Content advisory: the following images portray animal decomposition and a messy (though not scatological) plumbing mishap, respectively.

This is the very first photo I took in the process of exploring my new surroundings in Florida. I was recovering from a lengthy illness and a lengthy road trip, and coming to terms with a discombobulating succession of life upheavals; accordingly, I began with a local animal in no condition to evade me.

This roughly crow-sized bird (species and cause of death unknown) lay in an oddly heraldic position suggesting a necromancer’s coat of arms, on the disheveled curb strip of a business that was both recovering from Hurricane Ian and changing hands—likewise in a state of transition. The red spot at heart level is a dried wild fruit of some sort.

Taken on 4 June 2023 at 19:48 U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time:

( Fined_be_ye_who_move_my_bones. )

Some while later, I suffered a clog of mysterious blue-gray residue in my bathroom sink (don’t worry; it’s long since been dealt with, although not conclusively explained)—and was fascinated by the delicate poinsettia-like radial pattern created when the water finally receded.

Taken on 20 July 2023 at 14:16 U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time:

( Mystery_plumbing_sludge. )

Taken on 21 June 2024 at 20:33 US Eastern Daylight Savings Time, as I hurried up the street through the break in the rain.





My limited equipment does the scene nothing even remotely resembling justice: neither the gauzy rainbow-sherbet luminosity nor the grand theatricality of the skyscape, with the air of a vintage book illustration or a meticulously painted film backdrop. A detail I particularly like is the small dark cumulus cloud at bottom center that suggests a person astride a charging (pig? bear? huge dog?)

Taken last year, this is pictorial tax for my previous post; this little guy was one of a family headquartered in a vacant lot along one of my habitual shopping routes.





Note the ropes cordoning the space off, as well as the designated perch set up for the owls. In the upper background, across the path, is another staked-off owl nesting site; unusually for birds of prey, Burrowing Owls are social animals who sometimes form communities of multiple families.

(If I’ve slipped into Earnest School Essay Mode, it’s because this is stuff I myself am very much newly learning.)