Slow turtles ahead

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We were on our way home from the vet’s office Tuesday (and that’s a story that you would thank me for not telling), when we saw this in the road.

A turtle, apparently not all that interested in actually crossing the road. I turned around and went back. It was all tucked inside its shell and not coming out. As I got closer to take this photo I realized just how big this thing was. I grabbed it about mid-shell. It peeked out but that was all.

Here’s a shot with my hand to give an idea of the scale.

I put the turtle in the weeds away from the edge of the road and we continued on. About a mile further down the road we saw another turtle. This one was considerably smaller, and not right in the middle of the road. By the time I turned around to go back, and then turned around again to get on the same side of the road, it was speeding in a turtle sort of way into the grass, so I didn’t have a chance to take a photo. And I didn’t have to rescue it either.

We haven’t seen any turtles on the road lately. Maybe the rain brought them out.

Fear of flies

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Zoe didn’t want to complete her walk Friday morning. She didn’t pull on her leash as she normally does. Instead, she kept close and circled around me. We had gone less than a quarter of the way to our regular turnaround when she turned around and wanted to go back home. A couple of times recently she has started out on one of her short, restroom walks and suddenly turned and started pulling back towards the house. It seems she has had an encounter with a horsefly.

My second doberman, Bella, was afraid of horseflies. She was fairly old when I got her. Her hips were bad, and she had apparently never done much walking in her previous life. That was back when I was doing some running. I didn’t want to take her with me, because she couldn’t run the whole distance. I would have to stop and walk with her back to the house.

When I tried to go for a run by myself, I left her on the deck, where she would howl and cry until I relented and let her come with me. Inevitably, I had to walk her back home. The one time I saw her run, and fast, was when a horsefly came buzzing around her. She wanted nothing to do with that. Apparently a horsefly bite is worse than arthritis in the hips. She knew exactly what she was running from. One time I managed to smack a horsefly that had lit on her back. When it fell to the pavement, Bella leaned down to it, bared her front incisors, and bit the damned thing to death.

I don’t blame Bella or Zoe for running from a horsefly. I have been bitten a few times, and it’s not a pleasant experience. I assume Zoe has been bitten at some time because she recognizes the buzzing sound as something to fear. Her original home was Oklahoma, which probably has horseflies. Maybe even more than their fair share.

55 years ago today

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My brother Henry was pretty smart.

This is a photograph from the June 6, 1965, Rome News-Tribune, our local newspaper. Henry is receiving his National Merit scholarship. The presentation was made at the local country club, where all the rich folks met to play tennis and drink. My family were not members.

It’s Henry G. Paris, not Henry E. Paris. Reporters. What a bunch of idiots.

The photograph appeared in the paper on Sunday, June 6, but the actual award was on the previous Thursday. Henry graduated on the 6th. Very soon after graduation, he left to start the summer quarter at Georgia Tech. After that time, he only came home for short visits.

After his freshman year he started in the co-op program, where he alternated quarters working and attending school. After he got his BS, he immediately started graduate school. When he got his PhD, he went to a post-doc at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. From there he went to the Alcoa research center near New Kensington. From there to San Diego, where he worked at a company that Alcoa bought. From there back to Atlanta, at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Then to Chattanooga, where he worked as the primary scientist for a company that wanted to get into materials.

Henry never slowed down, not once in his life.

And he was pretty smart. I might have mentioned that before.

There will be grapes

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I have mentioned before that we have muscadine vines all over the mountain. They grow up in the tops of the pines, and they grow on the ground. They are also growing on a small oak tree just beside our driveway, where we put cat cages to acclimate our cats to their new home when we moved back in 2016.

They are small. Very small. Here is my hand to give some scale. My hands are appropriately sized for my height.

Muscadines provide food for birds and, I assume, squirrels, of which we have quite a few. I don’t know whether these will survive to maturity, and, if they do, how many might be available for us to eat. I doubt that all in the bunch will survive. I have never seen that many grapes in a bunch on any of the vines around here.

Muscadines are sweet, but the skins are thick and tough, and the seeds are large compared to the meat of the grape. All that makes it hard to eat a muscadine, especially wild muscadines. Apparently some varieties are grown commercially, but they are seldom at any of the grocery stores where we shop.

I’m not sure whether these will be the deep red, almost black grapes known as muscadines, or the green or bronze variety called scuppernongs. We’ll see around August or September, when they are supposed to be ripe.

This won’t end well

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We have been seeing some small birds flying around our front steps for a while, and then we saw them flying up under the porch. They are building a nest on an electrical box from which a light hangs. It seems like a great spot, sheltered from the weather and well up off the ground. Unfortunately, two or three cats frequent that area, and one of them is a killer.

This is Chloe watching the bird perched on the bottom post of the stairs. Chloe is very interested. When the bird flew to the other side of the steps, Chloe’s head followed.

Chloe is not the real threat to the adult birds. That would be Sylvester. He is a natural born killer.

I had intended to check the nest, and tear it down if there were no eggs or baby birds, but I’m afraid I’ve waited too long. We know what is going to happen. If the adults escape Sylvester’s bloody mouth, the baby birds will fall prey to him, or Chloe or Dusty. Chloe and Dusty are not the killers that Sylvester is, but I don’t know a cat that can resist killing a baby bird on the ground. The killer might even end up being Mollie, since she goes out for a while every day. She has already brought one bird in, apparently to play with it. It was still alive. We opened a window and it flew out.

This is apparently a pair of white-breasted nuthatches. They are fairly common throughout almost the entire United States.