Helicopter
We heard a helicopter hovering, and hovering, and hovering. It seemed not to be going away. Sometimes they do this when the government is looking for fields of marijuana. But this didn’t even sound like that. Ben and I went to look and saw that it was the power line inspection helicopter doing something new.
Every few months or so they fly along the power line corridor inspecting the lines, poles and such. Usually they’re fast. This time they were stopping at each pole and hovering sort of nose down for extended periods, gradually shifting around the power poles. It looked like a funny dance.
When they turned I saw that there was a guy sitting out on the door sill with what looked like an automatic weapon cradled in his lap. I’m almost sure it wasn’t… More likely it was a scope or something for closely inspecting insulators, poles and wires.
They were there for a long time as we have close to a mile of the high tension power lines crossing our mountains. This meant they had a lot of stops to make before finally passing over the ridge into the next valley.
Outdoors: 41°F/25°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 59°F/55°F
Daily Spark: You can’t stop insane people from doing insane things by passing insane laws. -Penn Jillette
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
spotting scopes don’t look like high powered rifles. There’s a concern by homeland security that power poles/towers will be sabotaged or blown up to disrupt utilities. Could be a security scan.
I took Walters statement about the gun to be a bit of edgy commentary on our state of society and government
Re: Your spark. I reviewed Penn Jillette’s GOD,NO for the Sacramento book review a while ago. Brilliant man. Raunchy book. He’s on the edges of both show business and cutting intellect, and reading him was at the same time revelatory and somewhat embarrassing.
Watched, in broad daylight, one of our local coyotes circling a flock of turkeys out in an alfalfa field today. (local ptarmigan, Davis’s green snow) Though our western toms are smaller than your eastern birds, the song dog wasn’t about to close on his personal thanksgiving while the flock’s males had him in their gaze. Pulled over the car to watch for a bit, and the coyote, sensitive to human observation and possible sniping, made tracks. Not far. Just out of range. Waiting and hungry. I like seeing ambition at work, but left, as my presence was obviously influencing outcomes.