Help Your Neighborhood School by Shopping

With municipal budgets being squeezed tighter every year, public schools need every bit of help they can get, including corporate help.  Below are a few ways you can support your local school simply by shopping. 

Box Tops 4 Education -- Clip "Box Tops 4 Education" box tops from hundreds of products and deliver them to the school's office.  Each box top is worth $0.10 for the school.  List of participating products.  
In addition, shop more than a hundred retailers online through www.BoxTops4Education.com to earn e-box tops for your school.


Register Your Shoppers Card -- At checkout, link your shoppers card to your school and the store will donate a portion of your purchase amount to the school.  Stores participating include Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Kroger, and Office Depot.

Labels for Education -- Help your school earn free educational equipment by giving them Labels for Education proofs of purchase from Campbell's Soups and other products.  www.LabelsforEducation.com

E-Cycling Event in Virginia Beach This Saturday

Here's your opportunity to purge your home of old, broken computers, televisions and more.  Bring your old electronic components to a free e-cycling event this Saturday, October 1st, at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center.  The collection point is in the East Parking Lot, across General Booth Boulevard from the museum's main building.

I did this last January and can say it's very easy.  Just pull your car into the queue and wait your turn.  Volunteers will come to you to collect your stuff.  You don't even have to get out of the car.

Computers, computer peripherals, fax machines, telephones, cell phones, PDAs, stereo equipment, gaming systems, and TVs smaller than 32-inches will be accepted.  Click here for more details.

You can e-cycle anytime through Best Buy or Goodwill, as I detail here.

Astronomy Exhibit Coming to Newport News

On November 29th, the Virgil I. Grissom Library in Newport News will welcome a new exhibit celebrating four hundred years of astronomy. "Visions of the Universe:  Four Centuries of Discovery" will span the evolution of astronomy, from Galileo's first observations through a telescope to modern images from the Hubble Space Telescope.  The exhibit will be on display through February 15th and is free to the public.

It bears pointing out that the library that will host the exhibit is named for an explorer.  Virgil Grissom was better known as known as Gus Grissom, one of NASA's original Mercury seven astronauts.  Grissom and his fellow astronauts did much of their training at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.

To promote the traveling exhibit, the American Library Association has provided the media with some beautiful, high-resolution photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.  The graphic at the top of this post is an example.  You can view more here.

Links:
www.nngov.com/pressroom/press-releases/universeexhibit
NASA Langley's role in Project Mercury

Red Light Camera Scam

Police in Northern Virginia are warning residents of a scam involving red light cameras, the automated traffic monitoring devices now in use at busy intersections in a number of Virginia cities.  Several residents of Vienna have reported receiving phone calls and being threatened with arrest if they didn't pay a fine for red light camera infraction right then.  The would-be victims are then told they can take care of the fine if they would just provide the caller with a credit card number.

Authorities are calling it an identity theft scam.  In Virginia, red-light violators are notified of the infraction by mail, not over the phone.

The scam has not shown up in Hampton Roads...yet.  The Daily Press reports that police in Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, and Newport News, the three Hampton Roads cities with red light cameras, have not had a complaint about the scam.

In the Daily Press report, Virginia Beach police officer Brian Walters offered this advice to help reduce the risk of being scammed over the phone.

• Ask the caller for a copy of the citation, but don't give out your home address.
• Don't give out personal information, like credit card or social security numbers, unless you initiated the call.  This applies to any over-the-phone transaction.
• Record the time and date of the call.

 Links:
Daily Press report on the scam.
Yahoo News report

Central Library Sculpture will be Repaired

Recent visitors to the Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library in Virginia Beach have noticed yellow police tape surrounding the mount on which the building's iconic wind driven sculpture once stood.  The sculpture was heavily damaged by Hurricane Irene in August.  Library spokeswoman Christine Brantley tells me the sculpture is being repaired and should be back in its usual spot in a couple of months.

Update:  I've learned the sculpture is called "Pennant."  It was created by New Orleans artist Lin Emery, who just unveiled a new piece called "Wings" at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts.

Below:  the sculpture in action

Amazon Launches Library Lending for Kindle

Months after announcing it was coming, Amazon has quietly launched library lending for its popular Kindle e-reader.  The move eliminates the Kindle's primary weakness and puts it on par with Barnes and Noble's Nook and other e-reader devices, which have supported public library checkouts for some time.

