Rolling on.

Further content forthcoming, but since I've posted Blood Letting I feel like I can say I'm horribly tempted by this:



It wouldn't be hard to find a plot and hit the wordcount - it's only 10,000 words, and I can do that in a little over a week if I've got a good start. And I'd either write about Danny's years on the road, or I'd write about House and Wilson getting into trouble and the trouble getting worse one summer night in Princeton.

The only trouble is I don't have much beyond those ideas, although I admit I'm leaning towards the second idea. Maybe I should sign up and just start writing and see what happens.

I still think it's awesome that Davis has a wiki.

It turns out I haven't talked much about the nature and wildlife I've been seeing in Davis. And that's practically criminal, what with everything I've seen these days. I've been making an effort to get out of the house - soak up the sunlight and heat and the town itself - and I've been seeing a lot. I've chased jackrabbits, watched nests, photographed babies, and danced for a parrot.

Tuesday started out with babies: the scrub jay nest I spotted on Sunday is still inhabited, which I learned when a squirrel got too close and the mother chased it away, yelling and cawing. It was hot, dry, without any clouds at all, and I got a four-for-four with the northern Sutter Buttes, Diablo to the south, the Sierras to the east, and the Coast Range to the west. I'd gone out to the south end of town to get a good look at Diablo and marvel at the flatness. When I started to go back into town I stopped by the veterinary pathology lab to watch some yellow-billed magpies, then turned down a dirt road I'd never much thought about - it was one of those things where I thought I'd go down it some other day, and realized that it was finally some other day. And a good thing, too: there was a jackrabbit on the road, just sitting there. Not for long, though, because I realized there was a rabbit and I was on a bike, and the rabbit realized that at the same time and the chase was on.

I never caught up to it, even when it stopped to look around and check on me - it was always off again right away, bounding along ears held up high. It was a long, straight road and I kept thinking it'd go to the side but it didn't, not until we got to the end and it went down a turn and I lost it in the grass. Then I looked around and found out I was at an offshoot of the campus with an abandonded snack truck - the kind that sells hot dogs and sodas - plus a couple of motorboats, some farming equipment, old test tubes, a big lab building, a truck, and a magpie's nest up in a palm tree.

Wednesday I went back up to the North Ponds on the route around the park instead of through it, partly because I could and partly because I saw what I'd hoped to be there: geese in the grass. Geese nest in the ponds and several pairs had climbed out and come up the hillside to walk around in the tall native grasses and maybe have a nibble along with the change in scenery. I took some pictures and went over to one of the lookouts, where I ate fresh cherries and watched fuzzy yellow goslings follow their parents before heading back home.

Today started out quiet - a cupcake, a cemetary, spending time inside my head - and got loud when I went up to the Ponds and found out it was Celebrate Davis day, with blooths and prizes and food galore. And to illustrate the sort of town Davis really is, valet parking for bikes. I walked around a bit, spinning roulette wheels to win post-it notes and talking to a chef at a food booth about his restaurant's sauces, and then went back on my way - but I got stopped by a parrot. His name is Maya, he's friends with a dog named Max, and I didn't get the name of his owner but learned that he hand-raised the captive-born Maya and answers lots of questions all the time, especially this time of year when he takes the dog and bird out for walks in the late afternoon. There was a little girl on a walk with her dad, and she shared some of her banana, and I bobbed up and down and swayed from side to side, and pretty soon Maya was bobbing and swaying along with me. He also has a keen eye for hawks and has a very specific sound he makes to tell his owner he's spotted one. I finally tore myself away from him and went around the ponds, stopping to take pictures of geese and watch them fly right above me, and then went home.

Unrelated to nature but still contextual, Celebrate Davis is capped off by fireworks, and the opening salvo is at nine o'clock. I'd forgotten about it, and when I remembered - at nine-oh-one - at first I wasn't sure if it was fireworks or a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier.