Extra bonus points if you can figure out what this mystery photo is (I’ll give you a better clue further down):
We had a great visit with Nick. He stayed here for a few days on his Western migration to life in Silicon Valley. He is getting good at this handstand, can do it for 60 seconds without moving:
He can also break into your house if you happen to lock yourself out:
We did a couple of fun hikes:
His thin vibrams ‘shoes’, and his feet, get a workout on our rocky, thorny trails:
The local news station must have sensed the blood from Nick’s foot. Their news copter zoomed over to us from across the valley and circled us a few times with their camera tracking us:
Then, just as we were turning around 2 hours into our hike, Nick got a call from his Skritter team wondering why he had not joined their video conference:
Apparently there is a 2 hour difference between us and the East Coast. So we turned around and zoomed down the mountain in a record 30 minutes … that right edge of the photo is about 2/3 of the way home:
Nick was sweaty, but it was a video conference, not a smell-o-vision conference, so it worked out. They are getting very close to releasing the Apple version of Skritter. This page has one of the promo videos they just finished:
Here is a 2nd mystery photo, same subject:
You might have guessed what part of the subject that is a photo of, but what is the subject? One last hint. If you have an unfortunate meeting with this subject, then these carrions eaters might have a feast:
Your statistic for they day: Utah is 2nd in the nation in per capita water usage at 250 gallons per day (Nevada is 1st at 300). Not as bad as back in the ‘80s when they were at 500 gallons per day, but I checked our usage for the last year we averaged 300 gallons per day, even with my infrequent shower policy, so I was feeling a little guilty.
Most of that is for lawn watering (we live in a desert), so I re-engineered the sprinkler system. I capped off the water to the parking strips (I will zero-scape them later this summer) and replaced all 60 sprinkler heads with new-tech water efficient small rotator heads. They don’t mist much so they deliver water more accurately. They create rain-like droplets in continuous streams that look really pretty:
Now feeling water virtuous, I decided to share with the birds and bought a bird bath:
So we are becoming a popular bird hangout. Lots of bluejays:
and morning doves, which I used to think were owls (they sound just like owls):
and a few unknown guys:
And the local favorite, California Quail. These guys are in baby season now, so lots of tiny fluff balls on legs scurrying about:
Today I heard what sounded like an army of birds tweeting. I saw a yard full of those little quail puffballs running every which way and this guy, one of the 3 strays that visit, slinking away with one of the puffballs in his mouth.
He came back later for seconds, but the daddy quail would rain redemption from the sky whenever he got close, so he eventually left.
The first mystery photo was a Diamondback Rattlesnake’s tongue and nose. The 2nd photo was his eye. I met this guy on an evening hike yesterday:
I read snakes typically only ‘strike with authority’ within about 1/2 of their body length, so my point-and-shoot camera and I gave him an appropriate 3-4 feet, although now that I think about it, I’m not really sure how long he was, as he preferred to stay coiled when I was around:
Helen was glad my camera has a zoom lens.
Bruce
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