My excellent parents paid me a visit this weekend, one of my stages of being seen off to England for the year. Last night, as we sat in my excellent friends' living room talking during a rainstorm, we heard what sounded like someone's knocking on the window. We all started a bit. Then we heard a loud thud, as if something heavy had fallen somewhere. A couple of us went outside to look, but we couldn't see anything amiss.

But when my parents went to their car a few minutes later, they found the problem straightaway:

(Obviously, this is what it looked like this morning.)

So, a ten-foot-long limb through one's windshield will keep one from progressing homeward in quite the way one had imagined. Phone calls ensued. Eventually, a rental car was procured. We extracted the limb from the windshield (and off of my own car, which sustained just enough cosmetic damage to add to its considerable character--my car is no longer even a teenager now). My parents made it home safely by early evening, and the tarp-covered car still rests outside my excellent friends' house, until regular business hours begin tomorrow.

It was a hard week for (some) birds, too: the day after I shot the cardinal babies' photos, those babies were gone--almost certainly prey either to crows or to squirrels, both of whom consume baby birds with abandon.

I find myself deep-down tired tonight.