Category: Very Short Story

Patterns

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Nature’s plan
Void
Of emotion

Another of my “hopes dashed” sagas.
A moment of peripheral movement piqued my interest. A bird exiting from under the eaves of the house could mean a new nest. Walking to the eave, a house finch protested. He was atop a gate, feet apart in a defensive stance. Our eyes met and I walked away.
Within a week, there was a full nest.
Again, I started planning to document the life cycle in video and photos. I dug up an old action cam that I can operate with a phone app. But how do I mount it? Looking through my hardware, there were some steel straps that could be modified perfectly. Everything was ready down to the 1/4-20 anchor. I was pretty sure the eggs were in the nest. The plan was to install the camera in a couple of days.
The next day, the nest was on the ground and the eggs eaten (partial shell in the photo).
Seems one of our scrub jays took the opportunity to nourish himself with a high protein snack. He had been hanging around the eaves on another side of the house hunting a grasshopper (which I appreciated).
Maybe next time.

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)

Spaceball

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Dirty filthy ice
250,000 kilometers per hour
Vacuum of space

I drove to a nearby clearing to get this. There were a couple of families there to witness the show. Nice people. I showed them mine, and they showed me theirs. Me with tripod, camera set to 5 second delay blah blah blah. Them, with their phones, long exposure magnificence and excellent results.
I’m a dinosaur. Luckily, it only happens every 80,000 years.