Tag: Dunwich

Having the Relatives Over

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Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

So, this week, in the middle of all the usual crises in Dunwich I got a visit from the First Selectman.  I was out in the fields when suddenly the shadow of a five-hundred-foot eldritch horror darkened my path.  Now tact is always the key survival trait when dealing with the First Selectman.  So, I greeted him respectfully and asked him to what I owed the honor of his attention.

He got right to the point.  His kin were having a visit to Dunwich and he wanted to make sure they had a nice stay.  Well, when Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep come to town, they’re bound to be hungry from the interdimensional transit and will expect something substantial with which to restore the tissues.  So, Cthulhu wanted me to arrange the menu.  Since Dunwich is a farming town, I suggested cattle.  He gave me a shake of his cephalopodic head and reminded me that all three visitors were obligate anthropophages.  Well, that would make this a tricky assignment.  Even though I’m regularly fed up with most of my neighbors, I’m not really comfortable with them being eaten alive by monsters from beyond space.  And I especially don’t want to be the one feeding them to the hideous entities.  But neither did I want to be next on the menu for refusing.  So, what to do?

Well, it took a little work but by the creative lowering of our fairground fees I was able to attract and book the Democratic Socialists of America’s New England political rally for that weekend.  And wouldn’t you know Graham Plattner was the keynote speaker!  Now without a doubt an oysterman would provide just the tang of New England cuisine that the First Selectman’s family would find irresistible.  My plan is to let the rally reach a crescendo of communistic agitation and then use a couple of fire houses to marinate the crowd.  I gave the First Selectman his choice of sauces; classic Worcestershire cocktail, garlic butter, Bang Bang or a Remoulade.  Being old fashioned he went with the garlic butter.

I know, I know.  What kind of heartless monster would feed his fellow humans to creatures of cosmic horror.  I did think a while about it.  But then I remembered that Bernie Sanders and AOC were also supposed to be attending.  So that seemed to assuage my conscience.

But today I had new pangs of guilt.  I mean Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep have never caused me any harm and here I was feeding them some of the most toxic creatures on the planet.  I mean, what if they got really sick.  It would be my fault.  At the very least maybe I should provide a photo of Plattner to the Great Old Ones and warn them that he probably had at least a sixty-proof rating and anyone with an alcohol problem should probably steer clear of the pugnacious oysterman and stick to something a little less spicy.  Well, anyway, the First Selectman seems pleased with the menu.  That’s something.

A Special Message from the First Selectman

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Good morning my fellow Dunwichians.  I come to you today with a heavy heart but a firm resolve.  I’m sure that all of you are aware of the enormous scandal that has unfolded over the allegations that have swirled around my old friend Graham Platner.  As you all know he and I go way back to the early days of the oyster farming craze of the twenty teens.  After all, as a cephalopod I naturally gravitate to shellfish eating pursuits.  And for many years we’ve made the rounds of the New England dive bar circuit.  Of course, he was entering them looking for drunk chicks and after he was done I would rip the building from the ground and swallow all of the organic contents.  But we were always very chummy.  He would show me his death’s head tattoo and I would show him my keychain with the skulls of anybody who didn’t get out of my way that week.  But we were always good pals.

But things have gone too far.  His disrespect for women has crossed a line.  Now, sure, I’ve had my moments of ribaldry with the fairer sex.  That time I crashed the Smith College orientation day and ate the whole freshman class in a swimming pool full of barbecue sauce was a bit “forward” of me but I maintained the highest levels of decorum, always keeping my pinky fingers outstretched and never talking while chewing.  And I did send an apology to the Dean of Students for neglecting to get a pool pass in advance.  But in my heart, I’ve always been a true gentleman and have never disrespected women.

So, it is my sad duty to condemn Graham for his awful behavior and shocking actions.  As the political head of the Dunwich Democratic Party, I must take the sad but necessary action of cancelling Graham Platner’s status as keynote speaker at the Dunwich Labor Day Jamboree.  And I must further demand the return of all the free passes to the rides and attractions that have already been mailed to him.  These passes represent a value of over eleven dollars and are much sought after by patrons of the event.  I would hope that Graham would have the decency of mailing the passes in time for their use at the Labor Day festivities.  He may have sunk into sexual moral depravity and criminality but at least let’s hope he hasn’t also become a selfish jerk too.

