Confused chameleon contemplates change

Aside from the ten thousand five hundred eighty six "small detail items" on my Follow-Up To-Do List, all of the big stuff on the Priority To Do List has been completed and we put the house on the market last Thursday.  (More on that later in the week if I find time to post).

One of the last of the big stuff items on the now extinct Priority To Do List, which I burned in an almost religious ceremony of gratitude, was pressure washing and re-staining the porch.  Just before spreading down the plastic to protect painted areas from stain, I  spotted the fellow below. To try and prove to myself that the photojournalist in me had not been totally beaten down into oblivion and to document his confusion, I snapped a picture of him, peeking from the plastic which had become his last hiding place.

He (or she) is clearly contemplating life's great questions:

• Where have all the plants gone that used to be here on the porch?
• How can I escape off the porch since the hole in the screen has been patched?
• Where is food?
• Am I about to die?
• It's already November -- have I missed mating season entirely?
• Why is God pointing that damned Nikon at me again?
• Is it safe to quench my thirst by drinking Valspar Dark Redwood Weatherproofing Stain?
• Why is God now moaning and grabbing the small of his back everytime he stands up?
• If God sells the house, will the new owners of the house also have cats?
• If I do manage to get off the porch, is the dreaded black snake still living in the crawl space?
• How are the other chameleons coping, or am I the last of my species left on Earth?
• If I'm a chameleon, why can't I turn white?

I wish I had time to discuss these great questions with the chameleon but my biggest concern this morning is to ransack the medicine drawer in the bathroom to see if there is any more Tylenol left.

FRIDAY PHOTO SHOOTOUT - Animals

No lions, tigers or tigresses...but here's my shootout for today.

Yes, I spend a fair amount of time on my stomach, pretending that I'm very very small. Sometimes I scare myself.


Then there was Alice.

Alice appeared three years ago in a huge web she constructed between the porch and the tree which has prickly things that are a nuisance in the fall and I keep repressing its name. I first ran into her, literally, one night, flailing her web from my screaming face. But she rebuilt it in the morning and I guess forgiveness is a skill, because I argued for clemency when Karen gave me the broom of ultimate destruction. Sally and I learned to always turn to the right off the porch so we wouldn't find Alice on the bridge of my nose. I watched her for almost two months. I didn't expect her to live so long. I watched her eat (ugh), have babies (which almost convinced me the broom of destruction would have been a good idea) and...I think the above is not actually a baby but foreplay. I guess size doesn't matter for male spiders. One day, I came out and she was hanging listlessly by one leg and an equally large black round spider was moving hungrily up the web toward her. I thought to save her but she looked on her last leg anyway and I thought it might be faster and more natural to let it go. The journalist in me went to get the camera but I got distracted, or maybe I just couldn't bear to watch. Later I went out with the broom to remove the remains. Hanging on the web was the largest silken-wrapped pre-prepared spider meal corpse I had ever seen. Sitting proudly beside it was Alice! Queen of the hang by one leg and pretend I'm dead strategy. A few weeks later when she did go on to spider heaven, she did it by simply disappearing. Morning came, I walked out and even the web was gone except for a few hanging strands of silk. On to photoshoot -


We get these guys in the manmade pond behind our house. I'm careful when walking Sally, but when it's just me, I don't worry much. I'm way too big to be considered food, so they consider me a threat and usually run. Mostly they stay in the water, just floating but this one got hungry enough to cross the spillway and pick up a dead fish on the other side. He's now walking back with it, thinking, "I hate dead fish, but that's all there is. Yucky rotten dead fish. I sure wish that fresh meat with the camera was smaller."
These guys actually scared me more than the gater. Crawling under the bushes near the front porch to get a shot...since this was the best I could do, you can tell I didn't stay too long.

And then there are birds!

These guys gather, for some reason, at the Subdivision Swimming pool. Anyone for a swim?

Cute in the beginning -

Not so cute later, particularly when they run around my backyard leaving goose-feces.

Hummingbird-feces is smaller. I assume. I don't think I've ever found any.


Okay...bye for now...gotta fly.