Skip to main content

Death Of The Great Pretender

    Hey, everyone. This is a track of a raccoon. I found it under water at the creek behind my house. Notice their long and nimble fingers? I had a silly post a while back about a raccoon playing a guitar. Those fingers make you wonder if they could be taught many things. Notice the thumb. By the way, some deep prints will still be discernible after several days with water flowing over them.
     Today at work I saw something rather cool. I walked outside to get something out of my car. There was a mockingbird sitting on a power line. I saw a flash of color and the mockingbird sort of exploded in a barrage of feathers as a hawk hit him. A hawk gets such impetus because he folds his wings and dives like a maniac. There is no fight and there is no battle and there is no mercy. The hawk just comes from such a great height that he is an irresistible force.
    The odd thing about this was not the unfortunate demise of the mockingbird, however. A few months ago I did a post here on the blog about a mockingbird that was having some fun with a squirrel. The mockingbird was hidden in a leafy tree and he was watching this family of squirrels. He would imitate the screech of a hawk and the squirrels would just go ape. They are deathly afraid of hawks and for good reason. The squirrels 'fuss' when they get upset, chattering and doing this odd sound that sounds kind of like they are trying to clear their throat. Anyway, the squirrels would quiet down and the mockingbird would cry out like a hawk again. He was driving the squirrels nuts, no pun intended. The squirrels deserve to be messed with because they are not nice people. One day there were about 8 squirrels playing in the yard and a shadow passed over them as a hawk floated by, high overhead. It was hilarious the way those squirrels disappeared.
       My thought today at work was that the mockingbird could have been imitating a hawk, and a hawk heard him and decided to punch his ticket. That would be cool to document, don't you think?
    On an unrelated topic, let me tell you about a video I saw on AOL.com today. There is a pod (a group) of killer whales off the coast of California who have devised a plan to kill sharks. It seems that one of them will zoom in on a Great White Shark from the side and smash into it. While the shark is stunned the killer whale takes the shark in its mouth and turns him upside down so that the shark suffocates. Then the killer whale and his good buddies eat the shark. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, I suppose.
    Hey, do you think that Apple named their music device after a group of whales?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The White Chicken Mystery

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Egg Art

     Hey, everyone. One of the odd customs in America is the Easter Egg Hunt. Here at the Green Retreat, we do a hunt every Spring. I just ran across some of the pictures from this years hunt and it is obvious that an artist had sneaked into our midst. The orange egg is a rendering of one of the Angry Birds of gaming lore. If I were a bird and had to pass an egg that size, I would be angry too. Ha, ha.      We typically will dye about 10 dozen eggs and people get quite creative with their quotes and colors, as you can see. Many of the eggs are a bit risque for these pages. After having a few laughs, we hide the eggs. All of them are never found, which is cool. It is amusing to see old men (me) and all ages of folks, walking around with a basket on their arm. Some of the hiding spots are dastardly. Like eggs hidden in the guttering downspouts and ten foot up a tree. The kids are perhaps the most devious at hiding the colorful orbs, goi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Biscuit

    Hey, everyone. What a relief that Christmas is over, huh? I don't think it was meant to be the way it is.     I started thinking about the so-called good 'ole days today. My wife says that at her house, they would take a left-over biscuit and shine their shoes before church. I one-upped her by saying, "Oh, yeah? I ate the biscuit when everyone got finished with it. And I was grateful for it." Truly, though, you can and people did, shine their shoes with a biscuit. Hey, they were greasy little buggers.     Speaking of greasy little buggers, I remember when everyone had wells and were very conservative about water, particularly those of us who had to crank a handle up and down to get a bucket of water. There was no daily bath. (No showers in those days, mate.) About twice a week we took a bath and here's the recipe: The oldest kid took a bath first, then the next oldest etc. You can see why younger siblings hated the older. Bathing in the...
Post a Comment
Read more