But as much as it is my sad duty to denounce Graham for his outrageous behavior, I feel it’s also necessary to extend the hope of redemption to this lost soul.  During the Middle Ages the Church of Rome was famous for their carefully calibrated table of alms linked to indulgences for various terrible sins.  In the same vein I’d like to offer Graham the chance to pay alms to Dunwich for the indulgence of his offences.  I think three tons of oysters would cover the moral lapses in question quite nicely.  If he could convey the alms to my refrigerator by the end of July, I think we could see him attending the Labor Day Jamboree as a “prodigal son” without too much squawking by the gals, in my estimation.  Think about it Graham.  I’m sure you’ll do the right thing, amigo.

Blow-Up Godzilla and Highway Mayhem

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The Third of July was a busy day.  We had to get the pool vacuumed before guests arrived and then there were chores around the yard.  And then we had a good summer cookout with burgers and potato salad, corn on the cob, sausage and peppers and watermelon.  No wonder losing weight is such a slog!

And it was a good visit with reminiscences about summers up in Maine when my kids were young and other trips.  And I had an interesting conversation with Princess Sack of Potatoes.  She said something about how useful mothers were.  So, I mentioned to her what fathers were useful for.  I asked her if she ever got tired while out somewhere and her father carried her around like a sack of potatoes?  Or what exactly would happen if the car got a flat tire far away from a tow truck?  Or if suddenly traffic stopped on a crowded highway in the middle of summer and after an hour someone would have to get out and walk up the road to see how long the stoppage would be.  And this caused a yelp from Princess Sack of Potatoes’ mother.  She remembered that day very well after all these years.  And she was still upset by it, remembering how certain she had been that I would never come back alive.  We all got a big laugh out of that.

This was shortly after I had moved out of New York City but I was driving into Manhattan to attend a wedding in SoHo.  It was a science fiction themed wedding with a blow-up Godzilla in attendance.  We were on the FDR Drive when the traffic screeched to a halt and nothing happened for about forty minutes.  So, since it was very hot that day and my car’s air conditioning was non-existent, I shut off the engine and started walking between lanes of traffic to see what was going on.  And about a half mile up the road there were police, fire and emergency vehicles blocking the road in both directions.  And along with several crashed cars there was a very fancy sports car that was upside down and wrapped around a light pole and some other parts of the highway infrastructure.  The firemen were cutting away what was left of the frame to get at what was left of the driver.  It looked pretty grim.

The good news for us was that our direction on the highway would be released as soon as the ambulances got their patients stowed away and headed to the hospital.   The other side looked like it would be stuck for hours.  So, after satisfying my morbid curiosity for a few minutes I headed back to my car with the news that we would be moving in less than another half hour.  And my youngest daughter looked so relieved when I managed to return before the traffic had started to move.  She was convinced that if I hadn’t gotten back before it started to move then of necessity I would be squashed like a bug in a cartoon.

It’s funny, up until today I hadn’t thought of that day in thirty-some-odd years.  Funny what stuff just pops into your head.

All in All, Very Entertaining

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Ah, July First.  The end of winter here in Dunwich and the season of heat and oppressive humidity.  Glorious!  All week the grandkids have been swimming around in the pool which mercifully opened this year without a leak in the liner.  Last year ended with two patches applied and a warning that when winter ended it might be time to replace the liner; a very expensive and difficult procedure that would tax the almost non-existent competence of our local pool professional (and I use this word extremely facetiously) to its limit and beyond.  I told Matt, the pool guy. that I would think about replacing it in September.  But I’m not sure.  I might roll the dice again in 2027.  We’ll see.

I’m off from work for the next week and a half and I’m almost as giddy as a school boy on the first day of summer.  I walked around and checked the milkweed to see if any monarch caterpillars were chewing on the leaves.  While I didn’t find any, I did see a monarch butterfly flitting around the yard and took that as a good sign.  I also haven’t seen any preying mantis egg sacs or baby mantids anywhere and am starting to believe that the mantids that I bought the last few years aren’t capable of surviving the Dunwich winter.  I’ll have to look into that.  I have seen them naturally occurring in the area but I was hoping that my seeding of the area with egg sacs would have made them more prevalent.

