Um.. Um... I just got back from Carkeek Park where I've been hanging out with my trusty field guide, surreptitiously killing barnacles. (I'm really sorry. I am not enlightened. I wanted to see what they looked like inside. I'll become a barnacle in my next life. I know. Ugh. It's done. It's out of my system and I will never EVER EVER do it again.)
BUT THEY ARE COOL! Who knew that Barnacles have the longest penis:body size ratio of any living creature known to man? Not me. I honestly don't think that I ever gave Acorn Barnacles a second thought until today. But I cracked one open, took a gander at the cirri it uses to filter feed... and spent some time actually thinking about these guys. Imagine. Ok. To begin with... they can change sex. BUT they don't self-fertilize. It's not like that. The thing is... after a brief expulsion into and a wild dance amid the ocean's miasmic pulse of newborn plankton, these guys land on something and CEMENT their heads to whatever it is for the rest of their lives. They live all alone in these tiny stone houses of calcium carbonate sucking up the detritus the world throws their way... until one day... they literally reach out and touch someone. They knock on the door of the other stone houses around them... and hopefully, someone lets them in. And, I guess gender just doesn't matter. As long as they find someone within the filimental scope of their own lengthy protuberance... they're all set. As long as they land in the right place, hopefully amid a bunch o' utha barnacles, LIFE is good. Right?
But... if that's the case... why is it just one barnacle per little stone house? Why not two or three?
Hmmm... I guess, even for barnacles, it's nice sometimes just to shut the door and be alone once in a while.
I was running along the Burke Gilman today when a hummingbird suddenly zips overhead--breaking the sound barrier and kicking birdy ass down the trail.
Thrilling. A hummingbird is always thrilling... every time. It doesn't matter that these bizarre irridescent hovercrafts are LEGION in Seattle at the moment (in the most undemonic sense possible). I can't help it... every time I see one I have to stop what I'm doing and grin dumbly into the sky/tree/bushes for at least five minutes.
So... I'm doing this. Trying to avoid the cocky lycra jersey boys of the BGT --clipped into their pedals and deathly afraid of anything that might make them slow down and consequently tip over. Bike bells are ringin' . A cacophony of "On your left!" "On your left!" is being screamed with tremulous paranoia by the herding helmet heads. And, I... I am experiencing the shear bliss of watching a hummingbird sit still.
And then something happens. (This is really cool).
The hummingbird buzzes over to a little bush and plops down next to a teeny fuzzy gray thing with a gaping needle beak... and proceeds to barf semi-digested nectarjuice down the throat of what can only be a BABY HUMMINGBIRD?
Do such miracles really exist?
They do!! And LOOK!!! LOOK! There's one right there!!!
I so desperately wanted to jump up and down and point this out to the bikers... the joggers... the woman in the motorized wheelchair... but DAMN. No one looked like they wanted me to interrupt their intensely serious leisure migrations.
Oh... I was so sad.
Poor baby hummingbird. I was the only person who was going to get to see it... and I'm not cool. Poor me... if nobody else saw it I was going to have to hold on to this moment all by myself 'til the end o' days. Could I do it? What if I failed? No. I couldn't let that happen. This was a moment to be remembered!
So... I spun around... and lunged at the slowest trailblazer I could find (a small blonde university gal lugging a big backpack) and I said, "wanna see something really cool?", in the most nonthreatening nonchalant manner I could muster.
She hesitated slightly... but then CAVED. HAHAHAHAHA!
And, so, the two of us squatted together by the side of the trail grinning dumbly into the bushes for five minutes or so.
It was lovely.
