Category: Freeverse

Deflated

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Nature has a way
Of promise
Without promising anything

Earlier this spring as I was tending to our landscape irrigation, I noticed some little black dots on the ground under the Chinese elm. Looking up, there to my delight were dozens and dozens of caterpillars grazing on the leaves.

Immediately I started planning to document the life stages in video and photos. I read SOME of the information and started planning. Within a few days, they were gone. Completely, utterly vanished. Searching the property was futile. Stuffing my head into trees and bushes for many days, I must have looked like a weirdo.
The part I did not read said that when the caterpillars fully mature, they drop from the tree and move to another spot to become butterflies. They disband as well so they are not all in one spot.
Maybe next year?
Since then (mid April), I’ve only seen one of the adults and I can’t be sure it was from one of them.

Nymphalis antiopa – (Mourning Cloak)

New Weird Not Weird Now Normal

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Looked up
With someone else’s eyes
What was it?

On the ninth I had placed a trail cam face up on a table and accidentally left it overnight. The next day I reviewed the footage and saw lots of moths and a few bats. In two of the clips there were some weird lights that came into view.
At first I thought it was a drone. That creeped me out. Then yesterday I told my daughter and her husband about it. He explained that it was a Starlink Train. Apparently, multiple satellites will launch and travel in a line in a low orbit until they deploy to their respective final orbits.
So, not weird, new normal.

From the provided data, a key Starlink launch occurred on May 9, 2025, at 20:19 PDT (00:19 GMT on May 10) from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, deploying 26 satellites (Starlink mission 257). Vandenberg is approximately 200 miles northwest of Ramona, and satellites launched from this site often follow a southbound trajectory, making them potentially visible over Southern California shortly after launch. Another launch occurred on May 10, 2025, at 02:28 PDT (06:28 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, but this is less relevant due to the distance and orbital path.
(The trial cam date shown is incorrect)