I am almost finished putting the Animal Tracking honor together. I still need to find several tracks, including wild turkey, earthworm, robin, and crow. I also need some pigeon tracks, but I realized during lunch that a bunch of pigeons roost under the parking garage on Storrs Avenue in Concord, a short walk from the office. So after I ate, I grabbed my camera and went looking for pigeon tracks. I found them in spades. There were hundreds – perhaps thousands – of pigeon footprints there. So I snapped a couple of pictures and then hightailed it back to the office. Later, I loaded the photos on my laptop, but to my dismay, I could not see any of the tracks! I decided that the problem was that the flash went off, and lit up every nook and cranny, eliminating all shadows. Unfortunately, these tracks were pretty much invisible without the shadows.

It was a slow day at the office, so I decided to go out and try again. I managed to take one picture with the flash off, but my camera seems incapable of attaining focus without the flash, so the first photo was a bust. I didn’t get a second photo – the battery on the camera ran out. I find this puzzling, because I just changed the batteries the previous day. I use rechargables, and I figure that either these batteries have taken their last charge, or I took the old batteries out and then (in a mild state of confusion) put the same ones back in again. When I got home, I tried that again. If these take a charge, I’ll know the answer.

There were no tracks in yesterday’s smoothed mud. I smoothed it a bit more, but it was probably a pointless exercise, as it was thundering when I did it, and the forecast is for rain all weekend. That little storm water pond will surely overflow and cover my nice, smooth mud. But I’ll check it in the morning anyhow.

I went to check my little (and I do mean little) garden afterwards and was surprised to find several pea pods. Almost enough to make a mouthful. Beth helped me harvest them. She washed them for me, and put them in a pot of water too. I boiled them for about a minute. I guess there were half a dozen pods all told. Beth wouldn’t eat them. David tried one and made like he was going to gag. Jonathan eagerly gobbled one down, and I ate the rest myself. Man… they were good.

That inspired me to pull all the weeds after dinner.