Camera Girl has now completely conditioned her pond fish to expect a feeding at about six in the evening after our dinner.  Tonight when she arrived at the pond the water was already in motion and when she tossed in the food pellets it reminded me of what used to happen on the old Addams Family television show when Morticia would toss a leg of lamb into the piranha tank and the fish would roil the water for a few moments and a glistening white bone would be ejected at high speed out of the tank stripped clean.  That’s kind of like what her pond looks like at feeding time.  The damn things actually make audible noise.  I wouldn’t want to be an innocent grasshopper or cricket that accidentally fell into that death trap at feeding time.  It’s slightly unnerving.

I’m currently using my push mower to cut the grass in the fields and it’s taking many hours.  I’ve been too unmotivated to change the oil on the riding mower so I’m paying for my laziness.  But I figure it’ll help me achieve my summer weight loss goal.  If nothing else I’m definitely sweating off an enormous amount of water which must be good exercise for my sweat glands.  I noticed that I was having to double cut the grass to get it right.  But then I discovered that pulling it backward over the grass did a much better job so I dragged the mower behind me backward all the time.  Of course, you can only use one arm when dragging it behind you, so I came up with a routine to alternate arms.  And that had its own subtleties.  All in all, hand mowing was very entertaining.  A good first day of summer.

Reactions

Ed Brault 

It looks like New England is getting even more heat than here in South Carolina. I do remember a few HOT summers up in Danvers, and sweltering near DC when I was in college. Here we just expect it, do the yardwork before the Sun clears the trees, and keep in the shade and A/C until dusk.
If you think your wife’s fish pond look like the Addams Family, you should see the Great Ocean Tank at the SC Aquarium. 50 species totaling 550 various sized critters from all levels of the Food Chain, roiling the waters as we toss sixty pounds of mackerel, squid, shrimp, and smelt on the surface. The sharks are polite, they know they will have a separate dining service an hour later. Our 240-pound sea turtle, on the other hand, is the Diva of the Tank, and even the feeding frenzy parts before her as she glides over for her smelt-cicles (she loves it frozen, nice and crunchy). We do NOT have divers in the water at feeding time, although we do occasionally have to go in to recover a Chum Bucket that got loose from its line.

 

TomD

Father’s Day 2026

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So, I got every father’s Father’s Day dream come true.  I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything at all today!  I slept an hour late and I ate a leisurely breakfast and I went outside to breath in the Summer Solstice air and stare at the sky and enjoy the experience of time standing still at the top of the solar roller coaster ride before it comes crashing down in the Winter Solstice and Christmas.  And it occurred to me that I would only be getting a handful more of these.  How many exactly, was a secret that the big guy upstairs plays relatively close to the vest but a dozen or two is an optimistic range.  From the point of view of probabilities even zero more summers isn’t that very unlikely.  So, I decided I should treat this occasion with the proper respect and commune with the spirit of the day.

So, I saw something I’d never seen before.  Two rabbits were standing outside of the living room window and almost nose to nose facing each other.  And suddenly one of them jumped vertically in the air and landed in the same exact spot.  And a few moments later it did the exact same thing.  I was very curious about this ritual.  Was it a male and female in some strange mating dance or was it two males trying to decide who was the bull goose rabbit of the area.  But I never found out because just then they must have seen me moving behind the window and took off (like rabbits).  I thought it was interesting how an animal with such a lopsided set of limbs could manage to launch itself so precisely square.  Its entire back remained parallel with the ground throughout its rise and fall.  Or at least that is how it appeared to me.  Well, you live and you learn.

Today the neighbors began delving into their Fourth of July stash of high explosives.  For the most part it seemed to be some kind of a series of about ten detonations in a row that seemed larger than fire crackers but smaller than M-80s.If I were going to guess I’d say it was some kind of a small mat of interconnected charges that branch off from a common fuse.  And this moderate sized munition doesn’t have a bad effect on the dogs so far.  They haven’t gotten worked up or frightened or even seemed to notice them so far.  But that is a temporary situation.  My neighborhood is sort of the Yucca Flats of fireworks testing.  One of the close neighbors (although because of vegetation cover I’ve never been able to determine exactly which one) must have access to fairly large thermonuclear devices.  The seismic events are somewhere around eight on the Richter Scale.  The fact that the recoil of the ground has shifted the orientation of my house by forty degrees over the course of the last few years is a testament to the quality of his firework merchant.  But Dunwich doesn’t have a noise ordinance or an atmospheric test ban.  So, I expect the show will be spirited this year.  Let the games begin!

