Bill Maher Knows Nothing About Sex

Nobody, but I mean nobody, floats my boat these days. Except maybe Edward Burns. Something about his voice gets to me. Same with Josh Hartnett's smoldering eyes. But if his acting gets any worse, I'm ready to take a pass. Russell Crowe in LA Confidential and Gladiator can still fog my reading glasses, but nothing in real life makes me salivate lately.

To be perfectly fair, the lack of interest usually goes both ways. Chalk it up to old age. Like I care. On the other hand, one of my cousins said I don't look too bad sitting down -- because when I'm seated people can't see me trying to walk. It would be sad if it weren't so damn funny.

But I may be alone in my lack of interest in objets masculins. I was talking to one of my best girlfriends and she was almost apoplectic after a Bill Maher show that discussed Eliot Spitzer's escapades. I guess ol' Bill [who, last I heard, has never been married and can't seem to keep a girlfriend] was complaining that after twenty years of marriage the sex is pretty much over. So why wouldn't a guy seek alternatives.

My pissed off girlfriend wanted Bill to know that she and her husband, both over sixty, were still doing nasty things twice a week, na na na na na. So as a public service I am telling Mr. Maher that those two are not only at it way more than the national average, they've been together way past twenty years, so there.

She also mentioned commitment and other warm and fuzzy things that married people enjoy and the Bill Mahers of the world can only imagine, but I forget that part.

However, it's nice that a blog can come in handy. Bill Maher will get home some night, Google himself, like I'm sure he does on a daily basis, and find this entry. He should be aware that he ticked off my girlfriend. It's good that I can help.

Another one of my best girlfriends has reconnected with a football player that she [and me, too] dated in college. Her first husband was another guy I dated. Actually, I thought I was still dating him, when they started going out. But I digress.

I was going to say my girlfriend and football guy "hooked up", instead of "reconnected," but that has a new meaning. Wait a minute, that meaning also applies to them. They sound like they're having the kind of fun usually reserved for Spring Break. It helps that she looks at least fifteen years younger than she has any right to, and he looks like he could still be playing linebacker for the Baltimore Colts which he used to. If either of them reads this and allows me, I'll post a YouTube link about him so women of all ages can eat their hearts out.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all my friends getting noogie well past their expiration dates, I went to a party over the weekend. A younger female friend of mine met some guy online and now they both have stars in their eyes. So she wanted some of her friends to do the up close and personals while he was in town.

Who should be at this gathering but a guy I liked looking at, who liked looking back at me, despite watching me gimp into the room. Even better, he could speak in complete sentences. Then he did something I usually do, which was to tell me a detail about myself that I sure didn't expect him to know. Usually I can tell a guy what kind of dog he has and the car he drives. I can also tell him what sports he plays as well as what position he takes on the field. This guy, who had never met me before, took one look and told ME where I went to high school and what sports I played. He even guessed my ethnicity. Regardless, when he had to leave, I turned into a pumpkin again. Ten years ago I would have worn the glass slipper. Now my feet are too swollen to bother trying it on.

Ah, but for one brief shining moment, I could swear my boat was starting to float. Hmmm, I wonder if the engine works anymore.

Mrs. Linklater Talks Hoops

There's a bunch of sixty something females who read this blog. I keep hoping for more young men, but who am I kidding? Watch the ladies' eyes glaze over and their heads start nodding as they read Mrs. L's cogitations about roundball.

Because here's something you don't often hear a woman my age say, "So how are your brackets doing?" This may explain why I live alone. And don't get invited to ladies' teas very often.

I'm not having a good year. I picked Duke to beat UCLA. But they couldn't get passed West Virginia or was it Western Kentucky? So sue me. I should have seen the handwriting on the wall when the Blue Devils couldn't knock off UNC for the ACC championship. 

Even worse, I picked Tennessee to take it all. Yep, everything, the whole deal. I shoulda known Louisville would take 'em to the woodshed, but I was blinded by, I dunno, stupidity? Or was it the picture in Sports Illustrated of the Vols' flamboyant coach with his shirt off and his Danny DeVito body painted orange?

My only worthwhile pick the whole tournament has been Davidson, but I thought Wisconsin woulda taken them out by now, because they are such a small school. Dumb dumb dumb.

Memphis and Kansas better win their regions because I've never not had at least one team in the final four. 

Oh the humiliation.

Bullets Over Bagdad

Last night I watched Part II of this week's FRONTLINE -- Bush's War. Part I was on the night before.

No sense in you having to slog through all four hours about how we got into the Iraq war, how the Generals didn't have respect for the CIA, who got railroaded by Rumsfeld, who was best buds with Cheney, who had no use for Colin Powell, who got hung out to dry in front of the entire world, while Condi just waited around until Dubya dumped them all so she could take over and tell everybody what they ought to be doing. In short, the last five years can be summarized in two words:

Not Mideast Crisis.

Not Viet Nam.

But high school. 

Hillary, You Incredible Slut

I should be a candidate for president.

Today, on my way downtown, I had to dodge a huge pothole at 65 mph. The car next to me went ape-sheetah when the driver thought I was going to leap out of my lane and hit him sideways as I swerved.

But that was nothing compared to the guy behind me who slammed on his brakes and almost lost control of his car trying to avoid hitting my backend. He was so po'd that he took a shot at my car as he drove past.

Yep, used a gun with bullets.

I think he was aiming at my tires, but luckily he missed them and me both. Then he took off. Somebody must have seen him taking aim at me, because the next thing I knew there were three state cops streaking through traffic with lights and sirens and loudspeakers, ordering everyone to move the hell over. I've never seen four lanes of rush hour traffic trying so hard to cram themselves into one space in my entire life.

Next thing you know the guy who was taking pot shots at me loses control of his car, hits the median, and flips end over end, like a highlight film of great NASCAR crashes.

By this time everybody was driving about five mph in the far right lane, mostly out of fear at first. but soon out of curiosity. Is he dead? Maimed?

When the car finally came to rest in a cloud of dust and smoke, not to mention leaking fluids from its auto body parts, it was completely upside down. The cops did their best Starsky and Hutch and jumped out of their cars, just like in the movies. You know the drill, doors open, guns drawn and bullhorn screaming.  I actually couldn't understand what they were saying because by that time I had passed the craziness and it all just looked and sounded like mayhem and noise to me.

What's that? You say none of this actually happened?

Oh, I guess I "misspoke."

Any Closer and He Would Have Bit Me On The Butt

I've been trying to locate a retired football coach to interview him for a video. For six months, I've been asking former players, current coaches, and parents who knew him back in the day to help me find him. Nobody had any idea where he was. Last fall, I saw him interviewed on TV at a big playoff game. The commentators mentioned that his niece and nephew went to one of the playoff schools, so I called the athletic department at the school. But they didn't know. I called a reporter I thought would know because he had graduated from that playoff school. But he didn't call me back. Asshole. Finally I talked to a woman who works for another coach. She said she thought the coach I was looking for taught adult classes at their high school and the people there might know.

They did know! They even gave me his phone number after I told them why I was looking for him.

Turns out, after all this time looking, he lives in my town.

On my street.

Thanks, But No Thanks

So we get this dumbass storm today. Five to nine inches of Full Monty snow, wet and heavy -- the kind that kills people who try to shovel it.  The neighbor who has custody of our snowthrower -- the one I bought and he maintains -- didn't have a chance to use it on my driveway, because "Viktor," the guy who built the giant spec house across the street, beat him to it.

This is good news and bad news. The good news is watching Viktor bust his buns trying to be a good neighbor. He bought an industrial strength machine and goes around the whole neighborhood now. The bad news is that when he cleared my walks and driveway, a lot of the cold, wet, and heavy snow he was blowing into the wind effectively buried the steps and doors to my house. There was a two foot drift I had to maneuver just to get near the back entrance. My other neighbor usually shovels the steps for me afterward. Thanks to Viktor, I needed sled dogs to get indoors.

