Pigeon Legs

A hawk has moved into the Lincoln neighborhood. And his favorite food is pigeons! We have spotted the hawk on numerous occasions chomping on a pigeon--but something pretty funny happened the other day. The hawk had caught a pigeon, taken it up into a tree in front of the Dean House, eaten part of it, and left the rest there in the tree to snack on at a later time. There were pigeon feathers scattered all throughout the Dean House yard. That afternoon Ranger David had a group of cute little 4th grade girls at the Dean House waiting to head over to the Lincoln Home. When they went out the front door of the Dean House, one of the girls excitedly exclaimed, "Ooooh, look at all of the pretty feathers!" The other girls were delighted. Then one of them pointed up at the tree and said, "Oh, and look--there's the bird!" But then one of them looked more closely and screamed, "No, that's not a bird--that's a bird leg!" Needless to say there was quite a chorus of screams. Poor David ended up having to explain the whole circle of life to the girls. The pigeon leg really was just hanging there from the tree though. It was pretty gross.

This afternoon an unscheduled group of 30 Chinese students showed up, and since it was getting close to closing time, they weren't able to tour the Lincoln Home. So they decided to just walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of the house. A few minutes later we got a call at the Visitor Center saying that there were Chinese people climbing all over the front of the Lincoln Home. What the heck? So I had to run down to the neighborhood, and sure enough--they were everywhere. I told their leader that they needed to come out of the fenced-off area and back down to the sidewalk to take their pictures. But once those Chinese students spotted me in my ranger hat, I knew I was in trouble. They surrounded me, cameras ready, and all of them wanted their picture with me. For the next 20 minutes all I heard was, "Police lady! I take picture with you!" I know it's a stereotype that Asian people love to take pictures, but it is SO true!! :-) What do Chinese people do with all of their photos I wonder. Photo albums maybe? If that is the case, I must be in a lot of Chinese photo albums.