According to earthquaketrack.com, California has had

• 28 earthquakes in the past 24 hours
• 160 earthquakes in the past 7 days
• 692 earthquakes in the past 30 days
• 8,237 earthquakes in the past 365 days

of magnitude 1.5 or greater. I know there have been “feelable” earthquakes in Santa Cruz since we moved here, but I had not felt one until today. I was standing at my computer in the guest room when the shower door in the guest bath rattled spookily for several seconds.

What could cause that? I thought.

An earthquake! I answered. The conversation was silent, but there’s no denying I was talking to myself.

I cruised over to the aforementioned website and learned that there was a magnitude 4.7 earthquake 51 miles from my house at the exact time of the rattling door. To be precise, I did not feel it, I observed an effect it caused. I experienced it.

Most non-Californians think of California as a hotbed of earthquakes, and seismologists here agree. Other people here, though, rarely think of earthquakes. We have lived here fourteen months. In Santa Cruz, a lot of people remember Loma Prieta, in 1989, which caused property destruction and death, especially downtown.* Lots of people in Boston remember the blizzard of 1978, also a fatal and destructive event. People in Boston are about as actively scared of blizzards as people in California are of earthquakes.

Here we also have mudslides and fires, both of which seem more damaging.

I ate lunch on the patio about thirty minutes later, and our hummingbird was chirping up a storm. I remember that birds and elephants sensed the devastating 2004 tsunami, and moved uphill to save themselves. I wonder if the hummingbird knew about the earthquake before it hit.

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* Our complex was extant at the time, and was not affected.