Bumblebees and Teabaggers

The closed road at Mississinewa Lake has access to a path through pine woods, cut for an annual fitness event the DNR holds there. Coming off the path onto the road, I noted a bumblebee walking west.

Put me in mind of a song - "Poor Little Robin" - ("walking to Missouri, he can't afford to fly"), by Sammy Kaye in 1952. I had thought it was by Perry Como, who became ancient history with the introduction of Valium.

That "he can't afford to fly" is perfect for our bumblebee, according to Bernd Heinrich, the bugworld virtuoso of the printed word. Writing in Bumblebee Economics, Professor Heinrich states bumblebees only store (as in eat) enough calories for the proposed roundtrip. Any reason at all - windgusts, interference from other creatures, misinformation from other mates - and the bumblebee walks home. As mine was doing.

Verily, if you don't find this absolutely incredible, you should lock yourself in your car trunk next weekend, do a goodly bit of reflection and reevaluation.

The birds on the wires all flew today, for no particular reason I could identify. The only sure ID's were a couple of redwing blackbirds, with that beautiful orange-and-yellow bar pattern on the upper wing, near the shoulder. A wildlife biologist once told me that researchers blacked out these colors on males, and they couldn't get laid with a blank check.

I picked a painted turtle off the road and took it to a creekside in a woods. It is amazing how good such a totally simple act made me feel. It takes a bit of convergence - you and the turtle, plus the cars that have missed it, and the cars that haven't tried to hit it. I'm not quite on the butterfly-farts-in-Ghana-tornado-in-Oklahoma train, but stuff lines up some.

Like intersecting my bumblebee at that point, "my" Pearson's Mill red tail dropping its catch just feet away, looking out a window as an oriole flies past, a turtle in the road I didn't hit but glimpsed enough to back up a couple hundred yards to "save".

I had wanted to post some comments on the teabaggers, but I'm just not up to it. This, though:

I tend to be the least bit liberal, am a strict constitutionalist, strongly in favor of the Amendments and the Bill of Rights, and especially sensitive to the guarantees of Human Rights, an atheist with a fondness for the Ten Commandments and that gem from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". My feeling is that "Golden Rule" would solve just about every social dispute, if it were heeded.

Never mind that all the teabaggers are fucking idiots. What most especially gripes my ass is their usurpation of one of our hallowed moments in American History, the Boston Tea Party. How this in any way relates to the drivel and verbal drool they spew confounds me, except as an act of civil disobedience, also known as sedition.

Rave on, morons. The only people listening are Republicans, who fear a split in the flock, as anyone dumb enough to vote Republican could find your crap attractive.

Seriously, I cannot understand how airheaded gasbags like these don't blow away in a moderate wind.

Driving home this evening an oncoming car and mine nearly scissored a kestrel intent on roadfood. Clean miss, happily.

A kestrel on a wire is the same size as a turtle dove. The difference is the kestrel has no neck. The mourning dove has a long neck and a very small head.

Don't be fooled by that diminutive cranium. The bird has the brain power to propel those few ounces of feathers and hollow bones to speeds of 55 mph. Know how fast that is? Try this: buckle up, set the cruise control on 55, then open the door and look down.

Bird brain, indeed.