Parties and Stories

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Tomorrow Camera Girl and I are double booked for parties.  We have a graduation party and a friend’s family party.  And they’re both at about the same time.  So, I suggested that we go to the graduation party for an hour or so and then head to the second one.  Camera Girl spent a couple of days telling me why that was a stupid idea.  And then she told me that we would split up and each go to only one party.

So, then I suggested we start off going to separate parties but then I would come back and pick her up and both of us would go to the friend’s party.  I think she wanted to hit me.  She shook her head and walked away.  I don’t think she understands optimization.

You see if I show up at a party by myself everyone is going to want to know where she is and why I showed up without her.  I’m not the draw.  She’s much more interesting because she’s telling stories about all the stupid things I do.  And when she tells them they’re funny.  Now I can’t tell stories about myself.  It would sound stupid.  I need a straight man to tell the story and then let me weave my defense.  It would be like Costello asking “who’s on first” without Abbott.  It’s just not the same without the cross-talking.

So today I checked my stats on Amazon.  So far, “The Sniper” has sold a total of 303 books (65 paperback copies and 238 e-books) and 3,657 pages on Kindle Unlimited.  On Kindle Unlimited my book is about 210 pages long so 3,657 pages is about 17 copies.  Not bad for about a month on Kindle Unlimited.  But I may have to cancel the yacht.

But the lack of fabulous wealth from my book sales has not dampened my enthusiasm for writing.  In fact, I’ve become much more excited about the sequel.  And what has me most intrigued is not so much the plot or even the new and old characters.  What I’m interested in is injecting more dialog.  Specifically, I want to get some of the characters to tell their stories.  And I know that this is backward.  The author is supposed to show the reader the story and not tell it. But storytelling within a story is an interesting technique that I’d like to try.  And I’d like to introduce dialog between characters about politics, economic policy, religion, traditional family, artificial intelligence, the war between the sexes, energy policy, the future of the human race, space exploration and a million other things.

Of course, I’ll have to be careful I don’t drown out the action under such a heavy soaking of blather but I think it’s time for my world to start exhibiting brains and not just marksmanship.  One thing I haven’t worked out yet is whether I get Connors and Grace to go out on a date.  I’ve been bouncing some stuff off of Camera Girl but I still don’t know whether any of it makes sense.  Oh well, the only way to find out is to start writing and see where it goes.

29MAY2026 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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So, I’m a week in on the Kindle Unlimited program and I’ve got about a thousand pages sold.  Now that’s like five books worth.  Which is not much but the curve has been increasing for the last five days so I’ll keep an eye on this for a few weeks to see if it goes anywhere.  If any of you guys currently uses Kindle Unlimited explain how it works.  Do you read it on the website one page at a time or how does it work?  It seems kind of clunky to me.

So, Camera Girl and I went to the Dunwich Spring Middle School Concert which includes both band and chorus sections at both the upper and lower levels.  This is a remarkable experience because the range of accomplishment varies from fairly good to nonexistent.  But realizing that the teacher has managed to get these children to even organize into an orchestra is almost inconceivable.  The choral songs aren’t mostly to my taste.  They tend to try to introduce a foreign language song that doesn’t translate to an American audience.  One exception was Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).  The Tokens version is a favorite of mine so I was excited.  But something went wrong with the arrangement.  As is typical in these school choruses the ratio of girls to boys is seven to one.  So, the deeper voices are always practically missing in the song.  But Wimoweh famously has a towering falsetto section and of course all those girls should have been able to translate it into a powerful soprano part.  But instead, they had the three boys with their barely audible tenor voices whispering through this part.  Oh, the pain.

But the highlight of the evening was the band giving their rendition of the theme to “Jurassic Park.”  And the kids did a serviceable job of John Williams’ Fanfare for the Common Dinosaur.  But the funniest thing was a kid sitting behind me.  He must have been three years old and he started exclaiming loudly, “Giraffic Park, Giraffic Park!!!” at the top of his lungs and all the parents in the front rows started laughing.  But the Conductor/Music Teacher never missed a beat and her band performed the miracle of producing a recognizable version of the popular melody.

