random thoughts……

Simple Pleasures August 12, 2009

On advice from my nephew Kinnon (thanks for the heads up), I decided to do something I haven’t done in many years: get up in the middle of the night to see a meteor shower. Specifically, the Perseids, which are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. Even with the light of a half moon, I got to see a pretty good show – here’s my tally for the evening:

• 6 Perseids
• 5 Racoons
• 1 Opossum
• 1 Tarantula

I set the alarm on my iPhone for 3:00am. Shawn woke up too, which I was really sorry to see since he didn’t express any interest in joining me, but, well, too bad (I think he was back asleep before I even left the room)! I made it outside about 5 minutes later. I have the perfect reclining fold-up chair for star gazing and I placed it just under the edge of the moon shade of a big oak tree in our front drive (even a half moon is quite bright!). With the relaxing sound of the waterfall dropping into the pond, I was ready to see the show.

We had a very slight cloud cover to the north and east, but the rest of the sky was clear. Since we live several miles from any city lights it was looking pretty promising. Almost immediately after getting settled, I heard a loud rustle coming from the far side of the circle drive just in front of the house. Looking down, I saw a mother Racoon and 4 babies emerge from the trees and start heading my way.

I decided it would be best to use my small flashlight to let her know I was there as I didn’t want to startle her if she got any closer. She stopped, reared up, and gave me a little growl, then went around the island in the middle of the circle, each kit following at a good distance. She seemed to be headed for the pond, but I think she decided that it would be better to just get out of there.

Having said goodbye to the parade, I turned my attention to the sky, and was almost immediately rewarded – a nice flash just to the northwest of where I was looking indicated my first spot of the evening. Nothing quite like catching a glimpse of a meteor skimming along!

After a couple more, I again heard rustling, although this time it was in the direction of the pond. Mr. (or perhaps Ms.) Opossum had arrived. This one wasn’t coming in my direction so I just left it alone and I’m pretty sure it didn’t even see or hear me. As I was splitting my attention between it and the sky, I also noticed some movement in the drive – that’s when I spotted the Tarantula. Again, it wasn’t too close so I didn’t worry too much (yeah, I know, they won’t hurt you ,etc. Sorry, I hate spiders).

The best meteor moment of the evening came at about 3:37: directly where I was looking I saw a brilliant flash with a decent tail, followed about 10 seconds later by an even brighter and longer trail, again almost exactly where I happened to be looking. I was thrilled to get two fantastic views in such short proximity.

Just after that was when I decided to call it a night. Not too bad for 40 minutes of outside time. Sometimes, it’s just the simple pleasures in life that can put everything in perspective. Now, back to bed – ‘night.