Life imitates Lem's

So a guy calls me up while I was sittin' here reading ricpic's poem, chuckling, and he asks me what's funny? I tell him about Troop's post and ricpic's poem, which I then read to him, he suggests that perhaps that is not the most PC thing he has ever heard, but he, too, laughed, so ricpic's work is now known far and wide. Just then guy on the phone says - hey, wait - a car just passed me and it has a vanity plate that reads "GOOKER". No way, says I - you can't get a tag that says that, even here in the solid South. But it does. Must be the guy's name. We will never know.

As I am winding down the conversation I hear a helicopter. Okay, this stuff is getting a real strange right about now. Given where I live I know that if I hear a helicopter it is a news helicopter, and in the years that I have lived here I know that means that someone has died. Yeah, it is a quaint little town and when there is an accident on the highway the TV station from the nearby big city sends over a chopper because if it bleeds it leads, right?

I check the news and it turns out that someone met their demise in the nearby woods. My concern is that it is someone I know or someone I have interacted with. We have some pretty interesting sojourners here and I give what I can, when I can, so I hope it isn't someone I know.

Maybe that will be reported, but probably not.

Here is the helicopter flying over my red mulberry tree.

Here is another picture of it - circling my back yard.

Son of a mother duck.