Wind, puddles, and a plastic bottle — what more does dog need? The crunching sound of the plastic bottle is part of the fun, but I muted the video because all you could hear was wind noise in the microphone.
Author: doug
The prize catch
Curious footprints
It must have been a cat, is all I can think.
Giant ants
Espacio Ciencia is an interactive science museum next to the Portones shopping center in Montevideo. I had never noticed it before yesterday, when we made one of our “OK,we really need to go” trips to Montevideo. Because driving to and in Montevideo is not something I think anyone likes. But going by bus is worse.
Long ago I dreamed of making giant ants, and placing them in the trees of our property in North Carolina. Warms my heart to see someone else went through with it!
Mushroom season
Well, OK, I honestly don’t really know if it’s mushroom “season.“ But as autumn progresses, they seem to be popping up everywhere. I spotted this cluster on a eucalyptus tree recently.
Are they edible? I have no idea. They don’t look like the ones people sell on the side of the road. The last time we bought some of those — six years ago — we ended up throwing them out because they were so nasty. Not poisonous. Just not good. Perhaps they were the pine tree mushrooms instead of the eucalyptus tree mushrooms.
Another nice development since we moved here (recall coconut oil going from nonexistent to ubiquitous) is almost-constant availability of fresh mushrooms in the supermarkets. They’re not always at a price we want to pay, but they’re available.
Spider, happily visible
I am grateful to this spider for having a web that is so conspicuously messy. Syd said it’s apparently a highly venomous spider (he used the word “deadly”). It was a face level, in the middle of my path. Which would not have been fun even if it weren’t deadly.
Radiation tower work continues
This morning a crew is working on the new radiation tower near us. My only observations previously about radiation towers have been that a) they appear overnight, and b) they never go away. In this case, as far as I can tell, nothing has been done for almost three weeks.
Overnight, Uruguay-style.
Dog gone.
From Syd this afternoon:
Was not there today. The tent was there, looking worse for wear. Definitely had not had a human sleeping in it last night, but perhaps a dog. The chain was still there. The bowl was also gone.
So, I guess the adage to “leave the campsite cleaner than you found it” also hasn’t permeated the Uruguayan psyche, but this appears to be an encouraging development.
The season ends
A dreary, stormy weekend ends Semana de Turismo, as Uruguay refers to Easter week. Which means it’s over — the high season that runs mid-December through mid-March, and includes this past week. Flash back to a couple of summer sightings:
Vacaciones — a reminder what many people associate with the beach I take for granted year round.
A fleeting tribute to a significant amount of time.
YADU (Yet Another Dog Update)
After reading comments and feedback, and wondering what can I do? I decided to distribute a little flier to every house in the neighborhood near the dog we found. Though not cold, today was windy and rainy.
NOTICE
At this moment, there is a dog chained to a tree within a few hundred meters of your house, in the woods. He has been left, with no shelter, for at least three days. The two times we have encountered him, he has had no water.
This may be intended as a temporary situation, but nonetheless it is cruel, inhumane, and in violation of Law 18.471, Responsible Animal Ownership.
If you know who is responsible for this, we encourage you to do what you can to put an end to it.
Before doing that, though, I wanted to be sure the dog is still there, and phoned Syd to see if he’d check, since he lives nearby. He did, returning home seconds before another deluge, to report this:
The dog has moved again, but now there’s a tent that appears to have been inhabited by a person last night.
So….