Spotted Sandpiper

When we first arrived at the cabin there was a bumper crop of sandpipers and frogs. The beach is bookended with two creeks that drain from the cedar swamp behind the cabins. The frogs inhabit these creeks. The frogs were quite plentiful through the wedding, but about the time that a kingfisher appeared on the beach, they disappeared. Likewise, the sandpipers were also quite plentiful, but their young soon fledged and flew away. I hadn’t seen either species for days, but today I saw one of each. The sandpiper flew off from the beach embankment and we found the frog surfing in the waves.

Our copy of “Perfect Match” by Jodi Picoult had showed up on the deck when we returned from our walk. Book World on Ashman is closing. Another victim of Amazon. I guess our order didn’t help. The biblioklept in the family snatched up the novel, so I guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow when she’s done. She did offer to share, with dueling bookmarks. I suggested golf etiquette, where the person furthest behind is waited for until they catch up. That didn’t happen.

[SPOILER ALERT] About halfway through the book is a page of jokes that Anne shared with me and I will share them below the photo.

Bumper Frog Crop This Year – Green Frogs

• What is the middle of a jellyfish? A jelly button.
• Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? It didn’t have the guts.
• Why did the cookie go to the hospital? It felt crumby.
• What do lizards put on their kitchen floors? Reptiles
• What do you call a blind dinosaur? An I-don’t-think-he-saurus
• Knock, knock. Who’s there? Sadie. Sadie who? Sadie magic word.

Mergansers In Front of the Cabin

Anne and I walked the beach this afternoon. As soon as I popped out of the woods, I spied a flock of mergansers and more importantly they spotted me too. They were directly in front of the cabin and before they got too far away, I got several el primo pics of them. I liked this one the best, because it doesn’t look like they are swimming away from me and you can see them in profile. There were actually about a dozen of the babies all told, but with of the combination of their fleeing and the intervening bouncing waves, I only managed to capture half of them in this photo, six babies in the frame are better than twelve out of focus.

This morning, Anne joined Gina and Dashie for yoga. I stayed at the cabin with the Units. Doesn’t cook. Won’t bite. In-between Harry and Gene’s morning ritual I snuck into the kitchen, heated some water and toasted a bagel. The water was for a cup of Starbuck’s instant latté (Val, thanks for the steer!) and the bagel was a Thomas everything bagel, which I slathered with whipped cream cheese. I made my escape again to the sleeping porch, with no one else being the wiser.

This all reminds me of a story that I would like to relate here. Year’s ago, when I still worked for a certain defense contractor in Saint Louis, which had decided to institute random drug testing, one of my buddies at work, who had gotten on the outs with the department manager, who had the authority to order these tests. My bud was “randomly” chosen trice and passed all three times. I too had my run in with this guy and soon enough it my turn in the barrel.

I reported to the nurse and obligingly peed in a cup. A few days later, I was again summoned, “Sir, your test came back positive.” “I can explain, I had a bagel for breakfast that morning, which had poppy seeds on it.” “Sir, I’ll set that excuse aside for the time being. While, poppy seeds might explain the opioids that we found, they certainly don’t explain the crack or meth.” “But m’am, it was an everything bagel.” 😉