I just tried it with the Virginia Beach Public Library and it works great.  I visited the library's "Overdrive" site, which powers the city's e-lending.  Since our Kindle belongs to my wife, I looked for a book that was both available and trashy-looking enough to suit Mary's tastes.  I then clicked "add to cart" and then proceeded to check out. The check out process will actually take you to the book's Amazon page, which will copy the book to your Kindle.

The checkout period for Kindle e-books is 21 days.  The library has only so many e-copies of each book so some titles may not be available right away.  But you can put e-books on hold, just like with regular hard copy books.

Contact your local library if you have questions about library lending for the Kindle.

Link:
Virginia Beach Public Library E-Lending Page
Virginia Beach press release announcing Kindle e-lending

The Tumbling Satellite

By now you've heard that a wayward NASA weather satellite the size of a school bus is expected to fall to Earth this week.  The story conjures up memories of Skylab, which provoked a fair amount of hysteria when it crashed to the ground in Australia in 1979.  Here's what scientists know and don't know about this week's falling space junk.

NASA knows the satellite will fall out of orbit in the next couple of days.  They know that about two dozen pieces of it should survive re-entry.  What they don't know is exactly when they will fall or where.They don't know the specifics because of the satellite's immense speed (18,000mph) and variances in the earth's upper atmosphere, which affect the satellite's trajectory.

NASA also doesn't know exactly what risk the satellite poses to people, but scientists have hazarded a guess.  By factoring in the earth's population (7,000,000,000), the space vehicle's usual orbit, and the estimated amount of falling debris,  NASA has predicted a 1 in 3,200 chance that a human will be struck by a chunk of the satellite.

NASA has issued regular reminders that whatever debris falls on land still belongs to the owner of the satellite it came from.  Space junk is not for souvenir hunters, they say. 

That proclamation generated a somewhat deeper question.  Actually, it was my wife who posed the question:  if the satellite owner also owns the debris, is the owner then liable if falling chunks of satellite cause property damage or hurt someone. 

For that answer, I turned to NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.  NASA's public affairs division reported there are a number of overlapping international space treaties dating back several decades that deal with damage liability.  How an actual case of damage or injury would be dealt with under the treaties has never been put the test in court, they report.  Let's hope there is never a case where the courts would have to figure it out.

An article on space damage liability was published just this week by The Space Review.

The odds of the satellite hitting a person.

Low Cost Rabies Clinic in Suffolk this Saturday

Spotted this on the City of Suffolk's Facebook page...

A low cost rabies clinic will be held this Saturday, September 24, from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. at Suffolk Animal Control, 124 Forest Glen Drive. The clinic was scheduled in response to a record number of rabies cases in the city, and is sponsored by the Suffolk Humane Society and Suffolk Animal Control. The clinic is open to anyone (not just Suffolk residents).

Vaccinations will cost only $5.00 and have been provided by Nansemond Veterinary Clinic. Volunteers will be available to answer questions, and vaccinations will be given on a first come, first-served basis. Suffolk Animal Control will also be selling city dog licenses for $5 each.

Again, rabies vaccinations are available for $5.00 for pet owners in all Hampton Roads cities, not just Suffolk.  As I detailed earlier this summer, rabies has been especially prevalent this year in Suffolk and other western portions of Tidewater. 


Link:
www.suffolkva.us/anml_ctrl

Virginia Destroyers Food Drive

Amid the hoopla leading up the Virginia Destroyers' home debut this Saturday is a food drive for the local Food Bank.  The team will be collecting canned food at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex between 4pm and 7pm.

The UFL's Virginia Destroyers will host the Las Vegas Locomotives this Saturday at 7pm.

Meanwhile, you can save 40% on Virginia Destroyers tickets here...

Links
www.ufl-football.com/virginia-destroyers
www.foodbankonline.org

Free Museum Day this Saturday

This Saturday, September 24th is Smithsonian Magazine's Free Museum Day.  Admission to a number of Hampton Roads museums will be free, including the Children's Museum of Virginia and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in Portsmouth, the Contemporary Arts Center in Virginia Beach, and the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News.  In addition, the historic Jamestowne and Yorktown Battlefields will have free admission.

To participate, visit www.SmithsonianMag.com/museumday and print out an entry ticket to one museum.  The ticket will cover admission for up to two people.

For a list of Virginia museums that will have free admission on Free Museum Day, visit this page.

