Last night we were in the darkened atrium watching The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime when suddenly, right in the middle of a very tense scene surrounded by orcs, there was a big thud followed by thumping up on the roof...

We were startled, turned on some outside lights, and went up to the loft to close the ventilation windows.  In the loft I could hear whatever it was cross from the east side all the way across to the west side as I was closing windows right below it...

Still have no idea what it was.  Our roof is a high-ceilinged 2-stories without external access except to flying creatures.  There are no squirrels or raccoons here.  There are monkeys in nearby mountains but I've never seen any in our little valley and the nearest tree is much too far a leap.  Don't know what kind of bird it could have been thumping around on an open roof in the middle of the night, but that's the most probable answer so far.  The preferred answer would be a flying squirrel gliding down from the surrounding cedar trees.  They do exist but they are rare and I've never seen one.  I would love to add flying squirrels to the menagerie that we have somehow organically developed here over the past few years--
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Let it be a flying squirrel.  Please not goblins.  nor monkeys.
Fluffy Flying Squirrels would be delightful.  (I think)

UPDATE:
Climbed through the ventilation windows onto the roof this afternoon to investigate during the daylight...  I'm not Aragorn, but I'm pretty observant and I found nothing of interest to report.  So we are left with a mystery to be solved another time...

CASE CLOSED:
Last week's mysterious rooftop visitor returned to thump about again, this time with more urgency or desperation or mania...  but this time I was ready for action.  I turned off all the lights and pointed my big flashlight through the loft ventilation windows to catch a passing glimpse of the long tail and cute face of a masked palm civet.  A bit rare in this region and totally nocturnal, they look kinda like a raccoon-ferret-skunk hybrid.  Not a flying squirrel as hoped, not some large bird as expected, but also not a monkey, goblin, or orc...

A NEW CHAPTER:
Well, it's been about half a year, and the situation has evolved.  It turned out that our initial visitor was a masked civet jumping onto the roof from the nearby overgrown jungle trees.  Civets are cute, but very destructive to houses, and this one started scratching the roof maniacally trying to get in and live in our loft.  After several midnight visitations, I trimmed back the overgrown branches beyond its jumping range.  No more thumping in the night, and the surrounding forest had a healthier layering to the foliage.

A little later, we were visited by a badger who took shelter from a morning rainstorm UNDER the house.  Also quite cute, and also potentially destructive to the foundation, so after he woke up in the evening, we discouraged his returning by asking Alexa to play sounds of barking dogs and howling wolves...  which honestly felt a little silly.

Finally, six months later in the spring, a midnight thumping and skittering on the roof signaled a new arrival from the tall surrounding cedar trees.

And guess who?
Yes, at last, a Japanese giant flying squirrel.  Yay!

Survived a major typhoon last night with no damage.  Very thankful!
Today I got stung on the knee by an Asian Giant Hornet while clearing downed bamboo and branches from the driveways...  Ouch!  She must have been agitated by the intense storming, because even though they're known as Murder Hornets in the US, my interactions with them here are usually pretty calm and uneventful.  I felt light-headed with elevated heart rate and was a little concerned about being alone in such an isolated place, so a very kind neighbor drove me to the nearest hospital to wait out any adverse reactions...

Well, now I'm sitting in the lobby waiting for my wife to pick me up from having spent the typhoon helping at her family home.  Thankfully the only adverse reaction is pain...  it's considerable.  it's bearable.  and it's definitely nothing like the time my foot was run over by a forklift...

I'll still have to hobble around and clear a few more big bamboo branches before we can drive up and park the car, but with a little reiki and a lot of gratitude for what didn't go for the worse, I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep safe and sound--

what Craiyon AI thinks a mad murder hornet looks like...  yeah, pretty close...

Father’s Gift

A love of landscape
     of smooth deserts
     of broken mountains
and lakes like flattened wads of tinfoil
     some with water
     some without
but no oceans

A sense of adventure
in cars
     taking turns fast
in jeeps
     not so fast
     but slow winding treks
     to abandoned mines
on two wheels
     churning in the mud
     and chasing
     imaginary water
     irrigating the sage with desert
in a boat
     churning a hard channel
     to ski in
     and mapping edges
and hiking
          the top of Angel’s landing
          1000’
     wading
          the end of Whittier narrows
          miles between the cliffs
     scrambling
          into the rutted crater
          of an ancient volcano
     and stumbling
          in dark limestone caverns
          mostly shallow and dirty
          and pissed in
Risking
     severe abrasions
     broken arms
     running out of gas
     always imminent flash floods
     one possible lava eruption
     and rattlesnakes
But no sea-faring

An eye for scavenging
     in red-brown desert dumpsites from the 50’s
          bits of old, dulled glass sun-colored blue
          and rusted tin cans in the shape of log cabins
     in mineshafts and leveled grey cabins from the 1850’s
          rags of stiff yellow newsprint
          shell casings, square head nails, and railroad spikes
          bed frames
     caves and sandstone cliffs
          for mineral rosettes, veins of gold, arrowheads,
          and fossils
     lakes and piers
          dredging with five-pound magnets
     And old TV’s, VCR’s, stereos, and cars
          for bits of colored wire,
          good transistors, diodes,
          switches,
          and condensers to make shocker grenades

A taste for wild game
     venison
     rattlesnake
     rabbit shot with a revolver from a moving camper
     and wild boar never found
     bass, trout, catfish
And how to gut it, skin it, and preserve it

Fascination with artifacts
     wired
          circuit boards, copper wire, silver solder
          housed in metal and wood
     geared
          transmissions, brake systems, pulleys
          caked in dry, sticky dirt
     cast and machined
          engines and their parts
               pistons
               cylinders
               manifolds
          guns and their keys, pins, and stops
          bearings—balls, rollers, and their cages
          metal
          all wrapped in fine oil
And how to dismantle them
     feel them
     and fit them

A green army belt
A nickel plated .357

A combat medic dress coat
complete with shoulder braid
I am particularly fond of that shoulder braid

The smell of sage

The smell of leather
and light machine oil

Cool dank castles of large appliance boxes
that could be broken down into tank treads
to roll away in
down-hill, when too confining

--Jeffrey Scott

It's the winter holidays and it has been cold of late, often dropping just below freezing overnight.  Though the mornings start quite 'brisk', the passive solar well of light that is the heart of Sant-o-menel slowly collects the warmth of the sun's lovely rays throughout the day.  And by 3pm, while it is only 12C (54F) outside, I am here on the couch 'glistening' in a pink t-shirt and loving it.  It will eventually start cooling down as the sun sets around 5pm, and I will close the curtain at the top of the well to hold in the heat for the evening.  Gradually we will layer up again into the usual winter-wear but hold off lighting a fire in the woodstove until we need its cheery warmth after dinner around 9pm.
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I hope we can all take inspiration from collaboration with nature's abundance in our lives--