July 13 [Alligators]
July 13
It was a really nice morning, and I felt pretty good when I woke up. I was a little bit sore from the storm yesterday but not too much. And I felt a lot better having gone to bed properly preened, ‘cause my feathers hardly needed any straightening this morning.
Outside, the first of the early birds were at my bird feeder and there was also a fat squirrel on the balcony picking up what they’d dropped. I thought about joining them for some sunflower seeds but that would just scare them all off.
I decided that I wanted to fly southeast today, ‘cause I hadn’t done that yet. There wasn’t a good way to avoid the airport, so I’d have to make a jog. I probably could have gotten permission to fly over the airport, but I didn’t want to make trouble for the airplane directors.
I was getting pretty good at filling up my camelback and putting it on and it only took me a couple of minutes. I had some daylilies for a breakfast snack and also the last package of mapley oatmeal and then I called the airplane directors on the radio and told them where I was going.
Dori was directing airplanes, and she told me to keep low over the city, because they had some runway traffic and so I promised her that I would.
When I was over the city, I saw a big airplane passing overhead and I thought that must be the traffic that Dori was talking about. It was a brown airplane like I’d seen at the airport before. I’d learned that they carried packages, and then they put them in big brown delivery trucks, and that was how I’d gotten my alfalfa. It probably wasn’t important enough to fly on an airplane, though.
I went all the way out to the lake with the dam, which is called Morrow Lake, and then I turned southeast just like I had planned.
The land below me was a patchwork of fields and some woodlots. Some of them had square edges, which I guess means that somebody cut the trees down right to the edge of his property but his neighbor didn’t.
After I’d flown for a ways, I saw a little town ahead of me, and dropped down a little bit to give it a look. There wasn’t much to it; just a few streets, railroad tracks running diagonally through, and then more fields.
I angled a little bit more east, and flew on over more fields. There was a really odd narrow one between trees, and I also saw one that looked stripey—there must have been two different kinds of crops planted—and I went over a grass lot with lots of loopy dirt tracks in it.
There was a town up ahead a few miles away and I thought I might as well go there before turning around. So I crossed over a winding stream, and right as I got to the outskirts of town I saw a place that had stands like at the Tall Ships Festival and lots of little square pools, so I flew down to take a closer look.
I had to rub my eyes and circle around because it didn’t make sense the first time, but I wasn’t imagining things. The pools were full of alligators.
Well, I knew some ponies made pets out of pretty dumb things, but who would want alligators? I guess that I didn’t know much about them besides that they lived in swamps and floated around pretending to be logs and if you weren’t paying enough attention, they’d grab your legs and roll you under the water to drown you and then they’d eat you.
Well, I guess there was no figuring out what people did.
I made a big loop around the town, which was called Athens, and then started flying back towards Morrow Lake. I could see Battle Creek off the the distance to my right, too.
By the time I got near the lake, I was kinda tired. I think I'd gone further than I'd meant to, 'cause of the jog in my route. Still, it was good practice. If I was gonna fly over Lake Michigan, I had to be in shape!
I called Dori and told her I was about to turn, and they told me to begin a descent to a thousand feet or below, so I asked how soon I had to be low, and she said by the time I got to Sprinkle Road would be good.
I was hoping I could stretch my glide out further, but I guess not.
The railroad tracks were the easiest thing to follow, plus it was just a little bit shorter—the road curved around a bit—and so I checked my altitude when I crossed over Sprinkle Road, and I was at about a thousand two hundred and that probably wasn't too far off my assigned altitude, so instead of dropping down right away, I just made my glide a bit steeper and by the time I was over the railroad yard I was at nine hundred feet.
I followed the railroad all the way to the base of campus and then dropped down the rest of the way over my neighborhood.
I took off my flight gear and ate a couple of carrots then went right into the shower. I got in when it was still cold and I was hot enough that there was a little bit of steam coming up off my back.
I'd completely emptied my camelback on my flight, so I tilted my head back and drank some of the shower-water, but not too much at once 'cause it would give me cramps. It was hard to overdo it when it was coming out of the showerhead.
When I was done, I turned on my computer and found out that I could take the train to Lafayette, but I'd have to go to Chicago first. That was okay; I knew what the Chicago station was like and could find my way around it easily enough, and I might have a little bit of time to look around in Chicago, too.
So I bought my tickets and then I sent a computer letter to Aric telling him that I was going to come see his play and visit Lafayette.
I ate some more lunch, and then read through more of Psalms. There were so many of them! I stopped when I got to a hundred, and turned ahead to see how many more there were because I wanted to be done with them before I met with Liz tomorrow. I had fifty more, which I could read if I didn't go on a long flight.
I put away my Bible and sat on the papasan to watch the birds but it turned into a little nap, and when I woke up it was cloudy and raining just a little bit, so I got out my radio and called Mel to see if he was going to drive out and watch.
He said he was already out there and it didn't look like it was going to be much so he hadn't called me.
Well, I was a bit relieved by that but then I got to thinking that maybe he was wrong. The weather I'd observed hadn't always been what he'd seen.
I couldn't really skip out on my duty like that.
So I filled my camelback and put on my vest and radios and flew out and up and I could see distant lightning to the west, and I wondered if he saw it down on the ground, too.
It didn't feel like it was going to be much of a storm, but they'd caught me by surprise before.
I knew that I wouldn't make it out to our normal spotting place, especially if the weather got real bad, so instead I went along Main Street and when I was across the 131 Highway and could fly higher, I got permission from the airplane directions and got right up to the base of the clouds.
It had rained all the way out, a nice, gentle rain. Those were the kind that everypony liked, 'cause the crops got watered and the ponds got filled and nothing got damaged.
