Behold, the SITEHAWK

I posted this on Facebook the other day and decided I'd put it on the blog, too. The Facebook entry reads like this...

FACT: If you are selling or leasing commercial property using a company called "SITEHAWK" and an actual hawk lands on your SITEHAWK sign you will have success in thirty days or less. Look it up.

And to quote the late Paul Harvey, here's "the rest of the story..."

I was coming back from lunch with some buddies from work and we looked over to see this sign. We've seen it quite a few times in the past, but the presence of the hawk caught our eye. This picture doesn't really do it justice as it was taken with a cell phone camera. The hawk (probably a red-tail) was impressive, to say the least. What are the chances of that happening? Perhaps it's not too much of a stretch since hawks are common here in Central Indiana. It might be like the late Tammy Faye Baker sitting on an Avon cosmetics sign.

I Saw One of These Today...

(Note: I didn't take this picture.)

I'm kind of a bird watcher and today I was fortunate enough to see a scarlet tanager. I was able to put a check mark on the corresponding page of my Birds of Indiana Field Guide.

Entertainment from the Front Yard

A few weeks ago I spent the entire weekend in the yard making things look nice for a group of people coming to visit. Near the end of one of these days I decided to take a break for a few minutes so I plopped down on a lawn chair and had a beverage (as Dave Letterman used to say, "There's nothing like a tasty beverage.").

Looking across the street I could hear what sounded like hundreds of birds congregating in my neighbor's twin pear trees. These were not large trees by any scale, but quite full and round. While I could hear hundreds of birds, I couldn't see a single one unless it chose to fly out of the "safety" of the tree. I used quotations marks around the word, safety for a reason. These birds only assumed they were safe in the canopy of the pear trees. I just happened to be looking straight ahead when a giant hawk (perhaps a Cooper's Hawk) shot into one of the trees. Honestly, it happened so fast that I don't know if the magnificent bird of prey swooped in from above or below the tree. The chirping and rustling of birds suddenly grew frantic, but paled in comparison to the rustling of leaves created by the giant wings of the invading hawk. Most of the birds in this tree managed to escape and the hawk quickly made his way to the other tree followed by more chirping and more rustling. A few seconds later one of the little birds emerged from this tree and attempted to make his way to the neighbors bushes to take cover. However, the hawk was right behind him. In a moment it was all over. The hawk held onto it's prey long enough to squeeze the life out of it and then devoured it piece by piece.

Should I have been grossed out by this? I hope it's ok that I thoroughly enjoyed being a witness to it all. I've seen these birds attack from a distance, but never from so close. I only wish I would have had a camera to get a few pictures. I grabbed this picture of a Cooper's Hawk from J. Cassady's "Vultures, Osprey, Kites, Eagles, Hawks & Falcons" page. Enjoy!

Target Practice

For a long time I could not get pictures from my cell phone to my computer. Thanks to a phone call I finally made to Verizon wireless, I can do it again. This can only mean good things for the loyal readers of big doofus blog (both of you). Now you can see the things that inspire me while I'm out and about.

So, here's one that I managed to save for quite some time now. Apparently, I must have cut off a bird while I was driving because he dropped one heck of a berry puree' on my windshield while I was sputtering down the road. It took a LOT of wiper fluid to get this spot off. YUCK!

Dirty Birds

We have a couple bird feeders in the back yard that we love to watch (yes, I realize this makes me and the Mrs. old geezers). It creates a steady flow of morning doves, house finches, chickadees, cardinals, gold-finches and sparrows. Plus we get robins, grackles (that no one cares for) and red-winged blacked birds from time to time.

Well, just yesterday I was able to witness some morning doves....uhhhh....how do I say this?...."gettin' busy." Sure, I've seen my fair share of dogs, cats and even cows in their intimate moments but this was the first time I'd ever witnessed birds mating. As the male was fluttering atop the female (I can only assume this was the case--I wasn't that close) I was going to tell my wife when all of the sudden another male shot down from the sky and IT WAS ON!!!! That lady dove had to feel like quite a prize to have two handsome doves fighting over her. Actually, males doves are not that handsome. They're pretty homely looking.

Anyway, that's what goes on at our house during the weekend. It's very exciting.

57 Weird Fact Things About Me (I was double-tagged)

I don't normally respond to "tags" or "memes". In fact, I'm not exactly sure what a meme is. I think I had a meme one time when I was seven and the doctor removed it for me. However, I was "tagged" by both Scott of Honey, I Fed the Kids and Elisa of My Journey Begins Now! for the same thing on the same day. So, I'm interpreting this as some sort of special revelation. To be precise, Scott tagged me to write "5 Weird Facts about me" and Elisa tagged me for "7 Weird Things About Me." I did the divine math and came up with "57 Weird Fact Things About Me." I don't care about the "rules" of the tag. I just feel like responding to them. However, I DO think it would be interesting to hear from my pal Uvulapie and his wife Uvalapie's Girl. I'd also like to hear from scott at Java Jesus, but his blog may not be the right place to respond.

Here goes...

1. I count my steps when I wake up and when I walk down the stairs in the morning. I have no idea why I do this, but I do.
2. I am used by many of my friends as a telephone information service. I actually USE my cell phone's handy contact list to keep all of this information which makes it very easy to call people. Instead of emulating this behavior, my friends have chosen to harness it and take advantage of it...and, thus, me.
3. I'm a sucker for movies, tv shows and commercials with talking pets--especially dogs.
4. I've never been out of the country (i.e. the United States). I've looked at Mexico from the border in Southern California, but I've never stepped foot on foreign soil.
5. I've memorized most of the movie Fletch...and Meatballs and Anchorman (which is wrong, I'm sure).
   
6. I make up weird things to say in place of today's more popular colloquialisms. Sure, I slip up every now and then and say the actual word, but I'm much more famous for screaming, "Cats!!!" when someone cuts me off while driving. It just feels good to scream out something. Sometimes the things I say are not even words.
   
7. There are a few people on this planet that "get" me. And I mean, they "get" to hear all of the disturbed things I come up with and they don't disown me. My wife has learned this art very well and then there are probably a handful of others.
8. When I was a kid I wanted to be an ornithologist. I even wrote it down on my "Big Dog of the Week" interview from 7th grade.
9. There is no # 9.
10. When I see myself in a mirror and I'm alone (or think I'm alone) I almost always make a weird face.
11. I sometimes sweat like a banshee dog in bed. I'm not even sure what a banshee dog is.
12. If I happen to look up at telephone poles passing by while I'm driving or riding in a car, I feel the need to click my teeth or move my toes up and down in between the poles. This makes NO SENSE AT ALL, but I do it. In fact, there were a whole bunch of odd things like this that my in-laws all shared with each other one time at a late-night family card game. I wish I could remember all of them. Even I thought some of them bizarre...and I'm me.
13. There are a lot of words that I find funny: robots, monkeys, grannies, cats (see #6), gravy, ninja, to name just a few. When you combine these words to make phrases or sentences, they're even better (e.g. The fighting Ninja Robot Granny Monkey Cats eat gravy to gain their super strength.).
14. I was once a stand-in blind date because a friend of mine couldn't make it. I married her. So far, it's been a great date!
    

15-57. Come up with on your own or just keep reading this blog.