Yesterday morning, the wee hours: woke up to hear a strange, persistent noise from down the hall instead of the usual peace and quiet. Realized what it was as I got up to investigate: with the recent cold nights, certain critters have begun the search for warm winter quarters. Meaning I'd caught the first mouse of the coming cold season. The noise it was making: its equivalent of banging a metal cup up and down the bars of its cell. Probably also yelling some version of "Lemme outta here, screw!", but pitched too high for me to hear.
I shut the door to that room, went back to bed.
Later, around midday: took the inmate over the hill, let it out in the woods. Forced relocation #1.
In the slammer:
Today: while cutting grass, had the season's first encounter with a writing spider. Have come across at least one of them at summer's end for three years running. Big buggers, impressive. Don't look quite as intimidating as black widows seen during my year and a half living in L.A. (many lifetimes ago now), but they're contenders.
This one had set up shop off the side of an adirondack chair, one I had to move to cut a section of lawn. I transferred its nearly-golfball-sized egg sac off to the shelter of some bushes, then did the same with the maxi-arachnid. Forced relocation #2.
Not to be messed with:
Northern Vermont has been blessed with spectacular, sparkling late-August weather these last 2-3 days, the kind of fare that that practically has me stumbling around in open-mouthed, bug-eyed amazement at the extreme beauty of it all. A guy in the locker room at the gym today, resorting to the standard conversational gambit of talking about the weather, responded to my hello with a mumbled comment about the gorgeous day happening outside, saying something about the weather people having forecast 'a couple of good days.' I mentioned once hearing someone say that any day aboveground was a good day. He stared at me uncertainly, headed off to the shower trailing comments of doubtful semi-agreement, sounding like he wasn't really buying an outlook so freakin' positive. (Not that he had to.)
Yesterday afternoon: met a friend in Burlingtonn, sat at a table with her along the Church Street pedestrian mall talking, sipping iced coffee, watching the parade of passing people -- the kind of activity that gets me thinking about Madrid. After which I skipped over to the Spanish-speaking group that convenes every Friday evening, a couple of short blocks away. Which turned out to be a bit stranger than usual, most of the Latinos taking off in short order, leaving us honkies to fend for ourselves while a jazz band cranked up a Miles Davis number, overwhelming attempts at conversation, finally sending us to a table out in the relatively fresh air as the daylight dimmed.
The day has skidded by at unnerving velocity. As I write this the sun has slipped down behind the trees across the road, the evening air cooling quickly, though alive with the music of crickets.
The liars in the weather biz claim that the weather may become dodgy overnight, far less user-friendly. We'll see. After all, any day aboveground yada yada yada.
Later.
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 5:29 PM [+]
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