Damned Bugs

Intense heat today, nearly 100° F., and after a brief rainstorm in the late afternoon, tropical humidity. August has arrived early. Yesterday I got a handwritten note near my front door from the village engineering department. The tree next to the street in front of my house -- on village land -- is going to be removed. As in, cut down. The problem: the dread emerald ash borer.

Damn. It isn't a favorite tree of mine, but it's a tree in a spot where there needs to be a tree. The note added that a replacement would be "discussed at a later time."

Damn again. Fine, a little tree is going to go there. Will I even be here long enough to enjoy it as a full, shady tree? Probably not.

But the note did make me take a closer look at the tree that will be destroyed. It looks ill. Here in the fullness of June, it doesn't have nearly as many leaves as it should. The village has more about the problem here, including the awful lines that "... history and research has indicated that the village can expect a vast increase in mortality rates this summer. The EAB Management Plan assumes the loss of the majority of ash trees from this infestation..."

Yuriko and I took a walk late yesterday afternoon and noted the mark of death, a red spot painted on the trees, facing the street. At least a half-dozen trees on our street are slated for removal (but not all of them). I lost count of the other red spots on other streets; the infestation must be bad. I also came to think that decades ago, when this subdivision was new, someone planted a lot of ash trees. Maybe they were cheap, and the concept of biodiversity hadn't been invented, or at least popularized, yet.

The Dread Zebra Mussel

It's a pleasant-looking place, but not all is well with Deep Quarry Lake at the West Branch Forest Preserve. Zebra Mussels have invaded. Signs all around the lake warned anglers not to participate in the species' invasion of North America.

"A small freshwater mollusk called the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), has been steadily invading America's rivers and lakes," says the National Atlas of the United States. "Zebra mussels originated in the Balkans, Poland, and the former Soviet Union. They first appeared in North America in 1988 in Lake St. Clair, a small water body connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Biologists believe the zebra mussels were picked up in a freshwater European port in the ballast water of a ship and were later discharged into the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair."

Apparently they move in and take over, eating all the algae and other creatures that come their way. "Zebra mussels upset ecosystems, threaten native wildlife, damage structures, and cause other serious problems," the Atlas continues. "Millions of dollars are spent each year in attempting to control these small but numerous mollusks... Once zebra mussels become established in a water body, they are impossible to eradicate with the technology currently available. Many chemicals kill zebra mussels, but these exotics are so tolerant and tough that everything in the water would have to be poisoned to destroy the mussel."

Ah, another old commie plot still wreaking havoc.

Die, Hormigas, Die

The ant highway (see January 30) was practically deserted today. A few stragglers made their way, but it was a lonely trip for them -- provided ants have any such concept. Only a day ago, I was ready to call the ant traps a failure, since the bugs were still numerous, and I couldn't see any of them entering the traps. But they must have.

So I'm now ready to call the traps a success: Raid brand, as it happens. Kills Bugs Dead.® Everyone knows that, because Foote, Cone & Belding taught us so. This product Kills the Colony (Mata a la Colonia), the box says, but not Kills the Colony Dead, Sows Their Fields With Salt, which I would have put on the box. Or Kills Them Dead as Crassus at Carrhae. That's why I'm not a product copywriter.

And they aren't traps, but "ant baits" (cebos para hormigas). Nice to learn that hormiga is Spanish for ant or worker ant. It's got a sinister ring to it. Do not trifle with the hormiga, my friend. He will kill you.

Ant Stories

In August 2001, I drove to St. Louis with Lilly, who wasn't quite four years old, to visit my brother Jay and nephew Sam, as Sam moved into his dorm for his freshman year at Washington University. Lilly and I spent the first night at a motel en route, and it so happened that Them! was on TV that night. We watched most of it. Lilly was frightened and much more recently -- last year, in fact -- claimed that she actually remembered how scared the giant ants made her, which was the only thing she remembered about that trip.

It had been years since I'd seen the movie. What I remember from the 2001 viewing, besides Lilly's reaction, was that I hadn't realized that a pre-Matt Dillon James Arness was in it. Thinking about Them! now, I'm surprised some producer somewhere hasn't managed to remake it into a CGI travesty in which the ants are created by genetic engineering, rather than atomic testing. Give it time.

In the summer of 2006, we came home from Canada to discover that ants were busy trying to take over our house. Or least set up shop and live in it. I called in professional help and the bugs were dispatched. They were large black ants, and they've never returned.

