Rara avis

If you'd visited my back yard yesterday, you might have caught a glimpse of the rare Black-Footed, Red-Faced Wobble-Bucket flittering about the deck. In the beginning, the deck and environs sported green and black blotches of algae and other gunk that thrives in a moist climate, but the three of us went out there armed with buckets and rags and Pine-Sol and algicide and by the time we were done, the deck and lawn furniture and siding were sparkly clean but the blotches had migrated toward me. My feet were black, my face was red, and my skin felt sticky all over from all the times I sloshed that bucket full of slimy Pine-Sol all over my clothes. So I sat back in a clean deck chair and watched the birds, particularly a couple of phoebes chasing each other around the edge of the woods. Or maybe the phoebes were watching me. If so, I hope they were delighted at the opportunity to place a check-mark on their life lists next to the Black-Footed, Red-Faced Wobble Bucket. That's not something you see every day.