Kalahari was going crazy barking at something in the park behind the house. The park comes up to about 10 feet from the master bedroom windows and there is no fence. Willow creek is about 30 feet from the window. We’ve had a rash of kids screwing with stuff in the park and some graffiti down the street so I took the dog and the Hi-Power out back for a look see.

Got back there and heard something down by the creek. I called out, “It would be a good idea for anyone down there who is not a raccoon to come out now.”

After 10 seconds of presumed deliberation the loud chirrup of a pair of raccoons came from the brush. I understood it to mean, “Don’t let that dog loose, man. We’re leaving, okay.”

A few days ago when I was trying to get a good picture of a cricket and a wood wasp my 2 year-old son came up to me with his first solo-capture: a beetle. I was just glad he did it without hurting the thing so we wouldn’t have to talk about being more careful and how it’s okay to kill chickens and cows but not beetles; unless they’re not endangered and you’re going to eat them of course. Then, buon’ appetito!

After I spent all that effort trying to get the woodpeckers—downy woodpeckers in this case—to move into a custom nest box, they are instead now “renovating” my $30 cedar, chickadee nest box to fit their overwintering needs.

I’m always amazed that I can see a kind of bee I’ve never seen before in the yard pretty regularly. It just occurred to me after looking through some pictures that we’ve got almost as many species of hoverfly.

This is the furriest one so far. Nearly bumblebee fuzz. I wonder if any of the hoverflies are buzz-pollinators. Here is another hoverfly which is a lot more fly-ish (housefly-ish anyway).

From last year.

to saint bartholomew’s wife

what the skin holds in– ₁
red ocean, ₂
the fat and the thin, ₃
the brass and the tin. ₄
when we’re skinned ₅
in all our starkness: ₆
our teevees, our veedees, ₇
aspen leaves and pumpkin trees, ₈
our skeevy infidelities; ₉
our semisweet semidarkness… ₁₀
i’ll check your box ₁₁
rife with tartness. ₁₂
4.32 23.10.94

Quite a bit of reflective colors on this little girl (looks gravid) from Spring.

Another shot of the same beetle is here.

I like the dimples. I wonder what function they serve. When I was working at Copy Queen someone from Texas drove up for a job and their car looked pretty much exactly like that. Like someone took a ball-peen hammer to the car, stem to stern. I asked them what the heck happened. It was a hail storm.

Some of the worst hail storms listed on the Wikipedia article include–

• Around the 8th century, several hundred pilgrims were killed by a massive hailstorm in Roopkund, Uttaranchal, India.
• 5 May 1995, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, USA, $1.1 billion insured losses. [Might even be the same that wrecked the car I saw.]
• 19 July 2002, Henan Province, China, 25 dead and hundreds injured.

I got caught in one that I thought was gonna draw blood from my scalp before I could get cover but nothing bad enough to total 40,000 cars.

There should probably be some sort of clever remark about beetles at this point to make this post coherent.

I’m not sure if it’s really an assassin bug or not but it’s, I think, at least related. You can see the super long mouth folded on the underside.

[book of autumn thirst]

to stop fighting

god (in reply to many harsh words): ₁
but i’ve given you freewill. ₂

devil: ₃
your gift of something impossible to give ₄
tastes to me like swill. ₅

man: ₆
but god has made me free ₇
and still takes care of me. ₈

devil: ₉
your safety net stinks of pedagogery. ₁₀

man: ₁₁
fine, then what would you have me be? ₁₂

devil: ₁₃
nothing, you see. i would have you be nothing. ₁₄
0.30 28.6.95

The “gloves” are pedipalps. Pedipalps are the spider version of testicles. Well, they have other functions too but that’s where the soft-serve is.

where i am #33

where i am is my lai, viet nam, ₁
a million candle power lighted my wrong. ₂
what i am is the shell of the dead man that swam ₃
from ho chi minh half back to saigon. ₄
22.10 19.09.05

Didn’t realize how nice looking it was in the poor light (picture is with flash). Wish I’d caught it to get a better look.

the emerald city

dorothy is back again ₁
reprising her role ₂
as the new lead singer of hole, ₃
as the kansas branch division ₄
chief of the ku klux klan, ₅
doing the funniest bit ₆
with kukla, fran and ollie. ₇
the playground went south, ₈
doppleganger effect ₉
blued the notes ₁₀
in the reporter’s rearview, ₁₁
accommodated the focus given of caffeine ₁₂
and over the counter antihistamines. ₁₃
because the emerald city ₁₄
stank of coffee and poppy ₁₅
and i was trying to forget ₁₆
the sweetest piece of rear in ₁₇
the sweetest city on the coast, ₁₈
and i was broke and feeling mean ₁₉
i hit pier fifty-four to find some junkies or mummies, ₂₀
looking to erase the line in between. ₂₁
the semiprecious stones i was born down with ₂₂
are the color of the envy ₂₃
that drove me through the land of the shorn ₂₄
to the clinic of the free ₂₅
and the emerald city nurses my dystopia, ₂₆
fills my prescription, ₂₇
says, “welcome home, cousin,” and embraces me. ₂₈
11·30.6.95

I have no idea at all about these guys but I like seeing them swarm loosely around the house and creek every fall. There is a real snowfly which is a stonefly and not related at all but I can’t think of a better name for this thing. Well, since they seem to have four wings they can’t be flies so I guess I could do better after all. They have downy coats which they seem to be able to shed.

