(no subject)

[which_chick]

I am done making cookies. Really. For real. I'm tired of cookies and I do not want to make any more any time soon. Next December is probably when I will be ready to consider making cookies again. All I need now is a pie and I'll be all done with holiday cooking obligations. I would have done the pie this AM but I didn't have enough of the right kind of flour to proceed. (My kitchen has three kinds of flour, depending on what I want to do with it. Whole wheat flour is not good for pie crusts. High-gluten white bread flour is also not good for pie crusts.) I'll hit the grocery store tonight and there will be pie tomorrow so that I don't have that hanging over me any further. I don't like being Damocles.

I saw a pileated woodpecker out the window this morning. The pileated is probably the largest woodpecker in the eastern United States since I'm pretty sure the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct. (gwangi, can I get an Amen or whatever on this?) Pileated woodpeckers are about the size of a crow, striking black and white birds with red-crested heads. Although I grew up here, in these woods, I never saw one in person until about two years ago. Now, while they're not an everyday sight, they're around enough that anyone who spends a reasonable amount of time in the woods and isn't completely oblivious can see one. I'd say that, these days, they're as easy to see as wild turkeys.

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[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I read a not-horribly ancient article (last two or three years) about how Cuba, despite being operated by the bad guys in terms of political freedom had better ecology than most of its less-communist neighbors. (Link: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/may03/cuba.html) Cuba might could have IBWs. They're close enough to Florida for boat people, too, so it's not a horrible stretch for birds. Also, there are other strange and wonderful not-extinct-Gotcha! things in the forests of Cuba, like the almiqui.

I was up to speed on "The Ugly Chickens" because I saw that in your LJ the other day (I'd run out of porn, as it happens, and was scrolling down through the older entries in other peoples' livejournals for something to do) and went to go read it. (It was delightful, had a very Dueling Banjos feel to it.) The whole extinct birds thing was why I asked you about the IBW. I figured you might know.