…nice things happen. It started out crummy; Judy took her iPad along on a shopping trip because she ends up showing pictures to the people she meets. That part wasn’t bad, it was normal, she takes the iPad everywhere. It has photos, books, email, contacts, google search,….. This last trip, she accidentally left it somewhere. When she got home, we searched the house. We searched the car. Sometimes we look right at things and miss them, so we searched everything again. Judy called the stores she had been in. She got back in the car and retraced her steps. Nothing. She called Verizon to disable the internet access, but there was nothing else she could do to make the iPad undesirable for someone else. We have a “Where’s my Droid app for our phones, but we hadn’t activated that app for the iPad yet. We had the conversation that most people are honest and that the lost device will probably turn up, even if it takes a few days. We just need to give it some time and hope it didn’t end up in nefarious hands. That night I got a telephone call. The iPad had been left in the shopping cart at Lowe’s. Judy put the cart in the cart return. An older couple picked up a cart on their way in, shopped, returned to their car, and when they were unloading their cart they found that the red plastic flap where you put kids in the shopping cart was also an iPad in a red case. (Judy keeps it in a red case so it will be easy to find.) English is not the first language of this couple and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t trust to just take it back into the store; thinking they might get accused of stealing. They drove home and showed it to their daughter, who then phoned her way through Judy’s Outlook contact list and I was the first one to pick-up. They drove another 20 miles back to a meeting spot with us to make the exchange. They went way out of their way to be good. Sometimes nice things just happen.
Yucca
The native yucca here in South Texas is called Spanish Dagger.
Cool name. Nice yucca.
Seems like it’s always in bloom.
Cool name. Nice yucca. Seems like it’s always in bloom. Tonight’s dinner
Smoked chicken.
Yum! Judy will make chicken tacos out of the leftovers.
Yum! Judy will make chicken tacos out of the leftovers. I’m surprised
I thought anything that looked like a monarch butterfly in South Texas in the winter would be a Monarch mimic; something that looks like a Monarch, but isn’t really. Like the Viceroy. Here is my Monarch.
Here is a Viceroy (from the internet).
They look a lot alike. The Viceroy looks almost exactly like a Monarch, but it has that line across the hindwings that the Monarch doesn’t. (There are other differences too, but the line on the hindwings might be the most obvious.) You can’t see all of the hindwings of my Monarch, but you can see enough to tell that they don’t have that black line. Not only that, but the male and female monarch are patterned slightly differently. See those two black spots on the hindwing of the Monarch, just to either side of the body? It’s those two spots that make this a male Monarch. The female has slightly bolder black lines, and it doesn’t have those two spots. I thought all Monarch butterflies wintered in Mexico. But now that I ask, I’m told that a few Monarchs over-winter here in South Texas. I want to state for the record that asking a question about this butterfly doesn’t really change anything. There are bird watchers and there are butterfly watchers. Some people do both. Not me though. For all these years, looking at birds, I have resisted looking at butterflies, maintaining that I can’t afford another compulsion. Figuring out which bird I’m looking at is challenge enough without getting distracted by a gazillion different kinds of butterflies fluttering all about. I remain a birder, not a butterflier.
Here is a Viceroy (from the internet). They look a lot alike. The Viceroy looks almost exactly like a Monarch, but it has that line across the hindwings that the Monarch doesn’t. (There are other differences too, but the line on the hindwings might be the most obvious.) You can’t see all of the hindwings of my Monarch, but you can see enough to tell that they don’t have that black line. Not only that, but the male and female monarch are patterned slightly differently. See those two black spots on the hindwing of the Monarch, just to either side of the body? It’s those two spots that make this a male Monarch. The female has slightly bolder black lines, and it doesn’t have those two spots. I thought all Monarch butterflies wintered in Mexico. But now that I ask, I’m told that a few Monarchs over-winter here in South Texas. I want to state for the record that asking a question about this butterfly doesn’t really change anything. There are bird watchers and there are butterfly watchers. Some people do both. Not me though. For all these years, looking at birds, I have resisted looking at butterflies, maintaining that I can’t afford another compulsion. Figuring out which bird I’m looking at is challenge enough without getting distracted by a gazillion different kinds of butterflies fluttering all about. I remain a birder, not a butterflier. This looks like
… a Monarch Butterfly.
But they’re not here yet are they? Aren’t they still in South America preparing to fly north?
But they’re not here yet are they? Aren’t they still in South America preparing to fly north?