can i just say this...i did not spend most of my early years learning which fork to use first just to spend a chilly evening in my dark driveway with a man in baggy-assed shorts watching him blow into an owl call. no i most certainly did not. and yet. i stood exhausted in my driveway. in an upper middle class neighborhood. a neighborhood with rules and covenants. and where you need approval to paint your house. and you can't keep a boat in the driveway. or jack up your pick-em-up truck to change the erl on sunday after church. that kind of neighborhood. is where i stood tonight. with a man in baggy-assed shorts watching him blow into an owl call. and listening as an owl - a real owl, mind you, hooted back. and got closer. and closer. til it was in my neighbor's back yard tree. and still, the man with the baggy-assed shorts persisted. and the owl, the real owl, came closer. i just knew i KNEW we'd end up on one of the America's Stupidest People shows. like where the man smears himself with deer estrus and goes into the woods and LO! gets bitch-slapped by a deer. and all the while, his wife, screaming, videotapes the rape for all of america to later snicker at. i did not have a video camera, but do plan to buy one, because i am certain Absolutely Positive that this behavior will continue, and soon earn me $10K on some show as the grand prize winner of America's Stupidest Person. and i will say Yep. it was him. so back to our story - i know i have you on the edge of your bale of hay. so the Green Acres thing is going on. and Romeo Owl, the real owl, is about 1 tree away. now i'm am certain that the fake owl with the baggy-assed pants had no plan. no idea what he would do if approached by a real owl asking if he came there often. and to be sure, fake owl had no clue not an inkling what in the God's green world he was saying to this real owl, as he blew 3 short and 1 long hoot through some lame-ass owl call he got at - yes of course - the State Fair. known for it's ingenious products of realistic-ness and value. so hootie and his blowtoy continued hooting the real owl in for...? what? he didn't know. just because he's a guy with a cool toy and because he could. so the real owl was about as close as it could be without revealing itself. and loverboy farted. yes. he did. and apparently real owls do not break wind, cut cheese, toot, flatulate, pull fingers, rip one off, etc. and AND then laugh uproariously at their own accomplishment. so 25 minutes of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom...down the drain. so to speak. i swear i was not raised to live this life. and now know what all those reruns of Green Acres were meant to teach me. i will commence affecting a Hungarian accent and wear pearls with everything. dahlink. so how was your night? linda