Eep!

Paid account expires in a few hours! Time to do a poll!

[Edit: Thanks to a very kind anonymous person, the paid account does not expire after all! Many thanks, Anonymous!]

[Edit 2: I need to do more creative polls.]

[Poll #712240]

(no subject)

This is the time of year when I start to wonder, "Why is it so dark in my room when the sun is shining so brightly?" And then I remember that the recently-bare trees are now covered with leaves and I briefly feel like an idiot.

I haven't seen any fuzzy raccoon friends around lately, but the leaves on the tree outside my window block my view of the chimney where one lived. Over the weekend I watched a robin working on her nest in that tree, though she never sat still for very long. Later, a crow landed on that branch and thoroughly investigated the area, hoping to find something to eat. Later still, the robin returned to the nest, looked around a bit, then flew away. I haven't seen her since.

Random childhood memory: Once when I found a dead bird in the backyard, my brother warned me not to touch it because "You could get lice! You don't want lice, do you?" But I didn't know the word "lice" at the time. What I thought he was saying was "You could get lifes! You don't want lifes, do you?" It seemed strange to me that a dead bird could transmit life (more than one?). It seemed even stranger to me that getting more life would be thought of as a bad thing. Wasn't it good to be alive? Maybe there was something about life given to you by a bird that made it unsafe for people. I wanted to ask my brother more questions, but he was busy and didn't want to be bothered. A long while later, I heard the expression "the birds and the bees" and thought it might be a clue.

As I was typing, the robin returned to the nest. I see her through the leaves, glowing in the dappled morning sunlight.