Shore Birds by the Road

Efforts to control the population of shorebirds at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel are working...somewhat.  College of William and Mary biology professor Ruth Beck tells the Daily Press that the laughing gull and herring gull populations on the tunnel's man-made islands have been cut by more than half in recent years, but adds that those birds have been replaced by rising numbers of terns.  The birds are seen as a safety hazard to passing motorists.

Some past endeavors to control the birds, such as an effort years ago to shoot them, have been controversial.  A more humane project to coat gull eggs with vegetable oil, thus suffocating the embryos, has proven more successful.

Read more in the Daily Press

Triple Coupon Day

I am writing to report that I have successfully completed and survived my first-ever Triple Coupon Day mission. The pros are right; you really do need to plan and organize to make it work.

I learned of Harris Teeter's Triple Coupon Week from AFrugalChick.com, Laura Oliver's increasingly popular blog on tips, coupons and deals.  It's one of the websites in my bookmark group called "daily sweep," a handful of sites I make a point to visit every day.  The others include VARTV.com, a site about local radio and TV, and Sun-Sentinel.com, where I read the latest dire predictions about my team, the Miami Dolphins.

To get myself organized for triple couponing, I had to know the rules.  Laura's website includes a link to the coupon policies of most of the local retailers.  I learned that between September 14th and 20th, Harris Teeter will triple the value of any coupon up to and including $0.99.  Customers can redeem up to 20 coupons per visit.

I have been clipping coupons since college, but I only recently began putting any real effort towards it, times being what they are.  The greatest effort went in to creating a searchable coupon database using Microsoft Access.  It has about 400 coupons listed, sortable by product name, coupon value and expiration date.  To pick which ones to use, I selected all of my coupons with a value under $1.00 and asked my home's chief menu planner, my wife, to mark the good ones.  I then pulled those coupons from my coupon book, made a list, and, on the morning of September 14th, headed off to Harris Teeter.

I quickly learned that my coupon planning efforts were nothing compared to some of the other shoppers'.  The store was fairly crowded with customers, many armed with long lists and coupon organizers as big as phone books.

Laura, the "frugal chick," had advised during her regular Sunday appearance on WVEC-TV to get to the store early on triple coupon days because items sell out quickly.  Good advice.  One of my $0.50 coupons (worth $1.50 on this day) went to waste when I found the store's entire stock of Domino sugar was gone.  The same was true for the Betty Crocker Deluxe Brownies.  But I did find plenty of other things on my list that were in stock, and many of them were on store discount with my Harris Teeter shopper's card.

At the register, my selection of Campbell's soup, Hamburger Helper, Bisquick, Duracall batteries and more totaled about $48.00 with the store discounts.  With my one dozen coupons, my final price came down to $25.00, almost half the original price.

Hardcore couponers, like those seen on the TV show, Extreme Couponing, might scoff at my rookie effort, but I take solace in this.  We've all heard the anecdote of a person who bought $200.00 worth of groceries for $5.00.  But Laura Oliver has told me that with the restrictive coupon policies of the grocery stores in my area, it's really difficult to pull that off here.  Also, I only bought things that I would have bought anyway.  I could have tripled a $0.50 off-the-shelf coupon for Tide detergent, but we have plenty of detergent already and we don't generally use Tide.

One more note on organizing your coupons.  I recently found a website that includes a database of all of the coupons that are released through the mail and the Sunday newspaper.  The database is searchable.  And with a free membership to the website, you can select individual coupons and put them in your own private database, a "coupon box" so to speak, that is also searchable.  The coupons listed sometimes don't match the coupons from the newspaper exactly, but each entry in your "coupon box" is editable.  The website is http://coupondatabase.dealseekingmom.com/main-database

More Links:
www.AFrugalChick.com -- Laura Oliver's money saving blog
Hear my interview with the Frugal Chick

Also in the News

The Stuff that Didn't Make it on the Air

VDOT will temporarily close two drawbridges in the coming days.  Wednesday and Thursday nights, the Gilmerton Bridge will be closed between 8pm and 5pm.  VDOT is doing more construction work in advance of the planned replacement of the bridge.  Meanwhile, the High Rise Bridge on Interstate 64 will be closed for about an hour this Sunday at 6am for routine maintenance.

A Crime Line caller whose name was accidentally revealed to the violent crime suspect he had called about has dropped his lawsuit against the crime tip organization, but his lawyer vows to refile the lawsuit, the Suffolk News-Herald has reported.  According to the lawsuit, the tipster claims defendant Bubble Jones confronted and threatened him.

