TV.

Today, Lorelei and I went to RAPTOR. I had seen a neat pellet display at the CNC and wanted to investigate some of my saved pellets and see if I could replicate the display.

Our owl pellets don't hold any secrets...we feed them, so we know what's going in and what will be coming out. I chose one of Storm's pellets, since he is fed mice and swallows them whole (our larger owls seem to pick apart their food and leave leftovers, so their pellets aren't quite as interesting).
Quick pellet lesson:
All birds of prey (and some other birds, like herons) make pellets. What can't be digested is coughed (cast) up and you can pull it apart and determine their diet. Owl pellets are special in that the owls tend to swallow their food whole, or at least pull it apart and finish it all...so the entire skeleton (give or take a few tiny pieces) is wrapped in the fur or feathers of the prey.
Scientists can gather owl pellets and evaluate the food supply of an area.
Owl pellets also hold a larger amount of food residue, since their stomach acids are weaker than other birds of prey.
Barn owl pellets look a little different from other pellets...they are round, instead of oblong.


Storm's pellet:



I started to pull it open....

Arggh! A treasure trove of bony secrets!


I separated the bones into piles (ribs, tail and vertebrae, skull, legs) and Lorelei got very interested...

...so I let her do some pulling herself.
She wanted to know what every piece was, so I explained that the ribs protect the lungs and heart, and the vertebra are the back, etc. I showed her on her body where her ribs and spine were, and there came a moment when something clicked in her. I saw a light come on...



I assumed there were slightly more than one whole skeleton in this pellet. (Lorelei said it was one really BIG mouse)
Lorelei has said repeatedly over the past few years that she wants to be a veterinarian. Seeing that light come on in her eyes made me think that this is not just a dream or fancy. She really got into this. And made connections between the bones we were pulling out of the pellet and her own bones. It was so cool to witness, this awakening.

Pulling the bones out, with Daisy the stuffed Puppy looking on:

Just trying to get a nice photo...

Nellie just looked so cute sitting there. I wanted a nice photo of the two of us.

I sat next to her on the floor, turned the "Burst" function on and started shooting...

Little did I know that she was creeping in....



...to plant one right on my neck!

Teach your daughters well

As Father's Day approaches, I have been thinking of some things my Dad taught me that has helped me immensely throughout my life. And some things I wish I would have learned earlier.
(I have no advice for parents of boys. I am not a boy.)




All you Dads out there? Take some advice from a former little girl:

1. Teach your daughters how to drive a standard transmission. So when her boyfriend is drunk and unable to drive her home, she can dump him in the back of his souped-up ride and get herself home in one piece. Then she can leave drunk boyfriend in the car in the driveway to sleep it off...to get awoken by you in the morning.

2. Teach your daughter how to change the oil in her car. So when she is on her own (or with a man who doesn't know how) she can save herself a lot of money by rolling up her sleeves and rolling under the car to do it herself. Also let her watch and ask questions when you are working on your car.
*I impressed the Hell out of an ex-boyfriend and his cronies when I replaced the boyfriend's alternator. Six guys standing around a car, clueless...then I borrowed tools from a neighbor and just did it myself.*

3. Teach your daughter how to use tools. And give her your old ones. A woman's toolbox should not only hold mascara.

4. Teach your daughter how to field dress a deer. That might just come in handy someday. Really.

5. Teach your daughter how to change the fuses in the circuit box.

6. Teach your daughter how to mow the grass, preferably on a huge old tractor. She will be able to handle this alone and not have to count on a service or any one else. And she will enjoy the tan she receives.

7. Teach your daughter that while her pretty looks may open some doors, they won't keep her in the door. Remind her that she has a brain and that she knows how to use it.

8. Teach your daughter to respect herself, so that others will respect her too.

9. Teach your daughter about your parents and your wife's parents. This is where your daughter came from and she will cherish the stories throughout her life.

10. Teach your daughter that she is more precious to you than your own life. Having your support and your love can pave the road for her and keep her head above water when things are tough.













11. Teach your daughter to kick back every once in a while and enjoy what they have wrought.


Anyone have any lessons they learned from their Dad's to share here?