When I opened the garage door this afternoon, I discovered a dragonfly that had been bumping around in there all night. Despite the open door, he kept smacking into the back wall, and was dangerously close to a spider web. Poor, stupid, softhearted goof that I am, I decided I should help him.

So I stood on the top step leading into the house and gently, oh so gently, cupped my hands around the dragonfly.

By now, anyone familiar with me already knows what is about to happen.

With the dragonfly safely in my cupped hands, I turned to take him out to the flowerbed. Naturally, since I was concentrating so much on not hurting the dragonfly, I completely forgot that I was standing two steps off the nice, firm, concrete garage floor.

Yeah.

To my credit, my hands remained carefully cupped around the dragonfly, who came through the incident entirely injury free. Since I couldn’t use my hands to break my fall, I didn’t. Break my fall, that is. Eight hours later the feeling has mostly returned to my toes, and the badly scraped knee has almost stopped throbbing. By my standards, I came through it remarkably well.

I hope the dragonfly appreciates the assist.

I’ve photographed a famous model! How cool is that?

(Downtown Plainfield IL, July 19, 2009)

I don’t know if the three ladies were just looking at the girl, or if they were glaring at me because I was looking at the girl.

Either way, I bet the commentary would have been pretty entertaining to hear!

That may have changed just a tiny bit now. About three years ago I took this photo of a ‘fantastikal’ character at the Bristol Renaissance Faire:

 
Of all the photos I’ve taken, this is among my top ten – quite possibly my very favorite. Her character seemed to only interact with children. She moved around in a flowing crouch, struck strange poses, and was generally unearthly. My nephew, who was only a little over two years old at the time, saw a pose she was in and mimicked it. She noticed, and changed poses. He mimicked her again. Then he posed, and she copied him. Little by little they crept towards one another, coming face to face. They touched hands, and exchanged small pebbles and sticks as gifts as a gathering crowd watched. Without saying a word, this faerie creature and a two-year-old boy had a moment of perfect communication. I’ll remember the scene for a long time.

 
Ever since I took it that photo, I’ve wondered who the the girl was. She clearly had training as a dancer. Even a lout like me could see that by how she moved – she almost glided over the ground. She had some skill as an actress, as well, judging by how wonderfully she played her role.

Well, thanks to Facebook groups, I finally know who she is. Her name is Kaitlin Chin, and not surprisingly, in addition to her other talents she is also a model. In some of her professional photos, you can see a hint of the mischievous faerie creature come through.

The area where this creature is reputed to live today is a ribbon of forest that runs along the course of the Illinois river, roughly from the Channahon and Des Plaines Conservation area, and west to at least Ottawa. Some contend that Seneca Man’s range extends as far to the southwest as East Peoria, but details of sightings in that area are sketchy.

Those who have spotted Seneca Man describe it as roughly human in form, between 5 and 6 feet tall, with considerable hair on the head and face, but only lightly furred elsewhere. Though older historical sightings don’t make reference to it, more recent sightings often note that Seneca Man is a thin creature. Some witnesses have even described it as “scrawny”, which crypto-zoologists have suggested may be a result of limited food supplies in its dwindling habitat.

This past Saturday I was out for a ride on my scooter, enjoying the good weather after previous rainy weekends. Just north of Channahon on West Shepley Road, I crossed over the DuPage River. Glancing down to the water below, I had the rare good fortune to spot a Seneca Man, in the flesh.

What I saw was very similar to other descriptions I’ve read. He was standing at the edge of the water line, leaning up against the old stone sides of the river. He was facing away from the bridge, but looking back over his shoulder at it with a definite look of concern, possibly fear, on his face. No doubt he was frightened at finding himself so exposed to human observation.

He had long, stringy hair and a similarly disheveled beard, and as others have reported was otherwise unclothed and hairless. What really startled me was how very pale he was – much like the ghosts described in those old Indian legends. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a safe place in time to pull over and take a photograph before he disappeared.

I suspect he had been driven from his normal hiding places in the forests by the recent torrential rains. With anywhere from five to ten inches of rain in the area over the previous weekend, rivers throughout the region had flooded. My ride followed along Cemetery Road between the I&M Canal and the Illinois River, and even a week after the storms, huge swaths of woods and fields were still flooded, with water more than a foot deep in many normally dry areas.

The flood waters continue to recede, and no doubt by now Seneca Man has been able to return to his regular haunts deeper in the woods, where he won’t be troubled by passersby. In any case, I feel blessed to have caught of glimpse of this rare, almost mythical creature.

It was a snapper. Even if you’ve never seen one before, they’re easy to identify. They’ve got this very menacing, prehistoric sort of look to them, and an attitude to match. This one was about 14 inches from the front to the back of his shell. Big thick legs and tail. Massive head on a long neck. Beady little eyes. Bad smell. Though it was only a mid-sized snapper, it seemed much bigger than actual size as it hissed and glared and released musk at me.

It was obvious from the start that ours was going to be a difficult relationship.

I’ve never tried to pick up a snapper before, but I was pretty clear on the “avoid the biting end” concept. That’s harder than it sounds – I learned right away that those things can pivot a lot faster than you would expect. I managed to get behind him, grabbed the edges of his shell about midway back, and found out just how long and fast his neck really was. ‘Snapping’ doesn’t really capture the full excitement of the noise it makes when it just misses tearing your thumb off.

Ok, new plan. Grab further back on the shell, hang on tight, and hustle.

