  In the last two days, I have slept little, driven much, lucked into a biblical case of chiggers, and had several valuable insights into the world's inner workings. First, when you decide to go birding in Texas the morning, you learn things. For one thing, the dawn is really pretty. I never, ever get up before 6 am, so this was quite a nice thing to re-discover. For another, birds are damn noisy, and fascinating in a sort of coral reef-fish fashion. They just keep flashing in and out of your view, and they are entertaining little suckers. How blind is the bulk of modern humanity, not to hear individual species on the air, see them fly, and see birds in their nests as we lumber by. How blind I was, and still am, mostly. But I know of my blindness, now, and that, I think, is the beginning of wonder. Second, I have been rudely introduced to a couple unpleasant facts. Poison ivy does indeed grow to the large shrub/small tree size. This terrifying form of the nasty stuff occurs both in Isle of Shoals, Maine, and in Killeen, Texas. Even heaven may not know where else it reaches that size, but I bet the Devil does know. Another friend of the Devil, the chigger, has recently taught me that it can indeed occur in infestations of more than 100.
From my recent trip through the bushes of Killeen, I currently have more than 100 chiggers buried in my torso and waist. While chlorinated pool water typically helps to kill the chiggers and reduce the duration of the itching from weeks to days, I discovered to my chagrin that it does not come close to stopping itching right away when you have a HUNDRED bites, and you are STUCK in a board meeting. The Chigger is a wonderful insect. For more information read this: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2100.html. For those of you from the north (including my girlfriend) or California, rest assurred that chiggers are a common occurrence, everyone gets them now and then, and they are not catching.
This MANY chiggers is just the result of birding in poison-ivy bushes. Third, I have learned that bats are the most beautiful creatures on earth. If you don't believe me, go to the Bat Conservation International website, write them, find out where the nearest breeding cave is to your locality, and watch the bats emerge at dusk from their cave. Thousands of bats whirl around like a tornado, a moving darkness, each individual bat more graceful and liquid than a dancer in the soul of the moment. When they decide to go, they peel off in moving columns, flowing over the trees. You see them in the sky like storm clouds of mercury, forming and re-forming with incredible speed and unending variations in form. And this last for hours, repeating every night. Those who wish for a little humility, a little insight into the vast mind of God, should go witness the endless peregrinations of bats. Lastly, I have learned that two twenty-hour work-days are enough for anyone. I miss talking to my wonderful girlfriend in New York City, and I haven't seen my community garden in days.
No doubt the squirrels are eating all of my tomatoes. I highly recommend not doing the same thing every day; being a stick in the mud stops you from seeing the birds and bats, from the listening to the very pulse of the earth. But maybe the birds AND the bats are a bit much to do all at once--they keep different hours, you know? 
