Wordless Wednesday
Monthly Archives: June 2016
Love Affairs Gone Bad
Welcome to this week’s Puffin Tales Advice to the Lovelorn column.
BOOTY CALL
Live Science tells us that, “In firefly mating rituals, the males cruise by, flying around and flashing their signals to let the ladies know that they are looking for love.”
The male lightning bugs fly about three-four feet off the ground while the ladies recline on a grass boudoir. Out here in the country, there are a lot of flashing green lights, in part as the horny males ramp up their offerings but also to mark territory and push of the competition. Once a lady sees the best male’s light, flashes just once. Once the male sees the response, he wastes no time dive-bombing the bower of bliss.
Last night, a male lightning bug outside my study window was fighting off the green light on the router for the affection of the pretty female lightning bugs on the ground.
I don’t know who won.
MIRROR CALL
The house in North Puffin is in the middle of a dinosaur preserve and I’m convinced that dinosaurs were the most annoying critters to walk the earth. Until they evolved into mocking birds.
Did you know the Northern Mockingbird is the direct descendent of T-Rex? Fact. “The Northern Mockingrex is a medium-sized noisemaker, a bit more slender than a thrush and with a longer tail. Mockingbirds have small heads, a long, thin bill with a hint of a downward curve, and long legs. Their wings are short, rounded, and broad [much like their predecessor’s arms], making the tail seem particularly long in flight,” according to allaboutbirds.org
The mini-rex “enjoys making its presence known. It usually sits conspicuously on high vegetation, fences, eaves, or telephone wires, or runs and hops along the ground. Found alone or in pairs throughout the year, mockingbirds aggressively chase off intruders on their territory.”
We have a small army of them in South Puffin; the numbers are far greater than a squad or platoon and may approach brigade strength. Some of them have fallen in love with the mirrors on my truck.
Sadly, mockingbird love is abusive.
All of these birds land on the mirrors and peck at them, over and over and over.
I can only be glad that the mockingrex is so much smaller than the original. Those mirrors are expensive to replace.
COOLER CALL
A little skunk with its tail in the air fell in lurve with my big, Styrofoam, Omaha Steaks cooler on the porch in North Puffin.
Don’t get me wrong. An Omaha Steaks is a joy — the best cooler I own for taking frozen food back and forth between the Puffins — so the skunk had good taste.
The cooler was empty and washed out.
The skunk was beating and biting and scratching away on the lower outside corner of the cooler. Moved that cooler all around the porch and made a heck of a racket. I heard it all the way in the study where I was watching lightning bugs.
I turned the porch light on. Skunk kept killing the cooler. I flashed and waggled the flashlight. Skunk kept bouncing the cooler. I opened the door and barked. Skunk kept eating the cooler.
I won, though. I opened the door and pulled the cooler into the house.
The skunk ran off between the trash cans but I don’t know how he got on or off the porch. Unrequited love is bad enough but it’s worse when the object of your affection gets snatched by a noisy, woofing giant.
Wordless Wednesday
Mail It
Tales of a South Puffin headed North.
We’re south of South Florida and actually more comfy year round than the mainland (it’s sub-tropical down there in the Keys, so we do get a bit of temperature swing but it’s small).
I’m a sunbird. I stay there until the ocean gets warmer than the air, and then follow the cool air to North Puffin. I’ll be back before I have to start wearing longjohns and cutting a hole in the ice for supper up there. That’s a reference to ice fishing although I have never understood why people would spend a day sitting on a bucket to try to catch a block of ice. I mean Walgreens or Kinneys sells ice for a buck or two.
Today is the first day of Summer but my last day down south last week felt like summer. It was sunny, sunny, sunny and calm with a high of 91 or so which meant a heat index of about 108. The water temp was 90F at Station VCAF1 — Vaca Key — which is off Palm Island Drive on the Gulf side of Marathon. It certainly felt like bath water in the ocean. The “cold spots” were probably 85.
As an aside, 2016 is a very special year because the solstice coincides with the “Strawberry Moon.” Named by early American tribes, the Strawberry Moon is a full moon like any other, but the one that marks the beginning of the strawberry season. The two events coincide once every 70 years. It may be pink when I get the picture.
I have several chores to do when shutting down the house. Tell the cops. Turn in my !@#$%^Comcast devices (the high point of the day, you betcha), and (temporarily) forward the mail.
I generally did the latter at the counter, but the Post Office got all official-like and started making me fill out a form and mail it in. Last year, I actually handed it to our postal person, but the USPS probably charged itself for the “postage paid” response card.
Our postal person was up to his eyeballs in customers when I went in for the form so rather than waiting in line, I decided to do it online. It’s easy peasy. Go to “USPS.com. Find ‘Change of Address’ under ‘Quick Tools.’ Follow easy on-screen instructions to enter to enter your information.” And the easy on-screen instructions really were easy.
Until I got to the Identity Verification.
Identity Verification — Credit/Debit Card
We must charge your credit/debit card $1
In order to verify your identity, we process a fee to your credit/debit card. The card’s billing address should match either the old or new address entered on the address entry page. If your card is billed to a different address, you may enter it by selecting the “Enter a different address” option. This is to prevent fraudulent Change of Address requests.
Please note that the Internet Change of Address Service uses a high level of security on a secure server.
Wait a minute. What?
You charge a dollar to verify my identity? What, are you nutz?
Banks, which charge for everything, have figured this out; they don’t charge.
Paypal knows how to do it; they don’t charge.
I think my stockbroker put four cents in my account.
I stopped at the counter on my way out of town. Our postmaster is on vacation but our sub gave me the form to fill out. I did it on the spot and handed it back.
“You know you can do this online, right?” she said.
“You charge me a dollar.”
“That’s an ID check because anyone could go online and change your mail.”
I just shook my head and handed her the form.
“I’ll take this but it takes at least two weeks to go through.”
By the way, she doesn’t know me from Art. Didn’t ask me for ID, though.
<le sigh>
Wordless Wednesday
