~o:> Charming Oddities

Additional note: 09-01:

“This is a Blister Beetle in the genus Megetra, and sadly, it has no common name other than the general family name of Blister Beetle.  According toBugGuide:  “Range  Restricted to Chihuahuan Desert of the USA (TX, NM, and extreme southeastern AZ) and Mexico (where most of this desert region is located).”  In the past, we received a submission from Spain that looks very much like the genus Megetra, and is probably in the same tribe, Eupomphini.  You should use caution if handling a Blister Beetle as they can release a compound cantharidin which is a blistering agent.”

Yow.

The red bands on this guy are really beautiful, and his armor is like something out of Babylon Five.

Red striped bug.  Purple plants.  A very interesting place, this.  I think Kris let this bug go.  I’m pretty sure he did.  I’m super sure he didn’t take it to work the  next day and drop it in some unsuspecting mouth as a joke.  He wouldn’t do that.  I’m almost certain.

Second odd thing: (odd to me) Copious numbers of lizards.

My first New Mexican lizard-on-a-wall.  Now I know why they make huge ones out of clay and metal.

Odd son, sneaking up on the wall lizard with his phone, set on camera (rather than stun).

Third odd thing: this vicious looking mer-boy.  That tail looks dangerous.

And his uncle.  Who can remove two of his teeth on demand.

Fourth thing: frustratingly odd.  A dentist and a Frazz on bikes, wisely wearing helmets.

M went with these guys on a very long bike ride.  Their community has miles of trails like this.  I am tempted to move there with the horses – somewhere to ride that is not either a road or the steep side of a mountain.  But if I did, Gin would sneeze her face off.

The next day, M and I took a quick walk along this same path.  See that cloud?  Yeah – thunder coming out of it.  We would have walked quickly anyway, but we really sort of put on the speed, keeping a weather eye out on this cloud.

Fifth thing: wilderness odd.

Kris found this ancient fire-watching ranger tower off in the wilderness.  Gin and I gratefully went shopping while the boys went off to explore the tower.  Little did I know that the thing would be a hundred feet high, and that they’d climb rickety stairs or something to get to the top –

Yeah.  It’s far down there.  Definitely you could see budding fires from this perch.  Only nobody uses it for that anymore.  Instead, they use it for breaking windows out of and leaving bottles in.  It was once a cool little place – with a plumbed sink and other amenities.  Sad that it should have fallen on hard times.  But here is the odd part:

That these grown up men would climb up a thing like this with a six year old child and a DOG.

Sully seems to be reconsidering his choice.  I don’t know how they got him or Max down alive, and even writing this makes the palms of my  hands sweat.  I will NEVER let them out of my sight again.

And the finale:

This actually  has to do with the trip home, which will be the next, and last, installment of this story.  As we drove away, back up to the north of New Mexico, heading into the mountains, we passed a “Falling Rocks” sign.

M started to laugh.  I hadn’t seen the sign, being a responsible driver with her eye on the road.   “One of the rocks on that sign looked like a cow,” he said.  And we thought that was a really funny idea.  Especially as we passed—

this sign about a mile later.  Such a stark statement:

COW

Meaning, I must assume, “cow crossing.”  So right away, we decided to take pictures of these signs and go home and make our own very funny “falling cows” sign in PhotoShop.  But we only saw one more rocks sign, and had shot past it before it had registered. (At that stage of the journey, we weren’t stopping to record the interesting stuff.)  So when I got home—actually almost two weeks later—I searched for a picture of that rocks sign on Google.  On the way, I found this, which was pretty great:

I don’t have  the reference for this image.  I promise I will look for it again tomorrow and give the credit.  But I also found the falling rocks sign I just showed you up above there.  And having all the pieces,  I sat down today to put together our own, personal Very Funny sign.  As follows:

Pretty funny, huh?  My favorite part is the dent on the roof of the car.  I gave a lot of thought to the position of the cow, and decided she was doing a back flip.  Funny—except for one thing; as I was searching the New Mexican highway signs, I found something very interesting:

Yep.  The very sign Murphy had actually seen had HAD A COW on it.  New Mexico had put it there on PURPOSE.