Storm, that is.  Tropical depression 1E hit Mazatlán this morning and for a few hours there was torrential rain, crazy wind, windows banging, tinaco lids flying, and miscellaneous howling and scattered screaming here and there.  One neighbor told me that part of the roof on the school on our block flew off.  I watched some sort of metal plate swing crazily in the wind.  I saw a line of laundry flap off like a crazy nautical flag.

Our timber bamboo whipped this way and that.  One piece must have hit the roof edge and even though it was more than an inch around it was cut clean.  Our bouganvillia got to whipping around and was pulled off the wall and now is a heap on the ground.  (We think we’ll be able to put it back up)

All the plants on our new patio got plenty of water.  Most of them filled up to the edge of their pots and then ran over.

The new backyard patio really took a beating.  Avocados from the tree next door flew everywhere.  Leaves.  Dirt.  The parrots in their cage were being whipped here and there, Paul and I carried the cage in as crap flew everywhere.

It’s hard to really show how bad it was, but finally this is what it looked like. And this was after we had moved the birds, picked up all the cushions that had flown about, the dog beds, etc.

During the worst of it I was just mesmerized by the scene.  I had been worrying about all the birds that live in our yard, especially the hummingbirds.  Then what should I see but our mama hummingbird (you remember her from the video where she was feeding her baby?) at the feeder pushing on a smaller hummingbird (we assume the baby) trying to get it to eat.  It was the most heart wrenching thing I have seen in a long time.  Finally I got too close and she flew off to the tree nearby.  I could see the baby was breathing, so I got the ladder and was reaching for him when he collected himself and flew off. Here is a one minute video of the scene.

Paul thinks that my totem is a hummingbird, and I have to agree.  I feel a really strong connection to them, and I love the strong awareness I have of them as they live here with us.  I didn’t write about it, but we watched the baby get fed many, many times, watched his mom teach him how to feed and fly - and to watch this heart wrenching scene today was pretty intense for me.  I am so glad it turned out all right.

After the storm was over we had a lot of hummers sharing the feeder who would normally be fighting and territorial.  I think that they were so hungry from several hours without food that they basically called a cease-fire.

We went out around 5 and walked around Centro with the dogs.  We saw a few trees down and a lot of limbs down but for the most part all is well. We heard that one person clocked gusts of 75 mph.

The tropical depression fizzled out and the storm is no longer being watched.