nature stories

Meteor Shower meets at the library on the third Tuesday of the month, but every other Tuesday, except for like a holiday, we meet at the Cultural Center (for Beagles that is the old downtown library).  As I said I preferred Silver Hamsters as a name but it took forever to decide on that, time that could be spent trodding the boards, so I don't see any name changes in the future. 

The middle video, of Ron, our leader, was at some other place where he does improv.  The first and third are us doing skits.  Skits is a misnomer because it implies we have a script, which we do not, but what else are you going to call it?  In the first video we are doing a parody of The Dating Game and the third is Clap and Repeat where we have three groups of two, one of which is performing and when they see a chance to break in they clap and take the foreground using the last phrase the first group said and work that into their narrative.  It is all kind of silly because people are making it up on the spot.  The audiences we get are mostly friends of the players and they are there for a good time, and they are easy on us.


One nice thing about the 21st floor is no flies and no mosquitoes.  I've seen a few dragonflies and butterflies, and lots of those tiny nameless bugs that hang around my tomato plants.  There are lots of spiders, it's not unusual to have spider webs on my balcony.  Apparently air currents take bugs right up the tower where they land in the webs. 


When I was living with my parents, having come back from Texas 30 years ago dead broke I stepped out to the front yard one morning and there was a squirrel munching on a mushroom in that cute way they have standing on their hind legs and grasping it with their little paws.  "Awww,"  I said.  "I wish it was a poison mushroom," my mother said.  "Me too," her neighbor chimed in.  What they chiefly hated was the squirrels would build nests in their garages.  What bothers people like my Champaign friends is that they eat their plants.  Tomato gardeners really hate squirrels because they take one bite out of the tomato and discover they don't like it, but then instead of moving on, they try the next tomato to see if that one tastes any better, and the next and the next.


I hadn't seen  those photos before, thanks Beagles.  It reminded me of one time a pigeon got into the State of Illinois building and all kind of efforts were made to get him out (I think they were ultimately successful but I don't remember how).  One day our secretary (who I did not like much at all) suggested why don't we just poison it.  We looked a little horrified and she said, "Well there's plenty of them out there," and I replied, "There's plenty of people out there too, why don't we poison you?"