I bring this up because I discovered a trail of very small ants this morning across the floor of the room in between my office and the kitchen. We'd seen these little black ants here and there during recent weeks, and even some in the upstairs bathroom, which I discouraged with a few squirts of bug spray. But I guess their numbers increase if they're aren't dealt with more systematically.

Most of the ants were following one of the grooves in the floor created by the grid-like pattern of tiles. The groove is a straight shot across the floor -- an ant highway -- all the way from the trash bin in the kitchen to a small hole in the baseboard. Their lair must be in there. Well, nest. But that always sounded too pleasant for ants, which have some nightmarish features if you think about it. (Or see movies in which giant ant mandibles kill people.)

So I picked up some ant traps today, the kind that promise that the ants will enter, pick up a load of poisoned food and take it home to the nest. The first time I ever used such a thing was in Japan, during the first year I lived there. Ants invaded; somehow I found the ant traps in a store, though I had no idea what to ask for; and they worked very well. During the 2006 ant invasion, ant traps didn't work. So we'll see if these little ants take the bait of doom.

The Coke Freeze

So there I was, shoveling snow from the driveway late Saturday morning. Frozen precipitation had visited northern Illinois on Friday in quantity. Unless there's a snow blower active nearby, shoveling snow is a fairly quiet time: the softened hum of traffic in the distance, your own breath, or panting, the thump of your pre-heart attack heart beat, the tap-tap-tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. Wait, what?

It usually isn't until March sometime that I hear the characteristic woodpecker pecking, but I heard tapping from a tree above, with eight or so inches of snow on the ground below. It didn't fit. I looked around and there it was, tapping away, high in a neighbor's tree. Maybe the winter has been so warm -- until about 10 days ago -- that there were some grubs in that tree for the bird. Or maybe he just likes showing off.

The January cold has taken its toll, especially on a Coke can accidentally left outside of the garage refrigerator. The contents expanded and the top popped off. I decided it needed to be documented.

This is the bottom of the can, compared with one that didn't freeze.

This is the can, viewed from above. To make the can stand up, I put a stapler next to it.

The frozen contents look a little unappetizing, but after the frozen Coke slush melted, it was drinkable.

Christkindlmarket Chicago '11

I visited at the Christkindlmarket Chicago on Friday as an appendage to a longer visit downtown, as during previous years, since it isn't something I would make a special trip just to see. The ornaments are pretty and all, but not so dazzling that I'd drive to a Metra station, ride an hour on a train, and walk six or seven city blocks just to gaze upon them.

Nice baubles.

It might be a misapprehension, but it seemed like there were more food vendors at the market this year than before. Such as this purveyor of pretzels.

It was a fairly cold day, though not actually freezing -- been a strange December that way so far, with little snow or ice. But it was cold enough for pigeons on Daley Plaza, site of the Christkindlmarket, to seek out warmth wherever they could.

That's Daley Plaza's Eternal Flame, dating from 1972, whose plaque says, Eternal flame in memory of the men and women who have served in our armed forces. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserves and Merchant Marines. In Pigeon, it might be called "the Warm Place Always."

Teeth & Bones

There will come a time when I see very little children's TV programming, maybe none if I play my cards right. Even now I don't see all that much, but enough to be amazed occasionally at some toy or other I'd never heard of. Such as Dr. Drill & Fill, a Play-Doh-based toy that simulates dentistry. That's a real toy? People really buy that for their children, even those who haven't expressed a desire to grow up and practice dentistry?

Maybe there's a market for this toy among the most demented kids, who like to re-enact scenes like this.

Ann brought home some mouse bones today. This was unexpected. She told me that the bones were created when an owl swallowed a mouse whole, digesting the good-and-soft parts, but later bringing the bones and fur up again. I'm not sure exactly where the school got these bones and pellets -- I like to imagine that the process involves a friendly farmer who owns a large barn staffed with hungry owls, and who cleans the residue and brings it to Ann's school for science class.

Ann's share is in a small clear-plastic Solo cup with a lid. Honestly, the pellets aren't that much to look at -- like fuzzballs that a vacuum picks up. But the bones are interesting. She picked them out of the cup and showed them to me: a skull, a jaw bone, some leg bones. "It's interesting and particular," she said.

