Anyway...

[rain_gryphon]

So, I have the flu. Right at the tail-end of the season. I got a shot as I've done every year since (IIRC) 1988, but it got me anyway. At any rate, it's a rather mild visitation, so either the shot helped some, or perhaps the strain, if not one for which I was vaccinated this year, is close enough to one I've been vaccinated for before.

I'm tempted to write to Sanofi/Pasteur, and ask for my $25 back.

*****

I almost ran over a Bald Eagle a couple of weeks ago. It's amazing! For 50 years, I never saw one outside of a zoo, and now they're just everywhere! I was driving down the highway, and she was diving on some prey off to the right side. Instead of coming straight at it, she dove almost to the median strip (divided highway) on my left, sharply flattened out her dive, and shot across the road in front of me just inches off the ground. She passed just in front of my car, but I suspect that she was very much aware of the car and its velocity, and knew she had time. It may even be that she was using the car as a sort of cover, in the sense that a mouse doesn't expect an eagle to come shooting across a highway at surface height just in front of a car, so in that sense traffic on the highway might be perceived as a safety barrier by the prey.

Comments

[quirkytizzy]

Seeing a bald eagle that close to my car would give me quite a fright. I've only seen one in my life, over a river where it swooped in to get a fish, but that fucker was HYYYUGE. Shocking but beautiful. I wonder if they are smart like that - to use cars as cover. It wouldn't surprise me, considering they are apex bird predators.

[rain_gryphon]

She probably was deliberately using the traffic for cover, yeah. Eagles and hawks aren't very intelligent at all in a normal sense, in that they don't seem to have any sense of numbers (most birds can discriminate between, for example, three eggs and four eggs - eagles can't tell the difference between one and two), and they can't solve problems that ordinary birds can (pulling the string to get the attached food, etc). For stuff like using cover, even when it's a moving object, to approach prey, diving out of the sun, etc., they're extremely intelligent.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I do not think Pasteur is answering his letters these days.....

Sorry to hear about the flu... recollect any sneezes into your direction?

Very amazing snippet about the dashing eagle!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I almost certainly caught it at the grocery store. Grocery store, garden store, and hardware store are about where I've gone these past couple weeks. Sick people generally aren't interested in shopping for hardware and garden supplies, but they still need to eat.

[allaboutweather.livejournal.com]

Get better soon!

Eagles show up here in the winter, mainly in the bluffs along the mississippi.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I grew up in southern Indiana, and we never saw them there. So far as I know, they weren't on the river back then. Now, suddenly, just in the last few years, they're everywhere!