Fifteen percent of employers in Hampton Roads are planning to add workers in the 4th fiscal quarter, employment group Manpower is estimating.  Eight percent excepted to cut jobs, for a net job outlook of seven percent.  A year ago, that number was in negative territory.

The foundation in charge of the September 11th Memorial in New York City is pledging to fix a small error on the memorial.  When the memorial opened to the public Monday, the sister of 9/11 victim Jeffrey Schreier discovered her brother's first name was spelled "Jeffery."

The Easy-Bake Oven is getting a makeover.  With the government phasing out incandescent light bulbs, which served as the famous toy's heat source, Hasbro has announced the new Easy-Bake Oven will have an actual heating element, much like a real oven.

SpongeBob was Never My Kids' Teacher

A new study finds that four year old children who watched only nine minutes of "SpongeBob Squarepants" on TV did measurably worse on mental function tests than kids who watched a slower paced show or watched no TV at all.  The study's author says the results suggest that frenetic kids programming could be detrimental to learning.

I read the above story on the wire this morning with some amusement.  Who is suggesting that SpongeBob is at all educational?  Entertaining?  Yes.  Educational?  Hardly ever.

SpongeBob is simply the latest in a long line of dopey children's programming dating back several decades, from the Flintstones to the Smurfs to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show ("Overture, light the lights/This is it, the night of nights.")    At least Bugs Bunny taught people of my generation opera (remember "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit") and that the primary ingredient of hassenpheffer is rabbit.

The study focused on 60 four year olds who were assigned to watch SpongeBob, the slower paced PBS show "Calliou," or to draw pictures.  Sixty subjects is a low number for a study, but the researchers said the results suggest that media exposure could hinder a child's development.

University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard was the lead author of the research.  She says SpongeBob or any other fast-paced kids show can have the effect.  It's not just how much they watch, but what they watch, she says.

SpongeBob is ridiculous, to be sure.  The stories and musical numbers are generally silly.  I do enjoy the voices; I can imitate all of the male voices except the main character...his is too high and out of my range.  My main concern is that SpongeBob has embraced gross-out humor lately.

My older daughter started watching SpongeBob at age seven, when the show debuted a decade ago.  The plot lines included SpongeBob and friends blowing bubbles, playing practical jokes, catching jellyfish and learning to drive.  Pretty benign stuff.

Now some scenes from newer episodes.  Patrick dives into a trash dumpster and eats some of the contents.  A ghostly pirate tries to freak out SpongeBob with scare tactics right out of an Indiana Jones movie.  SpongeBob's infected thumb grows to enormous size and then belches green slime all over another character.

I doubt I would be able to ban SpongeBob in my house without a rebellion.  You can't put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.  Besides, I grew up on the equally mind-numbing Bugs Bunny and Gilligan.  But if I were to ban SpongeBob, it would be over the show's content, not it's lack of educational value.  

Mother Nature Won't Let up in Virginia

Tropical Storm Lee made landfall several days ago hundreds miles from Hampton Roads, and yet it was still able to substantially impact Virginia.  New Kent County closed down schools Thursday due to what officials called a large number of flooded roads.  Schools in Charles City County were also closed, while Surry County opened its schools two hours late.

At right is a screen grab from VA511.org, VDOT's online roads information page, as of 4pm Thursday.  Each of those red dots represents a road closed due to flooding.  Again, this is due to the remnants of a tropical storm.  The same storm system dropped even heavier rain on eastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York.  And it spawned a tornado that destroyed a gas station in Cana, Virginia this week.

Another storm system, Hurricane Katia, is producing dangerous rip currents along the coast, despite being almost 400 miles offshore.  Red flag warnings were posted along the Virginia Beach Oceanfront last weekend but lifeguards still recorded thirty rescues.

Perhaps the meteorologists on TV do over-hype severe weather events, but they may also have a point.  The past couple of weeks should illustrate that it pays to keep tabs on tropical weather systems, even those that have been downgraded to tropical depressions.  Days after they come ashore, their remnants can spin off tornadoes and drop tremendous amounts of rain.

Meanwhile, central Virginia is still reporting damage from the surprise earthquake of two weeks ago.  The facade of a building in downtown Culpeper crumbled Wednesday, apparently following another aftershock.

