On Being Blind

Bonaparte's Gull

I got my first pair of glasses at age 11....hideous blue rhinestone things that I hated with strong passion. Of course I thought they made me look stupid, but they were also an awful handicap in playing football, baseball, war games, western ranch workers and Native Americans, and other neighborhood pastimes. They were usually taped together in several places until replaced with even uglier black ones.

Great Egret, just up the road from home

Those were followed by many others until I could no longer wear safety glass (protection from flailing cow tails) and had to accept plastic, because, you know, weighty coke bottles and all.

This is not terribly helpful for birding, although I get around it with good binoculars (thanks Alan) and a good idea of what a bird looks like so I can spot them fairly well.

Eastern Phoebe

However, with other things it is a downright difficulty not to be able to see well.

Take the bugs in the kitchen sink for example. (Preferably far, far away). I started out to do the dishes first thing today. Granted it was pretty dark and all. The sink was full of nasty little black things....so many little black things.

Ugh.

Local parking lot

I admit that this has been a bad year for Box Elder bugs and you can pretty much expect them everywhere, but these things were different. I sluiced and swashed, and generally used a lot of very hot water making them go away down the drain.

And then I realized that someone had not quite finished a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream last night....yeah, that's right, not bugs after all. 

Sometimes it's fun being blind.