Nature in the city

The tree across the street that I look at a lot in meditation, the leaves turned a week or so ago, and it's turning more and more. Fall is here. I like the cooling but I want the trees to keep the leaves for as long as possible. I think a lot about vestigial and deciduous trees. When I pick up my daughter I can go by an area that has quite a few pine trees, and I like the pine trees around my house. There are two small Juniper trees under my window.

There was a spider the other day that caught a fly in his web while I was meditating. I mostly keep my eyes closed, but I open them occasionally. The web is on my shrine and I don't clean it away because I want spiders to eat all the flies in my room. I've killed about 10-15 flies a day, and it's been a weird fly filled summer in NYC this year for me in Queens. I thought it was just me, but a friend has a lot of flies inside somehow, despite all the screens. 

I've become a student of how to kill flies. You can't move to much and a big wind up doesn't work, you need quick wrists like Ted Williams. When they freeze, you han't move, but when they start walking you can move a little bit, they're less aware. And then trying to find them on a surface where you can really swat them is difficult, they like to explore everywhere. I can get them all in my bedroom, but they replenish from the kitchen, or maybe I killed them and they'd already reproduced. I want to learn more about the common house fly. It reminded me a little of Amityville Horror (1977) to have so many flies.

There's a mouse in my house too. He scuttled around my bed and I saw him jumping out of my garbage can. 

One time when I was cat sitting for Andandi, Ella the cat left me a mouse. But the next time he stayed over, he didn't catch any mice. 

My daughter said, there's a mouse in the garbage can. I emptied a garbage can that is kind of bigger, and the mouse couldn't jump out of it, and since it was empty there was no garbage to climb on to get out. So I put a lid on it, and let it go outside. I was quite happy to humanely (perhaps) release him outside. I don't know if he has a way back into the building and a way back to my floor.