Twentynine Palms, 2010 - June 23

 

Slept in till about a quarter past six, and everybody else was up and running.

Steve and his helper (whose name I completely failed to get), and Newt were all out under the “porch” and as I headed toward the house to get started on my coffee, Bonzo trots up, proud as a peacock, with a small dead bunny in his mouth. Lovely. Just fucking lovely. After showing off his prize, he ambled off to show someone else and I ambled into the house. Born to hunt. Born to kill.

 

That, in some way shape or form, must have been what was holding his attention yesterday evening, although I’m not really sure about how the particulars of such a scenario might work in the real world.

No matter.

Nothing for it, so it can’t matter too much now, can it?

Newt pitched back into his “ranching” and was hard at it hanging the first piece of sheet metal on the outdoor shower enclosure posts. I walked by with the camera, and he advised that I could go shoot pictures or whatever, so I took him at his word and proceeded upon another slow and considered lap around the area, grabbing more shots as whim and fancy struck at me from either side, randomly.

   

At one point, a pretty tree with nice dark purple flowers on it caught my eye, and I thought I’d maybe get a close-up blossom shot or two, but I was jerked back to my senses by a couple of those weird large bugs that were circling the creosote yesterday.

       

Turns out they were not circling a creosote bush, but were centered on this guy with the purple flowers instead. Ok, fine. Whatever. Except it’s not so very fine, after all. They’re not large bugs with a “long pointy tail.” Nope. What they are, are great whacking-big black wasps, and the “long pointy tail” I saw is actually their last pair of legs dangling behind them while they slow-fly as large wasps will. Nasty-looking things, and I’m sure they’re fully capable of giving you one hell of a venom-packed wallop should you intrude upon them a little too closely. I very prudently backed away from the fucked up tree, and continued on my camera way elsewhere, shuttering whatever chance and circumstance continued to place before me.

 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very well then, no photographs of any pretty purple flowers this morning.

   

   
 
 
   

   

Later on, Newt informed me that it’s a willow tree, and the “large bugs” are called Vampire Wasps, and they make it their business to sting the local tarantulas into insensibility so that they can implant their eggs into the paralyzed spider where the eggs will hatch and the larvae will feed off of their unwilling, still-living, host’s internal organs before maturing and finally exiting the husk of the tarantula as a fully-formed, brand new bad-ass wasp. Yeeks! No, I do not believe I want any of that, thanks all the same for offering.

   
   
 
       
         
     
         
     

       
       
   
         
     
         
   
         
       
         
     

Got myself a few shots on my walkabout, and finally closed the circle where Newt was just finishing up with banging the first metal enclosure panel into place, and decided to trade the camera for a pair of workingman’s gloves.

So I did.

And then we ranched together for a while, and I measured and cut, with varying degrees of success, the cross-pieces that would support additional sheets of metal or whatever else whimsy and a trained eye might persuade Newt and Cathy as being just the right thing, while Newt nailed them into place, and the sun and heat both rose toward midday.

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It’s now coming up on 2pm, the heat’s on, and I’m comfortably ensconced within the Hell Trailer, taking my pleasure writing these words while Newt takes his pleasure with a siesta inside the house.

Summertime, and the living is easy.

 -

Went outside at about 2:30, shirtless with the camera.

Shirtless out here in the heat of the day on a clear day, is stupidity, possibly lethal stupidity, personified, but I figured I was close enough to the air conditioned safety of the hell trailer and I wanted to see how it works.

How it works, is fast.

At first, it feels downright pleasant, coming from within an air conditioned environment, with a body that’s nice and cool.

But that doesn’t last very long at all, and exposed skin is the direct route for insolation coupled with the ambient air temperature to pump a crippling oversupply of heat deep into your muscles and bones.

You can feel it happening.

And it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in Florida, or anywhere else for that matter.

Before it got to a state of possibly debilitating interestingness, I snapped a few more shots of things, including the willow tree, which the vampire wasps had given up on during the conquering heat of midday, and so I managed to grab a few frames of the pretty purple flowers, despite the less-than-perfect harsh lighting.

       
 
       
         
     
         

And it was right around this time, after about the fourth or fifth flower frame, that my body started telling me in no uncertain terms that it might not be such a good idea to continue to absorb heat at this rate. And, despite my rebellious streak, I listened to what it had to say, and slunk back into the cooling balm of the Hell Trailer, grabbing two more frames while on my way, before something funny had a chance to happen.

Interesting. Very interesting indeed.

Do not recommend it. Will not reattempt it.

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