Links:
www.VA511.org -- VDOT's traffic info page.
Weather Underground's tropical weather page, with long range computer forecasts
Report on this week's Virginia tornado
Report on the earthquake damage in Culpeper

The Fiat 500

Today I write about something I have been looking forward to for some time:  Consumer Reports' review of the new Fiat 500.  Sadly, the magazine finds that the 500 does not measure up.

In the October issue, Consumer Reports opines that the 500 is agile, nimble and fun to drive.  They add the mini-car's ride is choppy, its control layout is flawed, and its driving position is awkward.

These demerits were not unexpected.  The 500 is tiny, so it should have a choppy, jumpy ride.  And Italian cars have never been known for their reliability. But Consumer Reports, which usually waits for reliability data before giving a car a thumbs up or down, has come out and said it will not recommend the Fiat because it scores too low.

That's not to say the Fiat 500 doesn't have its fans.  The guys on Top Gear love it.  James "Capt. Slow" May says it "drives brilliantly." Richard Hammond called it a "fizzy little car."  Fiat is selling the 500 with a ton of different looks, including a convertible version.  I personally think the 500c with a red and white interior looks great...kind of like the inside of a Johnny Rockets restaurant.

I should point out that I'm not looking to buy a Fiat 500 or any new car, for that matter;  I doubt I could afford one.  But despite my own reputation as "Capt. Slow" and the fact that I'm a big guy, I have always had a thing for small cars, particularly five door hatchbacks.  And when something new, something innovative comes along, I find myself rooting for it.

If I were in the market for a new, small car, the sharp looking 2011 Ford Focus hatchback would be at the top of my list.  I'm also a fan of the Mazda 2, and, although I doubt I could fit into one, the Mini Cooper.

I'm now looking forward to reviews on more small cars, including the electric Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt and the diminutive Scion IQ, which is about the size of a Smart Car but somehow has four seats.  I also like the looks of Top Gear's current "reasonably priced car," the Kia Cee'd, but it's not sold in the U.S.

Links:
Fiat USA's official site
James May races the Fiat 500 through Budapest

Also in the News

A sampling of stories that time didn't allow me to feature on the air today.

The annual beginning of the school year reminds me to point out yet again that the safest way for students to get to school is, by far, the school bus.  The Virginia DMV reports there were 572 accidents involving school buses in Virginia last year, but zero fatalities.  In the majority of those accidents, the bus driver was found to be not at fault.  Here's the DMV's news release.

The Norfolk SPCA has taken in more than a dozen dogs from a shelter in Chowan County, North Carolina, which ran out of room after Hurricane Irene.  The Norfolk shelter will put the displaced dogs up for adoption.  www.NorfolkSPCA.com

Firefighters say the Great Dismal Swamp wildfire is about 90 percent contained but is still not out.  A spokesman for the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge says it will take substantially more rain than the foot or so provided by Hurricane Irene to completely extinguish the fire.

The Cost of Commuting

Here's a hypothetical situation involving a not so hypothetical radio newsman who happens to live about a mile from the would-be light rail corridor in Virginia Beach.  Let's say Virginia Beach does build a light rail system and let's also assume that a station is built within cycling distance of my house, near BJ's Wholesale Club.  And we'll assume that I work in Downtown Norfolk.  According to Google Maps, that's a distance of about 12 miles, or 24 miles round trip.

As both of my cars, a 15 year old compact and a five year old minivan, each get around 22mph, that would cost me one gallon of gas each time I make that commute by car.  By the current price of gasoline, that's $3.50 in gas every day, and that's only assuming there are no traffic backups along my route.

A one-way fare on The Tide costs $1.50 right now.  With a round trip costing $3.00, that would save me money in this hypothetical situation.  Yes, we can assume that light rail fares will go up in the future, but we all know that the price of gasoline, cars and car insurance will also be increasing.

Obviously, this scenario doesn't apply to everyone, particularly those who live in Great Neck or Pungo.  But for those who live near Virginia Beach Boulevard, commuting into Downtown Norfolk by light rail could be a viable option.

The controversy over whether to bring light rail into Virginia Beach reminds of another huge project that the City of Norfolk paid for with a lot of taxpayer dollars some years ago.  At the official ground breaking ceremony for MacArthur Center Mall in the late 1990's, a remember a few other reporters grousing about the expenditure of public money on such a big project.  I, myself, joked at the time that MacArthur Center could become the world's largest homeless shelter if things didn't work out.

Today, MacArthur Center is thriving.  It's become the focal point for Norfolk's other efforts to revitalize the Downtown area.  Whether Norfolk's Tide is as successful as MacArthur Center will, to borrow an overused newsman expression, "remain to be seen."

