Monday August 15, 2005
	It was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker and I didn't have a camera.
	I'm sitting on a stool at a bar and I am drinking Budweiser from a glass bottle and I am talking to a woman sitting to my right and I don't want her and she doesn't want me and she isn't good to look at and we are talking about woodpeckers. "I walk a couple of miles a day in a wooded swamp behind my house," I say.  "That's where I saw them." "I never cared much for walking," she says.  She has a missing tooth but she has good eyes and when she laughs it seems like a genuine laugh so I figure I'll grab hold of this moment like I would any other.  "I don't much like exercising either," I say.  "I guess it helps to keep my cholesterol down."  "That's where you saw this bird?" she says.  "In the swamp?" I haven't seen anyone use a cigarette case in a long time but she uses one and when she pulls the cigarette from the case it's like she's removing a delicate piece of hand-blown glass and when she puts it between her chapped lips (and lights it) I want one, too.  I've always enjoyed watching (and being around) women who smoke.  I don't know why. "The Pileated woodpecker is superficially similar," I say, "But they're much more common." "He saw some woodpeckers today," she says to the bartender then ordering another drink. The bartender says: "Years ago I shot a woodpecker with a Browning 12 gauge shotgun.  He was all the time knocking on the side of my house.  It was a helluva gun, Belgian made, just a puff of feathers when I pull the trigger and no more knock, knock, knock." "I'll take another Budweiser," I say. I didn't see some woodpeckers.  I saw the Ivory-billed woodpecker, the biggest woodpecker in North America thought to long have been extinct (recently rediscovered in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas).    When our drinks come I put the Budweiser bottle to my lips and while I'm pouring the beer down and into me a woman sitting to my left says: "I've got a Litter Maid Self Cleaning Litter Box and it usually doesn't work 'cause the gears are all gummed up with huge piles of shit coming out of the anus of my nine cats." "I like cats," I say, then putting the bottle to my lips again. "I use a douche bag to get the shit out from the gears," she says.  "Not these throw away douche bags girls use today but a real rubber one with a giant squeeze ball.  I inherited it from my grandmother and she inherited it from her mother.  Two, three squeezes and the shit melts away and my Litter Maid Self Cleaning Litter Box is up and running again." "That's really something," I say. "One time I even found shit in the battery compartment," she says.  "A full load inside the compartment like it had been deliberately pumped in like the way they use hoses to pump cement. What kind of a cat could do something like that?" she says and after she drinks down her whiskey she starts singing aloud the lyrics to Ave Maria. "To your fu-kin' woodpecker," says the woman sitting to my right.  I don't want her and she doesn't want me and she isn't good to look at and she's slurring her speech but she seems genuine so I figure I'll grab hold of this moment same as I might any other. PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT