First I'd like to give a shout-out to Stew- someone who ALWAYS makes me laugh. Wow- that comment about hair extensions for my armpits had me on the FLOOR! Sadly, the bearded eye-roller wouldn't be surprised by such a thing coming from me.

Back to my post. The 'thing' on the bottom of my Valentines day list is the stupid hawk that lives in the neighborhood. I was SO excited a few weeks ago that I had lots and lots of baby woodpeckers. They all flew in together to eat, and I saw at least 15 of them. It was almost surreal to see them all fly in at once and cover my woodpecker feeders; kinda like a scene out of The Birds.

I've enjoyed watching the babies move on from the feeders to the trees, but have noticed that there aren't as many as there used to be. I thought that maybe they broke up their shifts and were becoming more independent or something.

tra la la, it never occurred to me that some of them might have died...

I noticed a hawk the other day sitting in the tree in the back yard and mentioned it to BER . I've heard him squawk (or whatever hawks do) but have never seen him and thought it was really cool.

BER then shattered my perfect little Snow White/Bambi world when he told me that he's seen that hawk grab one of my precious woodpecker babies and fly off with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that this is nature and everyone has to eat, but why can't the hawk stick to rats?

Stupid hawk. No valentine for you.