Saw a banded kingfisher sitting still this morning on a sapling, overlooking one of his ponds. The heron was on the tree limb again. Must be a Wednesday heron- it was last Wednesday I saw him there for the first time. Also, in case I was ever in doubt about whether I would really miss television, the TV at the gym helped me out this morning. The local news station broadcast, for no less then 40 minutes, nothing but cell phone pictures of a wreck on a local highway. And the newscasters were all advising us to “Stay at Home!” in tones so dire you’d think a BOMB had dropped; in reality, all the fuss was over a little skiff of ice on the roads.

As my husband often says, quoting a MAD magazine he read as a kid: “And now, in keeping with our policy of bringing you the very latest in the news, here is an exciting color photograph of a jackal retching!”

Actually, a jackal retching might be more informative than what I saw this morning on the TV.