The Idea of Stromatolites

We had a yellow-sky dusk today. Mostly cloudy with rain predicted but not yet happening. The light begins to fade at around 8 now, a mark of the declining summer. I sat on the deck for a while just after 8, admiring the sky and listening to cicadas and crickets. They were almost loud enough to drown out the ambient traffic noise. Good.

Recently I finished reading In a Sunburned Country (2000) by Bill Bryson. I liked it a lot. (And I recommend A Walk in the Woods, too, which I read a couple of years ago.) It's clear from his writing that he enjoys the pure pleasure of setting out to see what he can see, and he takes his well-honed descriptive and interpretative skills with him. I also liked the book because its subject is Australia, a place Bryson's very fond of. Me too.

Toward the end, he describes a marvel that should be on educational flash cards (see yesterday), but never will be. Bryson traveled to Shark Bay on the remote west coast of Australia north of Perth, where he sought out a formation found only there and and a few other places in the entire world. "Nowhere in any direction was there a sign of human intrusion except directly ahead, where a nifty wooden walkway zigzagged for 150 feet or so out into the bay over some low, dark, primeval-looking masses that didn't quite break the water's calm. I had found my living stromatolites..." he wrote.

"Stromatolites are so primitive of nature that they don't even adopt regular shapes. The just sort of, as it were, blob out... In fact, they are shapeless gray blobs, without character or luster. It has to be immediately conceded that a stromatolite formation is not a handsome or striking sight.

"It's not the sight of stromatolites that makes them exciting. It's the idea of them -- and in this respect they are peerless. You are looking at living rocks -- quietly functioning replicas of the very first organic structures ever to appear on Earth. You are experiencing the world as it was 3.5 billion years ago -- more than three-quarters of the way back to the moment of terrestrial creation. Now, if that's not an exciting thought, I don't know what is. As the aforementioned paleontologist Richard Fortey has put it: 'This is truly time traveling, and if the world were attuned to its real wonders this sight would be as well-known as the pyramids of Giza.' Quite right.

"If you peer, you can sometimes see tiny bubbles of oxygen rising in streams from the formations. This is stromatolite's only trick and it isn't much, but it is what made life as we know it possible... For two billion years this was all the life there was on Earth, but in that time the stromatolites raised the oxygen level in the atmosphere to 20 percent -- enough to allow the development of other, more complex life-forms: me, for instance. My gratitude was real."

New at the Zoo

Hot days this week, but at least the dogday cicadas have returned to Illinois to buzz during the late afternoon and early evening. I try to time my book reading on our backyard deck to be late enough to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat, but not so late that I'm mosquito food for the dusk-time bloodsuckers. I also sometimes go out after dark and read by porch light and look for fireflies and listen for crickets. They're ramping up now. I expect much louder cricketsong as the weeks go on.

The Brookfield Zoo has added some features since we were last there. It's good to know that the economy hasn't kept a nonprofit like the zoo from capital investments such as the Great Bear Wilderness, 7.5 acres that, according to zoo, feature "iconic North American animals: Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Bison, and Eagles." (Sic. Not sure why animals get caps.) The zoo moved the bears there from the former Bear Grottos, which are no more. The new space for bears is much larger than the grottos, the better for bears to be bears, I figure.

The wolves also have a large new enclosure of their own, the Regenstein Wolf Woods. The resident wolves there were fairly active for such a warm afternoon, coming close enough to the viewing station to show their kinship with domestic dogs. A sign at the viewing station -- which is indoors -- promises a couple of minutes in a darkened room, listening to wolf calls. We couldn't pass that up. The room was indeed dark, except for the glowing EXIT sign, and the soundtrack began with crickets. Then the wolves chimed in, making quite a din.

That confirmed that I heard coyotes in the distance those years ago while camping on national forest land in Montana on a cold August night. All four of us were wrapped in our blankets in our tent, but I was the only one awake to hear the not-so-distant baying of coyotes. Later I thought maybe they were wolves, but apparently wolves howl more than coyotes, who yip and yap more (not that I've ever heard that in the suburbs, though I know coyotes live around here).

We also visited exhibits that have been around a while, such as Fragile Desert and Fragile Rain Forest, though I had to wonder about the fragility of environments that would kill me quickly if I ventured there unprepared. Pinniped Point has seals and sea lions, while The Swamp has alligators, otters, snapping turtles and signs warning us not to buy cypress mulch for our gardens, since cypress trees need to stay in swamps, not be cut for purpose of lawn vanity. I'll go along with that, partly for environmental reasons, partly in my quest for a low-maintenance, biodiverse lawn.

