Breaking News
Many thanks to Amy and Bobert for alerting me to breaking ornithological news. The wires are buzzing that over a year ago, bird folks spotted an ivory-billed woodpecker (thought to be long extinct) in the backlands of Arkansas. The Man and the Mad Scientists who support Him kept this sighting on the down low--arguably to protect its habitat and conduct some yet to be announced studies.
I watched the first clip Bobert sent while completely ignorant that avian history was unfolding before my very eyes. It looks like a home video of a para-military war game in Montana. I kept thinking the person in the foreground was going to shoot the poor bird.
Here's the more academic resource. It's "vintage" -- from the Little House on the Prairie days of wagon wheels stuck in mud and tin pail lunch boxes.
Hey, I'll take woodpeckers over any more news about the pope.