Not that I'm complaining.

Hell, yes, I am.

I FORGOT

I forgot that March 17th, besides being Drunkus Maximus Day, was also the fourth anniversary of this journal. 

Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.

I did hear a joke that I liked, which I will use to celebrate this auspicious occasion. 

What's Irish and stays out all winter?  Give up?  Huh? Huh?

Paddy O'Furniture.

It's almost as good as my all time favorite:

What's green and skates?  Peggy Phlegm.

Memorial Service

When someone dies, stupid stuff happens. You discover, for example, that the funeral home manager's name is COFFIN.  That was just one of the things that happened when my mother died.

My aunt's passing was no exception. She wanted to donate her body to medical science, but she hadn't specified a particular medical school. My cousin, her executor, took care of finding a medical school nearby and had her body sent there. That wasn't the stupid part, although someone made a stupid comment about the school he chose, which I will save for later.

The stupid part was deciding when and where to have her memorial service. There was the "We need closure NOW" group who wanted a service right away at her local Episcopal church, in keeping with family tradition.

Then there was me. I wanted to have the service three weeks later, closer to her birthday, which was yesterday, March 16th, Palm Sunday.  [Needless to say, churches don't do no memorial services on Palm Sundays.] My other thought was that waiting a couple of more weeks would save on airfare for those coming from way out of town.

While my cousin handled the negotiations between the "hurry up and do it now" group and the "let's wait until closer to her birthday" group to determine a date, we learned Aunt Genie had told a friend that when she died, she wanted her service be held at a particular Methodist church with a pot luck lunch afterward.

The Methodist church was where she had been going to AA meetings for almost twenty-five years. As we soon discovered, the first of several decisions was about to be made, because "Genie would have wanted it that way."

Two and a half decades ago, when she was in her early sixties, Aunt Genie called me to say she had joined AA. In my whole life I had never seen her drunk, let alone even take a drink. So I asked her, "Why?"  

When she told me she was an alcoholic, I had to sit down. She was my Auntie Mame, my mother's happy go lucky youngest sister, who loved music and the arts, who took me to my first opera when I was sixteen.  

When do you drink? I wanted to know, since I'd never, ever seen her with so much as a glass of wine. She said she drank at least a bottle a night, alone. That way no one knew and, thanks to coffee, the alcoholic's antidote, she never missed work. In fact, it would never occur to her not to fulfill her responsibilities.

Maybe her drinking explained why she had gained a lot of weight over the years. All that time, I thought she just ate too much, even though I never saw her eat copious amounts either. She would never take extra helpings at meals. Or eat more dessert than anyone else. Her cupboards and her refrigerator were all politically correct when I visited. No double chocolate cake on a platter, no gallons of ice cream or boxes of cookies for snacking. And, of course, no alcohol in sight. Turns out, she had secret stashes of sweets and booze hidden everywhere in her house. She kept her secret so secret I don't think anyone knew until she joined AA.

Finally, realizing she had not one, but two addictions, Aunt Genie joined Overeaters' Anonymous. Later, she went to ACOA [Adult Children of Alcoholics] meetings. I guess my grandfather had been a nasty drunk, although when I knew him he was just a retired farmer who always had his nose in a book or newspaper and only asked for a soda when he was thirsty. I do remember my mother telling me she had to talk her dad out of killing the whole family with a shotgun one night. But until Aunt Genie gave me the details, I didn't realize he was also drunk and the standoff had lasted until he finally passed out the next morning.  

To his credit, my cousin got everyone to agreeto March 7th for Aunt Genie's memorial service. Because she had made her wishes clear, we held it at the Methodist Church, since she would have wanted it that way. Unfortunately, this was an affront to some of the old line Episcopalians in the family who didn't think the place was "churchy" enough.

