Happy Labor Day!

First of all, the threatened beer-tasting post is up on the caps blog (hit the link on your right!)  See Scrappy beg for booze, among other things.

First off, Sunday afternoon KC texts me:

Are you Home? I think I'm lost in your woods

I replied, where are you?  Expecting to hear a land mark, I got this:

At which point I called him and asked, "Is the sun on your right or left?"  He said, "Left, I guess"  (it was not).  I asked for a land mark, and he said he had crossed the bridge a while back, and now could see "a big hotel".  Which meant he was going south.


Now, you might say, "I can understand getting lost in the woods".  But consider:

This is a small woods, with one main north-south trail.  The only other real trail loops back to the main trail and has four main exits- one into the addition (the way he went in), one on California Road (which he was heading for when he called), and two side exits that lead directly to the soccer fields, the Plex road, and civilization.  At most points in this woods, you can see through to the outside.  IT SHOULD BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GET LOST IN THIS WOODS.  Unless of course, you step into the woods to take a urinary, come back out, and forget which way you're going, or cannot tell your right from your left.

He did manage to find his way out with my help, BTW.

This morning, Scrappy and I tried a morning jaunt.  It was cooler, but it was humid, mosquito-y despite the use of Off!, the river was dead stagnant and smelled to high heaven, and you couldn't through a rock without hitting three IPFW guys running.  The worst thing about these runners (other than the fact that they insist on crossing the river and disturbing nature when they have ACRES of trails to run ON CAMPUS) is that the more of them in a group, the louder they feel they have to talk, until a group of 8 or more are shouting enough that I yell SHUT UP!!! as they go by.  We did see one chipmunk, two squirrels, and 2 ground hogs, none of which were of a mind to pose.    But when we reached the addition, we did see a curiously loud and upset group of crows.

 They began to chase what we thought was one another- but soon came to the source of their problems.  Look carefully here...

 

You see, the problem was, there was a hawk...

...but he wasn't attacking.  In fact, he SEEMED to think he was ONE of the crows, although they were under no such delusion.  He kept trying to "hang out" with them, they kept running him off, and finally, he got the message.  But now, the crows were bored, and started playing this game...

They would all stand there on the vent plate of that roof, then one would fly up, they'd all start cawing, a couple would switch positions, and one would slam down on the plate to make the loudest noise it could, then they'd all settle and get quiet.  And in a few seconds, someone would jump up and start it all over again.