…as viewed from Nutrea Henge (sun rises directly over Mt. Hood on the equinoxes).

A Great Egret foraging at Nike World Headquarters, Washington County, Ore. I think She’s hiding her feet so the shoe police don’t kick her out for not wearing Nikes.

I’m going to start calling our house Nutria-henge. On the Autumnal Equinox, the sun rose directly over the peak of Mt. Hood. Ten days later, it’s slipping south.

The weather’s wetter, which means…

the froggies are back, which means…

the snakeys are back.

Junior and I have gone from being fascinated by snakes to being kind of creeped out by them (after our snake ball sighting last weekend).

Oh, and we had another mantis sighting today, but we didn’t get any good pix. Here’s one from a couple weeks back.

Jr. and I spent the afternoon at Tualatin Hills Nature Park doing a little bit of a scavenger hunt. “Something a deer might eat” was easy, since we saw a couple deer eating leaves right off the bat. Jr. noticed there was no check box for “snake” (he frequently declares on our nature walks, “We’re not going home until we’ve seen at least one snake or a frog”), but we decided “Something a bird would eat” covered it, since raptors love snakes.

It wasn’t long before we started seeing snakes. Then more snakes. Then a great big ball of snakes. Holy smokes, never have these two boys seen so dang many snakes!

(The girls, meanwhile, were dealing with their own special kind of wildlife at the mall.)

I drive past this 222 acre preserve on my way to work every day, but this is the first time we’ve visited. We’ll be back!

A game we play in Ory-gun.

How to play: on your walk to school, count all the slugs you see, and also all the (non-human, non-slug) animals you see (bugs, birds, dogs, worms, etc.). Five sightings wins for that category. Or, if one gets to five, you can keep counting the other until you hit the school yard gate (that’s how it always used to be, until yesterday). Or you can change the rules as you go. Actually, I think it’s an unwritten rule that the rules will change at the whim of your third grader, and depending on whether we’re rooting for slugs or animals, and depending on how many of each are out on a given day.

Today, Jr. said the first one to five wins, period. Then, when animals got to five (two flies, a beetle and two dogs vs. four slugs), we decided we’d give the slugs one last chance. We were so engrossed in the contest, we didn’t realize the first bell had rung, and the playground was empty and quiet when we got there. Still, no more slugs.

Animals win again.

…with Jupiter below. It is “super” because the full moon coincided with the autumnal equinox, and is also special because of its appearance with Jupiter. More on flickr.

Shine on, shine on Super Harvest Moon…. I’ll see what kind of pictures I can get tonight.