The Living Coast has long been a favorite of mine at the Brookfield Zoo. It has penguins, for one thing. It also used to have a large tank of moon jellies. Now there's only a few in a small tank. Or maybe I'm misremembering things. Maybe the Shedd Aquarium has the tank of moon jellies. But I could have sworn that five or ten years ago the Living Coast had an enormous tank with dozens and dozens of the creatures, a real smack of jellies, meandering around their water unconcerned whether they were in Tethys Ocean or an artificial pool built by land-dwelling primates who, in jellyfish terms, are very recent arrivals.

I assume they're unconcerned. It's impossible to tell. I quote from Wiki: "Jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems." That's a lot of things not to have. They seem so otherworldly, so ethereal. Yet there they are, moving around placidly like they have for maybe 500 million years.

Summertime Salmagundi

Back again on Tuesday. Time for meat, beer and colorful explosions.

Finally it feels like we're at the doorstep of high summer. Professional weather-watchers say it'll be pushing 100° F. here in northern Illinois tomorrow, and I say it's about time. Naturally, it won't last. This isn't South Texas.

What's the collective for dragonflies? Swarm, maybe, but that isn't very interesting. Other insects get collectives such as army, cloud, flutter, intrusion (cockroaches), plague and scourge, among others. One source suggests a "dazzle" or "levitation" of dragonflies. Not bad. The question comes to mind because dragonflies are in force now, seemingly more than in other years. Dragonflies arc and dive by day; fireflies make their traces in the twilight.

Saw an ad for the new Captain America movie recently, which was the first I'd heard of it. At least he seems to be fighting cartoon Nazis, his proper function, but it made me wonder: haven't there been enough movie adaptations of super-hero yarns already? Haven't they all been done? Guess not. This cartoon still offers the possibility of a gritty, live-action reboot. Or this one.

Received ten dollar coins from a bank teller not long ago. I was glad to see that the presidential series has gotten around to Andrew Johnson and U.S. Grant. I can't find a citation for it right now, but I seem to remember that, when asked why he'd run for president, he said, "I needed a job." Apocryphal, maybe, but a likable quote.

Somehow I'm in possession of a little pamphlet produced by a well-known sect -- known for their aversion to blood transfusions, for one thing -- entitled "All Suffering SOON TO END!" I can't say that I've actually read all of it, but I did note a money quote: "Soon God will intervene in human affairs by destroying this entire unsatisfactory system of things," meaning, it seems, all the works of man.

But that's not why I like it. The cover features a painting of a happy man and woman in the foreground, sitting next to a collection of pumpkins and big apples in a field of flowers. In background is a mountain, some pine trees, some fall-foliage trees, a house and a couple of horses, one with a rider. Right behind the man and woman is a moose. A huge bull moose with huge antlers.

Look at the painting long enough and it seems that the moose, not the happy couple, is the focus of the image. What's going on here? Does the moose have some significance in this religion that most of us don't know about? If so, I'd think more highly of them for it.

The Puelicher Butterfly Wing

More rain. The lawns are greening up nicely, though some parts of them are under puddles right now. Yet the urge to mow is strong among some householders, though not so much in my case. A neighbor's back yard -- visible from the park next to Ann's school -- features a couple of mower-tracks, obviously cut the other day in the process of discovering just how soggy the grass is.

While we were visiting the Milwaukee Public Museum, we toured a small but popular exhibit called the Puelicher Butterfly Wing. It's a warm, humid room full of free-flying butterflies. As I said, the place was popular.

It's hard to see any butterflies in that picture. But they were in the air, on the plants, on the walls, and sometimes on the visitors. None liked me enough to land on me. Lilly, on the other hand, attracted more than one, for reasons only known to the butterflies.

I asked a docent, an elderly gent in a t-shirt that said BUG SQUAD (or was it BUG PATROL?) whether most of the species in the room were tropical. Most are, he said, except for some Monarchs the museum happened to have handy. Grand as they are, Monarchs are positively dowdy compared to some of the iridescent-hued bugs flitting around that room.

Still, I wondered, what's the evolutionary value in being so colorful? It must work, but how? I guess I could look up current thinking on that point, but I'd rather it be a minor mystery.

