A Plague of Frogs, Movies on the Beach, Dancing Planets, and Excessive Heat

The sun seared much of California with renewed ferocity this week, and the humidity made being outside even less comfortable. Despite this, the wheels of summer camp kept turning, grinding out five days of fun and festivity.

I started the week tired due to a weekend full of live music, including Mayhem Fest at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Then, because free movies play on the beach during the summer, went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on Wednesday. We saw The Breakfast Club, which I last saw so long ago that I barely remembered it. I think I liked it better this time through. It helped that a full, yellow moon slowly rose above the fog bank behind us to our left. It was quite beautiful. At one point, the seagulls started freaking out above us, and we looked up to see a hovering drone with red and green lights invading seagull airspace. It eventually turned and disappeared in the direction of the pier, and the seagulls calmed down.

This was the view to our right:

To the west, Venus and Jupiter did their static dance in the darkening sky. I pointed them out to the kids on the night hike the following night.

What else? A camper found a box turtle carapace in the pond yesterday. Not only aren't box turtles native to California, but they aren't aquatic. I envisioned some clueless weekend-warrior turtle owner deciding to free the box turtle by throwing it in the pond. Nobody knows for sure though, so it's a mystery.

The other noteworthy camp-related event this week was the abundance of tiny tree frogs (or Pacific Chorus Frogs, as they are now usually known) around camp at night. There were a bunch of them in the hallway, leaping across the floor and scaling the glass doors. There was one in the kitchen while I was making coffee this morning, and there was one in the Hub last night, which was spotted by a little homesick girl. I told her that she had saved the frog's life because when she spotted it, it was stuck in a spider web near the floor. That brought a smile to her face. Also in the Hub was a boy with a migraine (who ended up going home) and a counselor with a fever (who couldn't get hold of her parents, so didn't). It was kind of a busy night, as summer camp nights go.

At home, one of our Bold Jumping Spiders became a mom and a corpse in a short span of time. I found her little carcass at the bottom of her jar, and her young congregating on the sides. We're going to let them go in the front yard, because if we free them in the backyard, the chickens will eat them.