Hi friends! This is Bumble again. I posted this story from last weekend on my blog earlier today, but since mom doesn’t feel like writing today, I generously promised to post it here too. Mom is a bit sad. Muted. She said she’s lost an actor, who always made her laugh. I love it when she laughs. Who’s gonna make her laugh now? I hope this will cheer her up at least a little bit. So here we go.

“It all started in July. Mom told me she’d been bitten by a bug.  A photo bug, to be exact. I’m sure the bug was hanging around the birds she always shoots in the nature reserve. Anyway, she ordered a new camera. I was wondering why she was wasting money when the old one still was in one piece. It wasn’t broken. She said she wanted to get closer to everything she shoots. That sounded less than safe. Think if she wanted to take pictures of a snake! Or a lion when she travels to Africa! How dangerous is that?

So the new camera arrived. But mom still wasn’t happy. She ordered a tripod. I had no idea what that was. Anyway, when the package arrived, I saw it was very small. About my size. But then mom shook its legs and it became very tall, almost her size. Exactly like the other three-legged tower I’ve seen in the walking closet on my house inspection tours. Why did she need another one? She said the first one was dad’s and too heavy for her to carry! How can that be?  She can carry a 15 pound dog! Sometimes mom doesn’t make sense to me.

Soon I saw mom put her camera on the top of the new tower and spend lots of time on the terrace. She said she was trying it out to get good pictures of the supermoon in August. But she took pictures of the osprey nest in the nature reserve! She showed me the “close-up” of the nest, but that also didn’t make any sense to me. The nest was empty! She knew that the baby bird had grown up long ago and the whole family had moved away for now. I couldn’t figure it out, but if she’s happy, I’m happy.

Fast forward to last weekend. On Friday we went for our last walk for the day around 9 p.m. Mom took a picture of me with her iPhone. You can see it was dark. She was looking up and looking up. I was getting worried she might step into something undesirable. She said the moon was behind too many clouds. And that she was afraid she couldn’t get any pictures of the moon this weekend. I couldn’t help but wonder if she had bought the wrong camera. A good one should be able to see the moon anyway, right?

Then, on Saturday night we came out just after 9 p.m. But we didn’t go for a walk! As soon as I had done my first item of business, just around the corner of our garage, mom wanted to go in again. The moon was visible every now and then between the clouds, and mom wanted to get her camera! So out we came again with the tall tower in tow. And the camera clued on the top. I did my second item of business. Then we walked on the grass and mom planted the “thing” there. I had to sit next to it.

Then mom started shooting. The camera lens was pointed all the way up to the clouds. And the moon, when it made a few  short appearances. I saw the moon too, but to me it looked just like it always does. A bright ball in the sky. Nothing super about it. But it was super hot and I started to get sweaty!  Finally mom said we needed to move a little bit so she could get the moon from between the trees. Now I started panting. We had just parked under the trees where I used to chase squirrels, when it started raining. Phew! Mom grabbed the tower under one arm and me under the other and in she ran! We made it into the garage just when the huge drops hit the ground.

Luckily it was cloudy on Sunday. I got my evening walk again. Everything was back to normal. I hope it’ll be long before mom wants to chase the supermoon again.

Keep well now. Love, Bumble”