It's Not For Girls

No croci yet, but I heard a woodpecker this morning drilling into wood. For insect eggs? I couldn't say for sure, but it's still too early even for larval insects. Maybe woodpeckers need to get into practice before the spring drilling season.

Speaking of edibles, not long ago I discovered that a major retailer around here carries Yorkie bars. I'd never seen them for sale in the United States, so it was my impulse buy for that morning. This particular store has an international aisle with mostly the usual -- "Polish Foods," "Mexican Foods," etc. -- but also "British Foods." That was odd enough for me to look at the selections, and there it was.

Note the slogan right there on the package, It's Not For Girls (emphasis not added by me). Predictably, that upsets some literal-minded people, but I have a feeling it doesn't really discourage any girls from buying Yorkies in Britain or anywhere else. Lilly tried some, at her insistence, and seemed to like it. The UK adverts seem to have fun with it as well, such as this one, which I've linked to before.

Without Bees, Our Nation Would Be Misshapen

Another winter blast for the East again. I traded these e-mails today with an editor of mine based in New York:

Me: Did you make it to the office today? To hear weathercasters tell it, New York has been buried under mountains of snow. But they are an excitable bunch, prone to a little exaggeration.

Him: Yeah, it’s not that bad. A lot of snow, sure — especially in Queens and the other boroughs — but not exactly the apocalypse.

Here on the western shore of southern Lake Michigan, in that region called the Midwest, but which is all part of the North to me, not so much snow today. Maybe an inch fell late this morning and into the early afternoon, just enough to freshen up the dirty snow already on the ground and add a new top ingredient to the snow/ice parfait on certain outdoor surfaces, such as sidewalks. That's not usually a good thing to have underfoot.

The retailer Amazon pestered me with an e-mail this morning, the subject line of which said, "Amazon.com recommends 'Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation.' " I puzzled over that for a moment, then realized that the Amazon Machine had reached the conclusion that if I'd buy one book about bees and honey, I would surely want another. I don't particularly.

Last month I bought A Short History of the Honey Bee, images by Ilona, text by my old friend Ed Readicker-Henderson (Timber Press, 2009, subtitled "Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey"). It is, astonishingly, the first and still only thing I've ever bought from Amazon; but I'm a late adopter in many things. Actually, "adopter" is too strong a word, since I still vastly prefer physical bookstores and will do my little part to help a few survive, along with physical books themselves. I haven't read Ed's book yet, but it's in my vague queue for this year.

Bees seem very important, and Bees in America might well be an excellent work, but "shape a nation"? I'm reminded of a skit I saw long ago, on The Carol Burnett Show or its ilk, that involved a traveling Jim Nabors striking up a conversation with another traveler.

Nabors played an earthworm salesman, I think, and went on at some length about how important earthworms were for farms and the nation and the fate of the free world and so on, with the kind of irritating enthusiasm he brought to Gomer Pyle, much to the other character's displeasure. (Tim Conway? Or maybe it was Harvey Korman, trying not to laugh.) Toward the end of the skit, Nabors said something like, "When you think about it, earthworms are the backbone of this country!"

A Possum Playing Possum

Early this evening, as we were all getting ready to leave the house for a couple of hours, Yuriko spotted a tail sticking out of the recycle bin. The bin is next to the back door and right now contains some newspapers, aluminum cans and a few plastic items -- separation by material isn't required for pick up where we live. The tail was hairless and tapered to a point.

As soon as the girls heard about it, there was much commotion. At first they refused to walk out the door, even though the tail wasn't moving and no angry animal sounds emerged from the bin. I kicked the bin slightly. Still no movement, but looking a little closer I could see part of the animal's snout and its gray fur. Possum, I decided. He didn't move, or make any sounds. This was a first for me. I'd seen a possum playing possum.

No doubt he wanted to burrow for warmth, since it's nearly freezing outside, and happened on our bin. I insisted that the girls file past, following their mother, and the scary thing they imagined at the end of the tail didn't leap out at them. When we got back home later, he was gone. The girls insisted I verify that before they walked past the bin again.

Slate-Gray November

The weekend was classic November: slate-gray skies, intermittent rain, cold wind, mostly bare trees. A thin sheet of ice formed on the windshield and windows of both cars in wee hours this morning, only to melt later under the feeble November sun. The slate-gray was gone today, replaced by November blue.

