Sherry, I saw a B. philenor again the next day. No way of knowing if it was the same one hanging around or a second one though. Closest natural colony I know of is in north central AZ a couple of hundred miles away at a place where their LFP grows wild. Susan, All the years that I lived in SW Utah I did volunteer work for the local county DOA and the BLM. For the DOA I did the Desert Tortoise counts every spring, monitored and stood observation watches at several raptor aeries, did the lep and native plant studies for a new state reserve being established and participated in all the Gila Monster - rattlesnake round-ups at Red Cliffs Canyon. Red Cliffs is a small box canyon with a highly used year-round semi primitive campground. Twice a year 3-4 of us would collect and relocate the GM's and 4 species of rattlesnakes to another ideal habitat several miles away that was isolated and seldom visited even by hikers. The campers were always glad to see them removed with many having small children or pets with them. So we never told them that we were removing them to protect the reptiles and not the campers. LOL For the BLM I patrolled the AZ Strip and back country North Rim of the GC 3 or 4 days a week covering as much as 300 miles a day on dirt back roads, and was on their wildfire team running supplies and people to the fire lines and standing by on the fire lines as an emergency rescue driver for the firefighters and jump teams in case of blow ups. They put me through EMT and fire schools and issued me a very well equipped 4X4 Power Wagon so I could (and did) handle almost any emergency in the back country. All were lots of fun to be involved in, and naturally I also did Lepidoptera as a side line when "on duty". Miss those days of being active and useful. Larry

Oh my goodness, 8 likes! (I thought I'd do it if there were 5 or more..) There's not a lot to it, but don't read it if you're squeamish. Newly married, my now ex and I were at Agra Fort on the Yamuna river, taking time out to view the Taj Mahal several miles downstream, where it appeared to hover on the distant riverbank like an impossibly lovely white waterbird. We'd already visited it the day before, staying from mid-morning to closing time to gaze in fascination at its ever-changing shades of white as the sun moved round, to admire the magnificent marble work from elaborately carved perforated screens to exquisitely detailed, naturalistic relief carvings of flowers, and to observe the interesting optical illusion in the design of the minarets we'd been told about, which I'd wanted to see for myself. So after viewing the Fort, we'd wandered down to the riverbank to take in yet another view of the Taj, with a tragic love story in mind. After the untimely death of his beloved wife, the grief-stricken Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan had commissioned the building, the artistic masterpiece of his reign, to house her tomb, and as an eternal monument to her beauty of body and spirit. But, before long he would be prevented from visiting her there, when his usurping son saw fit to ensure his hold on power by imprisoning his father for life at Agra Fort. For the rest of his life, the still grieving Shah Jahan could only gaze from afar, every day from his cell window, at his dear wife's wonderful tomb by the river. Entranced with the beauty and the romantic history, I gazed out across the sluggish river and was surprised to see a large vulture silhouetted against the setting sun, floating slowly downstream, perched aboard a shiny black log-shaped floating platform. As I watched, he appeared to be picking and pulling at something near his feet, eventually hoisting up a quantity of black rubber tubing. As he feasted, my eyes adjusted; the floating log became distinctly less log-like and... with a shock, revealed itself to be a blackened human corpse, whose intestines he'd been busily removing... I learnt later that they burn the dead at sacred sites further upriver, and sometimes apparently the corpses, or bits of them, can end up, half-burned, floating in the river. (I hope that is what happened, better than if some unfortunate lonely traveller had fallen in and drowned. Or the body of an anonymous beggar no-one cared about was disposed of into the river with the garbage, without a funeral rite...) It's a striking aspect of India; its capacity to veer suddenly from transcendental beauty one moment to abject horror, at least to Western eyes, the next. And its people's apparent ability to accept and embrace that whole spectrum of life's highs and lows with remarkable equanimity and cheerfulness. Unless they're cocooned away from it all in their international 5-star hotels, Western visitors to India seem to either love the place passionately or hate it and can't wait to get away. I confess to being one of the former.

Aw, thank you stolenidenity! I'm really glad that so many of you have enjoyed the bear photos. Rusty, I had to look up javelinas and I'd be wary of those too. I've read and heard that wild pigs can be vicious. Here is another photo I took a few weeks ago - these critters are a bit less intimidating than the bear: Life in the woods can be like living in a zoo at times! :-)

Ken, no worries, you're good! That was not what I meant at all :) I talked to a local turtle expert/rescuer who helps clear new construction sites in our area. They often find turtles and relocate them before the machinery moves in. I understand she's passionate about the subject but... sheesh. And come to think about it, while she was berating me that "they are not pets," she also bragged that she had a pen full of them in her backyard and she could take mine. Oh, well, I'm glad it's over -- I'm exhausted.