Contrary to the what the photos may suggest, a Hootin’Nanny is not what you get when you cross an owl with a goat. A Hootin’Nanny, properly spelled “Hootenanny”, is Scottish for a celebration and we’re going to a hootenanny as part of the Corrales Harvest Festival — but there will be dancing, so this is one of those rare times the cameras will stay home in the safe as they pose quite a danger to other people when I’m dancing.
Spunk plays with his tail, his tail and his tail. The video (video link) at the end is of him watching a video of himself playing with a stick and interacting with himself on the video.
Spunk playing under the laundry basket.
Spunk was so wild this morning that he spilled Laurie’s coffee and broke her favorite mug. He didn’t just spill the coffee, either, but managed to make in explode all over the bathroom. You can see that even after we cleaned up the mess he was unrepentant, and still had a wild look in his eyes.
When I was trying to get up the other morning, Spunk laid on my chest and made me hold my iPhone for him so he could take selfies.
A brave Mantis and early morning rain on the Rio Grande.
Spunk trying to get to the last sips in the bottom of Laurie’s cup.
Spunk wired in by the catio.
It’s that time of the year when the garden spiders are building their webs in the flowers and pathways. Last night I moved the hose from one drip system to the other, and felt something crawling on me — it was one of the zipper spiders. It had apparently built its web across the path and I didn’t see it in the low light of dusk. I felt bad that I had inadvertently destroyed her web. I moved her over to some tall grasses and she crawled off me into the grasses where she could build another web. Walking through her web reminded me of an old Far Side comic where a couple of spiders have a web built on the end of a slide and one spider is telling the other “If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings!” You can see a copy of the comic here: http://blogerinblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/eat-like-kings.jpg.
While walking out to the ditch to turn in the irrigation water at 2:00 am under the Harvest Moon, I saw a critter scurrying my way. Skunks don’t see very well, so it got pretty close to me before it stopped and we had a brief stand off — long enough for me to sweet talk it into letting me get a couple of photos. The skunk wasn’t sure what to think about a giant troll talking to it in the middle of the night — it stomped its front feet and stepped from side to side trying to decide whether to scurry past me, spray me or retreat. It finally decided on a compromise and ran into the tall grass on its right. Fortunately, it turned out to be an uneventful encounter, but I had a difficult time getting a clear shot of the nervous little skunk as the shutter speed was only 1/5 of a second at ƒ/1.4. On the other hand, it was easy to get a clear shot of the spider that had built its web on the irrigation gate. It held perfectly still.
