Monday, July 28, 2008

Squirrel!

Interesting nature story told by a friend over dinner Friday night.

In an attempt to stop the squirrels and chipmunks from raiding the bird feeders in her yard, she erected a squirrel feeder, loaded up with all sorts of nuts and corn.

The thing seemed to be doing the trick, as the feral rodents flocked to it.

All was well, until the other day when she was out walking her dog, heard a loud "scree, scree!" from above and watched as a Red-tailed Hawk streaked from the sky and picked a chipmunk off the feeder.

The hawk, knowing a good thing when he sees it, has returned regularly to dine -- what my friend had intended to be a nut-filled squirrel feeder has in fact become a squirrel-filled hawk feeder.

My friend is okay with the whole survival-of-the-fittest aspect of this thing, although she deeply resents having to wipe blood off the squirrel feeder every time she refills it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Raptor's Delight All-The-Squirrel-You-Can-Eat Buffet (Now with Chipmunk!).

The perfect nexus of the Circle of Life with the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Santa!

No, that's Radovan Karazdic -- known as the Butcher of the Balkans for, among other things, exterminating 8,000 Muslim men and boys and holding the city of Sarajevo under siege for more than three years during the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s.

Arrested for war crimes on Monday, he had been living quietly but openly under an assumed name in a Belgrade suburb, where he practiced, lectured and wrote articles on alternative medicine.

How could a monster be so normal?