Pretty good plan. Only a few flaws. First, I still had the distraction of that massive angry head whipping back at me, hissing and snapping. Second, it gave the turtle the opportunity to bring a different set of weapons into play. Those big thick legs, it turns out, have big thick claws at the end of them. They’re not especially sharp claws, but they don’t really have to be. The turtle knew that if he dragged them across my fingers enough times, with enough force, he could shred me to ribbons. And he didn’t waste any time starting on that project.

I started thinking about the nasty pond scum and mud covering those feet and claws. Then I realized that the turtle has defensively, um, pooped at me. Great, swamp muck and snapper poop being surgically crammed into what used to be the flesh of my fingers.

Must. Go. Faster.

I got him to the edge of the pond and sat him down in the mud. No doubt he needed a mud refill, having redistributed his own supply onto the bones of my knuckles. Now, if you were to release, say, a frog like this, it would be gone into the water like a shot. Even a common box turtle would be glad to beat a path into the depths. But this guy? No, he just turned around and read me the snapping turtle riot act. At length. I eventually got tired of listening, told him “You’re welcome”, and headed home.

Later, as I cleaned up my bloodied hands, I pondered… Spider-man got his superpowers following an unfortunate incident with a spider. What kind of super-powers might I have gotten from being scratched up by an angry snapping turtle covered in mud and poop? Let’s see… cranky attitude? scaly legs? thick skin? bad nails? Dang, I already have all of those things!

Maybe I’ll get salmonella. Yay.

This past weekend my wife and I were out for a drive on some of the more rural back roads of Illinois. We were in southeast Grundy county, on (You always were an asshole…) Gorman road, when we spotted the post in the pictures above.

Attached to this wooden post in the middle of nowhere, from bottom to top, are a large catfish head, a bird leg and foot (probably turkey, but maybe pheasant – do I look like an ornithologist to you?), a fox tail, another catfish head, and finally the remains of a stuffed pheasant, which I assume was at one time perched on top in its full glory.

I will never understand art. Especially when it should be accompanied by banjo music.

One of the cops who responded suggested that it was likely either just kids being morons, or some sort of low level gang initiation (which falls under ‘kids being morons’ too). By and large this is a good neighborhood and town. Low crime, quiet, even boring. But we’re pretty close to Aurora and Joliet, both of which have significant crime problems. And no doubt even Plainfield has its share of delinquents who think randomly trashing private property is somehow fun. So, the cop’s explanation seems reasonable enough.

One thing that sort of struck me as odd, though…

On the Monday after the vandalism occurred, we had a guy (“I’m not a salesman!”) from a home security provider going door-to-door. He had a nice shirt with the name of the security company embroidered on it, and a metal clipboard – you know, the usual guise of someone who wants to look like an official representative. He seemed to know the whole story about the vandalism, and was asking each house if they had a security system, and if so what brand it was, and if they would be interested in becoming a ‘demo house’ for his company.

If I had Spidey senses, they might have tingled. I don’t, but I did find it in mildly bad taste that they would be using this situation as a sales opportunity. I told him we’ve got a system already, and no, I won’t divulge who with.

My wife and I talked about it later, and we wondered some things…

• How many homeowners blithely respond that “No, we don’t have a security system”?
• How many of those also indicated when their house would be unoccupied? “No, the appointment would have to be in the evening as I don’t get home before 5pm”.
• And how many of those said “Sure, come on in (read: have a look around, see if I have anything valuable)”?
• How would a home security system stop someone from slashing tires on the street?
• Who the heck buys a home security system from a door-to-door salesman, anyway?

To anyone of a cynical nature (me!), the circumstances & timing were just a tad suspicious.

One of my hobbies is geocaching. It takes me to places I wouldn’t otherwise ever go, and lets me see some unusual things. This past weekend my wife somehow convinced me to get up at 8 am and head out on a day-long caching trip. I wasn’t opposed to the caching, or the day-long part, but the 8 am, on a Saturday of all things, was tough. I’m glad she convinced me, though, as it proved to be an excellent day.

We first drove to Urbana, Illinois, to pick up her brother who is also an avid geocacher. He and I are both working on some geocaching challenges, one involving finding a cache in every county in the state, and another to find a cache on each page of the Illinois DeLorme atlas. While he’s got the advantage of being more centrally located in the state, the real reason he’s kicking my butt on these challenges is that the dude can optimize a route like nobody’s business. Where I might ride around all day and find a few caches in a handful of counties, with him in the navigator’s seat we traveled 250 miles, picking up eighteen new caches in ten different counties and covering six atlas pages. My best. day. caching. ever.

Along the way we saw a lot of cornfields (this is Illinois, after all), some really nice and unexpected forest areas and a big honking lake. But the one thing that really stood out was the tree pictured above. We came for a geocache called Mug Tree, not knowing that there was a real-by-god-literal-mug-tree awaiting us in the middle of nowhere. The cache description calls it a “spontaneous gesture of amusing goodwill designed to bring a smile to the faces of passing strangers”, which pretty much seems to sum it up. Nice to see whimsy is alive and well in the countryside.

I was hiking and geocaching in the wooded area behind Joliet Junior College today when I stumbled across this strange arrangement of sticks and grass encircling a tree in a clearing. No idea what the purpose is, but it’s clearly for something.

You know those fantasy stories where the intrepid adventurers are traveling through some ancient forest, and the trees seem to be trying to steer them towards or away from something? Well, these woods may not be ancient, but they do like to confuse anyone hiking through them. It’s almost impossible to blaze a straight trail through the place. I’m sure I could not find this spot again without my GPS.