Check out this doozy.  This, my friends, is a whopper of a hornet's nest.  It's easily the size of a grapefruit, somewhat larger, I fear.  And there are hornets streaming out of it like Grand Central Station.  So where exactly is this "paper carton" nest?  It's hanging from a tree branch at head height a few feet from the path to my front door.  YIKES!  I'm really glad I haven't mowed the lawn in a few weeks.  You can actually see a few of the hornets milling about the entrance in this photo, which gives you some idea of the size of this thing.  I can't imagine how this went from nothing to that big in just a few months.  But hornets do not survive the winter, and the cartons are destroyed by the harsh weather, so I guess I've got a colony of super-hornets on my hands.

 

I'm going to call an exterminator, by the way.  Aside from the fact that I'm practically apiphobic from being swarmed as a kid by an underground nest of yellow-jackets, hornets are pretty dangerous puppies.  (Imagine being 4 years old and getting stung by a few dozen bees while your parents are whacking you with rolled up magazines and fly-swatters.  Yeah, it wasn't pretty.) I'm glad I read that page, because I was thinking of taking a night photo of the nest, and shining a flashlight on it to paint it with light.  Nuh-uh.  They are attracted to yellow light.  Also, this site says that they are "less active" in the evening, as opposed to "sleeping" or "killable" or something like that, and that scares me too.

 

I guess I get a bye on the lawn for a few more days.

Or the garage, more accurately.  There's a family of skunks that rolls around every now and then, and I went out to the garage last night to get something, and what do you know, the little baby skunk was in my garage poking around.

 

For those of you that haven't had close encounters with skunks, it's not that bad.  They are really happy, curious, noisy animals.  They like to stroll through leaves and other debris looking for things, and you can generally hear them coming a long ways off.  They are very approachable too, you just don't want to scare them for obvious reasons.

 

Anyway, I didn't really care that much about the skunk, as long as it wasn't living in there.  I don't think it is, I just left the door open too long in the evening, and this one got in.  I think it's out now - I opened both doors and had a little chat with the skunk.

 

"See here now," I said, "you're a nice little fellow, but I have a baby girl and a cat that likes to pretend he can handle the outdoors, and I just can't have a skunk in my garage, so get out - it's nothing personal."

 

That seems to have done the trick, for now, at least.

So I'm driving up to Maine a few days ago, and I stop at the Kittery rest stop on Route 95, just over the border from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  I went to the bathroom, visited the vending machines, stretched my legs, you know.

 

There were a lot of vacation travelers on the road that day, and when I was walking back to my car, I overheard the following comment from a woman who had just thrown something away.

 

"Wow, the lid to that trash can was really heavy.  They must have bears around here or something."

 

I thought that was pretty funny, because, of course, there might be bears around, but she was in about the third least likely place in Maine to encounter a bear.  (Maine readers, correct me if I'm wrong here).  I submit for your inspection the damage recently done to my trashcan here in Medford, Massachusetts - approximately 7 miles from the heart of downtown Boston, and probably 60 or 70 miles from Kittery.  This was not done by a bear, I can tell you that.  It was done by squirrels, racoons, or skunks, but my money is on the squirrels.  Why?  Well, I could be wrong about this, but it seems awfully delicate for a racoon.  I would think they'd be able to knock the can over, or pull the top off (the handle locks are pretty useless at this point).  And we were gone for a week, which means daylight access to the trash without all those pesky humans in the way.

 

The other interesting thing about this is that the weight of the trash can lid would not cause a bear to pause for a second.

I was driving back home this afternoon, and I was crossing Arlington Center on Route 60.  I'm in the middle lane.  There is a very beat up old Saab 9-3 in the left turn lane next to me, and I kinda notice it because it's rumbling a lot like it really needs some exhaust or engine work, and it's still kindof a nice car.

 

Anyway, the left lane goes first at this particular intersection, and as the car pulls out, I notice the license plate: 4416 CS.  This is absolutely bizarre to me, because my license plate is 4417 CS.  If there are any statisticians out there who know how to calculate the odds of this, please do tell, and I'll post them to the blog.  Maybe I'll take a whack at it myself if I get to feeling, well, really bored.

 

*sigh*.  I realized this would happen, of course, but I was still surprised when I pulled it out of the bag.  Actually, Kara bought the meal on the way home from Maine yesterday.  I should say, in all fairness, that I have gotten other toys at McDonald's that are not offensive, and I will post them at some point too.

 

So my annoyance now is due to the inevitable comparison between the two.  Taken alone, this one doesn't bother me so much.  That bothered me, though, so I spent some time thinking about it and talking to Kara about it.  Her first reaction was that she had a lot more clothes on than this Barbi.  But I also thought there was something about the clothes.  They are not what I am used to seeing day to day, but they are very fashionable.  This looks like a movie star or model at a premier, and so in a sense, they're costumed, and that body image is, unfortunately, well represented by those types of entertainers.

 

But then I look back at the other one, and I wonder why the white Barbi looks like a movie star, and the not-so-white Barbi looks like a party girl of some kind.  It's completely unfair to draw a conclusion from this, since I haven't seen any other dolls they hand out, but I'll keep thinking about it.

Boy, I'm way behind in stuff to post to the site, as usual, even with the frequency with which I've been writing lately.  I've got more McDonald's freebie Barbi things, photos for the photoblog, and oh, a big surprise!

 

That's right, I have a big surprise going up on the home page tomorrow, so stay tuned.

 

In the meantime, here's a shot of Katherine out enjoying the wonderful Maine weather (wet, cool, and full of bugs).

 

 

Of course, it was mostly sunny and nice until I arrived.  A few hours after I got there, it started raining, and it didn't really stop until, like, the New Hampshire state line on the return trip this aftenroon.

 

But anyway, she was pretty good, except we were there with Robbie, and she likes him a lot, so anytime we had to separate them it caused a major incident.  Truth be told, she was so exhausted this afternoon that we had here down and asleep by 7:15 - a record, I believe, for her at this age bracket.

There's a minor update to the recent blog I wrote on the Medford Sex Offender's Sandwich Board.  The Transcript did, in fact, print a correction in the following week's paper.  I had pointed out to the Editor in Chief that the six people do not all, "live and work" in Medford.  She seemed to take that very seriously.

I told some of the folks admiring it that it was really making me look bad as a parent.  Most of this cake was edible.  I know that for a fact, because I ate it.  I think everything except the candles and a few of the animals was edible.  Chocolate rocks, frosting.  Whew.  It was great.  Now what on earth am I supposed to do for Katherine's third?  She's very into birthdays right now, and I'm sure she was watching and studying everything, and she thinks that a birthday involves swimming in a pool, eating bar-b-que, playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, cracking open a pinata, opening gifts, and eating a really, really awesome cake.