JB
Honorary Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2001
- Messages
- 45,907
I can't seem to get in a black enough mood that my environment can't get me out of it.<br /><br />Been warring with my equipment for a few days.. .had to cough up nearly 2Gs for a new finishing mower, hot as normal but humid as S. FL, caught the devil from a new member because I moved his boat question from the Force Outboard Forum to the Boats Forum, two prospective buyers turned their noses up at my 1980 boat because she isn't a marina queen (some folks think a classic must be in perfect detail at all times), etc.<br /><br />I started out with my field mower to mow the wild flowers field in a nasty mood. It was about 95 and muggy.<br /><br />As I moved along the fence a pair of scissor-tail flycatchers (gorgeous birds!) kept pace with me, sitting on the fence until I got even with them, then flying another 20' along and diving on any morsel that I put up that caught their fancy.<br /><br />I started to smile.<br /><br />I have a family of merlins in my big cottonwood tree. They are falcons, a bit smaller than the peregrine, that used to be called pigeon hawks. Three of them were circling above, eyeing the flycatchers (I think). Merlins are the only falcons I have ever seen soaring, but they are almost as fast as their larger cousins when they hurry.<br /><br />Field mice occasionally darted from the path of my tractor and quickly into the tall stuff. Sceighty 'leven bazillion grasshoppers fled in all directions (why I don't have a garden).<br /><br />A kestrel (another small falcon, formerly called a sparrow hawk) joined the flycatchers and started picking off grasshoppers. Then it nailed a mouse that was almost too heavy for it to bear off.<br /><br />Sweat trickled down my back, into my eyes, soaked my shirt. I cared not. I smiled more.<br /><br />I am so thankful that many folks want to live in cities and towns so that we rural folk have this wonderful life to ourselves. 