I’ve started reading “Project Hail Mary.”  My oldest grandson has loaned me his copy and I’m treating it with kid gloves since I remember what it was like when I had a mint hardback copy of an sf favorite.  I’m a hundred pages in and it’s interesting.  It’s definitely a millennial book.  There’s a difference in the voice.  It’s a kindler, gentler voice.  There’s much more emotion.  Now the protagonist is a Middle School teacher so you can say this is just the consequence of this particular character.  But the choice of the character is part of this younger generation of readers and writers.  Well, the book is good so far.  It’s inventive and well-paced and has an interesting manner of unfolding the story.  It starts in the middle and flashes back to the beginning but one flash at a time.  Weir has come up with an interesting twist on an interstellar drive.  It dovetails with the crisis that is forcing the need for a trip to Tau Ceti.  Now I don’t think it’s a particularly plausible mechanism but it is entertaining for sure.

Well, that’s enough.

Robert’s Rules of Order, Optional

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So we’re in the thick of this mid-term election cycle here in Dunwich.  And just as all over the country election holders that have strayed from what their party wants are being primaried out of their candidacies, so there have been several candidates who showed up at the Town Hall to take out papers to run against the First Selectmen.

Now this isn’t unprecedented.  Every few years someone moves into town and after experiencing just how “difficult” conditions are in town government, decides to throw his hat in the ring.  Now usually after seeing that First Selectman Cthulhu’s hat is thirty feet in diameter the incipient “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” type picks up his hat out of the ring and slinks back home.  But this year’s Mr. Smith (specifically a fellow named Ned Parson) was made of sterner stuff.  He paid his registration fee and showed up in front of Town Hall and challenged the First Selectman to a debate.

Cthulhu nodded his head and told his secretary to set up a public meeting on Sentinel Hill on the following Monday.  Sentinel Hill is convenient for meetings involving the First Selectman because if the humans are standing on the top of the hill and Cthulhu stands at the base, his head is only slightly above their level.  Also the acoustics are such that Cthulhu can usually hear mostly everything spoken by the humans.  And this is important.  Because if he can’t hear what’s being said, he tends to think he’s being disrespected and that usually ends poorly.

Last Monday it was cold and cloudy but there was a decent crowd, maybe fifty townspeople milling around the podium at the top of the hill.  And on the podium Ned Parson was dressed as Uncle Sam including the beard.  He was throwing buttons to the crowd that said “Be Led by Ned!!!” along with shooting off some confetti poppers.  He seemed confident, almost jubilant.  As the noon hour approached the First Selectman rumbled up to his station on the valley floor.  His facial expression was as usual unreadable but his breathing seemed to be a little noisier than usual.  There might also have been a certain grinding of his teeth audible but not very loudly.

At noon the Town Clerk climbed the podium and read the description of the event; “Debate for First Selectman Office.”  She added that Ned Parson had one the coin toss and would speak first.  Ned proceeded, “My fellow Dunwichians, I stand before you today prepared to finally convert this town from a weird dysfunctional outpost into a modern, progressive New England town.  For too long you’ve all suffered under the inefficient, corrupt and depressing administration of my opponent.  For too long you’ve been unable to get town services or even the comfort of knowing a constabulary stood ready during outbreaks of vampirism or lycanthropy to protect life and property.  I have the support of the local surrounding towns and I will bring our standards up to those of our neighbors.  I will not stand still.  I will move forward and I will make a big splash in this little place.”

The Town Clerk thanked Ned and then asked the First Selectman for his rebuttal.  Cthulhu reached down to the podium and closed his hand around Ned, winding up he threw a perfect strike.  Ned splatted against the rock face of Mt Bishop leaving a sizable red stain.  Cthulhu guffawed, “That little man was right, he made a big splash.”

Well, as debates go, it was to the point.

A Quaint Dunwich Custom

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In Dunwich the end of April is both an important time of the year agriculturally but also a time of great stress.  It is at this time that the great skunk cabbage harvest occurs.  Dunwich keeps ten thousand acres in skunk cabbage cultivation.  And depending on the phase of the moon sometime between the middle of April and the middle of May all of it must be harvested and processed for First Selectman Cthulhu’s Vernal Feast.  All of the cabbage is sent through an homogenizer and then mixed 1:1 with liquified cow manure and then pumped through a high-pressure hose directly into the First Selectman’s maw.  At one hundred gallons a minute this takes about six hours to transfer.