There was a lovely soloist, who wore a dressy-casual pants outfit instead of a choir robe. The minister was in a suit, instead of dressed like a pope. The pews were padded, which goes entirely against the Episcopal heritage of uncomfortable, Puritan pews. There was no kneeling, another blessing. Instead of an organ there was a synthesizer and one of my cousins played the "harp," which, in this Methodist church referred to a harmonica, an instrument not often heard in Episcopal settings.

In place of monolithic, stained glass windows above the altar, there was a huge white movie screen where the words of each song appeared in giant letters, so you didn't have to get out your glasses to follow along. We also sang the familiar, fundamentalist hymn, How Great Thou Art, a favorite of mine, which I can assure you is not in the Episcopal hymnal.

My cousin gave a wonderful eulogy. No one could have done it better. Aunt Genie would have been quite touched. He remembered her childlike joy around children and animals, her great wit and sense of humor, her love of music and reading. He made us laugh. And he wiped a few tears as he spoke. After he finished he invited any one in the church to add words of their own. Some people came up to the lectern. Many others just stood up where they were. There were lots of smiles and quite a bit of laughter as people shared stories about my aunt. 

I chose not to say anything because I would have been blubbering the whole time. In her honor, I did wear a wonderful hat of hers that a cousin had made for her eightieth birthday. It was covered with flowers like an Easter bonnet. And it was purple, her favorite color. She would have enjoyed that.

About a hundred and fifty people came to the service,most of whom I didn't know, because they were friends from my aunt's support groups. About one hundred joined us for lunch afterward.

At the luncheon there were several poster-sized photo collages of Aunt Genie, filled with pictures of her with friends and family, nieces and nephews. One of my cousins had also set up two long tables with mementos from her life, which guests were invited to take if they liked. There was a large chicken buffet worthy of a family reunion, right down to the lime jello pineapple mold. Lunch was followed by a dessert of frosted cake with her picture on it. Her name was spelled wrong, but very imaginatively. "Imageanes," I believe it said.

I was sorry Genie couldn't be with us -- she always loved a party. Her remains were being prepared for donation to the medical school of a predominantly black university. Stupidly, someone had actually asked whether any relatives might be offended by that. I was offended that the issue would even come up. But, the answer to that question, like so many others, was easy.  

Aunt Genie would have wanted it that way.  

DONOR WEEKEND ALERT!!!!

Let the drinking begin!! Today is the start of our annual Irish Inebriation Celebration, culminating this Monday night with St. Patrick's Day.

Chicago has a kick off parade at noon. This morning the river will be dyed green to match the hair, hats, and painted faces of the stoned blarneys named O'Blonsky, O'Smith, and O'Nelson lining the parade route. Everybody's Irish for the next few days. For most that doesn't mean learning to bagpipe, sing Danny Boy, or talk like Colin Farrell. It just means getting drunk.

I'm guessing, but this may be the single most alcoholic weekend of the year. While most holidays make a pretense of celebrating something, like the new year, or rabbits laying eggs, does St. Patrick's Day serve any other purpose besides imbibification?

Since nothing goes better with drinking than driving, there will also be roadkill. 

The good news is that there are thousands of people sitting on death row -- transplant lists to be more accurate -- waiting for new livers, new hearts, new lungs, new kidneys, new corneas, new skin, new bones, and any number of other replacement parts.

So holidays take on new meaning when you don't know whether you'll be alive for the next one. You look forward to the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas with greater anticipation when you're waiting for an organ that could save your life.

Even faux holidays like Super Bowl weekend, prom night, homecoming, and of course, St. Patrick's Day provide hope for those who wait, because wherever there's drinking there's going to be death by driving. That's why families of people waiting for transplants call them Donor Holidays.

So, as a public service, I have come up with a slogan to encourage a successful holiday experience -- for some people at least.  You can copy it, blow it up, print it out and tape it to your bumper with my permission.

KEEP TRANSPLANT HOPES ALIVE -- DRINK AND DRIVE!!