It does remind one of the maddening forest of the snowflies in Vagrant Story. A game which really should be played by anyone who likes video games at all. Not just because the makers, unlike so many others, understand that Ashley is a boy’s name.

Monday night

When we were looking for houses in the papers and online six years ago we almost missed it. Julie had already been through the paper and I picked it up to see what she’d circled. At the top of the page something caught my eye which she’d missed, “…two creeks…”

We were looking for something downtown, not in Tukwila or someplace but I read it just to see what we’d be missing. It said it was in Seattle and priced just on the outer rim of our range. Nonsense. Circled it anyway.

Sure enough, it was ten minutes from downtown and close, but not too close, to a big shopping center. Two protected creeks right around the yard joining at the corner on a few acres of undeveloped park. If you read here much you already known, this is the yard.

The birds, the trout, the other assorted animals and insects make me happy to live here every single day. Never is there a day when I don’t appreciate it and rarely a day when I don’t see something interesting or even novel; whether it’s just the same 20 species of birds (from herons to hawks, and woodpeckers to wrens) that appear any given day or a raccoon mother teaching her three kits to catch crayfish by feeling around under the bigger rocks.

I’ve seen trout spawing in a ditch under a driveway, hawks eating flickers and robins and snakes, woodpeckers by the bushel, hummingbirds fledge, raccoons fighting like pscyhotic cats, herons swallow suckerfish whole which I could barely finish cooked and cut up. But in the six years before today I never saw a salmon in my backyard. Today I got to see at least three Coho salmon headed up the creek to spawn. One was at least 30" long.

I know the creeks in Seattle still have a lot of problems and it might get worse but to have a three foot long salmon jumping like a wild Alaska documentary in plain view from my computer desk entirely within the Seattle city limits made me really happy and proud of what this place has been able to maintain and what some Seattlites are trying to restore. I grumble and bitch a lot about picking up after people around the creeks but today it certainly seemed worth it.

Now, if I can just get an eagle on camera working on one of the carcasses next week after they’ve spawned a floated back down here.

Here’s a local link: Be a Creek Steward. If you are in an urban setting with any nature left at all, check out your local programs. You can make a difference and help to keep an environment that’s as pleasant to live in for humans as it is for the rest of the pyramid.

[book of autumn thirst]

and said he must be

hail, heil, avé boy! ₁
long life to the kissing sky’s favorite toy ₂
always left laying out in the playroom. ₃
holding uncontrolling interest by minutes ₄
where the seraphs vote ₅
and play on the slides of rules; ₆
the subtlety of the lies, ₇
the immense scale of the subterfuge, ₈
the face that everyone you love and run to for help ₉
is in. in on it. ₁₀

you fall into ₁₁
his arms, this smallish player ₁₂
in a largish affair and you swear ₁₃
with muttered prayer ₁₄
he must be ₁₅
the deliverer ₁₆
and say he must be the breaker of lists– ₁₇
the bridegroom pharaoh of nefertiti, ₁₈
the thing to end all daylight, ₁₉
or put everything right ₂₀
depending on how you see it. ₂₁
15·7.7.95

all chroma

the chroma of all terror; ₁
all hyperbole; ₂
all the ones who fell for it ₃
versus all those who fell for me. ₄
17 October 2006

Really not sure what it is but since it spins silk from its mouth it seems to be in amphiesmenoptera and since it resembles caddisfly larva I’m calling it trichoptera. Update: after reading a bit, it seems to be a moth. Several of them are case bearing as larvæ, including the kind that eat carpets and clothes. Boo.

Quite tiny if you couldn’t tell from the fingers in the frame. Found it dangling down two feet from the porch ceiling.

