My vision of the Super Bowl.

The Packers defeated the Eagles and the Falcons, so birds need to watch out. It will be more fun (next week) to see them go after the Bears. "Packers" refers to meat-packing, so I think Bears are more meat than Seahawks. Enough fowl. We want red meat. (So I want the Bears to win today.)

Now, after we the Packers butcher the Bears, it's on to the Super Bowl (which suggests a bird, Superb Owl, but there will be no birds in the Super Bowl). Who will face the Packers: Jets, Patriots, or Steelers. The best image isn't Packers against Jets. Jets are planes. I don't like the imagery. So Patriots or Steelers. Both are human beings. I think Steelers makes for the best imagery, because Packers and Steelers are both working guys. There's a nice parallelism to that, which pleases me.

I also care about what I like to call their "costumes." Certainly, yesterday, the Steelers' costumes were much better than the Ravens costumes. Man, the Ravens looked like they were wearing ladies' leggings. I think you want some color break at the knee, so I was for the Steelers.

I'm all about: How do they look? It's a spectator sport!

(Originally written as a comment, here.)

UPDATE: I'm watching the Seahawks and Bears game right now, and I'm seeing there's a player named Herring on the Seahawks team. That's like having a player named Honey on the Bears team. This reinforces my support for the Bears (this week).

UPDATE 2: The Jets and the Patriots have quite similar costumes. To understand the game, I need to keep trying to remember which team is dark on top and white on bottom and which is the other way around. It's like that "Last Battlefield" episode of "Star Trek" where one guy is white on the left side his face and black on the right side and the other guy is the reverse. To people who aren't intimately connected to the struggle, like Captain Kirk, it just doesn't look different enough to matter. And by the way, that episode of "Star Trek" was bogus as hell unless it's established that these people don't have mirrors. Anyway, I concede that top and bottom are easier to distinguish than right and left, and I also realize the dark color is different for the Jets and the Patriots, but I need more contrast.

A bad omen for the Packers?

Rush Limbaugh laid out the bird theory of this weekend's Wild Card playoff games:

If we were to go Environmentalist Wacko Method this week, every bird team would lose, and lose bad.  What's happening out there?  Birds are falling out of the sky.  Scientists are trying to figure out why.  But if you go the environmentalist wacko route, the Seahawks (birds) lose. Ravens (birds) lose. Eagles (birds) lose.  The only game that doesn't feature a bird team is the Jets and the Colts -- and the Jets, nevertheless, are in the air -- and some birds die because they get sucked in by the jets, but the Jets aren't playing a bird team.  So the environmentalist wacko method for the Jets and Colts, again, you'd have to go Colts on that because Colts are horses -- wild, American history, cavalry, cowboys, Indians, so forth.  Jets, they're just expensive. They pollute, foul mouth, lousy service, all the things you gotta go through to get on one these days at the TSA. You gotta strip search. You'd have to say the Colts.  The environmental wacko method would have the Colts, the Saints, the "Cheaps," and the Packers going the environmental wacko method.

So far he's wrong. The Jets and the Seahawks have won.  So, that's a bad omen for the Packers.

More birds crashing into flying saucers...

... and tumbling to the ground.

Oh, no, it wasn't the alien spacecraft...

... it was a loud noise that killed the birds.

"Hey, did you hear that 1,000 blackbirds died and fell from the sky in Arkansas?"

"Nobody knows why it happened! Probably just a normal thing..."

La la la. Move along.

Meade sees a new bird.

"You really don't know what it is?"

"No."

"Is it big?"

"I've seen bigger."

"You've seen an ostrich."

At the Red Tail Hawk Café...

... you can be as hawkish as you like. Or dovish.

Madison needs to deal with its vermin - the geese.

At the Isthmus, Bill Lueders — remember him from last week? — seems disturbed by the proposal to kill the geese that are ruining our beautiful public lands.

Parks Division spokeswoman Laura Whitmore notes that the city is soliciting public input on goose management, after the brouhaha at Warner. (The eradication plan there is on hold pending further review.) One public hearing has already been held, on geese and golf courses, and another is planned, on goose management in general parklands.

"We want everyone's opinion," she says, "not just a few."

I'm sure the people who want to spare the geese will honk loudest, so I hope those of you who, like me, think the geese should be treated the way we treat rats will speak up too.

"This is the time" — I hope you're thankful.

I hope you made it to your destination okay. Or, if you're staying home, that you're warm and cozy. Feel free to eat pie: Michelle Obama has given us a dispensation to eat pie.

