Free Florence!

[The stock market. (Whatever; I still treated myself to a nice-ish Italian lunch at Stelline yesterday.) Heath Ledger's death. (Greeted in my office by man and woman, gay and straight, as though some random Kennedy had been shot.) The latest polls. (McCain and Romney are tied among California's Republicans.) A number of important events vied for my attention this morning as I leafed without much hope thru this morning's Chronicle. But the story that grabbed and held my attention?]

[A magnificent frigatebird got lost and landed in Healdsburg.]

[Apparently, the species is more at home in warmer climes, but was blown off course by one of the strong, windy rainstorms we've been experiencing hereabouts. It's "resting" at a bird sanctuary in Cordelia, where I used to play mini-golf as a child. I've done that drive between Healdsburg and Cordelia. Much of it is pretty; I hope Florence, I mean Freedom, the Frigatebird enjoyed the scenery en route.]

[Two notes about the story:]

[1. Initial calls from the birdwatchers about the bird were treated by employees of the bird sanctuary with "the kind of skepticism one might expect from someone who had just been told there was a pterodactyl attacking tourists in the Tenderloin."]

[I can assure the reporter (who clearly enjoyed covering this story) that during that last year of living in the 'Loin, I was fairly sure a couple of times that there was in fact a pterodactyl on the fire escape outside my bedroom window. I acknowledge that this says more about me at that time than about the prevalence of Triassic/Cretaceous period reptiles here in the homely Holocene Anthropocene.]

[2. That name. The bird's discoverers initially named him Florence, but after discovering the bird's a male, the sanctuary renamed him Freedom. I prefer Florence, even for a boy bird.]

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