Walking-wounded..
(begun Tuesday 7th January at 3.45am..)
I'd been propped up against the windowsill, on Cloud 9 for ages, watching at least four bats perform their daredevil antics above our front lawn, and they're still at it, even as I'm up and at the desk...
Again, it makes a mockery of my fondness for using the term 'the technology saturates the area', for those creatures wouldn't be there if there was anything in the air that bothered them... It's odd that they're restricting themselves to just the space above our front lawn, but maybe there's an invisible swarm of miggies that they're feeding on...
Have they actually learned to avoid the artificially created paths of the signals that cross our frontage?
Oh, they're there all right.. Our Freddie at No. 12 has that powerful light clipped to his picket fence and turned down to face in this direction, and beyond that, there's another equally bright light on one of the Plumber's outbuildings at No. 14...
Neither of them appear to be 'talking' to THIS beauty, tacked onto the valley-facing end of the bunker at No. 6, as the Madagascar fern HERE is growing taller than it's ever done before, whereas in the past the fronds at the top would be burned and dead...
The latest bit of magic to come my way involves the big round basin I'd bought at the China Mall a year or so back... The GameWrecker tells me it's probably zinc-coated tin, and I'd slotted it in among all the plants under the birdbath HERE... Whereas a couple of hadedas would happily bathe together in it's fibreglass predecessor, they seem to avoid the shiny replacement like the plague, for reasons I can't fathom...
I've shown you pictures of how the rock 'ladder' I'd created for the toads had turned black and slimy within days, and that when I came to hose it out, there'd be thick gooey black silt on the bottom...
I'd scrubbed it out last week some time, and had re-filled it.. Or so I'd thought. A couple of days later and I discovered it was standing empty.. As clean as a whistle, and not so much as a drop of water in the bottom.
I'd shrugged it off as forgetfulness on my part, and had filled it forthwith... Yesterday, I found it had been drained again.. What puzzles me the most is not that it was empty and dry, but that it was free of the black dirt that normally collects in the bottom.. I'd refilled it, and late yesterday afternoon I'd lugged out the Panasonic and taken a couple of shots to show the water level was right up to the rim..
If, when I check later this morning, it's emptied again, I'll have to drag it out of it's sunken resting place to see if there's somehow been a hole punched in it's underside...
Highly unlikely, but just in case, I'd also brought the short length of hose that I keep out on the verandah for draining that pool, safely indoors...
You're bored? This is all insignificant stuff? Man, I'm not so sure.. You should know by now that the ultra- short laser beams are more than partial to zinc, and although I'd taken those two pictures while it was still bright daylight, around 4pm, one of them turned out to be pretty interesting... Will you check out all those bits of brilliant turquoise that appear to be dotted about that big rock under the water? It's companion photo, taken at a slightly different angle, shows nothing untoward at all, and yet THIS one is full of magic...
(You'll have to wait to see those results, but I will get to post them eventually.)
It's now 4.25am, and there's at least a half-dozen or more of those hand-sized bats going nuts just above our front lawn.. How they avoid crashing into the windows is a miracle in itself...
LATER at 4.40am
Any of you following the Save our Berea page on Facebook? The post they'd made yesterday regarding the resident's objections to that black-glass-fronted monstrosity that's gone up at the big intersection of Essenwood and Overport Drive? I'd commented to the effect that the owners appear to have abandoned aesthetics in favour of safety, as there was likely to be a huge amount of Smart City technology running by those traffic lights, hence the use of all of that laser-deflecting black glass.
Did my comment contribute in any way to the rough treatment meted out to me yesterday afternoon and evening?
I'd already begun taking direct hits at around midday, and by 1.48pm the house-alarm next door at No. 6 had begun it's now daily activation, and it had gone off a further five times after that...
With my damaged hearing I have to actively listen for it, but I find it worth logging each time...
It must have been around 3pm when I'd finally sent a text to Missus Balliram, citing the precise times her alarm had gone off, but there'd been no reply... By 6.10pm I'd bathed and was curled up in front of the TV sneaking a nap, when I was jerked awake by the arrival of the Carey Colon frequency, without any warning... A nasty one that is, as anyone living nearby who'd rushed off to their proctologist after the St. Phil's Director's early demise will tell you... Although typically, it had excluded the inclusion of the BackFire frequency, whoever had thought to employ that back-door horror had kept it going for far longer than usual... My civic-minded text to the Operative's better-half perhaps?
Had it been the same Shift Monitor on duty at 8.15pm, when someone had seen fit to drive a needle into my eye, and then again at 9.15pm, to unleash a flurry of ultra-short lasers at that same eye, with the result that it's red and inflamed this morning? It seems that all of my pleas for aid continue to fall on deaf and fearful ears, which is sad when you consider the years of entertainment I've provided for you here.. But hey, dems da breaks, right?
LATER at 5.30am
I suspect I've found the reason for the bat ballet I was treated to earlier this morning. When I'd gone out at around 5am to put the seed on the birdtray, I'd disturbed a cloud of minute insects feasting on the pawpaw leftovers... I also checked the hadeda's shiny tin basin to find the water level had indeed dropped to halfway down the rock 'ladder'... Natural evaporation? The stray cat that yowls in our yard these past weeks? No ways... I'll have to drain it myself and upend it, to see whether it's somehow developed a leak, although I don't see how that could've happened...
Right. I've now taken a whole lot more pictures for you.. Some with the flash and some without.. Typically, I don't know which produced THIS turquoise line running along the same large rock as in yesterday's efforts.. For some of the results show nothing out of the ordinary, and yet three show that bright blue line..
My Panasonic had politely asked me to replace the batteries almost as soon as I'd begun shooting.. Instead, I'd gone onto the verandah, removed the batteries for a moment, and then replaced them, before going back out to continue taking pictures without any further remote interference...
Do you still believe the rubbish that my cameras have a Fault that causes the spheres to appear in dozens of my photos? Despite that excellent picture I posted on Facebook of my ex-Treasurer? Taken after dark with the flash, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, although I'd picked up no orbs in the background on that occasion...
Did you ever get to watch the animated Happy Feet 1 and 2 feature films? If you enjoyed them as much as I did, you should look out for the doccie on BBC Knowledge Penguins - The spy in the huddle, that concerns the different penguin colonies... They've used life-like 'penguincams' to achieve some really astonishing results, and I have to say that the penguin's behaviour towards those brilliant man-made look-alikes all but had me crying with mirth, and is well worth a watch...
By the look of things, it's set to be another hot one out there today... Will I be treated to more of those fierce jabs to the upper jaw, head, and neck, as I go about my business? What combination of radio frequencies will the Controller choose to unleash on his now ultra-sensitive labrats today?
We can only wait and see...
Peace..
---oOo---
Tuesday 7th January 2014 at 8.52am.
