News items.

I've fallen out of the briefly sustained habit of using new chapters of The Tiger is Out as an excuse to put a post together, which means I haven't posted direct links to the chapters with Spike giving Joe swimming lessons, Joe experiencing winter for the first time, new Thanksgiving traditions, or mourning rituals, but here I am giving a direct link to the chapter which explains how Joe came about - or, at least, how the conditions for him to come about became possible.

There's a line I wrote that I still find funny: "[Giles] told Joe about wishes, and the different types and ways they could be granted, and all the kinds of people that could grant them, demons and genies and gods and Mrs. Rosenberg."

In the park, there's a drinking fountain with a small pool down at ground level. Whatever its intended usage, the sparrows have found it to be a wonderful bathtub, and sometimes when I go past, I'm lucky enough to see a whole bunch of them using it all at the same time. Hanging out around the rim, jumping into the water and getting all clean. It's downright adorable.

Less adorable and no less marvelous was looking up at a red-tailed hawk that'd landed on a streetlight to have a quiet spot to eat a rat. I was able to get right underneath it, then thought better of that and moved slightly away, and kept watching it rip its prey fairly delicately to more easily swallow it down.

Too many people seem to think of the parks as their own backyards without ever stopping to consider how much nature is actually inside a backyard.