Four Girls -- Not So Fast!

We have four parakeets, all girls. At least that's what we thought...

Adult parakeets are sexually dimorphic, the differences between the looks of the males and females, only by the color of the cere -- that body part above their beak where their nostrils sit. Boys are blue (how convenient!), girls are not-- their color can vary but is often tanish or brown. The cere, an ambiguous pale color at birth, will settle into its final color when the keet reaches maturity, somewhere around 8-12 months.

When we increased our keet-load from two to four late in 2009, we got two more girls (assured by the pet store), so we would avoid the confusion that we felt sure would erupt in a co-ed cage. Now, as they are approaching maturity, we find that the cere of Newfie, our blue keet, has turned from pale to bright blue. Looks like she might be Our Little Man!

We have read that the cere can turn blue and then closer to 1 year turn another color (or vice versa), so it is not certain that we have a transexual keet (transexual at least from our point of view, as "she" probably knew the status of "her" genitals all along). We'll have to wait and see. But you can be sure we are watching her "sister" and store-mate, Baja, very carefully!

Newfie Last December

Newfie Now

Desert Rain

We have had no measurable rain here since it snowed on April 1st. The monsoon season officially arrived at the end of June, and now we are getting thunderclouds building over the Huachuca Mountains, to the south, on most afternoons.

Black clouds roll in, some getting caught on the closer Whetstone Mountains, and some slipping easily over the top. The clouds have finally started to bring rain, and the desert really does have an identifiable smell after a cloudburst. Not surprisingly, I suppose, it smells like dust and dryness, with a bit of oldness and heat mixed in. Not at all unpleasant, but something I have never smelled before.

Huachuca means "thunder." Bring it on.

4th of July at Kartchner Caverns

John and I both worked at the Caverns in the morning on the 4th. On our final tour, we met a wonderful family vacationing from Puerto Villarta. If you are reading this, we both hope we will see you "down the road"!

In the evening, our neighbor, Bob, joined us at our picnic table as we watched the fireworks in Tombstone and Sierra Vista, about 20 miles away. We listened to a local radio station that was broadcasting patriotic music, and watched Scorpius and Sagittarius rise over the desert.



As an experiment, I tried zooming in during the fireworks. This is the result -- makes the town look a lot bigger, doesn't it?



Happy 4th of July to one and all.

How Did He Ever Make It Out of Junior High?

Location: Tubac, NM

The Tubac Presidio was a Spanish military garrison established in 1752 that housed both soldiers and their families. While the town of Tubac is now an artsy-fartsy colony with cute knicknack shops and cafes with entrances guarded by metallic gauchos, the garrison is a state park where recreated buildings and original excavations can be seen.

As we wandered through the old garrison, we found the recreated one-room school house, complete with a pot-bellied stove, student ink well desks, a piano on the stage, and a fake teacher and student:



John, feeling a sense of connection to his one-room school house roots, immediately took on the role of the attentive student, ever ready to be a good example for the other student and absorb whatever knowledge the teacher was willing to impart:



But "Bad John" was still lurking just under the surface. Don't let that innocent Iowa farm boy exterior fool you! John, John, John. How DID you ever make it out of Junior High?