I wondered about that color, "slate gray." Is it really descriptive for days like Saturday and Sunday? So I looked into it and decided that it's close enough, especially if there's no need to be literal. I also found this table called "shades of gray," which also happens to be the cliché used when talking about nuance. Are all those colors really part of the gray clan? "Glaucous" seems blue-like to me, and the various "taupes," except for taupe gray, seem more aligned with brown.

But it is Wiki, after all. Take your glaucous and taupe with salt.

Around sunset on Friday, I noticed something new up in the branches of our back-yard honey locust: a nest. The last of the leaves finally fell only a week or so ago, exposing it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there last year, so some birds moved in during the spring. Or maybe squirrels. Now I need to figure out a way to charge them rent next year. Trouble is, birds might want to pay in earthworms, and squirrels in nuts.

I took a picture of the nest on a whim, and caught the waxing moon too. Invisible to us under the clouds, it was half full the next day, and is headed for full on the 21st. The Farmers' Almanac quaintly claims November's full moon is the Beaver Moon, and maybe it was in 1818. In our time, the Almanac ought to consider selling naming rights to the full moons (or would that be the prerogative of the International Astronomical Union?). November, for instance, could be the Walmart Moon, in honor of the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

Pepe's Fate

Around Labor Day this year, the smell of skunk suddenly perfumed our back yard. Not a full blast of skunk, but just enough to remind us of the one-of-a-kind stink every time we went outside using the back door. "Where's the skunk?" Lilly would ask. "I haven't seen one."

I hadn't either, but I figured the smell was left over from some unseen fight some dark night between a skunk passing through and a raccoon defending his territory. I've seen raccoons around here. But it was pure speculation about whether raccoons and skunks ever mix it up.

Anyway, the stink lasted a week or so, and then faded from nose and memory. Today I mowed the back yard, maybe for the last time in 2010. The last time I'd done so was in early September, because of slow grass growth, inconveniently timed rain and my own sloth. Leaning against the back yard fence is a large plastic kiddie pool, a blue oval that I keep there during the warm months. Lilly has long outgrown it, of course, but Ann could still use it, though she didn't bother with it this summer. I noticed that a little rain water had collected in the kiddie pool, so I tipped it over to pour out the water, and all at once smelled skunk again -- just a little.

Behind the kiddie pool and near the fence was a decaying animal corpse, but with enough distinctive skunk fur to make identification certain, as if the smell wasn't enough. Somehow the animal, let's call him Pepe, bit the dust here. When I have time for it in a day or two, I'll take a shovel out there and put him in a hole next to where he fell. It's the least I can do. Actually, it's the most I can do, since taxidermy isn't within my skill set.

One more note: Google "Pepe Le Pew" and the search engine suggests "Pepe Le Pew quotes." He was never a favorite of mine, but he is Warner-canonical, so I let myself be distracted by that search. Big Cartoon Forum has only one quote for the Gallic skunk, which is, "Zee cabbage does not run away from zee corn-beef."

Rocky Raccoon Checked Out of His Room

Dry July is gone; so far, the rains have returned for August. The grass has started greening and growing again, and mosquitoes have made a fierce, get-in-the-house-at-all-costs comeback. Why do they sneak into the house when the door is open? To paraphrase a storied criminal, that's where the blood is.

There was a terrific rain this afternoon, but one without lightning or sound effects. Just an intense downpour. The entire patch of Queen Anne's Lace in the back yard bowed to its might, instead of standing up and reaching for the Sun as the flowers usually do. After the rain, the bowing plants were adorned with beads of water. It was a pretty sight, and a photo-op. For someone with better equipment. I went as far as taking a few snapshots, but instead of a graceful collection of summertime plants washed by the heavens, all my images look like an explosion at a salad bar.

Actually, they don't look like that. A blown-up salad bar would be interesting, if not pretty.

Returning to my back door, I spied something I haven't seen before on the roof: a raccoon. Let's call him Rocky. The rains must have driven him from whatever local hole he dwells in. He was curled up, asleep under one of the second-floor awnings, bothering nobody. I suppose as a property owner, I ought to do something about his presence, and would if he wanted to live in my attic. But he'll be gone sometime in the night to do whatever raccoons do in the suburbs.

Harris' Hawk in Illinois

According to the Peregrine Fund's web site, Harris' hawks -- also Harris's hawks -- (parabuteo unicinctus) "are found in semiarid habitats like savannas, chaparrals, scrub prairies, and mesquite and saguaro deserts," none of which describes Illinois that I know of. Indeed, "they range from the southwestern United States through Central America and into much of the drier habitats in South America."