March 16, 1922 - February 12, 2008

It's been a week since my last entry. You'd think someone died or something. Oh, wait, someone did die. My Aunt Genie.

In fact, I think they killed her. She fell and broke her hip and wrist a few weeks ago. Note to self -- ask someone to shoot you if that happens. At least end it before they start using you as an experiment. Death seems to be the only option for old people who have to trust their health to the medical profession when something happens. Despite the odds of survival, which were not good for someone my aunt's age, she was doing well enough after surgery to be sent to re-hab, which, as it turns out, is what I think did her in.

I flew out to visit her in the hospital soon after the accident, and she was in very good spirits, considering. She was checked into the hospital where she had worked for years as a nurse, so the good news was that she had old friends on staff who were constantly looking in on her. The bad news was she didn't like some of the new staff. She was old school and thought the new nurses weren't trained as well as they should be. Especially those from other countries. In her quiet way, she was keeping tabs and making sure things were handled in the proper manner. Probably a good sign that her mind was doing fine, but I'm sure it was disconcerting to the people she was taking to task.

One theory of her accident was that her hip broke when she turned around too quickly in her small kitchen. One of her best friends and I had lunch after her memorial service. Turns out we both think she broke her hip because she passed out and broke things when she fell down. Along with her broken bones, the docs discovered she was anemic after they got her to the hospital. She also suffered a fall while visitng a friend last July which was attributed to tripping over her shoes. We think she had anemia back then too, blacked out for a moment, and fell. 

I found it interesting that UCLA's old coach, John Wooden, recently went to the hospital after a fall. They discovered he was anemic, so he might have passed out like we think my aunt did. Nancy Reagan recently fell, but luckily, she didn't break anything. No news about whether she passed out or just tripped while trying to discipline a servant.

One the biggest problems of getting old is just staying on your feet. Your balance sucks all of a sudden. Your bones can get so brittle that they breakand you're down. Or you can get dizzy and hit the ground. You can even do what I did a few winters ago. I walked out my back door, noticed that the steps looked slippery and said to myself, 'Be careful, the steps look slippery." As soon as I put my foot down I proceeded to do a pratfall worthy of the Three Stooges. I don't know how I avoided hitting my head. After landing hard enough on my ass and right elbow to make me wonder if anything was broken I discovered 1] I was just fine, thank you  2] I probably needed new steps  3] I might be late for dinner with my friends.

My aunt was not so lucky. After surgery for a rod to stabilze her hip and a cast for her wrist, she was sent to the previously mentioned re-hab hospital for some industrial strength physical therapy. Unfortunately when they brought her back from an afternoon of PT, they twisted her leg and hurt her broken hip, while moving her from the stretcher to her bed. One of my cousins was there to see that happen. The next time she went to PT it happened again. After this second mishap, a large bruise appeared on the inside of her leg. 

Bruises mean blood clots. And blood clots are inclined to travel. If they get to your heart, lungs or brain they can kill you. Several hours later my aunt was rushed back to the hospital emergency room, because she was suddenly having trouble breathing. I think she had thrown a pulmonary embolism from the bruise on her leg. Other people think her heart just gave out.

Either way, she died.

Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that: the memorial service

Oprah's Big Give is a Big Stupid Idea

I tried to watch Oprah's Big Give last night, but I was cringing most of the time.

I have a disconnect with the premise. The show is a fundraising contest. Who can raise the most money the fastest and the best. That would be fine if the funds were being raised to help an organization or a town.

The problem is that there are real people who need those funds and they are at the mercy of the players in this pathetic little game.

Basically, there are ten contestants who compete to see who can be the biggest giver. Each week someone will be voted off the show by the judges for not giving enough. That alone is a good reason not to watch in the first place.

No one should be judged for making an honest effort to help someone in need.

To turn raising money for desperate families into a contest is very demeaning to the people who are supposedly being helped.