I liked this shopping-for-Thanksgiving story Chip Ahoy told in the comments at last night's Lake Dusk Café:

The grocery was crowded tonight. Everybody is in high spirits and eager to engage. I encountered two guys picking out a GIGANTIC turkey that barely fit into their cart. The turkey was frozen solid. I remarked on its size and they were filled with glee and good cheer, pleased with their choice. I suggested they might consider an ostrich and they laughed like they just met a hilarious stranger. I did not have the heart to tell them there is no way that thing is going to thaw by tomorrow. No way. I can see it all now; they will cook it anyway. Guy are like that. The outside will be charred and the inside will still be ice. The sequence of events is set, there is no escaping the inevitability, their turkey will be a complete disaster. Years on they will recall tomorrow as a favorite Thanksgiving coming of age fiasco story.

Are you cooking anything? Or did you cook everything already? I'm told real feast-masters do the Thanksgiving cooking before Thanksgiving, and by that standard, I've never cooked a real Thanksgiving dinner. I'm thankful that I've made it nearly to the age of 60 without ever going on the guilt-trip that my Thanksgivings were not sufficiently Thanksgiving-y because I didn't start the preparations days in advance.

Well, maybe I once made a pie — maybe even 2 pies — on the Wednesday. Did I tell you it's officially okay in America today to eat pie? Our national mother has said we may.

Michelle Obama has granted permission for all of us to totally forget anything she says about eating 'cause it's Thanksgiving.  It's okay [today] to go ahead and have pie.  It was in her interview with Barbara Walters.  It's Thanksgiving, eat whatever you want.  But on Friday you gotta get back to what Michelle says you have to do. 

Oh, yeah, she said:

"Don't worry about how much you eat. Just enjoy it.... This is the time. Have pie."

This is the time. Our time to turn the page on the abstemious diets of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new appetite to the piled-high platters we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the food we love. The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. We face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of our own limitations. But we also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide pie for the sick and pie to the jobless; this was the moment when the tightening of the belts began to slow and our gluttony began to increase; this was the moment when we ended our self-denial and secured our yummies and restored our image as the chubbiest humans on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great dinner so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.  Thank you, God. And God bless the United States of America.

At the Lake Dusk Café...

... we can drift off into a fantasy of the past.

At the Birdhouse Moving Day Café...

... get all this crap out of here.

(Thanks to Chip Ahoy for animating of my photograph.)

Yikes...

... or cute... I'm not sure.

If I thought that was a bird's face, I'd be sure it's cute. But it's an insect face, so... I'm not sure!

Click through to the contest winner, which is also an arthropod face... and quite gorgeous, but only because it doesn't feel alive at all.

At the Ducks-in-Duckweed Café...

... I guess that's the way you like it...



... there is open water over there you know...



... and here you are, lining up in the shadow of a tree.

At the October Water Café...

... shimmer...



... ripple...

"Arriving angry at Bush's Texas ranch over the president's position on Israel and Ramallah, Abdullah quickly decided he wanted to leave."

"But the prince spots a turkey on the road -- and takes it as a good omen, a sign from Allah!"

Sunset cranes.

This evening on the prairie.

After all of this politics...

... don't you feel you need a bath?

UPDATE: I'm back. Not from a bath. From a long bike ride. Over 20 miles. Glad to see the Badgers crushed Minnesota.

The war monument.

This is the "War" side of the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. This closeup shows one soldier using a dead soldier to place to perch his gun...



... and pigeons, in turn, using that gun.

It's not a hummingbird.

At the botanical garden today, 2 women were staring at a little beastie that was going at the butterfly bush. It was not a butterfly.


(Enlarge.)

"Do you think that's a hummingbird or an insect?" asked one of the women, who seemed quite involved in the identification process. It wasn't easy, because it was small and darted around. The wings were nearly invisible.

I said: "To me, it looks like a miniature flying lobster, so I'm going to guess insect."

She said, "Yes, I think you're probably right, because it keeps hanging around, and hummingbirds are shy."

Instinctively recoiling at sentimentality and remembering this, I said, "Oh? I've seen some very aggressive hummingbirds. I've seen some hummingbirds who were real jerks."



Hey! Look at the tongue. Maybe it is some kind of crazy butterfly.

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene says it's a hummingbird clearwing moth.

AND: Peter Hoh thinks it's a snowberry clearwing, and that looks right to me.

AND: Rick Lee said:

I just posted one of those also... I asked my friend the entomologist if it was a hummingbird moth and she said it was a close relative, the bumblebee moth.

Hey, he got his to hold still... plus he's a professional photographer. No fair!

They say it's about airline safety.

But you know that's crap. It's about crap.