Observation Quiz! How good are you?

Mystery Object

A student brought this in and asked me what I thought this was and I am stumped! I think she said it was found on a beach. I will ask her where. Does anyone know what this is? (I think it's a calcified fairy wing, but until a fairy is caught and its wing is studied for comparison, we will never know)

Heads Up!

I'll never forget the day I hit my grandmother in the head with a baseball. I was only thirteen and learned the hard way that my accuracy still needed honing. I was playing catch with my brother in our backyard when she dawdled towards our garden. We cautiously continued to play catch until a high, rainbow like flutter ball konked her on the head and softly landed five feet away. She was a bit stunned but forgave me even though I did not shout "heads up!" It all happened so slowly, that yelling "heads up" did not even enter my mind. I felt like I was watching a horror movie in slow motion! And anyways, if she did look up, she would have been hit in the nose. So I like to think that I was "protecting" her. My brother disagrees, but he had a bad angle on the throw anyway.

So I am here to say "heads up" to you. Because there are at least five things you need to keep an eye out for in the coming days.

ANOTHER FALLING SATELLITE

Did you know that you had a 1 in 3200 chance of having a decrepit satellite fall on you last month? If you didn't, now the odds of having a satellite fall on you has increased to 1 in 2000 because a defunct German satellite is going to enter our atmosphere and crash somewhere on Earth. Where? No one knows until one or two hours before it hits. Now don't fret. Our atmosphere will protect us by burning up most of this satellite. But unfortunately, the mirrors on the satellite will probably survive re-entry temperatures and land on Earth. They gave an estimate that it will land somewhere between Canada and South America. At least I know Santa is safe. UPDATE: The estimated time of crash is this Sunday morning (the 23rd). So make sure you park your car in the garage and spend the weekend in a bunker or basement!

METEOR SHOWER

If you do not want to wait to see Halley's Comet, just look outside near the constellation Orion during the wee hours of Saturday morning. If you see a meteor streaking across the sky, you are likely seeing a piece of dust that left Halley's comet the last time it whipped around our Sun. The peak of this meteor shower is only 15 meteors an hour, but it is still better than no meteor shower at all. So heads up for space junk and meteors!









BIRD POOP

When one of my kids was a toddler, a bird in a parking lot pooped on her head. It was gross and quickly cleaned up. When I told my Mom about this, she said one of the best things in the world. "When a bird poops on your head, that means your lucky." I never heard that before. So I believed it, until last week.

I visited Blue Beach in North Kingstown and had the whole beach to myself except for the presence of some cormorants and one large great blue heron. I stalked the heron to get a picture and I watched in awe as it slowly flew away with its usual grace. But the elegant grace disappeared as a single, thick, long wet stream of heron poop landed on the pristine sand of the beach. It's incredibly hard to gross me out, but that was totally disgusting. So heads up for bird poop.

LICHEN

I have a love / hate relationship with squirrels. Mostly hate though. But when I was in my backyard over the summer a piece of bark landed on my head. Then another piece just missed me. When I ran away and looked up, I saw a squirrel frantically breaking apart the lichen and bark looking for food to eat. I was very impressed with the variety of the squirrel's diet. It made me want to at least try some "yucky" foods like cabbage, pickles and cauliflower. But not really. I would rather throw that food at the squirrels who constantly outsmart me at my attempts to feed birds. So heads up for lichen and bark falling on your head from evil squirrels.

THE ACORN GAME

I thought of a great game to play. Put on goggles and lay face up under a towering huge oak tree as it is losing acorns. Try to catch the acorns for points. If you miss and it hits you, then you get a bruise from the speedy and pointy acorn. I have not played this yet, but I will have the common courtesy to let someone else be the first to play and to let me know how much an acorn can hurt you before I decide to play. At least with this game, due to your position facing the sky and trees, no one needs to holler "heads up!"

Foliage Color Map