A Plethora of Plovers

Nice day, decide to take a walk at noon. Creep around the fence where we're not supposed to go, company worried about liability if associate gets his by a truck around the loading docks. Lots of dried mud puddles and one lone shorebird. Not a sandpiper. Natty band around neck. Bird is pissed, flits around and gives me a huge piece of her birdbrain.
Me: "I can't help it if the water dried up. You should go on the other side of the building. There used to be a little pond over there."
Bird: "squawk, squawk, $#$%&*."
Me: "I am only try to help."
Bird dances around and squawks some more. Flies off into the undergrowth. Chastened, I continue my walk, around past the trailers, back where the guys who work next door play a game I don't recognize, up the hill past where I saw the fox, past the tulip bulbs someone was too lazy to plant and thru the parking lot, across the street, past an empty building where someone has put out fresh crysanthemums. Guess they hope to lease based on appearance.

I turn back, past another building and the used car place. I look at the fence and the American flag is on the ground where it has been been for months, but at least not being used to block the entry to walkers, because it has fallen down. Scumbags run the place, obviously. I debate about a flag rescue and a proper burial, but the idea of marching down the street carrying that poor sad flag on its pole is more than I can imagine. Do I take it into the office building or leave it by my car. When I get it home do I burn it or bury it? How? I live in a condo, and there are probably rules. Decide I will read up on proper flag care, then do it. Before fall, definitely. Will the used car people think I'm stealing their flag? Imagine ugly confrontation. A writer's mind builds the most modest moments up into scenes of drama. Maybe.

Back at my desk, I go online to find the bird. Not a sandpiper, so it has to be a plover. Ye gods! There are scads of plovers. I know it's not a piping plover, (endangered) or Wilson's (not in range), so it must be either a kildeer or a semipalmated plover. Not a black-bellied plover. Web site describes plover often found in Louisiana, and I am sad again, thinking of the hurricane.

"My" bird was a kildeer, often found far from water. Do not get paid to surf the web identifying irate parking lot birds. No indeedy.

We need to have a conference call with some folks in Florida and the phone lines don't work all day. "We're sorry. Yada yada yada." I am assuming re-routing of calls due to the hurricane has tanked the phone lines. We have only two weeks to test and release this big complicated project and we are testing brand new software. We are the Alpha site, not even the Beta site. It ain't gonna be pretty. Should we tell The Corner Office to suck it up and understand that these things take time? No indeedy. The Corner Office will squawk like the Kildeer.

Aloha,

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