No movie tonight, but I did watch an episode of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" that was pretty cool. You may recall that I was watching "Voyage" eps last Fall and Winter, when I purchased Season One on dvd. Back in 1964 when that season aired, TV shows had 32 episodes per year. What happened was that I bit off more than I could chew because I also bought more "Rawhide", and the complete "Kolchak" series, and I had a bunch of "George Gently"s as well. Then the 2017 "Twin Peaks" was released on dvd and all of a sudden I was overstocked, on top of all the movies I am always watching. So I put "Voyage" on the back burner last January or so, and I am now getting back to it.
I loved that show as a kid, it was one of my first favorites. In this episode, a small group of surviving Nazis kidnap Admiral Nelson midflight on an airliner and take him to a remote island where they have other scientists held captive. Besides being an Admiral, Nelson is also the world's leading marine biologist. The Nazis want to use these scientists to help them establish The Fourth Reich, but first they need to use Admiral Nelson as bait in order to commandeer his nuclear submarine the Seaview. Once they have their hands on the sub, they plan to launch nukes simultaneously at Moscow and Washington, to bring about WW3. When it is over, they will take over the smoldering remains of the world to fulfill The Fuhrer's goal.
A nice cheery little drama, eh? But of course it's all done in that understated but tense and highly professional 1960s style, in which The End Of The World is threatened and averted in 50 minutes, with no repercussions. The Nazis are toast and The Seaview keeps right on sailing, all the way to the bottom of the sea.
I also watched some more of the X-15 footage from the dvd set I bought from Spacecraft Films last year. It's amazing stuff, to watch the first and only Spaceplane perform on it's test flights. Somewhere in my photo albums, I have a picture of myself standing next to the X-15 at Edwards, taken at an Air Show in 1997. I'll post it if I can ever find it, one day when I live in a bigger home and all of my stuff is no longer stuffed into a closet like it is in The Tiny.
I went on a nice 95 Degree Hike this afternoon at Aliso. The air had cooled ten degrees since yesterday, thwarting an Official Hundred Degree Hike (which I haven't often had the chance to undertake this Summer), but the humidity was still high enough to count it as a reasonable facsimile. I was looking for the large, elaborate spider webs that appear every August at Aliso, because I like to photograph them, but I found nothing today that could compare with the arachnoid masterpieces from the Summer of 2016, which was when I noticed these webs to begin with. Examples of the 2016 webs are posted on my FB "2016" photo album.
I did see the Aliso Coyote, though, and I finally got a picture of him. Or her. I've gotta settle on "him" or "her" in a way that I don't sound un-PC, haha. I could call the Coyote "it", but I hate that use of the word for animals. But anyway, I think the Coyote likes me, or at least trusts me.....
Because this is like the fourth time I have seen him/her in the last six times I've been up there. By contrast, the first four years I went to Aliso I probably saw the Coyote twice. Now it's like almost every time. So maybe there is a good vibe happening. Don't think me naive, because I know it's a wild animal, but this is one of those "you'd have to be there" situations to know that the Coyote lives in a park that dozens of people go hiking in every day. So he or she knows about people.
And today, he (can I call him he so I don't have to do the he/she thing every time?) was trailing me when I came around the bend from where she lives (I'll alternate the gender). I wouldn't have noticed him had I not turned around to take a branched-off trail to look for spider webs. When I turned around, there was my buddy, about 100 feet behind me, following and assuming I'd continue forward.
But when I unexpectedly stopped to turn and take the perpendicular trail, that when I saw her, and she stopped too. She stood still for about three seconds as I turned on my camera, but just as I raised it to my eye, he turned and walked away. I was lucky to catch him in that photo before he disappeared.
Animals are a trip, however, because they cannot communicate through spoken language. All they have to go by is body language and the vibe a person is giving off. Just last night I encountered two raccoon cubs at CSUN. They were not with their mama, and I could tell they were kids because there was no leader. When the mama is with them, she goes first from the gutter toward the trash cans. She leads, and then when the coast is clear, the kids follow. But this time, you could tell they were cubs because of the way they moved and stuck together. Body language again. But the cool thing was, they weren't scared. Here I was, passing by on the sidewalk. They were hunting trash cans, and they stopped and froze as animals do. I stopped too, because I like to quietly interact with animals. What I do is just stop and be quiet, and I look at them and talk to them as if I were talking to a dog. "Hey, raccoons, how are you guys doing"? Spoken quietly, body still so as not to startle.
What I find is that you can get the guys to hang around a little longer when you approach them that way, because - being animals - they are all about sensing the vibe. Last night the two raccoon cubs began to scale a nearby tree trunk, but they stopped halfway up to stare at me, and I talked to them some more.
Dad once told me a story about when he was staying in a cabin in the mountains, owned by Pearl, and every night there would come a scratching on the back door. It was a Raccoon Mom and her kids, and they knew that Dad would have popcorn for them. They trusted him.
I feel that same vibe with certain animals - though I must say that I do not want to see any big cats or unexpected snakes - and with Coyotes and Raccoons - and definitely Bunnies, I seem to have a kinship.
Just talk to them, let 'em know you are interested in whatever they are doing, and that everything is cool. They will understand. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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