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Friday, August 22, 2003 A week ago the first of two waves of guests passed through. A brief visit, 24 hours. Featuring loads of interesting conversation. At times extremely interesting. For example. We're here at the dining room table, where I sit to write, go online, fart around with the computer. (Not necessarily to dine -- that often takes place in the kitchen, me standing at the counter, reading or (more painfully) thinking. Or out on the back stoop, me sitting, taking in the day or (more painfully) thinking. Or in the living room, me planted on the floor in front of the T and V (not thinking).) The bird feeders that hang outside the two dining room windows were seeing heavy use, bunches of feisty finches and chickadees wrangling over sunflower seeds. Mourning doves and the resident chipmunk picked away in the grass below, hoovering up seeds sprayed about by the winged pigs duking it out at the feeders. Hummingbirds came and went at the sugarwater dispenser in the nearby lilac bush, often pausing to hover curiously outside the windows, peering in at us. A lot of entertainment, which had us talking about critters, about the wildlife that supplies a lot of the background here. It occured to me that I haven't seen any blue jays this year, birds that made themselves real pains in the butt in past warm seasons. We get talking about them -- beautiful birds, though often lacking in charm – me appreciating a jay-free summer. Within a few minutes, my friend G. looks out the window, says something along the lines of "Uh-oh." A blue jay starts making its obnoxious noise from the bushes out there. First time all summer. Hmmmm. Another time we got talking about spiders. Mostly in appreciation, ‘cause they're fascinating critters. I confessed that there is some part of me that gets a teeny bit creeped out by them, something to do with the their archetypical form, manner, way of moving. Meaning I appreciate them, I let ‘em live in my living space (or put them outside in lieu of squashing them) without problem, but I don't especially want them crawling on me. Within the hour they were showing up seemingly everywhere I looked. This continued during the following days, reaching its peak just as the second wave of visitors were about to hit the road -- sometime between Saturday night and Sunday midday, a seriously sizeable black and yellow spider threw together a web on the outside surface of the screen door for the house's front entrance, produced an egg sack about the size of a golf ball (with a hard surface, not your typical soft/squishy job), perching itself just above eye-level once it settled in, post-home-building. So that anyone going up or down the stairs got a startling eyeful of black/yellow spiderosity. I de-webbed the storm door screen, tossed the family-sized egg sac into the long grass out in front of the house, caught the spider in a glass, took it a couple of hundred feet down the hill, deposited it in some bushes. I regret relocating the bugger without taking some photos first -- I've been unable to find it any field books, hard copy or online, and it was a beautiful, impressive creature. One more bit of goofiness: something got us marveling at the way holiday decorations/store displays have been showing up earlier and earlier -- Halloween, Christmas, all that. That bit of chat took place on Friday, shortly before my friend packed up and headed in the direction of Montreal. I go into Montpelier to pick up groceries for the next visitors, walk into the town's supermarket where I'm met with some near-mountainous displays of Halloween candy, all visible display surfaces extravagantly covered with black silhouettes of bats, etc. August 15. Halloween candy. We're a wacky bunch, we capitalist running dogs. rws 3:10 PM [+]
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