Storm
We had a nasty storm blow through Nor Cal a couple weeks back, crazy wind gusts. I was working in my office at home when the wind blew over a fairly big tree onto our roof. When I heard it snap and crash into the window/roof where i was sitting i stopped, dropped, covered and rolled!! .. after a few rotations on the floor i realized that drop/cover/roll is for fires not trees (doh!).
Anyway - it was pretty cool (no real damage) because I was able to play with my chainsaw! Picture it .. rainy, windy .. and me up on the roof with an electric chainsaw cutting the tree into pieces that could be thrown off the roof! Good fun had by one! You can see the remnants of the tree in the bottom left of the photo below.
More interesting is Shannon made the TV/Papers again ...
Link to News Article
The strong winds caused a large number of birds to be misplaced/lost/weak. The International Bird Rescue Research Center where Shannon works was inundated - most interesting is they were brought a Magnificent Frigate bird (bottom right photo). This bird was WAY off course, they are normally found in central america - occasionally making it to parts of southern CA during the summer - but for a Frigate Bird to show up this far north in the winter is CRAZY!
More about the Magnificent Frigate Bird
As an aside .. wikipedia is amazing (if not always 100% accurate, but i think those kinks "experts" have been corrected). Notice in the link about Frigatebirds that the 4th paragraph already makes note of this sighting.
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Shannon - Your tireless work and talent has been so valuable to the Northern California region. Your job must be very difficult seeing these many animals in distress or worse (I'm sure very rewarding when you get to see the positive impact you can have on them to relieve their situation).
Hopefully man-made disasters as well as natural disasters can take some time off so you can have some R and R.
I envision some sort of Freddie Krueger silhouette in a very dark and science fiction feeling atmosphere when you were cutting the tree on your roof. You could then join the dark forces of Lord Thanatos and Mistress Death.
Do you ever wonder why Shannon married you?
(Just Kidding)
That's an easy one Heather.
It's my great smile! wait - can't be that my teeth are fake/yellow. Maybe it's my muscular physic! .. yeah, we all know that's crazy. I got it - my warm personalty! .. as long as she doesn't bother me, hmm - maybe not that one either.
i have no idea. I don't think I'll ask, she might not be able to remember.
OK this is genuinely cool. As always, nice job Shannon. Is the "local window washer" (see Newspaper link above) going to come and get Brian off the roof, too?
Dumb question: does a bird this size just fly back across the globe after you get it back in good shape, or do people try to get it closer to its usual habitat?
Style points for explaining how irridescence (wiki bird entry) works - I don't understand it.
Hey Jeff - thanks for the comments. Shannon says that ideally they would arrange for it to be release somewhere much closer to 'home' - but, chances are when the bird is healthy again it would find its way home even if it was release in San Francisco. The bird is still in recovery now - so, we'll see ...