Category Archives: Personal

What’s in our kitchen now?

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We had a visit this evening from a rather healthy looking Solifugid (aka camel spider, wind scorpion, sun spider, though I always knew them as a “sun scorpions”) which I caught after seeing it scurrying across our kitchen floor.

Solifugids are arachnids related to spiders and true scorpions and like scorpions seem to be largely nocturnal. We get them in the house not too infrequently (much to my wife’s dismay) but this was a larger specimen than usual. In fact it is probably one of the larger I’ve seen in this area of So. Cal..

Penny for scale

Close up

Despite their fearsome appearance they’re relatively harmless as they lack venom of any kind. However I imagine that they could inflict a rather nasty bite in self defense with those chelicerae (mouth parts).

Look into my eyes!

However impressive this individual might be for around here it is still relatively small compared to some pictures I’ve seen of some old world species encountered by U.S. troops stationed in the middle east.

Just another night in the Britain household…

Some web sites on Solifugids:

An exciting day

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I had something of an exciting day today. First, after some running back and forth (which hurt, a lot, due to the gout attack I am currently suffering from) I managed to capture two of three feral kittens that have been living behind  my workplace. The third, a dark haired and slightly older kitten belonging to a different mother cat managed to elude capture, for now.

Unlike the raccoon and electrical sparks pictured below, these are the actual kittens in question, who are, as of this writing, residing in our bathtub.

Kathy (the wife) doesn’t seem inclined to keep them (despite her love of kitties), so they’re probably destined for the animal shelter. This gives them a better chance at a decent life than living on the streets eating out of dumpsters.

Second while trying to locate one of the kittens I looked between the building I work in and the bank next door (which is a space about a foot and a half wide) only to find myself being looked back at by a large mother raccoon with her kits (cubs?). This had the whole office and a few customers out peering between the buildings, which no doubt had the momma raccoon wondering why all the big hairless monkeys were staring at her.

This was the first wild raccoon I have seen in this part of Southern California (after 30 some odd years of living here). I’ve seen possums, skunks, and coyotes before but despite having heard they were around I had never run across a raccoon before until today.

Finally in the afternoon while I was working on my press, I noticed that the lights flickered and went out. This was followed very shortly by a loud buzzing coming from the circuit breaker panels in the back of the shop and then a series of extremely loud bangs from outside the back of the building (right above where I had caught the kittens in the morning).

I ran outside to see one of the electrical wires that feed our shop sparking, exploding, and burning a few feet past a transformer on a telephone pole in our back parking lot. This was followed shortly by a visit from the fire dept. and the electric company guys who informed us that the power would be out for the rest of the day.

What’s next?

Night of the Tenebrionids!

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My back yard is overrun with tenebrionid beetles (genus Eleodes), aka stink beetles. This is in Southern California, early May 2010. My wife Kathy is behind the camera making comments from the peanut gallery.

Here is a picture of a larger version I took a couple years ago:

This was a good sized female who was a little worse for wear (note the dent in her elytron/back). She was ovipositing in a dirt road.

The not so itsy bitsy spider climbed out of the cactus

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I was doing some long neglected yard work today and while pulling out some weeds around a dying bit of prickly pear cactus in the back yard I came upon this “little” beauty:

And here is one for scale:

OK, so it’s not a bird eating spider, the size of a dinner plate, but outside of a full blown tarantula it is the biggest spider I’ve seen in the wild around these parts (Southern California) since I was a kid. My first attempt at an identification would be a California trapdoor spider (Bothriocyrtum californicum), though it looks a little different from the pics I can find on the web and I didn’t find it associated with a trapdoor setup. It was just clinging to a bit of old prickly pear skin (an environment it was sharing with literally hundreds and hundreds of Eleodes).

Any spider guys out there that can confirm or correct my I.D.?

James – The Amazing – Randi comes out

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Magician and skeptic James Randi, a long time hero of mine has, at 81, come out as a gay man. He has been ‘out’ to his friends and close colleagues forever, and I must admit to not being terribly surprised myself (I picked up on a few hints here and there that made me suspect that it might be the case).

He doesn’t want to make a big deal out it, and I don’t see why anyone else should.

As I said he has been a long time hero of mine in the fight against what he amusingly calls “woo-woo” (paranormal &  pseudoscientific claims) and his being gay does absolutely nothing to diminish my admiration for him and the work he has done.

For more on Randi and his work check out the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Rate my rants

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While perusing my friend John Wilkin’s  blog Evolving Thoughts I discovered that WordPress has a post rating feature (one to five stars) and having learned this I have turned it on so that you can shower my rantings with five star ratings. The rating bar can be found at the bottom of each post, so have at it!

Halloween Yard Haunt 2009

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Well, this year was bittersweet. I (mostly) finished a large new addition to our haunt (‘The tomb of the mummy’), however between that and the other little things I tried to do, I bit off way more than I could chew. The result was I didn’t properly finish anything and didn’t even get the old stuff dressed right (no glowing monster eyes, or spooky music etc., etc., etc.). Nor did I get the street signs up to attract more traffic.

Sigh…

I guess I just have to look at it as everyone keeps telling me: “hey you’re all ready for next year now.”

I’m not though. I still have to put finishing touches on several of this years additions and then there are the plans for next year that were already thought of but put off due to lack of time and money.

Still I want to acknowledge the help, not only physical and financial but also artistic, that our friends Don and Gaynell Frack gave us. I also want to thank them for putting up with my near meltdown when as the sun was going down I realized we weren’t going to make it to a proper finish. Thank you both!

Anyway here are some pictures (all taken by Don Frack):

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Halloween Sarcophagus

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A short video showing my progress so far on an Egyptian sarcophagus (to hold a life-sized mummy) for our Halloween yard haunt.