Patriot, American Bald Eagle
Old business first, an update on yesterday’s post, the office of Claire McCaskill has already responded to yesterday’s tour requests to see the US Capital and Whitehouse. We have a tour reservation for the Capital and our Whitehouse tour request has been forwarded to the Whitehouse, some mumble jumble about the separation of powers. We ought to hear yay or nay from Obama in a couple of weeks. I am impressed that was pretty fast. Who says that the Senate can’t move quickly? Oh, Mister Blunt?
Patriot is the name of the pictured American Bald Eagle. It is a twenty-year-old female. Patriot is a rescue bird, rescued as a chick; the two other siblings from the nest didn’t survive. It is now a ward of the World Bird Sanctuary. Although the World Bird Sanctuary is located in West Saint Louis County, we met Patriot at the Audubon Center in the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. On Sunday, we saw a number of free Bald Eagles at the Riverlands, but this is the most striking photograph of one. We also saw a few of the last of the Trumpeter Swans, the rest have already migrated north again. We saw about a hundred White Pelicans. They are a little early this year; they don’t normally come through town until March. We also saw numerous little birds. We are still trying to sort some of these species out. It snowed Sunday morning, about three inches worth. This was certainly our first “real” snowfall of the season and what with Saturday’s Groundhog Day forecast, it could also be our last one of the season.
Nell: I won’t pay the taxes!
Snidely: You must pay the taxes.
Dudley: I’ll pay the taxes.
Nell: My hero!
Tax season has descended upon our lovely little hovel. In a bit of gender role reversal vis-a-vie the above dialog, my lovely bride has transformed herself into a real PITA (Personal Income Tax Assessor). I am now peppered with requests for W-2 and 1099 forms and the like. Our financial division of labor is that I pay the monthly bills and Anne does the annual taxes. You can also think of this division of labor as a personal audit of how well I did at managing our finances over the past year. So far, Anne has uncovered that I failed to pay our personal property taxes last year. Claire can you offer some help here too? 😉
Interesting that your family has the same separation of church and state that our family does.
I have done our taxes, except for getting the Interest statement from one of our accounts. Their web-site indicates we must wait until the end of February for the information. (I think I read that they are not processing itemized returns until the end of February anyway.)
Have you and Anne know each other long?
good one!