Winter beach, dog, wood
Category: Nature
General observations, generally during dog walks
A walk on the beach
There may be a story here … or not.
Pigeon on TV antenna. Yes, weather that dreary.
A dead penguin on the beach.
An appeal to ecological awareness, which caused me to remark how surprisingly free of plastic waste the beach in fact was.
And a surprise: the fishing platform mostly gone – it has been a long time since I walked on the beach.
It always had room for several people … no more.
And Mocha never stopped running the entire time – so many new things to smell!
Spot the difference
Portland, Oregon USA
Atlántida, Uruguay
100 reasons not to live in Uruguay
This will be a little obscure to someone who hasn’t actually suffered through daily life in Acodike’s Uruguay. Gas for cooking (“Supergas”) comes in metal gas bottles sold by many vendors. All have phone numbers, and will bring gas on demand for a slight charge. And of course everyone has a cell phone, so anyone can phone anytime, anywhere, and have replacement gas within a few minutes.
However, one company thinks we still live in the 1990s, and has its drivers – apparently on commission, based on their wasteful repetition and overlap – drive back and forth endlessly, with a tinny and piercing version of Beethoven’s Für Elise screeching at high volume. Yes, the ice cream truck “music,” but not tempting you once a day. No, just driving up and back every street, occasionally turning the noise off abruptly, which makes it no less jarring. Not every truck is the same, and I’ve heard as many as three different ones in the space of a couple of hours.
Everyone (above a certain level of awareness, with the bar set pretty low) hates them. But they just persist with their noise pollution, because es lo que hay – that’s how it is.
Today – blissfully! – we have reached the afternoon without their intrusion. From being an acoustic hell the last few days, Uruguay suddenly seems like a nice place to live again.
Reduce, re-use: yes; recycle: no
A little over a month ago, I began drinking sparkling water (agua con gas) instead of wine.
I love the vastly reduced clink-clank of bottle recycling, and the cash savings will certainly buy a little sushi, but I didn’t feel good about the single-use plastic water bottles from the supermarket. Given tightening purity standards in China for recyclables, many municipalities up north have gone from making a little selling recyclables, to paying much more to send them to a landfill.
I don’t know the status here. I don’t know if plastic is really recycled, and if so, where (but they seemed serious about it last I checked, seven years ago). But then I remembered how we got drinking water before I installed filters: the water guy who comes around every Monday morning.
He brings pressurized bottles like the one on the left. Total waste is reduced from a bottle with three types of plastic, to a little piece of plastic wrap. Plus the water stays fizzier because the bottle is pressurized. Also it costs less. And the delivery guy is friendly and helpful. For example, after starting delivery only a few weeks ago, we were out last Monday morning. We returned to find six bottles of water at our doorstep, to be paid this week, no problem.
So how many times can these pressurized bottles be re-used? I have no idea. However, this is one delivered today:
Notice the phone number. Phone numbers in Uruguay no longer begin with zero. In fact, they haven’t since late 2010. So, chances are these bottles have been around a while.
I like that.
Not playing
Unusual fuss last night; dogs wouldn’t come in. Bandito the Shih Tzu was burrowing impossibly into the aloe vera, backed by chain link fence, until I had to swat at him with a flashlight to flush him. He went inside, I went inside. Then Susan announced that Mocha was inside, she not seeing, as I did, something a foot long hanging from his mouth.
My first thought was a rat, but he jumped on the couch and deposited a young comedreja (possum). “Dead,” I said, but Susan reminded me how well they play dead, so I grabbed it by the tail with a piece of paper towel and deposited it outside the fence, where our dogs couldn’t get at it.
Alas, the morning light revealed that it was not, after all, playing dead.
It’s not the first, but a little less mysterious than the last.
Indecision
I’m not sure what left this trail, but I get a kick out of the little loop-de-loop lower left. Maybe the whatever-little-critter version of turning around as you head out the front door because you forgot the car key, only to realize it’s in your hand.
The dream and the moth
Ever since The Matrix was released in 1999, more and more attention has been given to the thought that maybe we live in a simulation. Search for simulation hypothesis and you’ll potentially be busy for a while. Then there’s the idea of the reincarnation trap, the idea that we are fooled into reincarnating by the Archons so they can harvest fear energy, and we remain trapped in devastations and wars of this simulation again and again. Essentially, the advice of going toward the light is a huge spiritual deception. When you check out of the body, you should go away from the light. Nota bena, Shirley MacLaine.
I woke up early this morning and, not wanting to get out of bed, lay there thinking and dozing. I thought about this light thing, wondering what it would look like, and then I was in a dream, in black space, seeing it. Aha! I turned away and found myself face to face with a large bright television-like screen. I started to look at it, then abruptly shifted my focus back – they’re trying to block the exits! So I decided to simply go around it, and I don’t know what more happened, but then I was awake again.
I went downstairs to a remarkable sight. My office window was open more than I would have left it – nod to a certain dog here – with screen removed, as it often is. In the downstairs bathroom I saw this:
A huge black moth on the ceiling, exactly centered on the window.
I have seen moths a few times in Uruguay, but not many, and never huge (this one is about 5 inches/12.7 cm across). And never black.
So I gently opened the window, carefully removed my homemade screen, closed the bathroom door, turned off the ceiling light (just in case), and gently touched the moth with a piece of newspaper. It was gone in a second, fluttering out the window…
…and into the light.
Another snake
This from yesterday. As last time, almost off the trail. Definitely alive, but very sluggish — I gently nudged it with a stick. Syd yelled at his dogs to keep them away from it. Happily, none really noticed snake nor yelling. And regardless, managed not to step on it.
Here’s the last one (30 September) — different coloration:
And this from November 2016 — Falsa Crucera de Hocico Respingado – Lystrophis dorbignyi (the tail is a giveaway):
And this from last November — Falsa Coral – Oxyrhopus rhombifer rhombifer (?):
I’m not particularly into snakes, but it presents an interesting challenge to figure out “who’s who” in the local snake world.
Blueberries!
Though a week ago Saturday was the first public blueberry harvest, we didn’t get notice in time. I went yesterday. The number of bushes is down radically from a year ago, but fruit is abundant and I managed to pick 2.5 kilos fairly efficiently.
The price has gone from (pesos) $180 to $250 per kilo, or +39%. One dollar buys about 14% more pesos than a year ago, so in dollar terms the price has increased 22%, double the rate of inflation (that I assume). So, bottom line, USD 3.44 per pound. Most places in the US I found online are under $3 per pound. So, like most things in Uruguay other than property tax and medical coverage, not cheap.
But delicious!
And then, consider what they cost at the supermarket. Over USD 2 for a small fraction of a kilo. These plastic containers are about 3 x 3 inches. I eat that many when I pass by the bowl on the kitchen counter!
If you’re in the area and want instructions to get there, let me know. I’m guessing this will be on for three more weekends.
A little background: blueberries (arandanos, the same word used for cranberries, which are not available here) seemed to become trendy around the time we got here (late 2009). But unlike other kinds of fruits, blueberries are only good for a very short period of time. They can be frozen, but when thawed these have a mushy texture and much less taste. Given the short time window, commercial buyers can basically pay whatever they want. Or worse. The first year Pilar (the owner) had a harvest, an Argentine buyer took the whole crop. Literally. Didn’t pay a dime.