Today is our last full day in Florida, so I'm not going to spend a long time on the computer. I just wanted to note two fun things that happened.
First, the day we got here, we were in Orlando eating dinner and it occurred to us that Giles might have a show.
Giles Davies is a fabulous actor who was Ally's mentor at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. He was with the company for about eight years and was one of the originators of the Groundlings program for high school students that Ally was a part of.
After being in one place for so long, he decided -- in a way that only a true artist and otherwise unattached person could do -- that he needed to move on. So, he put his necessities in the car and called over a bunch of his friends -- including Ally -- and gave away everything that didn't fit in the car. She still treasures the tweed cap and a couple of well-worn volumes of Shakespeare with his notes written in them. He had no real destination or plans. He just took off. He got acting jobs around the country, but eventually settled in Florida in the Tampa Bay area. I think he likes the warm weather.
So, sitting at the dinner table in Orlando, we asked ourselves whether Giles had a performance that night and, thanks to the Internet, we learned that he did. A new theatre company had just opened in the Tampa Bay area called A Simple Theatre and he was in the second night performance of their opening offering of "
Death and the Maiden." So, we drove over to Tampa to see it.
It was fabulous. Of course it was, Giles was in it. The other two actors in the three person cast were just as talented though. The story was riveting and the storytellers were superb. As
one of the reviewers said, I had a headache after seeing the show, probably because I had forgotten to breathe for an hour and a half. In brief, it was about a woman who had been tortured in a previous political regime and was suffering post traumatic stress. Her husband had a flat tire on the way home and was brought home by a good samaritan -- but she insisted the stranger was actually her torturer and took him captive. Giles played the stranger brilliantly and I won't say more about the plot.
The second fabulous thing that happened during our stay I've already discussed with Annette at length. The Disney Vero Beach Vacation Club played host to a swarm of
red darner dragonflies for two days. They don't bite and they eat mosquitoes, so they were welcome. They were actually very cool looking --
hundred of dragonflies zipping around in a frenzy. According to the locals, it's a common occurrence this time of year and it's probably a feeding swarm eating the plentiful mosquitoes and other bugs. It was hard to get a good look at them because they were flying high and fast, but the resort naturalist thought they were red darners. We couldn't capture any actual specimens without killing them and I couldn't find any dead bodies. Odd that, with so many of them flying around. After a couple of days, they went back to more normal behavior -- flying low and sauntering along, just a few at a time.
Last -- this is for the girls -- I took a bunch of pictures of the resort. I realize that even though we've been coming here since they were babies, we don't have pictures of the restaurant or the lobby or some of the other common areas. So, I took a bunch of pictures and I'm posting them. Ha! Ha! We're at Vero and you're not! At least, not until we come down again at Christmas.
Well, wouldn't you know it. Yesterday's post saw the caterpillar's transformation completed and the beautiful butterfly flying into the sky. This morning, when I went out to check on the rabbits and give Andy his regular parsley treat, I found more caterpillars on the parsley! This time, I found them much younger because I knew what I was seeing. The youngest caterpillars are mostly brown with a white horizontal stripe. The ones I found before had already grown out of that stage. 
