Red Eft on the Trail!

Well, I have a couple of pieces of news, and one thing stuck in my craw that I must get out. Some of them are good. Some of them are not so hot. When I went to grab my little pink iPod shuffle to go on my hike on this day, I discovered I had not turned it OFF the day before, and the battery was completely depleted. This is the first time I have ever done this. I feel bad about it.

I have plugged it in and charged it, and yes, it turns on, but I worry that I might have ruined it. I will find out for sure the next time I take it hiking. In the meantime, I wait, with bated breath. And I hike, without music. Which is not NEARLY as fun, if you ask me. No, not at all.

So my hike was a silent one. But I ran into this fine fellow on the trail. This is a very saucy red eft, which is the terrestrial stage of the eastern red-spotted newt, Notophthalmus viridescens. This newt is on WALKABOUT! 

Except that it was . . . sitting in the middle of the trail, silent and unmoving. And since I almost stepped on it myself, I quickly got down to my knees, took a few pictures, and then moved this little fellow onto a green, mossy log along the trail. It is my personal practice not to touch a creature unless it needs help. Moving it off the trail seemed a simple way to assist.

Now, I have another topic that I really hate to get into, but honestly, this one is stuck in my craw. Have you all been watching the news from America? And have you been seeing how women's bodily autonomy is going right down the tubes? Wow, man. What a bad scene for women in the U.S.!

Here is a thing. I am a woman. I am the queen of the Universe that is Me. I own the only thing I brought along into this world along with my soul: my body. The government does not get to own my body just because I was born with ovaries. Let me say that AGAIN for the people sitting all the way in the back in the cheap seats:

The government DOES NOT get to own MY body. THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT GET TO OWN MY BODY and make me do things that are against my will and against my own best interest!!! If I do not get to have say-so over my body, I do not have complete bodily autonomy, and I am something less than a person. Here's another thing: the rights you don't stand up and defend, you lose! Oh, RBG, how we miss and need you now!

As I was picking up my newt, the song running through my head was, "Just another newt in need of rescue. . . . " which turns out to be (sort of) this Whitesnake song, and it also applies to my treatise on women's bodily autonomy that I just had to stick in here on this innocent Blip of a newt! The song is Here I Go Again, from 1987, featuring the lovely Tawny Kitaen (we like her in that kitschy 1986 Witchboard movie).