I didn't mean to let so long slip by between posts. My cold is better. My discomfort over my last day of the semester on campus has faded. I may get a short story out of that episode. I am beginning to see daylight on end of semester grading; it is a good thing, because they are due at noon on Wednesday! (And rest assured I will be done at exactly 11:59.)

I had many things to write about, but was focused on evaluating students, and arranging enough space in the house so we could get a Christmas tree, which we did, on Sunday. A beautiful fresh cut Scotch pine. I tipped the two cute little boy scouts $1 each for their handiwork, and they skipped off, shouting, "we got a tip! We got a tip!"

It snowed a bit yesterday. Rudy is, as always, thrilled, that nine-year-old puppy of mine. Sophie and Edna are considerably less thrilled; the former because she has no hair! And the latter because cats hate getting wet. Now it's cold, cold, cold here.

One story I wanted to comment on that I heard on the news several days ago was that one of the local Home Depot stores hired Orkin to put out poisoned bird seed to kill the many birds that are always flying around those stores because some customer complained. I love those birds! They are the only good thing about Home Depot, they sure beat dodging forklifts.

Why do people hate birds? Case in point: the most obnoxious, stuck-up, conceited, plastic, shallow, fake girl in my high school class listed "birds" in the yearbook as something she hated. Why do I clearly remember this 25 years later? Because it happens to be one of the captions they chose to re-print on the program of the reunion last summer. And, in the three times I saw her since high school (10th reunion, 20th, 25th), she has only increased in being obnoxious, stuck-up, conceited, plastic, shallow, and fake. If she hates birds, then logic dictates that I must love them.

Next example. Every year, there are newspaper articles about some obnoxious, stuck-up, conceited, plastic, shallow, fake town, neighborhood or facility (like the race track or a golf course) with interviews of people who are complaining about crows, Canada geese or pigeons. Why can't people leave the birds alone? A murder (isn't that a delightfully descriptive word) of crows often flies around and perches in the trees in Castleton. The racket is reminiscent of the Hitchcock movie! I am fascinated when they arrive, and I rush outside to see (and hear) them. Canada geese are a common sight in Samsonville; sometimes in the spring they have adorable goslings trailing behind. How carefully the parents watch them! And I have always appreciated the pigeons in Albany, those scavenging city birds so many people think are disgusting. I wonder as I watch them, how would they like to be transplanted to Samsonville? But they wouldn't much care for it, I'm sure, as there are no McDonald's french fries to score. In Samsonville, our nuisance bird is probably the barn swallow. They build nests everywhere, and have batches of five or six that do make a mess. But still I love them, feel joy at watching those hungry little beaks, keeping the parents so busy.

About the awful Home Depot report. This isn't an isolated incident. My first wish: May a bird crap on that customer's head, repeatedly, every time he or she goes outside. My second wish: A massive boycott of Home Depot. There are so many reasons to do this, but the bird atrocity is the best yet. May the whole chain burn slowly in big box he-l.