Dream with Our Eyes Open

This has been around for awhile, actually. I just found it on National Geographic's site, but this Youtube version runs better for me:

The original title on this at Nat. Geo. is "Fox Makes and Eats a Six-Layer Sandwich." You will note, however, that se doesn't actually eat it. I think Fox is taking the food home to whoever lives with hir.

I'm fascinated by how daintily and precisely Fox stacks up the food. Also, Fox knows all about paper bags!

On the way to the Metro this morning, I saw a tiger swallowtail butterfly. I haven't seen one in years. The cicadas were shimmering and simmering zim-zim-zim from the trees. The August Moon hostas will be coming into bloom: my late father called them August lilies and told me that they bloomed especially for my birthday. I knew he was joking.

August: the dog days of summer, when time seems to stand still. And this year I will be 51 years old. And ... I hate hot weather.

(More frivolously: it's dead easy to find a picture of a dog wearing sunglasses on Flickr Creative Commons.)

I just had to show a quite large bat off the premises.

I will confess to being slightly freaked out, even though I like bats in principle, because s/he was about twice the size of any other bat I've ever seen that close.

I trapped it in the dining room (the only room on the ground floor that closes off entirely) and then with the Mr.'s coaching (I had to roust him out of bed and away from his crossword puzzle), opened a window in there and exited the room myself. A minute later, it flew outinto the night.

I have no idea how it got inside in the first place!

My colleague Bob wrote tomorrow's intranet interest column about bats. (He usually likes to do nature subjects, which is fine with me!) Anyway, I was combing the Intarwebs for .gov/.edu photos that would be OK to use "for educational purposes" and found a marvelous page of photos of a couple of Big Brown Bat in flight, taken in a lab. The wings are just amazing in the way they flex to take the air as the bat maneuvers.

It's also kind of amazing that this "big" brown bat is actually such a teeny creature: here's a photo of a young girl being shown a Big Brown Bat, which is held in the naturalist's gloved hand ... it's so little and frail-looking.