Here are a few photographs from yesterday. I persuaded someone to let me in to an old amusement park type thing closed for five years (thus the thick layer of dust) and walk around with a little LED flashlight... and I took a few photos.
I took a picture too. I went to get the lawnmower out of the garage (edited to add: my garage at my house) and discovered this on the floor:
I'm not sure what it is. It appears to have fur and/or possibly feathers, and these things that are either bones, paws, or four beaks. (Which is, granted, unlikely, but, I mean, look at it -- why shouldn't it be a dead, mutant four-beaked thing?) Basically I have no clue what it is; I bet Sharon the Birdchick would know. It was really stuck to the floor. I had to bear down hard with the snow shovel to scrape it up.
edited to add: Dear wonderful, helpful fans -- Please stop emailing Mr. G about what this is. I think we've covered all of the bases now. Yes, it's probably owl vomit or a decomposed shrew. My money is on shrew, though not literally, which it really should be because then you'd get a sense of scale. The owl vomit hypothesis is very cool, but that would have to be one seriously sneaky owl to get in, purge, and out in the short window* when I usually have the garage door open. I mean, we're talking about the Ethan Hunt of owls here, rappelling down from above disguised as a shrew. Either that or I'm going to find a dead owl in there next.
* = Not an actual window; the garage has none.
Barnes & Nobles is collecting reviews of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. The Kirkus Review ends: Closer in tone to American Gods than to Coraline, but permeated with Bod's innocence, this needs to be read by anyone who is or has ever been a child.
Lastly, for those who wrote to ask what the "slash" in yesterday's entry meant -- and, honestly, I suspect that questions like that are just trying to egg me on -- I give you Mr. G writing on April 10, 2002:
.....slash fiction is basically erotic fan fiction, normally TV series based, pairing off two (er or more I suppose) members of the same sex who don't normally couple for the cameras. From the "/" mark in the middle of "Kirk/Spock" or "K/S" fiction, which is where it all started. ("But Spock," said Kirk, huskily, realising, finally, irrevocably, what his true self had been trying to tell him ever since the beginning of season one, "it's so huge. And it's green." "And it would be logical for you to... touch it, Captain," said Spock. And so on. It's normally written by extremely nice ladies. I have several very sane, respected, and respectable friends who write slash fiction, and do not try to make me read it.)
Labels: a Bigfoot hoax of my own, a blast from the past, Scooby Doo (guest starring Neil Gaiman)