UUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH...Belch...

Have some more chicken
Have some more pie
It doesn't matter
If it's boiled or fried

Just eat it, just eat it
Just eat it, just eat it... Woo!
— Weird Al Yankovich
"Eat It"

Ah, the joys of post-Thanksgiving Blimp Day! Everything was wonderful and way too much...althought Pig of the Day awards go unconditionally to our grey parrot, Ripley. For 363 days of the year, all the parrots get a disgustingly health diet of fresh fruits and veggies, alogn with a carefully chosen mixture of cereals, grains, a few nuts, dreid fruits and vegetables, birdie kibble, etc.

On Christmas and Thanksgiving, the guys get a little people food — a rinsed-off dumpling, a little mashed potato, some shredded turkey, some homemade bread. The macaws take it in stride, but Ripley sits quietly in his cage and porks down anything he can scam. By 5PM, the Ripster looked like a sleepy, small grey Butterball turkey. By 6PM, he was announcing loudly, "Want to go nite-nite!" I asked him whether he wated me to turn out his light...he puffed up and announced, "OKAY!"

This morning he and all the rest of us are pretty much back to normal, except for Alf the Wonder Beagle, who remains embittered that once again we did not have a bison carcass for her.

The strangest thing about yesterday was when I opened the blinds in my office first thing in the morning. There was a huge coyote in the back yard, had to go 70 pounds or more, With his red-ruffed full winter coat he looked twice that size (and with more than a little wolf in the woodpile). He was favoring his right front paw, but hobbled over and sat down to start at me. I'm not a big fan of A-level predators around the house...foxes are okay; the bears are relatively good neighbors, but the lions and the coyotes bother me, and the Thompson/Center rifle by the office window is there to enforce my ill will.

Still. it was Thanksgiving, and since I hadn't heard any howling I figured the injured paw had him on the outs with his pack...and set him up as some lion's Thanksgiving repast. I opened the window and said, "Safe passage, brother." I swear he nodded, then stood up on his three good legs and moved up toward the Forest Service land.

In the meantime, I thihk I'm going to do a SHOOTING GALLERY (again, with my previous caveat!) on Browning Hi-Powers. Aside from the fact that BHPs are my long-time favorite semiautos, there are some really cool versions floating around these days — the shorter Commander-length "Detective" variants and the small run of lightweight aluminum-framed guns that have trickled in from a European police agency.

I was talking to some guys a few weeks aga and they mentioned the BHP retains a small but dedicated following among The Unit-type folks. Years ago, I got one of those weird middle-of-the-night phone calls from a Great Big City cop who was working undercover in gang intervention. He'd read one of my books on police weaponry and he wanted to talk guns; his cover was that he was a disgruntled high speed military guy, and he wanted a gun that 1) shrieked "high-speed," 2) had a Big Time Cool Factor, and 3) shot lots and lots of bullets. After much talk, my eventual recommendation — which he accepted — was a nickle-plated BHP. I got a note from him about a year later saying that BHP was better than a business card...