jinian | Perseid report

Wim and I went out to Quilcene to watch meteors last night. The first neat things we saw were not meteors, but BATS. Little brown bats, probably, swooping and jinking over the highway to catch bugs in the gloaming, all the way from the Quilcene turnoff to Wim's mom's place.

Later, after it was mostly dark, we went outside with a feeble flashlight to find a place shaded from the house's outdoor light. Up on the septic field (long story) seemed like a good viewpoint, so we tromped up and found our way between the tall, sticky mulleins in the partial darkness, lit by the flashlight a little but mostly by the glow of the horizon's haze. Just as we reached the part of the septic field that was shaded from the house light, there was a WHOOF of an exhalation from a Something. I called "Hello" at it to demonstrate my ostensible lack of fear, and then we backed off, way off, back down to the much less worrisome driveway.

(We investigated the site of the blowing sound in the daylight today and found nothing much. There were hollows in the grass, but they hadn't been slept in overnight. A bear or cat would probably have left some smell behind it, but a deer seems somewhat too small to have made that large-lunged noise. W's mom says there are meant to be elk about, which is the best tradeoff of likelihood for alarmingness so far proposed.)

Finally we settled down on a too-thin blanket in the rough gravel driveway and watched the METEORS. We saw maybe twenty total in the hour we spent outside, and an unusual number of them left glowing trails behind them. Yes, only an hour, though we'd driven for over two. It was cold out there, and we couldn't see what was making those noises, and telling yourself it's mountain beavers only works for so long. Not to mention that, even that long after sundown, there were things crawling on us. It turned out, horribly enough, that at least some of the crawlers were spiders. Not giant ones, maybe the mass of a housefly, but incredibly good at making creeping sensations on one's body. The really nasty part is the way I discovered this. It was all a mystery until we got indoors and I was brushing my hair in front of the mirror. I noticed I had something on my neck. It proved to be, yes, the mashed remains of a spider. Bleah!

Anyway, we had a good time last night and a pretty good time today. My head's been hurting, but we climbed the hill to the fire road and demolished a platoon of thistles anyway. Also, I made quite good peanut butter fudge despite the candy thermometer's breaking yesterday, and we ate that and other good food. We fed grass to the chickens and attempted to convince the rabbits we weren't going to kill them. And I swear there's exhaust coming inside the car, but we have made it home alive. Good night.