The night of the race, we ate dinner at a Greek restaurant on the boardwalk. We sat on the ocean-facing patio.

Next door was an amusement park that I could see from my seat. I was infatuated by one ride in particular. It had odd spinning monkeys. They were kind of creepy; I couldn’t stop staring at them.

Since it was getting dark, I had to return the following day and capture their monkey splendor.

Click on the monkeys if you’d like to see larger versions.

Be afraid, be very afraid!

We arrived home today to find a bird standing on the porch. This normally wouldn’t be unusual, except that as I approached, he didn’t move.

He looked terrified; I figured I must have startled him.

I backed off, and waited a few seconds. I was a bit worried that as I walked past, he might freak out and fly into me!

He continued to stand there, beak open.

I nudged his foot with a stick, hoping to snap him out of it and get him to move along.

Nope, nothing.

I cautiously walked past to the front door, and went inside. He stayed there, still looking catatonic.

Since my digital camera batteries were dead (the camera’s kind of broken which caused the drained batteries), I could only get a (crappy) photo with my cell phone camera.

You can’t see the look in his eyes … or that he was standing there with his beak open.

Since I barely have a zoom on that thing, I was also standing no more than two feet from him.

After starting dinner, I peaked outside and there he stood. A few minutes later, same thing.

Eventually, he turned his head and hopped in a circle.

After dinner, he was gone.

Hopefully he went on his way before one of the neighborhood stray cats realized there was a free meal on our porch!