Someone spent too much time in the heat...
Lately, it seems like there been a lot of news about unidentified flying objects. You know. UFOs.
Perhaps you have seen your very own UFO. I have not. Unless you count flying objects with feathers. UFOFs. Unidentified flying objects with feathers.
Take, for example, the Mississippi kite, a bird which has made several appearances in previous columns. As noted at the time, I saw what turned out to be a Mississippi kite hanging out in a tree in Anna.
Fortunately, a fellow Traveler on the Journey Through Life who happens to know much, much more about UFOFs than yours truly shared some information about the aforementioned Mississippi kite with me, for which I am grateful. For whatever it might be worth, I have not seen the Mississippi kite again.
Perhaps...just perhaps...that UFOF, which subsequently became an Identified Flying Object with Feathers, or IFOT, really was a UFO.
Think about it. Conspiracies are all the rage these days. With that in mind...explain to me how a bird, which I had never seen in metropolitan Anna before, suddenly showed up, hung around long enough for some pictures...and has not been seen again.
I’m guessing the UFOF turned IFOF might have been some sort of secret UFO. We can’t be sure these days. The CIA could have developed some sort of secret weapon that just happened to look like a Mississippi kite. Somebody, perhaps the folks at “60 Minutes,” should check this out. Seems like they actually had something about UFOs not all that long ago.
By now, you’re probably asking yourself: Did this guy spend too much time out in the Southern Illinois heat and humidity?
The answer would be yes. Twice. In the same day. Saturday, to be more precise. On Saturday, you may recall, the heat index outside was something like 150 degrees.
The heat index is some sort of combination of air temperature and humidity which we only seem to hear about in the summer time. I never heard a word about the heat index last February when I was outside shoveling snow. Go figure.
Early on Saturday morning, I went to the book sale at Stinson Memorial Library. At the time, I think the heat index was only 130 degrees. It was not snowing at the time. But it was hot enough that some of the pages in the books I tried to buy caught fire.
(Turned out that the index was about 110 degrees in Union County land last Saturday afternoon, according to records kept by the guy who provides information about the weather for the local newspaper.)
Since I am not a very smart boy (just ask The Other Half), I made another trip outside on Saturday...this time during the afternoon...when the heat index was, well, hot.
You would think that I would have learned a lesson on Saturday. Nah. Went for a daily walkabout at about 3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Did not seem as hot at the time. Perhaps I was just delirious.
However, even when my simple little mind was addled by the heat index, I did not see any UFOs. Truth be told, I didn’t see much of anything. Smart critters were someplace cool...
...which brings us to the critters which you see this week. Folks seem to like the photos of birds, bees, flowers and trees which appear in this space. With that in mind, I thought I’d share a few pics of Identified Flying Objects with Feathers I’ve seen during the last couple of weeks. Oh, and there’s a picture of an Identified Swimming Object with Four Legs and a Tail, or ISOFLT, too...just because...