h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just six feet to my right, on the other side of the glass door, is a mockingbird nest. My neighbor alerted me to the fact that he'd seen them zipping in and out from my passiflora feotida hirsutissma and thought they'd been building in it. I responded immediately to this by brining Ganesh and Oghma out to that section of the yard. (they are normally indoor kitties and are quite frightened to be out on their own, but will explore anywhere that is very close to where I am present) I rubbed them all over the trellises, and made sure we were out long enough to interrupt a feeding cycle. I didn't know how long such a cycle might be, because this was early in the season and they were still surreptitiously building, mind you, but stayed out a good half-hour in any case.


All to no avail. The rockabilly Country & Western boys next door moved out late last winter and now we seem to have a staid-couple-plus-one-renter on that side of my garden. I think that the mockingbirds had gained a taste for danger from the loud music and comings and goings from when they themselves were raised and from their last year nesting in the nerium oleander over there. So, the threat of being divebombed by my hummingbirds, the scent of the cats (who having been purebred never really got the idea that those interesting tiny cheeping things might be tasty) and the loud sounds from Peirigill's GameCube were possibly just like a siren song to them. They came over here instead.

Now, I am not getting any butterflies on my passion vines at all, they and all their caterpillars are being EATEN. I will never get to see any orb spiders in my garden this year at all. They even have the temerity to swoop in when I am pruning to snatch for baby-food my unfortunate wolf-spiders who are frantically scrambling up the garden wall back into the safety of the green, and then brandish their wings at me threateningly when I am between them and their squat. It turns out that the 40 minutes or so that I take to water that section of the garden IS too long, but they are amazingly enterprising at figuring out how to zip in behind my head.



Did I ASK them to come build right in front of my side door? There are some enterprising squirrels (also nesting) in the washingtonia palm nearby and occasionally they will make a foray. So far they've been roundly chased off, but I am rooting for them.

I've been listening to British funk band Jamiroquai lately. There's a song that reminds me of you, called 'Corner of the Earth'. There's a sample of it that you can hear here: http://music.msn.com/artist/?artist=16189520

And the lyrics are here: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jamiroquai/69428.html

(I apologise in advance for my musical tastes!)

I think I made a mistake about the song sample.

Okay, I've sorted it. If you haven't heard it already, you'll find a free download of it down near the bottom of this page: http://www.andreawilkinson.com/sentences/archives/2002_12_09.html

But I warn you, it's SLOW to download! About 5 minutes with broadband. And you need Realplayer, but that's easy enough to get.

You see, it's the tune as well as the lyrics that makes me think of you.

How are the baby bsrtaads getting on?

I almost managed to get Gothly holding an orb spider yesterday--a diddy little female. But then I went and dropped her, scaring Gothly in the process. Next time....

My computer is ancient and so can't quite manage the audio download and playback thing. I will wander off to the local music megastore and have a listen there, to see what I sound like to you.

The brstaads are still attacking me and my neighbors. Something seems to have taken them down a peg and made them altogether less nasty about it though. I was seriously considering seeing if I could volunteer at the LA Zoo so I could pick up some urine from something that dines on middle-sized birds, but this seems unnecessary just now.

I was putting together a collection of music samples from various CDs that I own with the idea of at least getting some 'rent' from the mockingbirds by etching sounds that I like into the musical part of their brains. This requires me to get assistance from friends who actually own the needed equipment to make the edits and burns. So far they've been fairly dilatory, so I am not sure that it will be prepared to play and re-play by the time they leave.

It was an idle whimsy on my part. If they come back next year, I will be prepared.

As for musical taste, Claude Bolling's "Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano" is one of my favorite albums, and it has some mockingbird-like riffs on several of it's movements.

When I think of you on walkabout talking to people, I think of the urban-picaresque Eels' song "Going over to Susan's house".

"etching sounds that I like into the musical part of their brains."

That sounds like a great idea! Now I'm hoping those orb-spider-eating bsrtaads *will* come back to haunt you next year. You gotta do it! You just gotta.

I've just had a listen to some Internet MP3's of the music you mentioned. Looks like I'm going to have to add Claude Bolling to my birthday list. Isn't he brill! Very you.And I see what you mean about Susan's House: I do meet people like that. But at least we've got a pretty setting for people to drown in their own personal hells. When it's not raining.

I made a resolution the other day to stop complaining about the rain.