Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Heat Wave

Such a crazy summer.  One-hundred degree days are back, predicted to last a few days before dropping to the seventies...that's a thirty-degree difference in a week.  The lassitude that come with heat leaves plenty of time for the mind to go free wheeling, and mine frequently goes "off road."  Last week I saw a tiny, half-inch, baby praying mantis, and when Clay was here, there was a full-grown male on the post by the goat pen.  I understand the migration of birds and elk, etc., but I know so little about entomology.  When certain insects are not here...where are they?  Since most of the mantises right now are babies, were the eggs laid a year ago and are just now hatching?  When we moved up here, just about this time of year, there were mantises all over the place, and I mean in the hundreds...and then they "went away."  Did they all die, or move on?  Although I see them every year, there have never been so many again.  There will be no dragon flies at all, and then one day the air will be filled with tiny helicopters.  As suddenly as they appear, one day they're gone.  Pine beetles deserve a story of their own, and I'll wait until the first real rain of the season to tell it.  Bees, flies, and mosquitoes increase in numbers at certain times of the year, but a home guard is always in residence.  One wonders.

Since I have no way of telling, Yuki is getting all the credit.  There have been three little pale-brown eggs in four days!  It would take a dozen or more of these cute little eggs to make a decent breakfast for two...they're only a little larger than a quail egg.  I'm really enjoying our evening cuddles before I tuck her into her room with Satomi and Keiko.  I suppose, like all kids, she'll outgrow the need for nightie-night hugs, but it's nice while it lasts.

5 comments:

Kathryn said...

Can't say that I have ever done that much wondering about bugs, but at least we don't have to lug around an encyclopedia to find out any more. And speaking of bugs...as I was typing encyclopedia, I let Jiminy Cricket guide my fingers. Did you watch The Mickey Mouse Club or were you too "grown up" for that???

My aunt and uncle had guinea hens and their eggs were really tiny - so cute!! Don't know how those compare to the silkies, but how cute that Yuki lets you cuddle - and maybe if it is nightly, she will get in the habit and not want to stop either - at least 'til she hits her teens!!

Bo said...

I honestly don't remember watching The Mickey Mouse Club all that much. Watched a lot of Tim McCoy and Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd)westerns with my dad (I even had Hoppy six-shooters!), and Alistair Cooke's Omnibus with my mother. Saw all the Disney movies...Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, and remember sobbing when Bambi's dad died and had to be taken out of the theater.

Kathryn said...

I watched Hoppy (and was told that my grandparents knew William Boyd but I don't know how), and Roy and Dale, and Sky King, and The Cicso Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok...but I have never even heard of Tim McCoy! I think he was before my time, and don't really remember watching tv with my folks! Anyway, Jiminy Cricket was kind of "the conscience" for the Mickey Mouse Club viewers, and he dispensed good advice, and taught us to spell "en-cy-c-l-o-pedia!" with a lilting song.

Bo said...

Leo Carillo was Cisco's sidekick, Pancho. Buttermilk was Dale's horse. Tom Mix and his horse, Tony, came to my grade school and did rope tricks. My friend Cynthia entered a contest and won an albino horse like "Silver." Wow...what a trip back in time!

Kathryn said...

And do you remember "Jingles," the "Hey Wild Bill, wait for me!" rotund fellow? He was Andy Devine, and he had a house on the way to Beacon Bay and Balboa Island. [Did your family ever go to the beach at Newport?] And what about Bullet, the German Shepherd (Roy and Dale) and Nellie Belle, the jeep?? Oo - and there was The Adventures of Kit Carson. Our Saturday mornings were FULL! And speaking of Westerns, my mom always said that her folks knew Milburn Stone, who played "Doc" on Gunsmoke. Well, I found out later that they not only knew him, but that he had been in love with, and had wanted to marry, my grandmother's older sister. My mom was even in posssession of a nice newsy letter from him to her folks - when he was married and living in Hollywood...they all grew up in Kansas! Oh the memories...Happy Trails, Bo.