Mark LaFlamme: Let me tell you about the birds and the bears

Talk of the Town Ernie Anderson

For the birds
My friends, I’m transformed. Ornithologically transformed, that is! For the past couple weeks, I’ve had a pair of phoebes (those are birds, you know. Read a book once in a while) starting a family in a nest above my door. I’ve become so enamored of these creatures, I go to great lengths to avoid using that door, even though it’s the main entrance into my house: “I don’t care WHO needs an ambulance, sir, the phoebes are sleeping and I’ll not disturb them. I said good day!” You know you’ve become a bird lover when you find yourself crawling out a spider-infested basement window just to go to work.

Here’s looking at YOU, bird
I’m so curious about those chirpers, I even went out shopping for a selfie-stick, and I’m a guy who had no idea that such things existed until I was bitten by the bird bug. I use the selfie-stick to guide my camera ever so carefully over the nest so I can get a look at what’s going on in there. Boy, was my face red when I got one lady bird just coming out of the shower. I was pretty lucky, frankly, that she was willing to drop the whole matter.

Bear! In Lewiston!
Whenever there are reported bear sightings like this one, I go out on my motorcycle (I have a motorcycle, you know) absolutely certain that just by riding around a little bit, I’ll come across the beast. It’s kind of ridiculous considering the odds, but on Wednesday afternoon, my confidence paid off. Halfway down Grove Street, or possibly Pond Road, there it was, a dark, hulking figure crouched in some unsuspecting fool’s backyard! I approached quarry carefully so as not to spook it. And I didn’t spook it, either, because this bear was actually a wheel barrow. It was an embarrassing moment, especially when I had to explain to the homeowner why I was elbow crawling across his yard with a knife clamped between my teeth. Weirdly, it’s not the first time that’s happened to me.

Three charged in Big Apple robbery
Wait, it took THREE of them to rob a convenience store? I get that you need a stick-up guy, a lookout and a getaway driver, but we’re talking The Big Apple here. How do you possibly spilt the stolen loot three ways in a mini heist like that? “OK, fellas. Two packs of smokes, three lottery scratchers and nine bucks in cash for each of us. That’s a good haul. Next, we’ll go shoplifting at the dollar store and then we’ll have enough to give up this life for good!”