WHACK

This room has three sets of sliding glass door on the side facing the lake. I was just sitting here a second ago when a large woodpecker got got jiggy and smashed into the one to my left. He picked himself up and flew to a Douglas fir, apparently not having done too much damage to himself (well, concussion is his life). On the other hand the sudden WHACK on the glass startled me a great deal.

I don't see woodpeckers a lot although they are around. At my last house I had a resident sapsucker, which is very much smaller. This was a Woody-type woodpecker with a nasty sharp beak about four inches long. Last time I saw one here it was hammering away on the balcony railing, oblivious to me videotaping it (it had woken me up, I think). I sent that snippet to Anji, who told me Caitlin (a wee one at that time) thought it excellently funny.

Related to nothing, the racoons here were seriously out of hand at one point. I came home one night to a pair in my kitchen skittering about on the counters then both trying to escape through the same open window at the same time, like a couple of alarmed Stooges.

When I was doing spots for the Wa He Lut news I would make spots with things like that. Also - interviews with people who were exhibiting my student's artwork, NYC, microwaving Peeps, etc. I don't have most of the spots. Too bad, I'd like to see them. Especially "Miss Kendall's Spring Break" when I was visiting Deb, Richard, Karen, Lenny, Ismay, etc. and videotaped waiting for the tow truck to arrive after Richard's car broke down on L.I., and Lenny saying, "This IS New York."

Yesterday Tiff came over, which was fun. She feeds me, which is great. I am lucky I have friends who are interested in keeping me alive :D She is going to Romania-Slovakia-Poland-etc. in... June I think. She isn't learning any new languages, hoping to get by on English and German. She is interested in Ethiopia next, perhaps. I always, in a very mild and confused way, knew there was a connection with Judaism and Christianity and Ethiopia, but she was telling me more about it last night. I asked about Haile Selassie's connection, which she didn't know, but according to my Googling of a moment ago he was purportedly a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Labels: Birds, Lake