I called Mel and told him where I was and he told me to stay safe.
I kept my eye on one thundercloud, 'cause it was pretty active and I saw it from a long ways off. Most of its lightning stayed up and inside, but I saw a couple of bolts hit trees and towers off in the distance, and I kept a good watch after each one to make sure that it hadn't started a fire.
Once it was gone, things stayed calm for about an hour, and I just circled and observed. Then another bank of thunderclouds rolled through, and they had a little more rain in them than the first ones did. I saw a tree get hit about a mile from me, and about half of it fell over in a field. But it didn't catch fire, so it was okay. The farmer would be mad about having to move it, but that was all.
After that went by I could see it was clearing off to the west, so I told Mel I was flying back home and he said he was about to do the same except he was going to have to drive. And so I got to chase the thunderstorm into Kalamazoo and that was kind of neat because it picked up a little bit of intensity when it got over town, and I saw lightning hit the hotel and a couple of the tall towers that are further off to the east.
This time I was smarter and when I got close to my apartment, I brushed my forehooves against the metal top of a street light to get the charge back off me. I was still mad that I'd made a filly mistake and gotten zapped hard in my tail yesterday.
Well, I didn't think that I was all that tired but when I was done preening my head was nodding, and since I was already on the futon, it wasn't any real effort to let it nod just a little bit further. It was kinda unfair, since I'd had an afternoon nap, but I guess my body wanted a bit more rest.
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And then she brings up the alligators to Aquamarine and learns of Gummy
I wonder if the gators are there for a Cajun-style cookout.
Wrong region, I know, but it was still the first thing that popped into my head.
Quick! Make a baseball bat!
Alligators?
Well, Silver Glow, you know one pond not to go to if you want a fish snack. Because you'd make a nice alligator snack.
Come on! Alligator are totally cute! Have you ever seen Gummy?
Here a zap, there a zap, everywhere a zap, SNAP.
What do you call a flying horse with a cold playing Go on a train.
PegAChoo.
Oh I was wondering if Silver would ever get hit. I guess her tail could act as a bit of a lightning rod.
I wonder if Pegasi have a technique for dealing with tornadoes that they can't out fly. Something like a surfer riding a wave but in the air, if you see what I mean.
So did her email to her handlers about the air corridor scofflaw never get sent?
Alligators are farmed for their meat (I hear they make good jerky) and sometimes leather, but I think that's illegal many places now.
I'm kind of surprised that her handlers haven't gotten back to her about the airplane thing yet.
7563947 After a quick google search, it is an alligator «sanctuary».
Soon, in just 37 more Psalms, Miss Silver Glow will learn about the joy of killing babies. Nothing makes people happier than bashing the brains out of babies against sharp rocks.
7563848 my guess is no. I thought that she was deliberately (ie with magic) accumulating charge so lightning wouldn't hit her.
7564761 Could you maybe tone it down a little? There really isn't any need to repeatedly go around trying to pick fights like this, much less by 'commenting' on chapters that aren't even written yet. I mostly agree with your points but your constant provocation (now even pre-emptive) of those who don't is getting annoying.
Have some horse going shopping instead.
7566091 Haters gonna hate, right?
Walabio is just another hater.
7566091
I have no idea what's going on in that video, but I would really like to.
And now I'm wondering how hard it would be to housetrain a horse.
7563587
It still doesn't explain why you'd want a pet alligator, but at least demonstrates that some ponies are as crazy as some humans.
derpicdn.net/img/2013/1/30/228650/full.png
7563611
It's some kind of educational thing, but it's called an 'alligator sanctuary,' which seems like an odd thing to have in Michigan, since alligators aren't native. I doubt they'd survive a Michigan winter.
7563620
Are baseball bats made from lightning-struck trees better than ordinary baseball bats?
7563639
A snapping turtle might try her on for size, and they do have those in the Kalamazoo River. I've seen ones that were easily big enough to bit off fingers and maybe whole hands.
7563672
Silver never has. Aquamarine probably has, though.
7563677
7563848
Sooner or later, she probably will, but she hasn't taken a hit yet.
Even so, there's a different charge potential in the clouds than on the ground, and when she's flying around in the air, she's going to pick up that charge. Here's an example from a helicopter:
ETA: not exactly the same phenomenon, but for our purposes, close enough
7563860
You might be able to use the wind in front of it to push you away, or else could possibly fly in the same direction as its rotation for a slingshot effect. Up in the air, the simplest thing would probably be to fly perpendicular to it, since I don't think that the top part of a tornado (the part that's in the cloud) moves around all that much, except in whatever direction the cloud is moving.
7563938
This is one where Mister Salvatore has to also talk to the FAA, and that takes time.
7563947
I'm not sure if that 's a federal law or state laws. IIRC, alligators aren't on the endangered species list anymore.
7564196
Mister Salvatore has to discuss it with the FAA. That takes time.
7564237
Correction made; thank you!
7564295
Although they've still got alligators who die of natural causes
I wonder what would happen if there was a flood and the alligators got out?
7564761
Very true.
I prefer Psalm 64. James Ray and the Performance used it in a song.
7566091
Have more horse going shopping.
7568633
Obviously, the horse is going shopping. You wouldn't want to have to go all the way back to the farm before finding out that the bridle you just bought was the wrong size, would you?
It's apparently not too hard.
7572201
I'm disappointed. I was hoping for more perusing, and even getting opinions from the horse.
"What about these cookies? No. How about these? ... Okay, so apparently oatmeal-raisin cookies are good, but oatmeal ones are not. And Black Beauty here wants lots and lots of Captain Crunch."