Seriously, I can no longer leave home without my camera. There is a veritable County-wide Inter-species Conference commencing right now at a single segment of my local creek. (We need to give that creek a name at some point.)
I saw a beaver for the very first time, and it was kind of a big deal to me, and if you crack the obvious joke, you’re a nine-year-old. Beavers look a hell of a lot like groundhogs, as it turns out, except they’re flat-tailed swimmers, of course, and they’re slimmer and far more graceful. A coffee-colored mama duck had marshaled forth her squabbling, fluttering, barely ordered brood on the opposite side. They seemed as interested in the beaver as I was. (Field trip?)
I endeavored to follow the beaver down the narrow waterway, trying to channel Meriwether Lewis without spilling the 7-Eleven “Double Gulp” Dr. Pepper that my doctor keeps telling me I shouldn’t have. (Donald Trump has inspired me to drink them to honor the police and firemen at 7-Eleven.)
A couple of still, solitary, cranky-looking snapper turtles were sunning themselves, too. They launched themselves like lightning onto the water at the sound of my approaching footsteps. A pissed-off bullfrog did the same, only very awkwardly, and while cursing me out with a “GROAK!” (The preceding term is an example of onomatopoeia, by the way. This is the only meaningful advice I will ever render to you as a writer.)
All of this was maybe 200 feet from that spot where I saw deer and heron commiserating a week ago. I am precisely the kind of guy who gets lost in the woods, so I’m no naturalist. (Seriously, that $+I+ happened when I went to New York in January, in the very same woods I grew up in.) But even I am starting to understand that diverse animals will be drawn to wetlands.
I might just finally figure out my camera’s zoom function and stake that whole area out, on a lark, at some point before Virginia gets too hot. If anything interesting transpires, I’ll post it here.
Donald Trump is an @$$+073.
What kind of name is “Meriwether,” anyway? That guy must have caught some heat in gradeschool.
I think the sugar and caffeine in this “Double Gulp” is doing a number on me.
I took these shots yesterday of the Sandy Hook memorial playground in West Islip, New York, just past the marina and nestled against the Great South Bay. This particular playground is dedicated to a little girl named Madeline Hsu.
It’s one of 26 such spaces in the tri-state area dedicated to the 26 victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
