Attacked by a Bird!

 This morning was pleasantly gray, fine for a walk until...ta da...a bird suddenly flew into my head. I don't know why. I don't look like a glass door, do I? I'm hardly tall enough to resemble an eagle's aerie. I just stood there, stunned by the blow and watched as two birds--one small and one large--kept flying over to rest in a tree near the elevator.

 It was odd. Maybe the smaller bird was being chased by the larger and wasn't watching where he was going. I began to take a few shots of the grain elevator against the gray sky while my scalp recovered, and suddenly that bird flew straight toward me again. I snapped his picture as he approached, then ducked and he sailed right over my head.





Once again, as he turned away, I saw that he was chasing a smaller bird. I don't know if they were playing tag, and the tree was base, but the big, bad, bird was definitely "IT". Leaving the area, I snapped a few more pictures and hurried home, eager to see if I had managed to get a picture of the bird before I ducked. Sure enough. There he is. He's a little camouflaged by the tree behind him, but you can see the approach.





If he had looked over my shoulder, he would have seen this old railroad track---a much better landing strip than my head!






UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I talked with some friends and also did a little research. The bird is a "Mississippi Kite" a bird of prey like a falcon. It does chase smaller birds and it also attacks humans if it perceives them as a threat. I was probably within twenty feet of his nest, hence the attack. Here is a link that discusses the Kite as a bird that does, in fact, live in Oklahoma:  http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com/cat/3/20

Nothing Ever Happens in our Little Town...Except For the Occasional Drive-by Shooting

Yes, those are bullet holes, 38's by the look of them, and they shattered a glass door and a window before embedding themselves in the art gallery wall. When Claye got to work Tuesday morning, her boss--the mayor--and a policeman were surveying the scene of the crime, figuring trajectories and counting bullet holes. All together there were four. One was deflected by a strip of metal outside, two were embedded in this wall and door frame, and one passed through the open doorway in this picture and expended its last energy on the closet frame of the pottery wheel room beyond.

Cameron's boss made up a glamorous story about a long, black limousine, surreptitiously-lowered glass, and mysterious guns blazing at the two of them while they bravely dodged bullets in the gallery, protecting the priceless artwork. (Well, we don't get a lot of excitement around here, so you have to use what you have at hand.)

The truth is probably more prosaic:

Since the shots were fired in the middle of the night, nobody was really trying to kill anyone.

Since they ignored the eight large plate glass windows and shot a smaller, easily-replaceable door,  they were not trying to bankrupt the business, nor carry out a political vendetta (not saying  that hasn't been done around here recently in nasty city council maneuvers but that's beside the point ).  

Since the shots were fired from about the height of a pick-up truck bed, and grouped into a limited area, the shooter was probably targeting a small object.

Therefore, from my extensive experience as a reader of detective fiction, I've concluded that the shots were fired by a slightly-inebriated young man, trying to impress the high school girls by shooting an ominous bat that fluttered in the light of the street lamp across the way.  Obviously, he missed.