Thus the hawk's handler at the pow-wow, a member of S.O.A.R., told us that you aren't likely to see one in metro Chicago, and for good geographic reasons. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen one. Mice and other small creatures of our area ought to be glad, since the bird had some wicked-looking talons. I'm probably just projecting, but it also looked like one determined bird, which is fitting for a bird of prey.

"The bird was named by John James Audubon after his friend Edward Harris," the site continues. "This hawk has also been called a Bay-winged hawk and Dusky hawk." I'm impressed. Audubon himself named it.

The bird was a hit with the kids. (Ann isn't one of these girls, but she did see the bird, as did Lilly.)

The other bird in the photo is a bald eagle, tethered temporarily to the ground. That, according to various sources, is "Deshka the American Bald Eagle."

Thursday Odds

On Tuesday, the first day at Lilly and Ann's elementary school, all the students gathered outside before classes and entered the building with their respective teachers. It was warm and clear that morning, perfect from such a gathering. Later in the day, it was hot -- the essence of a summer day. Very early on Wednesday, rain blew through, lowering the temps and visiting on and off since then, mostly as drizzle. As if to say, "No more summer for you kids."

The persistent rains have also highlighted a couple of silvery, intricate spider webs hanging from plants in the back yard. One of them is just above my car, dangling from two branches of the tree next to the driveway. Last I checked, a spider was still resident. I'll have to point it out to one or both of my daughters soon, to elicit girlish cries of fear or disgust. Which might not be heartfelt in Lilly's case; the web might have some fascination.

We went to three big boxes -- three, that's nearly an overdose for any particular day -- earlier this evening to finish off school-supply acquisition. Locusts had visited each store before we arrived, focusing on the aisles containing the supplies, and had carried off some of the items we were looking for. I will explain this in a note to Lilly's teacher, who reportedly wants all supplies in hand on Friday. But I probably won't mention the locust metaphor.

Received Tunnel Vision in the mail the other day. "A publication for alumni of student media at Vanderbilt University" that shows up occasionally. VU student media alumni Sen. Lamar Alexander, sports journalist Skip Bayless and humorist Roy Blount Jr. are all on the cover, to remind the rest of us how small our achievements are. But I can do that by going out any starry night.

Which reminds me of a Gahan Wilson cartoon I saw long ago. (He's still alive at last report, glad to see it.) I think the cartoon was in his early '70s collection I Paint What I See. We had that book around the house and it probably made me one of the few kids at Woodridge Elementary School who knew his work, which remains instantly recognizable to me. In Wilson's cartoon, an old man is looking out from his balcony at the vault of stars overhead, gesturing defiantly: "You don't make me feel insignificant, fella!"

Yes, In My Back Yard

Lately around here it's been nearly hot enough to be summer, just in time for that slide into fall that begins next month. Rain has been so frequent this year that the grass is still lush, instead of the water-conserving brown it should be. Basic lawn maintenance season has been extended.

Around midnight last night, the wind whipped up and rain followed. I was falling asleep about then, so it wasn't until I woke up in the morning that I noticed three large, branching pieces of tree lying in the back yard, plus a lot of twigs. From the look of the branches, a gust ripped them right off the trunk from fairly high up. Fortunately they dropped to a spot occupied only by grass, even missing our tripod grill. Any human or animal underneath would have taken a serious hit, or more likely, any part of my roof underneath would now have a serious hole in it, a problem I do not need.

For a while now, I've thought of our back yard tree as a honey locust, because of an identification sign I once saw on a tree in a park. I thought that tree looked like the one I have. But since then I've read about honey locusts, and some of the defining characteristics of that species, like seed pods, seem to be missing from my tree.

So I don't know just what kind of tree it is, only that it's slow to green up in the spring, late to colorize in the fall. This year, in fact, when I left for Texas in early June, the leaves weren't very well developed at all. When I came back in late June there had been some growth, but it was still a green fuzz. I worried that I might have a sick or dying tree on my hands (so to speak), another problem I don't need. About two weeks ago, however, the leaves grew vigorously, turning the tree as green as I've ever seen it.

Some of that greenery came to earth last night, but not enough to harm the tree. I think. As soon as the wood dries out, at least, we'll have a new supply for making fire in the grill.