That noise is nature

One can luxuriate at times in the romantic notion of a rural idyll.  But not for long. 

At first I thought it was rosy tinted Dawn (to borrow from Homer) whose light woke me this morning at five-thirty or thereabouts.  But no.  I lay in bed in Spike's parents' house in the Dooralong valley trying to puzzle out what machine had been started or why a giant lawn-sprinkler was operating then realised the noise was nature.  Specifically it was the mating call of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions for all I know) Cicada males trying to attract females with their impressive and loud sound boxes. 

The trees around the property are bursting with sound.  It is constant, from dawn to dusk and truly deafening at times.  I wondered at one point if it never stopped, if there might not be some let-up.  I hit on this silly notion.  That in the dense forest of sound there is one tree from which not a sound is made.  There, I speculated, sits a solitary male with the loudest, most impressive boom box in all of Cicada land.  He has a smile of satisfaction on his silent face.  Around him sit a bevvy of happy Cicada females, sated by their Alpha male and oblivious of all the also- rans still banging away around them.

We've had a delightful couple of days with Spike's family.  Tranquil, however, is not a word that immediately springs to mind.
.

A statement of the obvious

Floods in Victoria.  The "worst", they say in fifteen years.




















(Picture: ABC News)

Whales in Alaska

This is one of a series of photograps appearing in today's Guardian.  Taken by a British photographer (Duncan Murrell) from a kayak, the photos strongly suggest to me there could be more valuable / fulfilling activity in a man's life than working as a public servant in NSW (as necessary as that might be).

See all five photos here.
.

Mutant poppy

Scientists have discovered a poppy that does not produce addictive drugs - and are using it to make safer painkillers.