The return of the flying creature.

At 5:18 this morning:

I believe it's the same bird observed at 5:23 on Monday morning, here. In the comments there, Quaestor and rehajm said owl. "Owl," "Yes, totally owl."

Jaq said: "I think that we are going to have to use Bayesian logic to figure out the bird, and before I zoomed in my first thought was buzzard, but after zooming in, I am betting my case of whiskey on owl," and then "Nah, I was thinking about it and I think that time of day, milieu, and the general silhouette has me changing my bet to a night heron flying home after working the night shift fishing," and then, "the tail is not right for a night heron."

Quaestor returned to say: "Night heron? Not enough beak or neck showing Furthermore, a night heron's legs trail behind the deck feathers in flight. I'm sticking with an owl, probably a great horned owl. They aren't usually associated with lake environments, but they are opportunistic hunters. This one could have spent the night hunting ducklings."

Rusty concurred: "Yeah. Goin' with owl. Good catch."

"That branch in the water looks like some creature rising from the lake and reaching for the shore...."

Said Rusty in the comments to last night's café. He was looking at the sunrise photo I'd taken that morning.

And Meade had made a similar comment about the previous morning's sunrise photo. He commented pictorially, by text, picking out the detail...

... with the caption "The Easter Bunny."

It made me wonder — what are the horror stories involving rabbits?

"A touchy subject!"

 

That's a "Calvin & Hobbes" strip from 9/11/92, pointed out by a student in my "Religion & the Constitution" class.

Here's a great tool for finding vaguely remembered "Calvin & Hobbes" strips (if you have a key word). Here are a couple other separation-of-religion-and-education strips, focusing on the Pledge of Allegiance.

Gift idea: "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes." (Generic gift-buying portal for making no-cost-to-you contributions to the Althouse blog: here.)

And thanks to Rusty, commenting in "What sort of man walks the streets of Madison with a camera strapped to his head?": "Meade looks like Hobbes. In Calvin and Hobbes."