In Search of Giant Squid
I just want to tell you about a package of drawings and letters of
encouragement we received last Friday from the Academia Nuts at the Herndon
Middle School Giant Squid Outpost. Unfortunately it took 3 weeks getting
here, but it felt so good to receive them. We are looking forward to
receiving the batch of "squid cookies" (sugar cookies shaped like giant squid)
one of the mothers of the Academia Nuts has made and is about to send.
She has painstakingly made each sugar cookie to look like a squid. What a neat bunch of people this world is made up of!
I'm going to try to incorporate my latest "Seen from our Window" into this message, which I've just learned how to do. My learning curve on using this tool is slowly starting to level out, thanks to the patient teachings of the computer wiz kids around here. They are so patient with this old lady as she tries to learn basic computer skills. Thank goodness I have an occasional slow day to work it all out and to practice my newly learned tricks, which is what I'm doing today.
OK..... here goes with incorporating a section from my journal file:
As I sit at the computer set up on a card table in front of the
sliding glass doors overlooking the bay just 100 feet away, I often see
interesting spontaneous scenes which capture my interest. Just a few
moments ago my eye caught a cormorant who was sitting on a rock, struggling
with a fish it had just caught. The fish was clearly larger than the bird
could swallow, but it didn’t want to lose his magnificent catch. His
usually curved neck was stretched out straight to accommodate this long
fish, but the tail kept squeezing out of his mouth each time he tried to
swallow it further. At one point, the entire fish fell out on the rock and
the bird quickly retrieved it and started all over again trying to swallow
it whole. I have no idea how long he was struggling with it before I saw
it, but I watched for another full 5 minutes through my binoculars until he
finally finished swallowing it. He was exhausted from his long struggle,
and with his tummy over-full, he rested on the rock before he slowly swam
along the shore out of sight. He couldn’t even fly!
HA!! It worked!!
Smithsonian Giant Squid Overview Page
gene carl feldman / gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov