Here is a crow I caught on video using what looks for all the world to me like echolocation. He makes this wierd series of clicking noises facing the ground, and then checks the area he was just clicking at for food. I've seen crows doing this on campus about ten times so far, and I don't think I've seen them do it anywhere else. Planning on showing it to the people in the Animal bio department on Monday.

T.J.: "You have children, I have animals."

Me: "What about "animals are people too"?"

T.J. "That's debatable."


I think if you've been up for 23 hours you should qualify as a "vulnerable adult", at least until you've had a solid six hours of sleep.

The spiders have had a population explosion this year. I can't walk across campus at night without getting outfitted with a web-beard form all the little spider shanties that've been strewn thickly across every path.

There have always been spiders on campus but this year It's begun to feel more like an invasion, like Starship Troopers or something.

The spiders are thick and juicy, obviously the result of some spider-vitamin a robber-baron chemical factory has dumped into the canal on the north side of campus. They crawl around everywhere like a festering mess of mini-Shelobs from Lord of the Rings, as I hold out my flashlight like the star-glass light to fend them off, or at least to warn me before I walk face-first into another web and am forced to spend the next five minutes brushing myself off in paranoia and peeling the remnants of spider silly-string off my arms and eyebrows. They've only gotten larger as the year's progressed, right now the average one could pose a danger to small dogs and children. If the raccoons around here weren't so low to the ground I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of them sucked dry and left hanging in some grand specimen's web.

But it's finally getting Autumn chilly, and I think that's killing them off.

The other day at the goodwill I finally broke down and got a copy of Luther's smaller catechism. I wanted it for a short reference to go over with the kids as a primer on Christian Doctrine, and I've looked through it multiple times over the years and have always considered it good & clear christian teaching. I remember when I was little at church we were heavy on story but not so much on doctrine-nothing was really well defined. So I figured I'd do them a favor, plus I was reading through Ephesians where he tells dads to raise their kids in the instruction and admonition of the Lord.
So anyways...
Today I slept until about 2pm and when I got up felt the need to do something edifying. So naturally I called Josiah and Jaelle over and pulled out the copy of Luther. It starts out with the ten commandments, and by the time we got to four I thought something wasn't right with the numbers, and then I realised, 'Ole brother Martin numbered the commandments like a Catholic! (Catholics blend out the "graven images" into the first, and it shifts the numbers down. They get #10 by splitting coveting into two: houses & the rest. Odd how houses get their own no-covet commandment and wives are stuck with donkeys.)But I figured the kids will forget the numbers anyway, and I can re-number them later. I wanted it for a guide more than anything, since I need something to go over all the basics, and I can embellish beyond that. By embellish, I don't mean make stuff up, but expand on.

Then Josiah asked why we should "fear" God (since Martin prefaces every commandment with the reason we should obey it-"fear and love of God"). That was a tough one to answer. I kept thinking about George MacDonald telling his childhood story of when he found out about hell, "predestination" etc..., and broke down crying, wondering how God could be more cruel than his earthly father, and how that thought eventually led to him becoming a Universalist. I didn't want to give Josiah that impression, so I tried to explain it by asking if he was scared of me, and he said no, and I said how about when I catch you doing something you're not supposed to, he said yeah, and we took it from there.
Then we all had a short fighing free-for-all, and I read a book with Enoch (who was listless and alone on the couch with a fever) until Brandy called us to the table for chicken soup.


Now I'm @ Work and my co-worker just found a giant dead rat at the entrance to the bertona modules. There are all kinds of wild (and not so wild) life around here. Yesternight I was checking Robbins and a large Opossum was at the south entry door. When I opened it, she just stared at me for a couple seconds before waddling off. 'possums always seem a little slow in the head.