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A bird in the hand

 A friend found a baby bird.  It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t dead.  She didn’t know what to do with it, so she picked it up  and dropped it in a box,…and brought it to us. It’s a common pauraque.  Remember them?  Their natural defense is to hold perfectly still and be invisible. It didn’t work for this guy because he was on a sidewalk. He can probably get by on his own just fine.  We have the right habitat all around us, so we released him on the other side of our fence next to the mesquite forest. When he grows up we’ll hear him calling at night in the summer. 
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Chiggers

 …are a figment of my imagination. We are definitely into chigger season.  We’ve got summer weather; it has been in the high nineties every day.  Every overnight low is 78 degrees, except when it’s 80.  It is definitely chigger weather.  I have been walking through tall grass; bite free.  It was on Friday that I made my fateful observation, that in spite of all these circumstances, not a single chigger bite.  I didn’t walk in chigger habitat at all on Friday; we drove all day.  Saturday morning I noticed the first bumps.  By afternoon, I had serious itchy chigger bites from my ankles to my knees. Where did they come from?  Not from tall grass; I wasn’t in any.  I never had a bite until I said something.  Chiggers didn’t exist until I thought about them.  Chiggers are a figment of my imagination.  I proved it. 
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This is not a winter scene

  It’s June. Everything at the salt lakes is salt encrusted; even deer tracks. Along the edges of the lakes are the ruins of salt harvesting endeavors; pipes, hoses, and holding ponds. I don’t know how the process worked, whether they just cut out blocks of lakebed salt from below, or pumped water into evaporation ponds to concentrate the salt.  Maybe both. 
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Friday

 Another knee-cation day in Corpus Christi.  It’s a three hundred fifty mile driving day with a shot in the middle. The first two knee shots didn’t go all that well.  As late as Wednesday of this week we were thinking there was going to be no alternative to a knee replacement and we may as well get the surgery on the schedule as soon as we can.  Thursday night, Judy’s knee started to feel a little better for the first time.  We got the third gel shot in it today and it still feels okay tonight.  It’s not good enough to go for a walk, but it is better than it has been in weeks if not months.  Maybe the third shot was the charm. Now the protocol is to give it six weeks and see if it improves.