i left the house just once today, to check out some unwanted books a neighbor had left on the sidewalk. mostly home improvement magazines, a few outdated style guides (circa 1999), some self-help books. i didn't take any of them, but jeff (who came to investigate as well) took some history book about some guy named leopold. he updated me on his move situation, said he was getting ready to put up his condo for sale.
a pile of unwanted left on the sidewalk is like a carcass out on the serengeti. soon vultures - in this case pedestrians - will flock to the site and strip the carcass bare. when i looked out the window an hour later, all that was left was an andy warhol book. an hour afterwards, even that disappeared, replaced with a metal bathroom rack. the last time i checked, there was a broken air conditioner sitting on the curb. it's amazing the kind of stuff people throw away. the more affluent the neighborhood, the better the discard. and with so many colleges around, come graduation day, it's like freebie christmas as students throw away there old textbooks, unwanted furniture, and whatever else.
invasive wildlife of the day: the large yellow underwing (that's its real name, i didn't make it up). i was cleaning the windows on the french doors at the back of the house when this beefy moth flew out from the screen door. i would've thought it was some generic unidentifiable moth until it flew into the crack between two wooden floor boards and i saw the orange on its hindwings. these moths were originally from europe but managed to immigrate to the US. their caterpillars are amongst the ranks of annual cutworms that ruin vegetable seedlings.