Two on-bike encounters with feathered friends this week. In the first, I flushed a hawk on the opposite side of a (very narrow) road -- he came up out of the grass, then kept pace with me while eyeing my helmet and deciding how quickly it would break in his claws. It was unnerving to say the least. He stuck with me at a good 35kph pace for a while before deciding that I wasn't going to be tasty enough to be worth cracking open the shell. In the second, I was attacked by a group of exotic ducks that were hanging out at the end of someone's driveway, smokin' butts and looking for trouble. I didn't see them until the last second, when there was a sudden squawk, lots of feathery motion and a real hard left.

In general, road kill counts have been low this year, another side effect of $4 gas, no doubt. All those critters getting through the summer means that much more carbon dioxide they're breathing out, and more global warming, so I've adopted an official policy of no longer swerving to avoid squirrels. Just doing my part to save the planet.

.