I debated whether to write about the recent eclipse crossing North America*, figuring everyone’s jumping on that bandwagon. I will say that what I predicted would happen didn’t, much to my pleasant surprise.
“Prediction?” you ask. Yes, I predicted our chickie girls would be triggered by the dusky sky and retreat to their coop for the night.
Well, for one, the sky didn’t get all that dark where we are. It turned a surreal dark gray/blue, while sunlight still made the leaves on the trees bright. A lot like my favorite kind of sky, with the black storm clouds behind the trees with brilliant color, almost like a stained glass window.
What actually happened: they froze. Literally, like we were playing a game of “Red Light, Green Light” (or some called it “Statue”). And they did it for FIVE whole minutes. NOT hyperbole. And just after they reached that time threshold, they all took off for their daytime shelter (read: the dog house). One of the girls also starting making a weird little growl sound. A chicken “growling” is like no other sound they ever made. Bizarre.
But I said I wasn’t going to write about that. So much for that.
We’ve been getting strange weather–lots of wind, unbelievable wind in the last several weeks. And yesterday, we got a short deluge of hail. Luckily here it wasn’t big enough to do much damage to any of our plants. The girls got a kick out of it, though. The moment it passed they emerged from the shelter and started to feast on the tiny hail stones. A skyborne treat.
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Anyway, I’m still in the process of revising the sequel to Umbra (woohoo!) and it’s going along smoothly and steadily. (And, if you haven’t read the first one, check it out in the sidebar/below!). I hesitate to put an actual ETA on its completion, since every time I’ve ever done that when it wasn’t close to the date, something BIG and BAD in life happened. I’d rather not take my chances. I am truly hoping it will be ready before the end of the year, and you can keep checking back (or subscribe!) to find out when. In the meantime, there will be another Storytime BlogHop entry next week, on 24 APR 2024.
*The number of news media “journalists” stating that the eclipse crossing a slender swath of North America was somehow a “world-altering” event made me laugh. Idiots.
T. R. Neff - Author 