Whatever happened to Whippoorwills?

That guy in Oregon got me thinking about whippoorwills this morning.

When I'd spend nights at my grandma's farm in north Missouri in summer as a child, the last thing I'd hear before I went to sleep on the feather bed in Grandma's extra bedroom was the sound of whippoorwills, coming from the woods across the road. They created quite a racket.

The last whippoorwill I've heard was back at my cabin three or four years ago, and that was an isolated incident.

And there used to be so many of them; where have they gone? Dr. Google led me to a (noisy) article, complete with the bird's call, that gives some reasons for the bird's demise. It seems too many people and too many cats are the reasons the whippoorwill is disappearing.

On to other things. Just as Cliff and I were really enjoying the stir-fried zucchini, the squash bugs killed the plant. So we stopped at a nearby roadside market where I intended to buy a couple zucchinis. Or four, because my eggplant is coming along, and I'd love to have some ratatouille.

They had some, all right. But they were larger than I like, and obviously had been picked too late, because there was no gloss to the skin. I want my zucchini about the size of a large cucumber, and I want them to be shiny. Those big, misshapen ones are only good for zucchini bread or cake. I'd have better luck in a grocery store than at that roadside market.