Hail, tiny weapons, and other surprises.

Dorn, the automatic rifleman for my fire team, had been looking for a hydraulic buttstock for a long time, and finally purchased one on ebay. Or at least, he thought he purchased one. When the box came, it was much smaller than expected. And much lighter. It turned out that Dorn had misread the item description, and bought a 1/16th scale model of an M249 SAW automatic rifle. The mini SAW came complete with a 200 round drum and a sling. It is so detailed that the bipod folds out, the bolt can be cocked, the cover opens, and the hydraulic buttstock folds out and over just like the real thing. The seller is located in Asia and won't take it back, so now Dorn is stuck with an expensive decoration that sits on top of the TV. I calculated that if the weapon could shoot, it would take .o14 caliber ammunition - not even big enough for birdshot.

While on guard duty up on the border a couple of days ago, we got to see some amazing weather and the first spring migrating birds of the year. During the night we were awed by almost continuous lightning, and brief but intense hailstorms. The hailstones ranged from rain drop sized to a half inch in diameter. After sunrise, while patrolling the fence, I saw several great grey shrikes of the pallidirostris subspecies (with the pale beak, whitish lores and lots of white in the wings), some desert wheatears, a stonechat, and a few barn swallows.

While watching the gerbils, I wondered if perhaps one reason why they keep enlarging their burrows is so they don't get drowned by rainstorms. The sand that the gerbils were ejecting from the burrow entrances was wet at first, and then dry. It would make sense that when it rains really hard small burrows get flooded much more easily than large ones, and when they start to flood the gerbils can keep throwing out wet sand. Also, the sand here tends to turn into a hard, almost waterproof crust over time. If the gerbils keep digging, they'd keep fresh, water-absorbant sand exposed at all times.