i couldn’t sleep.  too much coffee.  too many cerebral vectors. 

instead, i listened as the wind rocked my wind generator.   pulses from the arctic.  winter sending out a feeler to see if it’s okay to come home. 

then, the landscape went limp.  like a switch had been flipped.

0100 and i was setting up my nets.  at 0105, i was extracting a hy swet. 

“silly owler”, my voice of reason said.  “he’ll never learn.”

but much to my chagrin, there wasn’t an explosion of birds.  there were 6 over the next 2 hours, at which time sleeplessness lost its foothold.  

tonight now.  that’ll be a challenge. 

i think.

male saw-whet waiting for some booty.

the comma-shaped weather system is not as impressive or as forceful as it was a day ago, but it is still here and it is still sending squalls of rain and wind into my otherwise, sheltered existence. 

i’m getting antsy and it has nothing to do with wanting to try out my new princeton tec, apex pro headlamp (owlman recommended) or stinking up a new seasonal batch of fleece.  instead, it has everything to do with getting on the front side of an owl push, rather than smack dab in the middle of one.

one would think i could temper my anticipation, given the decades-plus sampling, but i can’t.  i am powerless over owls.  powerless over the night.  they own me and i am their bitch humble man servant. 

right now, the winds are still gusty and i am house bound.  when the weather breaks though it’ll be monumental. my fingers will bleed. my back will holler in complaint.  my batteries will need changing.  i will resort to non-nutritive food substitutes.  i will think about nothing other than getting owls out of the nets and back into the night without unnecessary delays.

that’s going to happen and i can’t wait, but dread when it does.

go figure.

i used to do this regularly.  nearly every day i would spend idle hours expousing my insight and values on what was then, an unknowing public.  at one point, people actually paid attention.  when i stopped, those same people asked axed me “how come you stopped?”

i did you all a favor, people.  

what comes of this is unknown.  i lost my original blog to the demons of excess bandwidth.  it amounted to around 6 years of stuff.  owls. life. cynicism (hooray!) observation. bliss.  politics…why it was as though i had found a voice and the venue to voice it within.

of course,  owls are the profound component of my recurring nightmare  endeavors.  i can’t seem to shake them.  they are compelling and alluring.  like ones’ first love.  the first child.  the first six-pack of highly-hopped micro brew. 

sadly, i don’t think i’ve moved much further in life than where i was. 

i love that. 

now, with the gales of november september crashing against the rugged shoreline of lake superior and me having a poorly timed day off (i took it so i could have a long banding effort last night…alas rain and wind), i am going to see what becomes of this. 

the fall migration has thus far, been lackluster.  none of the early season “pushes” i have come to dread expect.  whereas in the early years of my homeownership, job responsibility was not a significant challenge, it now is and so, i must juggle owls with work with salsa canning and of course, there is always that damnable micro brew.

i’m not gonna get into a big chunk of blogging right now cuz i don’t know if i can sustain the effort without a big dose of literary cialis. 

we’ll see.