An Off-Kilter Day

Some days things are just a tiny bit “off” all day long…

We’re in our normal long summer dry spell. It hasn’t rained here in months, and there’s 0.00000% chance of rain at any time in the next ten days. We may get clobbered this winter with this “super el Nino” that’s brewing (the last significant one in 1997-1998 hit us hard), but for now, we’re watching those big thunderstorms build up over the desert and mountains between here and Las Vegas, with none of them coming within a dozen miles of us.

Until, with zero warning, at 04:45 last night.

That darker spot just north of us with the heavier rain had just passed. I woke to find it POURING, which made no sense at all. It had to be something else, something weird.

A quick check of the weather radar on my phone showed we were in the only rain cell within a couple hundred miles.

Like, literally just the one isolated spot between Mexico and Las Vegas. Extremely random and weird!

Then the porch security light started flashing on and off – if the rain gets hard enough and is gushing out of the downspout, the motion sensor on the light picks it up and keeps turning itself on, shining right into the bedroom. When I’ve just been woken abruptly from a sound sleep and I’m trying to jumpstart my brain and figure out WTF is going on, a strobing security light outside with all of the noise from the pounding rain doesn’t help the situation.

The rain lasted 10-15 minutes, the lights stopped, I went back to sleep, and got up to find the back yard invaded by an entire freakin’ FLOCK of California quail.

It was really cool when I first saw one back in April while I was out exploring along the edge of The Mesa. It was rare, a first, unexpected, a treat.

Then I saw three of them on the back yard wall a month or so ago, and that also was relatively rare and another treat.

This morning I found 7-8 of them on top of the wall, with another 4-5 on the ground.

Over a few minutes all but one of them on the wall hopped down, leaving one lookout, while almost a dozen quail chowed down on spilled birdseed.

Still a treat, still unexpected, still amazing, but I guess I’ll have to stop referring to these appearances as “rare.”

After that it was just a “busier than ghod” Friday at work with multiple massive deadlines coming at me like freight trains. I am so tired, a bit off due to the late night storm, interrupted sleep, and mental confusion, compounded by the semi-magical appearance of half the quail in Southern California all at once.

Carrying onward. As Leo Bloom said near the end of “The Producers,” “No way out! No way out! No way out!”