wombat1138 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wombat1138) wrote2006-01-12 09:58 am
wombat1138) wrote2006-01-12 09:58 am
Entry tags:
Bad conversationalist, no biscuit.
It's a surprisingly bright, sunny morning, and therefore too cold to slide open the glass patio door. The wombatcave is nestled within a fractal set of gaps among the hills-- there's the big gap all the way from the coast where the tidal fog comes through every night, plus we're down near a streambed where mist tends to collect/persist even when the hills are dry and clear. The misty foggy stuff buffers our local picoclimate to a fairly consistent year-round average, so that clear days in winter are Too Cold and clear days in summer are Too Hot.
Without access to the hinged flap in the screen door, the cats have resorted to sullen punk lurkage (and occasional failed pounces) at the birdfeeder on the other side, or rather the confetti scattered below it. When I first hung the feeder from the eaves, all we got at first were some bluejay-type things-- not the crested bluejays I grew up with on the East Coast, though they're roughly the same size; these are black-headed Stellar's Jays and crestless scrub jays.
Which brings me to a conversationish thing between me and the wombat-consort this past weekend, both sides having been delivered entirely in the same Marvin-the-Paranoid-Android deadpan monotone--
Him: That's a lot of little brown birds out there.
Me: We finally widened the clientele. The bluejays were too big to balance on the feeder, so they just kept dive-bombing it to piñata millet all over the deck. I guess the key was finding birdseed that wouldn't roll out and had to be et in situ.
Him: Is that brown basmati rice out there? The organic brown basmati I bought from Trader Joe's?
Me: It smelled stale when I found it in the back of the pantry. Must be at least two years old by now.
Him: Don't birds explode if they eat rice?
Me: Yes. They do. This is why all birds have gone extinct in Asia. Sometime new species attempt to migrate in, but come rice-harvest season, it's back to the exploding feathery carnage as far as the eye can see.
--at which point I suddenly remembered Miles Vorkosigan's question to Ekaterin in the attic during A Civil Campaign: "How can you stand me? I can't even stand me!" Not that the wombat-consort himself seemed to mind, but still. Sigh.
Without access to the hinged flap in the screen door, the cats have resorted to sullen punk lurkage (and occasional failed pounces) at the birdfeeder on the other side, or rather the confetti scattered below it. When I first hung the feeder from the eaves, all we got at first were some bluejay-type things-- not the crested bluejays I grew up with on the East Coast, though they're roughly the same size; these are black-headed Stellar's Jays and crestless scrub jays.
Which brings me to a conversationish thing between me and the wombat-consort this past weekend, both sides having been delivered entirely in the same Marvin-the-Paranoid-Android deadpan monotone--
Him: That's a lot of little brown birds out there.
Me: We finally widened the clientele. The bluejays were too big to balance on the feeder, so they just kept dive-bombing it to piñata millet all over the deck. I guess the key was finding birdseed that wouldn't roll out and had to be et in situ.
Him: Is that brown basmati rice out there? The organic brown basmati I bought from Trader Joe's?
Me: It smelled stale when I found it in the back of the pantry. Must be at least two years old by now.
Him: Don't birds explode if they eat rice?
Me: Yes. They do. This is why all birds have gone extinct in Asia. Sometime new species attempt to migrate in, but come rice-harvest season, it's back to the exploding feathery carnage as far as the eye can see.
--at which point I suddenly remembered Miles Vorkosigan's question to Ekaterin in the attic during A Civil Campaign: "How can you stand me? I can't even stand me!" Not that the wombat-consort himself seemed to mind, but still. Sigh.