Desserving people with heartbreaking stories have been reduced to game pieces on a Monopoly board.

The contestants were paired into five teams for the first week. Each team had a picture of the person they were assigned to help, along with a clue about that person.

As they took off in their SUVs, it wasn't clear whether or not the teams had their needy person's address. Did they have to find these people without knowing where they lived, or what? And why? One team never found their needy person until the second day. What was any of that about?

It was also not clear why the contestants needed to have a clue about the person they were helping. Why a clue? Why not a bio? When each team finally found their deserving person, the contestants just asked them a bunch of questions and found out everything they needed to know. So, again, what was the clue for?

As a result, right at the top of the show the contestants seemed to be off on a meaningless treasure hunt to find the people they're supposed to help. With a dumb clue about the person that never seemed to be relevant to anything. 

Back to the idea of the show: people competing against each other to see who can give the most to help change someone's life. I kept having to remind myself of that becauseof all the crap that got in the way. The editing wasn't much help either.

The first disconnect for me is that the contestants only have five days to finish their assignment. Five days. That amount of time isn't enough to help someone properly. Unless all that matters is money. And five days isn't enough time to raise the huge amounts of money these needy people required.

For instance, one pair of contestants had five days to get one person's huge mortgage paid off. Another pair wanted to get their worthy person's huge student loan paid off. Another pair had five days to raise money for a new recreation center for a huge number of handicapped kids.

In the end, all the teams raised money, but mostly, it wasn't enough to get rid of the whole debt. Like I said five days isn't enough time to help people properly. The handicapped kids got a new rec center donated that they could use for six years. That may have been the most successful effort. I wasn't around for the lady who had a mortgage to pay off after her husband had been murdered. Ironically, by then I'd already switched to Law & Order.

The second disconnect is that the measure of giving seems to be primarily financial -- as long as the contestants also demonstrate enough caring to tug at the judges' heart strings. People who give their time don't count in this competition.

The one contestant that figures out how to give away the most money to their weekly designated deserving person in the most heartwarming, caring way, will win in the end. Not too cynical.

It also turns out that the winner will end up with a million dollars, although the contestants don't know that yet.

Here's my next disconnect: as I mentioned at the outset, each week someone is eliminated because the judges decide he or she hasn't given as much or as well as the others.

Have I mentioned that the judges are a chef, a pro football player and a comedian's wife? Enough said.

The problem with Oprah's Big Give is that the show thinks it's like Extreme Makeover, but it's set up like American Idol. Extreme Makeover has no losers, only winners. American Idol is nothing but people losing. That's my biggest problem with the premise of the show. Like I said, no one should be designated a failure who legitimately tries to help another person.

Why should contestants be ridiculed, then punished for failing to raise enough money to make a difference in someone's life?

We don't need Oprah's Big Give for that. We already have the Catholic Church.

Marlin Perkins Would Be So Proud

When I was growing up in the comfortable, centrally air-conditioned existence of Chicago's northern suburbs, signs of wildlife were limited to the occasional dog running loose in our neighborhood of well-coiffed lawns. Except for those times when our cat would leave dead moles for us on the front steps, I assumed that everything else was extinct, caged at the zoo or living in Africa or Yellowstone Park.

As a result of this sadly sheltered existence, is it any wonder that my knowledge of woodland creatures was limited to gray squirrels, robins, cardinals and blue jays?

One day, after I was a grown woman, married and the mother of children, I happened upon a small, exotic-looking black and white bird sitting in the middle of our driveway. From its looks, I assumed a pet canary of some sort had escaped from its cage. It had a beak like a cardinal and a perfect triangle of fushia, positioned like a decorative accessory on its chest. Catching sight of me, it proceeded to fly up to the branch of a tree where it soon began singing a glorious song.

After calling around to see if anybody was missing a black and white canary, someone told me [gently] that what I had seen was no canary, but a rose-breasted grosbeak -- an actual species of bird that lived in the oak trees around our house.

