Happy New Year.

The wind is rushing around outside like — well, think of your favorite simile: the ocean; a herd of buffalo; a horde of flying monkeys.

Many of the trees around here are almost fully leafed out, so tonight they’re all tuned up for the wind to play; meanwhile the dying hackberry tree (badly burned two years ago) at the eastern end of the cabin is groaning and creaking like an arthritic ogre, adding to the ruckus. Twice tonight I’ve heard what I thought sounded like a freight train and panicked, trying to figure out how to lure Rusty and Sebastian into the basement before it was too late, only to realize that it really wasa freight train, carrying a load of gravel through the tunnel that runs for about a quarter-mile under this mountain.

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Step in to my Parlor…

The wasps and spiders have begun gathering on my porch, a sure sign that winter is well and truly over.

The numbers this year are somewhat unimpressive: last spring there were hundreds of wasps from three different species gathering under the eaves, while this year I’ve seen only a few, all of them Red Paper Wasps.

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World Enough, and Time.

The crane flies are out and about this evening.

These creatures are a familiar sight everywhere during their brief mating season each year — flimsy tangles of thready legs and cellophane wings smacking into window screens and lampshades, dangling from spider webs, drowning in teacups, the survivors finally disintegrating after a few days into a litter of disorganized limbs under the porch light.

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Goodbye – Hello.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced this month1 that the Eastern Cougar, also known as the Ghost Cat, is officially extinct.

The animal has probably been extinct for at least 70 years, but there have been a scattering of alleged sightings for decades that kept alive the idea that there might be a few of the big cats still surviving in wilderness areas of Pennsylvania and New York. After investigating many claims and reviewing the available data on others, the feds have finally decided that the Ghost Cat is now just that, one more of nature’s ghosts.

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