A visit to the park with Junie

The Baby Birds in our Backyard

A few years ago my wife bought me a wooden bird feeder for Father's Day. It was a gift straight out of left field, but to continue the baseball lingo, it was also a home run. It remains one of the most enjoyable gifts I've ever received. Just this afternoon I walked out on my front porch and had a handful of birds, a rabbit, and a squirrel flee from the feeder at the sound of my approach.

"It's like a scene from Enchanted" I told the kids, and you know, it really was. Heck, even Milwaukee's own McDreamy (moi) was there.

This summer I added a homemade birdhouse to the mix. We even painted it to match the house colors.

Sadly, no bird chose to make it their home. No, instead they chose to infiltrate my shed and set up shop atop my ladder.

I was going to remove the nest but when I tried I saw a blue robins egg inside. So it stayed, and every time I need something from in there I have to put up with a squawking, dive bombing bird.

This morning Lis sent me out to photograph the eggs (from a respectable distance to avoid ticking off the momma) and I got a shock - the nest was now full of baby birds!

The momma sat annoyed on a nearby telephone wire with a bug hanging from it's beak, waiting to feed her young. Meanwhile the kids were thrilled

whereas half of me was proud of our contribution to wildlife conservation, and the other 50% of my brain was ticked off that these squatters aren't paying rent.

Snow in Bleepin' April

You know, on the first day of spring my wife and I saw a robin in our backyard. The first robin of the spring, on the first day of the season. How poetic.

Today, April  #@&^ 11th, I am staring out the window at a swirling, nasty SNOWSTORM that is threatening to dump up to a foot of snow here in Milwaukee.

My junior year in high school we had a blizzard in May, but that was a rare exception  . . or so I thought.

* * * *

I've never listened to Don Imus, and could care less if he has a job or not. But I think that in a culture where profanity and mockery are commonplace, and African American comedians/musicians use the word left and right, that the use of 'ho's' shouldn't get the man fired.

Talk about a double standard - not only do comedians and rap artists adore the word, the very 'politicians' who oppose Imus are guilty of perverse [reverse] racism of their own.

My opinion? Imus is an idiot, mainly because his use of the term was offensive to WOMEN. That's my strongest objection to it, and even that isn't enough for me to take away a guy's bread and butter.

In other news, charges were dropped against the Duke lacrosse players. Something stunk about that case from the get-go; a DA mad for publicity, it sounds like.

Now a woman had her reputation dragged through the mud front and center, college players were wrongly put through hell, and no doubt the city will be stuck with lawsuit settlements for years to come.  

Sigh. What a bleepin' world.