The hummers that live in my yard (I found a nest last week) love their showers, and as it turns out, a dip in the pool now and then. This is the water pump on my small pot with the deer scare that is not visible here.

I never do handheld photos well, but only had a few seconds to take the shot.

It was wriggling in the dish this morning. After a bit of cleanup, there was another photo session, during which I decided it must be some form of June bug, both due to its appearance and the remarkable ability to navigate on its back.

After taking the photos, I went into another room to see if these turned out better than the ones yesterday. When I returned a few minutes later, it was nowhere to be found. Oh no! A fat larva almost two inches long lost in the living room.

But happily, there it was on the carpet, some three feet from where I left it. For all its dormant appearance, it can really move when the need arises.

The pot had not been moved for at least a year. Underneath was quite a surprise. After a brief photo session, I put it in the bowl reserved for the cornmeal/peanut butter mix that the birds at the feeder are addicted to.

Usually, the grubs I find are perhaps 1/2″ long. Once a live thing is in the bowl, I turn around, and something has seized it. However, the birds came by for a look and shunned this offering. Why, they could cut it up into a few steaks, a couple of roasts and maybe some spareribs and a ham or two. (I only show a portion of this beast to stay within the constraints of decency.)

Curiously, it seemed the first chickadee that happened by buried it in the cornmeal. I pulled it back to the top. Later, a family member came home, noticed that it was once again covered, and excavated it. It took a while, but I finally realized that the grub was doing the burying.

By nighttime, it was still trying very hard to cover itself.

Tomorrow I will try to find out just what it is, or what it will become. Don’t worry, I will share.

Meanwhile, here are some similar-looking brethren. The ones on the top row appear to have been bathed, compared to my specimen in its unwashed glory.

I first encountered hair-chewing when volunteering in a child’s first grade classroom. One of my tutees could not begin any task without wrapping a strand of her hair around her fingers, then sticking it in her mouth. As time went on, I wondered why her mother didn’t just cut her hair really short.

There’s a revolting photo of what happens when this is carried to an extreme. Scroll down to the second story here, and put that sandwich down.

Thanks to my continuing efforts to thwart the squirrels, today is the first day that a dove could feed relatively undisturbed. I had placed metal pie pans around the edges of the feeding table in hopes of splashing the occasional curious squirrel. Over the weekend, the water evaporated, and the poor dove kept upending the pans when it landed, terrifying itself with the racket.

Even more interesting, the sight of the dove didn’t intimidate the smaller birds. When the towhee eats, nothing else comes by, but the chickadees, juncos and titmice all shared at the same time, more or less. However, the dove was the champion eater.

Perhaps tomorrow I can bring out the 5D and get some decent shots without giving it a heart attack.

The baby was in the raised beds, enjoying a morning shower. The parents were frantic in the oaks above, screaming while trying to gain a foothold on the tips of the branches that didn’t really support their weight well.

I thought it was another photo op.

As soon as I got out there with the tripod, one dove at me. Then the other parent came from another direction. Meanwhile, the baby found the fence to be a formidable obstacle. When I say baby, I mean fledgling, and full-sized at that. I crept closer.

In the past, I’ve had parent crows swoop down before. One year, a fledgling was down somewhere in the neighborhood. To make sure no human would bother it, Mom and Pop attacked everyone out for a walk. This went on for several days.

The morning’s fledgling was unnerved by the sight of the tripod and camera plus moving human. Suddenly, it had the ‘Oh, right, I can fly’ moment, and took off for the top of the fence. The parents went beserk, unsure of whether to keep going after me or to encourage their baby.

Not a single shot did I manage to get. But I am wide awake.

The dark-eyed junco fledglings feed on their own now, taking big helpings from the cornmeal/peanut butter bowl. Shyer, the titmouse fledglings have just begun coming to the feeder. One was happily eating away when a parent junco pounced on it. The juncos chase away most other birds from time to time, but before I knew it, the fledgling was on its back, helpless with Papa junco on top pecking away.

I jumped up and banged on the window. Since then the parent titmice are making multiple trips with beaks full of cornmeal mix for the traumatized young.

Sometime I will rig up a webcam so you can see these antics too. There are plans afoot to build a bluebird nesting house or two. And I’ve got to figure out a way to film the hummingbirds that regularly jump into the spray from the hose for a shower.

Friday night at the produce stand next to Trader Joe’s, two of them were flanking a woman sitting on the curb. One was saying, ‘M’am, we know you’ve some substance, we just don’t know what it was yet.’ By the time I finished and was heading to the car, here comes another cop, a woman, moving briskly to help out. There were four police cars in the lot.

Saturday, we were slowed down by cops directing traffic around an accident in Palo Alto. Back home, we crept along near Sunnyvale-Saratoga, where chunks of tire debris littered the intersection. Off to the side, a large family with lots of little ones was talking to the cops.

Due to the heat, we mostly stayed home, but whenever we ventured out, there they were.

It used to be that the streetsweeper came by every Friday, made a few passes around my street and that was that. Then there was a water shortage. The city switched to using recycled water. If I didn’t close the door, the smell would linger in the house. A hard-to-describe smell, not real stinky but maybe a stench with a few of its aromatics removed.

The visits tapered to once a month. Sometimes, it seemed that it stopped coming around altogether. Today marks a definite change. Or maybe I got the deranged streetsweeper.

Around ten, he showed up, made two passes. I got the door closed in time. About 30 minutes later, here he comes again, makes a few more passes as if he missed some spots. Then he rumbles by again a few minutes later. I’m starting to get mad that I have to keep getting up. While it’s not as hot as it’s going to get over the next few days (up to the 90s, depending on which forecaster is consulted), it’s still stuffy with the door closed.

Now, at 1:30-ish, he’s here again. I don’t believe it. Is he making up for all the times he skipped? Does he have a girlfriend on the street somewhere? I’ll be heading out in a few minutes, and I bet the street is really, really clean.

And now, of course, there’s a ripeness in the air.

The artist explores a new medium. The results don’t look like your average computer art samples.

An Indian village of 2,000 families has 250 sets of twins. That’s six times the usual rate.

At the outlets, this little bird was found behind a trash can. High winds must have knocked it out of the nest in a large letter on the storefront. Another few gusts, and it would be in the street. It was not able to grasp yet, and didn’t want to be fed by well-meaning but untrained humans.

Off it went to Palo Alto’s Wildlife Rescue, where staff said one eye may have sustained injuries in the fall.

The idea was for an afternoon of art supply shopping and photo prop hunting. However, the sprinkles here turned into real rain in SF, and never let up. I had the wrong shoes for puddle-jumping, and decided props could wait another day. Mostly, I was hungry.

There are times when the family cook (me) rebels, and on such a blustery, wet day, wants pot roast and mashed potatoes, or some such comforting equivalent. We were, I thought, in the vicinity of Mel’s, good for quick, if somewhat mediocre, fulfillment.

The family member who was driving thought that either Mel’s had moved or had gone out of business. This seemed unlikely(there are three the last time I checked). But the rain became a torrential downpour, so we headed out of the city into an even worse storm, the kind known as a gullywasher where I come from. Visibility was frighteningly low in broad daylight.

But so much rain in May can only quiet the water-rationing types, if only for a little while.