5:30 am at wake robin
last night, after a day from july, sleeping was...warm. then add in power surges and a thunder storm. my poor ear, hairline, chin, and a variety of unreachable spots are hot after the visits by black flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, and one bot fly. kinda hard to photograph bug bites!
bad ear
anyway, i headed off to work with no time to spare but 3 miles away i turned around to come home and fetch my camera.
now this is some mama! snapping turtles like the roadsides here because of the nice, sandy soils built up, i think, from years of sanding the roads all winter. maybe 100 feet away was
a younger mama, not quite so large. i was careful not to disturb them (ha! these mamas would just as soon bite off my finger given the opportunity) because i want the eggs to have a chance. already this afternoon i could only spot one egg depository site from the car.
i so want to dig up a few eggs and 1) eat one, 2) raise one here in a bucket of sand in my home, and 3) touch one. i will do none of those things. if you could feel the intense female energy surrounding these ladies as they were working, right there next to speeding traffic, you would be in awe of them, too. this year my first turtle sighting was a painted turtle, yesterday i saw a dead snapper, and now these two, successful egg layers. indicating an auspicious four day weekend.
Beauties! We here in Western Mass had quite the storm.. I went to the dentist for my apt. 45 mins. away to discover the office close and the town looked like a hurricane aftermath. Quite a storm... couldn't sleep until it passed.
ReplyDeleteI find shea butter helpful for those nasty bug bites....
my granny would put honey on stings
ReplyDeletefixes them like magic
shea butter, honey, sounds good enough to eat! i'll give them a try.
ReplyDeletelove the turtle, isnt nature wonderful.
ReplyDeletethe impressionist first photo is pretty amazing too.
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photo nº1. another haiku.thanks.
ReplyDeletewonderful to have light before work. and ground mist, too.
ReplyDeleteI am astounded. Do you think the eggs will hatch? We don't have animals like that over here.
ReplyDeleteoh, yes, many must hatch because there are so many road-killed each year. they are what the world was created on in iroquois myth. awful young men like to squash them with their tires. my son was riding with friends and witnessed it.
ReplyDelete