More Notes on Hurricane Irene

From Around the Region

Power Still Coming Back Online:  Dominion Virginia Power has a self-imposed deadline of restoring 95 percent of the outages from Hurricane Irene by this weekend.  The utility is reporting about 115,000 outages this morning, down from more than one million immediately after the storm.

Staged Returns to Hatteras Island Begin Sunday:  Officials in Dare County have announced that Hatteras Island residents will be able to catch a ferry to the now isolated island, beginning at 6am Sunday.  The returns will be done alphabetically, beginning with the villages of Buxton, Frisco and Hatteras.  The island's only road to the mainland was carved up by the storm.

Funeral Today for Newport News Victim:  Eleven year old Zahir Robinson will be laid to rest in funeral services today in Hampton.  Robinson was killed when a large tree fell on his apartment building on Fairfax Avenue Saturday afternoon.

River Flooding Threat Wanes:  A flood warning will remain in effect for the town of Franklin but the Blackwater River is already beginning to recede.  The river crested Wednesday below moderate flood stage and well below the historic flood that swallowed the town after Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Bottlenose Dolphin in James City County Disappears:  The bottlenose dolphin that was spotted struggling in Diascund Creek in James City County earlier this week has not been seen since Wednesday, and marine experts hope it has returned to deeper water in the James River.  It has been theorized that the dolphin was pushed upstream by storm surge from Irene.

Crop Losses in Virginia at 60 Million:  Virginia's agriculture secretary said Thursday that up to half of the  tobacco crop in the eastern half of the state could have been lost. 

Heavy Damage at ECU:  Officials at East Carolina University have increased their hurricane damage estimate to 1.7 million dollars.  Multiple rooms at Greene Hall and the Spillman Building had water damage and more than a hundred trees on campus were blown over.

Three Local Beaches Reopen:  Swimming advisories at Anderson Beach and King Lincoln Park in Newport News and at Sarah Constant Park in Norfolk have been lifted.  Health officials believe the elevated bacteria levels they detected in the water can be blamed on runoff from Hurricane Irene.

Wild Ponies are Okay: The Director of the Carolina Wild Horse Fund tells the Virginian-Pilot that all 128 of the wild ponies of Corolla have been accounted for following Irene.  The ponies usually ride out storms in an isolated, dense forest.

The Locks of the Great Bridge Bridge are now Fixed:  The Army Corps of Engineers has been able to repair a gate lock at the Great Bridge Bridge in Chesapeake, which was damaged by Hurricane Irene.  One official said it was possibly the first time in 79 years the lock system had failed to operate.

Storm Debris on the Beach: On the northern Outer Banks, large piles of debris, including trees and pilings, have been washing ashore this week on Corolla Beach. A Currituck County spokesman tells the Virginian-Pilot the debris will be cleaned up by today.

Life in the Great Suburban Outback

It's easy to forget sometimes that as developed and heavily populated as Virginia Beach is, it's really a giant suburb, equal parts city and country in some areas.  And sometimes the locals remind us of the country aspect.

My house is just a mile north of the city's main road, Virginia Beach Boulevard, but it overlooks a pond and is adjacent to a wetlands area. It was a great surprise this morning when, as I was leaving the house (before sunrise, I might add), I was greeted with the trademark sound of a great horned owl.  I was able to record a little of it with my mp3 player.



I've heard owls here before, but not often.  I think it's been a couple of years since the last time a heard that distinctive hooting sound.

From my location in the middle of Virginia Beach I have also heard the eerie call of a screech owl way off in the distance.  I wasn't able to record it, but here's a link to a page with audio clips.

My early morning drives to work at the radio station have also given me the opportunity to see opossums, raccoons, and even a couple of red foxes in my neighborhood.

The nature lesson doesn't end at work.  There's a grey fox that trots through the station parking lot from time to time.  And following a rain in the summertime, there's often a chorus of frogs in the drainage pond out back.  These are bullfrogs that I recorded in July.


Okay, so Virginia Beach is not "Wild Kingdom" and I'm not Marlin Perkins.  But I feel that sometimes, it's nice to be able to stop what I'm doing and simply listen.

The title of the post is from a Calvin and Hobbes comic, in which Calvin is screaming that a bee "the size of a Kaiser roll" is chasing him.  Hobbes teases him in reply, "Life in the great suburban outback is certainly fraught with peril."