After that there is an eight-hour fermentation stage within the First Selectman’s alimentary canal after which this process produces a gaseous effluvium that exits at a very high flow rate at about a thousand standard cubic feet a second under considerable pressure.  Now this gas not only smells disgusting but it is as poisonous as phosgene so it must be mixed with air and immediately sent through a combustion nozzle.  The outlet gas still smells unbelievably bad but it is thus rendered non-lethal.

The combustion goes on for ten hours during which time the First Selectman likes to read an improving book or watch classic movies as entertainment.  It takes a crew of two hundred of the stoutest Dunwich men to complete the full process.  And it is an exhausting and psychologically scarring ordeal to say the least.  During this time most of the inhabitants of Dunwich vacate the town for about a week until the odor abates to a significant degree.

Over the years there have been attempts at Board of Selectmen Meetings to change the town bylaws to eliminate the “feast.”  Usually, the first Selectman eats whoever adds the motion to the agenda and the motion fails unanimously.  Usually this is some newcomer to town who doesn’t understand the nuance of having a Great Old One as a town official.

But there are some “advantages” to this process.  Rodents flee the town for at least two months after the ceremony and flies are so confused by the smell that they forget to eat and just weaken and die.  So, things are pretty vermin-free around town until autumn.  So, we’ve got that going for us.

There was a funny incident last year when a state environmental officer showed up and demanded that the skunk cabbage harvest be stopped because it was a native plant that was protected against commercial harvest.  He barged into the First Selectman’s office and threatened him with arrest.  Cthulhu seemed impressed with the officer’s courage and asked if he’d like to see the skunk cabbage field.  They walked over to the farm and then he planted the officer head first into the ground and applied a couple of gentle pats of his right hand to firmly smooth out his resting place.  And that was that.  Have a happy skunk cabbage feast everybody!

 

Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

A Man, a Plan, Camera Girl’s Pond Project

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The things a man will do for his wife!  This is going to be a very long week.  Monday and Tuesday will be completely consumed in the service of Dunwich.  By late Tuesday night I will be moaning and groaning and repeating that law of nature “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”  And in Dunwich the punishment is always cruel and extremely unusual.

Be that as it may I had promised Camera Girl that I would build her a goldfish pond and so I have been working at it since it arrived off the third-party delivery truck that Home Depot contracted for the job.  Between Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I got to work with pitch fork, shovel, wrecking bar, rake and wheelbarrow.    I measured off the perimeter, removed the turf and started to dig.  And because this is New England (at least the parts of Dunwich which are tethered to our space-time) the ratio of rock to soil is something like 3/1.  This makes the whole procedure slow and exceedingly painful.  The good news was that the temperature was in the fifties and sixties which made the earth moving tolerable but it was still strenuous enough to prove to me that digging ditches is strictly for prison chain gangs and other equally motivated people.  It brought to mind those scenes in Cool Hand Luke.  When Camera Girl brought me out some refreshments I said in a southern accent, “Taking it off, boss!”  I don’t think she got the reference.

But finally, yesterday as the sun was getting low in the western sky, it looked like the whole hole was deep enough.  So, I lowered the liner into the hole and voila!  In fact, it’s slightly too deep and also it will need a slight adjustment to make it perfectly level.  But the fine tuning will have to wait until Wednesday.  After that I’ll start the back filling that’s needed under the parts of the liner that are raised into steps for the placement of water plants and any goofy ornaments that women feel are needed to amuse the fish and frogs.  That will probably take a day or two.  And then we’ll fill the thing up and buy some water lilies and those other little sea-weedy plants that pond supply stores hand out and then onto the fish store to get goldfish or carp or whatever hardy species are available.  Camera Girl doesn’t want koi which is probably a good idea since they’re expensive and the Great Blue Herons around here like those better.

Truth be told I’m interested in seeing if in addition to the numerous and varied frog and toad species around the yard we manage to attract other cold-blooded critters.  Since I’ve seen them in the yard, I’m guessing garter and water snakes will show up.  And the painted turtles don’t have far to go from the real pond.  But what I’m not sure about is whether any salamanders will migrate over to this new water habitat.  There are several species in the area and I’ve always wanted to attract them to the yard.

Before we moved to Dunwich, I had built a smaller pond for Camera Girl in the yard where we lived.  It always made her happy to sit and watch the various wild animals and insects that gather around water.  I’ll have this up and running before summer and she’ll be able to enjoy it the way she used to.  Ah, the things we do for love.