Breakfast At Bob’s Pond

Your table’s waiting.

Today, as you can see, it was foo-foo food.  Cookies, fruit, and coffee.  Isn’t that precious?

Tomorrow there will be pancakes.  8 am sharp.  You’re invited, of course.  Wellll…. maybe not all of you.  That would be a mess, and we’d run out.  So just you.  You know, the one who is reading this right now.  Don’t ever say this blog doesn’t have benefits.

If you’re late, be prepared to fight the ants for crumbs and remains.  Their antenna are already quivering.  For the purpose of issuing this invitation, I seem to have planted myself right smack in the middle of an Ant Interstate.  Mostly the big black sort are moving stuff, but there is a miniature version also out and scrambling about.  They don’t seem to mind each other much.  Commuters and truckers, all sharing the road.  With me.

I noticed this traffic with some alarm when I first sat down here.  But when they encountered my Mountain Boots, they just backed up and went around.  They don’t seem inclined to climb.  One Bold Adventurer managed to surmount my toe.  He briefly looked around a bit, then climbed back down.  Perhaps he’ll spread the word.  “Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along now.  Tote that load!  Heave that leaf!”

I suppose the biggest danger is that I’ll track them into the trailer on my shoes, and eventually end up with ill-mannered bedmates.  So, in the interest of interspecies cooperation, I moved a couple of feet toward the water.  Out on the County roads.  If they follow, I’ll have to find a way to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Out here in the midst of beneficent Nature, we critters follow the sun.  In bed by nine, up at six.  By 7 am this morning, the earliest you are ever going to hear a credible report from me, the prospect of bugs for breakfast seemed to motivate a lot of activity at Bob’s Pond.  (The name is an honorific.  The beaver don’t mind.)

Despite the cold, Madame Spider already has wings tangled in her web, and is up taking care of that.  Details are not for the squeamish.  Fish are leaping out of the water to gobble up flies and tinier things.  Midges?  I can’t see what they are getting.  Either it is breakfast, or there’s a credible threat down below.  I’m guessing they are all about having rather than being breakfast, since their mouths are open when they leap. 

Do fish scream?  Not audibly to this reporter.

They do seem to manage a version of the high five.  One Olympic wannabe actually skipped along the top of the pond, making three distinct slaps before returning home.  Now that’s entertainment.  Good luck ever getting any of this on camera, as you may have noticed.

Birds swoop low over the water.  One of them appears to be a Mountain Bluebird.  A solitary duck was present yesterday, but seems to have moved on.  A bit of willow branch floats upstream, preceded by the tiniest showing of black beaver nose.  Mr. Beaver is a shy sort.  A bit of nose is about all you’re going to get, unless you are Mrs. Beaver.  Then, I suspect, you are in for it.

Yaas.  Except for Bob, we’re all pretty busy here at Bob’s Pond.  Bob’s retired, and doesn’t care who knows it. 

Another damn idyllic day starting, at another damn idyllic campsite.  Quieter and a little bit shadier than my last spot.  I like it better here.  The Arkansas River was sometimes just a little too loud, a little too rambunctious.  A little too tempting.  Seemed like it’d like to bust something up, just for fun.  Like me.  Now I’m up a creek without a paddle, and liking it just fine.  Not much to complain about. 

Well, there’s my ankle.  I’m not winning any hiking medals.  A week after the sprain, I can get by without a cane.  Whoopee.  If I stay on it all day, it throbs all night.  Figures.  I always end up being the weak link in my plans.  Why should it be any different in Paradise?

Bob is inescapable.  Neighbors are not.