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Well, my Arguments in Scientific Writing class is taking up all of my time, energy, and mental capital this month, so there wont be much in the way of posting. Not that it matters -- of the 18 hits the site's logged in its two and a half month lifetime, half are probably me, and the rest can be attributed to inexplicable hits from bizarre websearches such as "pictures of older people walking/running," and today, "how to kill crawdads/mounds".
Saw a raccoon out front last night (Friday) -- that was neat. He climbed up the neighbor's tree, then hopped back down and moseyed on down the street, not in any hurry but not wanting to stick around the humans either. It's easy to mistake them for cats when you first see them at night.
It rained this morning, and I went for a walk in the afternoon. It was nice, except that recently some kid set their backpack on fire over at the Mayfair park playground, and its charred contents were starting to spread around the park and towards the field. I figured I should clean it up now to avoid picking up half-burnt papers all over the field for the next year. On the remains of the backpack and notebooks I noticed the slogan "Burn in Hail" repeated a few times, along with other nihilistic teenageisms. It was an awful lot of soggy, burnt paper, with a Spanish workbook, a dictionary, some photographic negatives and several binders and notebooks contributing to the wreckage. I was intrigued by a small, relatively unscathed book of note cards which was filled with notes and citations concerning various species of whale. Male and female sperm whales were interestingly referred to as "men" and "women" ("average length for the men is... average weight for the women is..."). Was this a forgotten school project, or a symptom of a genuine interest in marine mammals? Either way, it made me feel for the kid. Hopefully his interest in marine biology will win out in the end over his interest in burning things. (For that matter, it may not even have been Whale Kid who burned the backpack -- it could have been stolen and burned by some jerk. Who knows.)
On the way back I saw three teenage boys in the prairie dog colony, up to no good, throwing rocks at the prairie dogs. I ought to have told them to stop, said that it's illegal and that it's illegal because it's stupid and wrong, and they aren't stupid, are they? But I chickened out with a pair of little girls -- what chance did I have against three street toughs? I kept an eye on them until they moved along, scattering a few ducks from the water with a rock as they went. I hope I never see them again. The ducks returned a few minutes later. Hopefully no harm done.
