It's not been a good week for animals around the Hudgins' homestead this past week. Just today we saw a mourning dove get taken down by a Cooper's hawk in our back yard.

A side note here: Because of our limited viewing spots it is possible that this was a sharp-shinned hawk but from the size of it I'm betting that it was a Cooper's. But then again, the head shape and colorations make me fall back to thinking that it's a sharp-shinned. If anyone viewing this bad picture knows for sure, I would dearly love to know.

We heard this loud bang/thump on the house. I was in the kitchen and wasn't sure where it had happened. My first thought was that something had given way on the house and a piece of the wall had fallen off. Bill was in the computer room, which looks out on the backyard, and he said the bang/thump was over his head on the roof. As he looked out he saw the great wingspan of a hawk flying down into the yard fifteen feet away from the window. He called out to me right away to have a look.

Well, the durn thing landed behind the blue pool tub that's sitting out in the yard so we had to try to see it from the kitchen window. That wasn't a good view either. We tried the dining room window and that was even worse. The bathroom window has plastic over it but it was the only view. This was the ONLY good shot I could get of the bird.

The big proud boy (or girl) was sitting there in the yard with a poor mourning dove held firmly in his lethal claws. He sat there and looked around for five minutes or more. Finally, I couldn't leave the scene alone and tried to go out the back door hoping to snatch him on film before he flew off but my efforts were unsuccessful. As soon as I got on the second step, he was off in a cloud of tiny dove feathers. I feel so for the poor dove's mate. They mate for life so he or she will be pretty confused for awhile. There's a pile of the demised feathers for the poor mate to mourn over.

Then last Thursday we lost Minnie, the outdoor stray cat that had adopted us last August. The last we saw of her was Wednesday afternoon when she was perching on the fence by the mock orange tree in the backyard. Probably hoping to score a little bird or two. I've been searching and searching my mind for answers as to why or how she wandered off and can't come up with a good viable one.

If you've been following this little trail of journals you'll remember my entry six weeks ago about Bill fixing up a plastic bin with a heating pad for Minnie to keep warm and dry for the winter. She loved it. She spent many hours in there sleeping the day and the night away. I was content with the arrangement I feared that bringing another cat into the household would worsen Bill's allergies. Plus I didn't think our landlord would like us adding another cat to the hostel.

The week before last I finally decided that I was going to take her to the vet and get her dewormed, get her ears looked at again, and have all the cat shots she needed pumped into her. I was toying with the idea of letting her into the fold. She had somewhere along the way crept into my heart. When I would go out to feed her, she wanted petted and held moreso than she wanted to eat. My heart sunk when I went back into the house leaving her all alone out there. Yep, she got me hooked on her. And now, just when her life was going to change dramatically for the better she's gone and got lost.

Minnie, I still have hope that you'll show back up but that hope is fading fast.

When am I ever going to learn to read the fine print on restaurant coupons??? Had a great coupon for The Golden Lamb hotel and restaurant in Lebanon, Ohio. Opened in 1803, it has been an overnight home to several U.S. presidents and some other famous people such as Charles Dickens, Henry Clay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others. The rooms are all filled with Shaker furniture dating back to I don't know when. The neat part about this is that you can still check into the hotel and have a stay there. Here's a link to some of the history of The Golden Lamb.

Evidently, there are supposed to be two ghosts that haunt the inn. Here's the skinny on that.

Now back to my lament. I got a coupon from The Golden Lamb when I went to lunch there with the ladies of The Red Hat Society when I was thinking of joining them. Speaking of which, I never mentioned how that went. I wore a green hat because that's all I could find at the Goodwill store. Why go to the expense when you're not certain you're wanting to be in something like this?

So I trot in there with my green hat on and, of course, as I expected, everyone made a comment about that. I said that it represented a trial membership. Then with another comment I said, "You ladies consider yourselves misfits and rowdies, well, I guess this means that I am more of a misfit and a rowdy showing up in a different colored hat like this." And actually, that was pretty much the only highlight of that expotition.

After the lunch, wherein I didn't feel like I fitted in--I was sitting with a bunch of retired teachers and they didn't ask me anything about what I do or did--we went to the "Queen Mum's" house to plan out the next year of activities. Well, they lost me right there. All they planned out was lunch after lunch in restaurant after restaurant. Sigh...where was all the fun??? They took pictures of the group as a whole and I volunteered to be the one left out who snapped all the pictures. I kept saying it was because of my green hat and it wouldn't fit in. They kept asking, "Are you sure you don't want to be in the picture?" And I reassured them that I didn't want to be in the picture. I got the feeling that all of them could tell that I was fading out of the group fast.

I still love the whole concept of this society. I guess because it's all made up of women my age and older (usually older) that that's all the fun they can come up with. Actually, it is really just me. I'm just not a groupie.

And I still haven't gotten to the restaurant coupon tale, have I. Bill and I went to dinner at The Golden Lamb last night. We explored the gift shop, we wandered around two stories of the three stories up above the restaurant, then sat down to dine in a very comfortable early to mid-American setting. We were served tasty food that was typical of great midwestern meals. It was all homemade goodness. Even the relishes that were offered before the meal--watermelon pickles, corn relish, mild hot peppers, and sweet bread-and-butter pickles. The waitress wore a colonial style knee-length dress with a large white bib apron.

Service was great, food was great, atmosphere was great. Paying wasn't so great. We couldn't use our coupon because in the fine print it says "not valid on Saturdays." Sigh. Oh, well, we have it to use for another day.