Out the Back Door

The CB features a sliding, double pane, glass backdoor.  It is glass, so most can see through it.  Crumby's Lazy Boy is situated so that Crumby, reclining, may easily espy the goings on in the backyard through the glass door to the extent that his view is not blocked by vegetation.  The vegetation that blocks Crumby's view is wildryes and Turk's caps surrounding the trunk of a sickly pecan cultivar.

There Crumby was on Thursday morning, watching perhaps the last bicycle race he would ever watch, when suddenly a doe appeared, raring up and stomping the shit out of Crumby's widlryes and Turk's caps.  WTF, surmised Crumby, that doe has clearly gone out of its tiny mind. But before Crumby could get on up out of the Lazy Boy to chase the deer off, a gray fox bolted out of the vegetation.  The fox, slinking south at a good clip, alerted Crumby to the fact that he was experiencing not just a botanical emergency, but a zoological emergency, which combined, makes up a biological emergency.  WTF!

Then, lo and behold,  a fawn, probably just dropped last night, staggered out from Crumby's vegetation.  So the fox got too close to the fawn and got attacked by the doe.  For the next hour or so, the doe, alternatively attended to the fawn, licking it or nudging it along to a new concealment spot, or chased the fox around.   Foxy kept coming back to the spot where the fawn was originally concealed in the vegetation, sniffing around.  Finally though, fox got tired of getting chased around and went up in the live oak for a nap.

fox with vegetation between fox and angry doe

crumby photo of this year's deer crop

weary fox

Mercury Transit Revisited

Back on Nov. 2, 2006 Ray or maybe Crumby were fixing to view the Mercury transit set to occur around sundown on that date.  An accounting of that misadventure is still contained within this, long-running blog. Mercy!  To view an account of that sad event, type in Mercury transit in the search box

In the meantime, Ray or Crumby had way better luck with the more recent Venus transit, June 5, 2012, also documented and searchable in this ancient tome or blog.  Somehow, documenting that second transit was really easy.   Photos taken actually revealed a sphere on a sphere.

This time though, we have regressed or backslid.  Not all the way back to the original miserable Mercury transit event.  No. We did better than that.  But nowhere near as swell as with Venus.  Here's  our excuses.

We were expecting cloudy conditions on the morning of May 9.  Therefore, we made no preparations for this transit.  Then, as Mercury was set to occlude part of Ogma Sunface,  the clouds parted.  Hurriedly we began to assemble the planet transiting gear.  Yet we soon became aware that hardware was missing from the planet transit tripod.  Yes.  Two essential screws for mounting the C90 to the tripod could not be found. So we had to rig up employing a photo tripod.  Bad!

Here's what we stick into either hole of the bifurcated C90  to take pictures, thus  adding even more weight to the photo tripod.  That's an ancient Olympus c5060wz, digi t gizmos and a 32mm plossl you need to stick in the hole. Not good!

Then too the wind was blowing extra hard so with that and the photo tripod we couldn't screw down the camera good and everything was constantlyvibrating.  Plus the camera didn't want to focus like it's supposed to. Nevertheless, we took  over a hundred photos.  Five of them semi-came out.  Here's a couple of those.
So generally,  we consider this particular Mercury transit to be a qualified success.  Photo coloring is artificial.

o

May Day

Catching up after months away is a daunting task.  It's like, now that those months are past, were they important.  And if they were important, are they still important?  Important enough to document.  Doubtful.

But what about May Day?  Today is, of course, May Day, the first of May, international worker's day.   Taking the entire globe into account, perhaps many of those that can or will work, still do.  Perhaps somewhere a working class exists.  Perhaps honest workers somewhere are marching for this or that, or just for fun on a day off.

Not here though.  Even if there were any workers here,  they wouldn't celebrate today.

Interestingly,  May Day is also a pagan holiday.  Maybe some pagans are celebrating somewhere.  Maybe they too are having a March, skipping and jumping.  But not around here.

Many may know that May Day is one of those spring days that potentially features, in the northern hemisphere, the northward migration of Class Aves.  Well, not all of Class Aves.  Chickens mostly stay put. But part  of the great bird class migrates north and is doing so on this very May Day.  Y, a migratory bird could possibly pass over your head any time now.  Or maybe not.

Once upon a time, long ago, bird migration verification on May Day was easier.  That's because there were many more birds that migrated.  Way less chickens too.  

Ray's Victorinox orange peeler collection

My collection of orange peeler blades has expanded by one with the acquisition of the model exhibiting many fine, deep serrations on the cutting edge. Here are the three pictured for comparison. Now I just need two additional iterations to complete the collection. Just two. Ah ha ha!