[book of autumn thirst]

a sea may die

loneliness isn’t contagious, it’s magnetic. ₁
life isn’t courageous, it’s pure magick. ₂
plate tectonics and inheritor sky ₃
gamble the riches into…dee–tay–ulls. ₄
hungriest prince yankees water ₅
into bags lined with you, ₆
plays on this thing once dismissed ₇
which has so much weight now, this ether, ₈
this salt fleeing particulate ₉
marionetted by the gravity on high, ₁₀
made to dance foolishly to give us breathable stuff, ₁₁
and do we care what really did what for us? ₁₂
this pneumatic vampire won’t ₁₃
appreciate your sacrifice either ₁₄
but once dead who notices these things? ₁₅
while you hold in check the deviations ₁₆
rocketing through heaven without a holy reservation ₁₇
you stand in amazement at the minutia, ₁₈
i tell ya’, the instinct for self preservation ₁₉
is nothing but inertia. ₂₀
25.6·14.8.95

On the refrigerator last night. That “rope” on the left is the fine nylon cord of a small pair of binoculars.

The thing about this is this animal, just a couple millimeters long, the merest fraction of the weight of a stamp, contains generally all the same internal organs you and I do. Simpler, yes. But heart, lungs, circulatory system, stomach, intestines, nervous system, eyes, and what passes for brain.

Don’t know if it’s a male ant or some kind of wasp cousin. They’re all hymenoptera (membrane wing).

[book of autumn thirst]

was anyone imagining that

empty skin still rumpled on wind ₁
till the skill breathes mint. ₂
hunger of fallen angels; ₃
the demons were good looking ₄
not greasy like flesh ₅
or rewarmed eggs ₆
but clean, sweet smelling and convincing, ₇
saying, “look, i know what you’ve heard ₈
but there were some pretty ₉
strong extenuating circumstances up there ₁₀
when it all went down.” ₁₁
dressed like men, not like creatures ₁₂
living in the pit of archetypology. ₁₃
you were innocent, ₁₄
you told your reflections passing ₁₅
on the polite city streets ₁₆
but at night you wore a conjurer’s hat; ₁₇
to trade blood for god seemed easier. ₁₈
now it’s all done, aladdin, you’re addicted ₁₉
and it was the only possible outcome really, ₂₀
now was anyone imagining that? ₂₁
18.6.95

This is excatly the same place the picture of the other crayfish was taken. This one was smaller and you can see the ulcer on its claw; I’m guessing it got a parasite or something when it was freshly shed and the claw developed badly.

You see the greenish/bluish color of the claws. The first time we walked to the creek we found a huge crayfish entirely that color in the rapids pictured here: Still my yard.

Never saw or noticed a case bearing moth before the so called terrestrial periwinkle the other day. The next day I found about six more all over the place, including this one here who decided that a good place to hang out would be next to a row of sapsucker holes on a western redcedar.

Live and learn. Or in this case, die and don’t breed.

These are popularly known as stink bugs, apparently. I’ve never heard it. In New Mexico, stink bug refers to a big black beetle which raises its rear defensively to emit a fairly bad smell; nothing like a skunk but not something one would probably want to eat.

I wonder what purpose the dimples serve? A few of the animals here have them; like this beetle. I wonder if it’s like golf balls and they help these guys fly with less energy…

Just for me but I don’t have anyplace else special for it right now.

In the yard, right now. A few dozen robins. The biggest flock that’s ever visited. They’re going between the redcedars and the California laurel. A couple cedar waxwings are mingling with them. Very energetic crowd. Also–

• Dark-eyed junkos.
• Black capped and chestnut-backed chickadees.
• Two northern red-shafted flickers.
• Ruby-crowned kinglet.
• House finches (purple, though we get the yellow variant sometimes).
• And a first for the yard: American Goldfinch. Not a bit of gold on him though. If he weren’t sitting still for so long and I didn’t have Sibley’s nice drawings of the various plumages, I never would have figured it out.

You can see a small subset of the robins—seven of them—going to town here below. They’ve had a couple of varied thrushes with them the last few times but I didn’t see them if they were there today.

debra pitchpaw

she was the girl in black, as a matter of fact, ₁
she was the girl of records; ₂
her paws were stained with her own, ₃
her words were full of letters. ₄

remember? that was the winter that was no winter at all. ₅

debra stormcloud of thousand oaks ₆
was raised on needles’ eyes and magpie sighs ₇
with one hand in the velvet box ₈
and one hand in the spokes. ₉

those were the mistaken summers. sure, you remember. ₁₀

she was the girl who was to come along, ₁₁
she was the winner by sheer correspondence, ₁₂
the para-legal matched pair of halves ₁₃
carries the chromosome prize in sweet briefs ₁₄
and she packs a hell of a preponderance. ₁₅
18.57 13.2.96

For the first time since I put this site together I got an attempted piece of comment spam; probably done by hand since the site code isn’t quite like any of those targeted by spam bots. I wrote the software and I’m pleased to say that the way it takes comments prevented the spam from reaching the site.

I’ll say for the record that any Belgians trying to sell you compact refrigerators are not to be trusted. And that’s a fact.