Thugs

Tonight from my dining room window, I watched a band of thug crows in action. After a few minutes of a Three Stooges-style quarrel over a stolen pecan, Larry jogged over to my vegetable garden containers. Without hesitation, he hopped up on my pepper planter, pecked at and rub on my cherry pepper plant, plucked out the plastic ID marker, paraded around the pot a few times (as if to show his buddies), and then flew away with it. Curley, Moe, and the rest of his band of thugs flew after him, like he had just robbed a convenience store and the first ones back to the tree got the cigarettes.

This is going to be a long summer...

The Firefly

The first firefly of summer drifted through the twilight this evening.

It brought with it a flood of memories. Memories of warm evenings in my grandmother endless back yard, chasing little yellow flashes until it was so dark that their light was nearly all I could see.

I stood in the silence of my front porch tonight, watching this lone firefly dance through the air. It seemed to whisper “summer is here”, and then vanish into the neighbor’s yard.

All creatures have a purpose. The firefly’s must be to make us smile.

(None of these photos are mine. The last one, the one in the golden light, can be credited to National Geographic, but the others were just out there on Google.)