And I quote:

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Rudy, holding forth on the topic of squirrels:

They eat anything.
They're like rats!
They are rats. With tails!

Predator on the premises

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I've been watching this impressive little raptor this spring as he has scouted my bird feeders for victuals. Two weeks ago he, or someone very much like him, slammed into my house---the siding, I believe, not a window---presumably while trying to pick a morsel off the two-prong pole near the back of my house. When I got to the back window to investigate, I saw some feathers swirling around and a hawk standing on the ground between the house and the feeder. He hopped to the top of the pole, then flew away, probably embarrassed with himself. Didn't get a good look at him then, though.

Then, a week ago, I came upon this guy with a freshly caught juvenile starling in its talons. He hopped over the fence for more privacy, but I went around and was able to observe him for several minutes at a distance as he picked at his still-living captive.

Today, interrupting myself from a writing task upstairs, I saw him perched atop the two-prong feeder near the ground-floor back windows. I observed him for probably 5 minutes total. Only after about 3 minutes, when he hopped first to the ground then farther away to the patio, did it occur to me to grab a camera. The best I could do was the Sony F717, a fairly high-end older point-and-shoot setup with a fixed Carl Zeiss (i.e., high-quality) zoom lens. I fumbled with it just to find a suitable auto configuration and managed to snap five or six frames while he perched on the arm of the heavy-duty captain's chair normally reserved for Rudy. I wasn't optimistic by the results, but was pleasantly surprised to see the large-scale snapshots. This is the best one, cropped at full resolution but compressed somewhat as a jpeg file. If you click the picture, you should see a decent enlargement with a critical detail for identification purposes.

I am officially identifying this creature as a juvenile or near-adult Sharp-Shinned Hawk. I'd been thinking he was probably a Cooper's hawk, but he is smaller than one I saw last year, and based on previous glimpses he appears to be more aggressive than Cooper's are reputed to be in chasing prey into foliage. The telltale clue is the yellow eye, which aren't found on Cooper's hawks. When comparing this picture with photos on Cornell's bird website, All About Birds, I was satisfied that his head configuration and feather patterns match those of the Sharp-Shinned Hawk.

Beer-D and I call this guy "Omar," in tribute to the oddly ethical "stick-up boy" from HBO's series The Wire. I can't actually verify his gender, but we choose to consider Omar to be a male unless the contrary is proved by an ornithologist.

My lesson learned for the day was to move my Nikon D80 from the closet to a hook by the back windows, set to fully automatic mode with a freshly charged battery and a zoom lens attached. Duh. (Slow learner.)

Wise sayings

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Direct from the Cowboy Monkey, Champaign, Illinois, by Rudy:

"Long face, deep throat." [Wise nod.]

Yes, but what now...?

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Rudy, knowing that I don't have an antenna connected to my TV, called about 20:05 to tell me that Osama bin Laden was killed tonight. The news says bin Laden was killed by "US personnel," without mention of a drone, and his body is in US "custody." This happened at an Islamabad-area mansion---interesting place for OBL to be hanging out, by the way, but not that surprising. I wonder who gets to collect the reward.

A sampling of blog comments at HuffingtonPost shows how eager wingnuts and yoginis alike are to gloat in this event. They need to stop and think: bin Laden was a symbolic figure, not a strategic one. And now he's a martyr. A martyrdom is red meat to organizations and the Taliban, especially if there are bellicose infidel crowds assembling outside the White House gates chanting  U  S  A !   U  S  A !  and wagging giant sponge-rubber "#1" fingers at the sky.

Assuming that bin Laden was guilty for the planning and logistics of the September 11 attacks---and I guess it's totally unpatriotic and unwise for an American to not assume that, anyway---no normal US citizen will be sorry to see him go. But jingoistic glee is just plain stupid. This event does not cripple al Qaeda, and there will be blowback. Maybe on US soil. But certainly in Afghanistan and Iraq.. to US military and civilian personnel. So with that in mind, I hope our stupid media and politicians will show some circumspection and restraint.

Won't happen, because it's already not happening tonight as I listen to the BBC chat with US "experts." Good night.

And I quote:

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"If a chicken don't eat its own shit I don't wanna eat it; it don't taste right."

---Rudy M., Champaign, Illinois (16 October 2010)

And I quote:

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"Hey! I used to bone a Roller Derby's sister!"

---Rudy, Champaign, Illinois (3 October 2010)

Happy birthday to "Politey"!

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...Politey being the antonymous designation for Rudy, the cartoonlike gentleman who spends much of his life in this apartment window, which is located 7 feet east of a Joe Pye Weed and dwarf coreopsis growing between my driveway and my fence, on West Healey Street in Champaign, Ill. Rudy has inhabited this planet for a full 67 years as of today. Coincidentally, also on this date in 1959, the first episode of The Twilight Zone aired on CBS. Also appropriately, he shares a birthday with Richard III (1452), the allegedly deformed, hunchback English king who served as the objective correlative in the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty," and was probably seriously slandered by Shakespeare on behalf of the Tudor monarchy a century after he died; Groucho Marx (1890), who was somewhat less funny than Rudy during his career; George McFarland (1928), the runt called "Spanky" in the Depression-era Our Gang/Little Rascals film shorts; and Maury Wills (1932), a National League base-stealing speed demon during mid-century previous.

Rudy's favorite expression is "What're you doing?!?" His favorite pastimes are lurking in his window waiting for Billy Goat Gruffs to carelessly trespass, reporting hallucinatory sightings of nonexistent species of birds patrolling our feeders, and making shit up as he goes along. He coins at least four neologisms every week, and believes that each and every one of them have been part of The King's English since Humpty Dumpty roamed the earth.

I offer all of the above observations in complete earnest, but without so much as a microgram of disrespect. He is an sweety-pie American Original, and by far the least generic neighbor I've ever had. Happy birthday, Fatso!