In wildlife news (you know I live for this):
- The praying mantises finally ended their love-in, after five plus days of togetherness. We don't know if either of the males got eaten and we haven't located the ootheca (egg case) yet, but then we may never find it, which is OK because it's none of our business anyway. Dino has observed the, or at least, a female mantis in the asparagus fern and again on one of the h-bird feeders a couple of times in recent days.
- I saw a skunk on the way home last night. They have a tendency just to run on the road in front of the car and they'll do that forever, so I stopped and waited for it to find its way down the hill. Don't want skunk smell on my car.
- Watched six wild pigs on the way to work this morning - looked like a sow and five juveniles, or possibly one big and one small sow and four juveniles. One of the pigs was sort of brown, black and cream spotted; they others were black. I stopped the car and rolled down the windows to tell them, "I was just thinking about you as*****s.' And I had been - only the other day I mentioned to Dino that there hadn't been any pigs around for a while. See, it's my fault. They were rooting around under a stand of oaks for acorns; they are terribly destructive.
- There were two ravens in the front yard under one of the main birdfeeders. We haven't seen them there all summer.
- Dino told me that this month we've been putting out 50% more hummingbird food than last month. They've been double and triple stacked at the feeders waiting their turn.
- Saving the best for last: It's Tarantula Season again! We've both been seeing the male tarantulas out and about now - this time of year they start on a trek looking for female tarantulas to make babies with. I had to take evasive action on the road yesterday to avoid a spider squish-o-rama.
