Disc Golf and Shiner

I was at a Barnes and Noble bookstore over the weekend in between games during my son's soccer tournament (they got 2nd). I wasn't interested in mall walking, so I camped out at the bookstore with a book and a comfy chair. As I read, there was some movement in front of me that was a bit of a distraction. There was a guy in a chair facing me, also reading. I noticed as he read, that instead of following the lines of the book with his eyes, he moved his entire head. His head would swivel slowly to the right and snap back to the left as he finished one line and continued to the next. He would slowly nod his head as he made his way to the bottom of one page and then snap back up to the top of the next page. I'm fairly certain he was taking some sort of mood-altering prescription, because he felt the need to strike up a conversation with me after finishing his book (Actually, I don't think he was finished so much as he was tired). Of course, he probably thought I wasn't really reading, because my head wasn't moving.

I made my daily walk to the grocery across the street this morning. I have to cross a fairly busy 4-lane arterial street and a frontage road to get there. In between the street and frontage is a grassy median that was quite unkempt. The grass was so long that I didn't realize I stumbled through a rabbit nest until I heard the squeals of 3 baby rabbits scurrying away. Each of them ran as fast as they could across the frontage road to the opposite side but were so young and small that they couldn't make it up the 6-inch curb. It was quite pitiful to watch them struggling with the curb and for a split second I considered rounding them up and placing them back in their nest. Then I came to my senses. These aren't pets that will just nestle back to bed. They're going to freak out some more and run again. Plus, if I get my scent on them, the mother will throw them out. Then I looked around. It's a pretty exposed area and even if I hadn't scattered them, they would have been snatched by a hawk or otherwise done in by any number of things.

I continued on my journey to the grocery, got my snack and made my way back across the street where I saw that a city worker had just started mowing the median.

I heard that earlier today, Steve Irwin (aka The Crocodile Hunter) had passed away. And by "passed away", I mean "had the poisonous barb of a stingray puncture his freaking heart". I believe my immediate reaction to the news was, "crikey". My 2nd immediate reaction is that this is exactly how I figured this guy would go out. Hell, every other episode of his show featured some close-call situation where Steve narrowly escaped being bitten by the "therrrd most-venomous snake the werrrld". I'm only shocked that it took this long to happen.