I was astonished. In my whole ilfe, I had never seen a bird like that before. I went to the bookstore and got Roger Tory Petersen's book, Birds of America. Hey, there's lots of grosbeaks in here. The next day I got out my husband's industrial strength binoculars, went up to the second floor of our house, and while the kids were in school, I spent the first of many, many hours scanning the trees for birds. I was hooked. I probably should have been practicing my homemaking skills, baking bread, ironing sheets, embroidering pillows, but no, I gave all that the, uh, bird, as it were.

I soon learned all I had to do was listen for their songs and track down the bird that was singing. Looking for the "canary birds", with my book in hand, I saw a Baltimore oriole, an indigo bunting, a number of warblers and I soon discovered how many different tunes a robin can chirp. I even got good at recognizing which bird was singing what song.

Every time I saw a new bird, I was oooohing and ahhhhing like a little kid at the circus. From my perch on the second floor, looking through the tops of the trees at the birds on their perches, the view could be rather startling at times. The huge magnification of the binoculars made tiniest little finch look like an eagle.

Then I got divorced, moved, started working, and didn't have time for birdwatching anymore. When you get up and it's dark and get home when it's dark, birdwatching is not an option. The only time I used my Roger Tory Petersen book was to identify what birds the cats had killed -- which is one reason I don't have cats any more. They can decimate the bird population. 

Last weekend, many years after my birdwatching days, I was at one of the forest preserves near me. I like to go there to shoot pictures after a fresh snow. [Amazing how someone with a camera can empty a parking lot full of middle-aged men sitting alone in their cars.]

I was having a sandwich in my car, looking around for pictures to take. Soon I started watching a rare black squirrel running from tree to tree. He seemed to be looking for food and using the trees to warm up his feet between his forays onto the snow.

I was enjoying the contrast of his black fur against the white snow. I was also musing to myself that he didn't have much camouflage to protect him from bears, even though I know there are no bears around here, when all of a sudden, a big hawk swooped down and held him on the ground with its talons.

I froze where I was, not twenty feet away from this suburban wildlife moment. The hawk looked around. I got a good view of its face. Those eyes. That beak. Up close and personal. Way cool.

He [or she, I didn't know] hovered with its wings spread wide and pecked at the squirrel's back. Suddenly the bird adjusted its grip.  I thought the squirrel was a goner. But then I realized that the hawk was trying to pick the squirrel up and the little black ball of fuzz was too heavy to lift.

Since the only thing I remember from college freshman zoology is that ducks will follow the first thing they see after they hatch, I had to rely on my hours of Animal Planet to remember that hawks usually swoop down, grab their prey and fly up to a tree to eat it.

[Remember that show when some little kid had his pet rat out of its cage on the family picnic table and a hawk swooped down and flew away with it? Or was that on America's Funniest Videos?]

But this hawk had swooped down and couldn't fly away with its catch. The big bird still had the squirrel pinned to the ground, but I was sure the hawk's wings and talons were getting pretty cold from the snow. Soon I was rooting for the squirrel. But I was worried that it had been been mortally wounded. Until suddenly, the squirrel got loose, took off across the snow and climbed a big tree. I thought I saw blood, but basd on how quickly it was moving, I figured maybe not a mortal wound.

The hawk sat there for a second, with a look that can only be described as embarrassed, retracted its wings and flew up to a branch on a nearby tree to sit like the Maltese Falcon. It was as if he were saying "I was only practicing."

I thought it was weird that the hawk continued to perch there, motionless, while not ten feet away, the little black squirrel was scurrying up and down trees, like a wind up toy. He finally found a tree he liked, ran way up to the top and disappeared.

The hawk was still sitting on the branch like nothing had happened when I finished my sandwich and left. [Now it was safe for the lonely men who sit in their cars by themselves to return]. 

That's when I realized that I hadn't taken a single picture. But watching a raptor bird and a feisty squirrel squaring off in middle of a suburb, I think I got the birdwatching bug again.