COLUMN: Owls

When my garage was broken into a couple weeks ago, I wondered if I'd become one of those jumpy people constantly paranoid about safety and security.

The answer? A resounding yes. Whole-heartedly.

As much as I don't want to, I'm now reaching for my security camera feed every time I hear a bump in the night. And while I love my neighborhood, let's also be frank: I live in Rock Island, and there's no shortage of bumps in the night in these parts. Most of them, in fact, are caused by the three cats who graciously allow me to live in their home.

One such bump in the night occurred last week. I was sitting on my couch when a sudden "BA-DUMP" from outside made me instinctively grab my phone and pull up the feeds from the front of my house. I'd like to say it was all quiet on the eastern front. It was, in fact, anything but quiet.

The ba-dump itself turned out to be nothing alarming, unless you were the guy driving the rusty pickup that had just nailed the pothole on my block. It's been steadily growing this summer from a minor inconvenience to what can now only be described as a gaping hell-mouth to Middle Earth.

But I instantly found myself less concerned about the ba-dump of days gone by and more with the sounds my camera was picking up live. As God is my witness, I sat there frozen for thirty seconds listening to what sounded like a tribe of angry monkeys on the roof of my house.

I'm familiar with the assorted night noises of Rock Island. People talking and laughing as they walk to the nearby gas station. Car doors closing. Trains whistling, semis honking, police sirens blaring. It's the lullabye of urban life. But these were NOT urban noises. These were prehistoric noises.

This is one of those times I'm stymied as a writer. I wish I could just play you the recording. The best I can describe, it was something akin to "SKREE! SKREE! WHAA WHAA WHAA OWOOOOOO! WOOOOOOO! AH AH AH OOOOOO!" And whatever it was, it was CLOSE. And it wasn't alone. At least two of these giant killer roof monkeys were chatting with one another. 

Obviously when that pickup hit the pothole, it riled up whatever ancient monstrosity lives down there in the Land of the Lost, and the hellbeast had awakened. Normally, this would be an insane proposition. But in 2020, killer subterranean monsters wouldn't surprise me one bit.

We all know what a nature lover I am -- specifically I love that it's outside and I'm not -- but I was curious nonetheless. I found an app for my phone that promised it could "identify ANY bird call within earshot!" I cautiously opened my front door, stuck my phone outside and pressed record. Sure enough, within seconds, my phone informed me with confidence that I was listening to -- a pigeon.

I learned something that night -- specifically, I learned how easy it is to waste $3.99 on a pointless app. If that noise came from a pigeon, it's a pigeon that's evolved Pokemon-style into Pigeonizard or something. That was no pigeon. So I took the recording and threw it up on Facebook for the hivemind of my friends to analyze. Multiple theories flooded in: Owls. Crows. Owls vs. Crows. Injured turtle doves. Someone even said, "that noise CAN'T be real. Someone's messing with you."

The next day, my neighborhood was quiet. The house was still standing, and I found neither the talon marks of a prehistoric pigeon nor the droppings of a dozen angry monkeys. Defeated, I thought I'd try one last recourse: Dr. Stephen Hager, from Augustana College's Department of Biology. Dr. Hager graciously agreed to listen to the recording and it only took him seconds to make a positive ID.

"Those are definitely barred owls," he told me, "and close by."

I may not be a man of nature, but I've watched my fair share of children's cartoons and I have pulled the string on many a Fisher-Price See 'n Say. Based on this, I can tell you with some authority that owls are supposed to politely go "hoot." They are NOT supposed to go "SKREE! SKREE! WHAA WHAA WAAAAA!" Apparently no one told this to barred owls.

"What you recorded that night was at least two owls caterwauling," Dr. Hager explained, "which is usually associated with paired birds that sing together, presumably to strengthen their bonds of devotion." I'm not positive here, but that might be the professorial way of explaining that my nocturnal friends were about to get freaky-deaky in a considerably more-than-PG-13 kinda way. I may have just heard the owl equivalent of an Al Green record.

"The raucous hoots, gurgles, and shrieks probably also signal to adjacent owls about territory boundaries," said Dr. Hager before casually horrifying me. "Caterwauling can also happen when owls are trying to subdue a large prey item. Any of your neighbors lose a kitty that night?"

OH, NO. Wait -- one... two... and three. Whew. My adorable large prey items are all here and accounted for.

I have no issues with owls. What's not to love? They're majestic birds with huge eyes and the ability to spin their heads around like Linda Blair. But when an owl shows up at my door, it should be for one of three reasons:

1. I have been accepted into Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

2. I am about to learn how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

3. I am about to get a stern lecture on littering.

The United States Forest Service could learn a thing or two from Dr. Hager. Kids might take littering WAY more seriously if Woodsy Owl showed up like, "Hey kids, give a hoot, don't pollute -- OR GOD HELP ME, I WILL EAT YOUR CAT!"

I dunno, nothing phases me in 2020. We're living with an invisible plague, murder hornets, and hurricane winds in Iowa. Adding a few aerial cat-eating predators should be just another drop in the bucket at this point. Still, I prefer my cats safely inedible within the confines of my home. Happily, Dr. Hager tells me the best time to catch barred owls caterwauling is between 3-5 a.m., when I'm tucked away in bed, happy and safe in my -- WAIT, WHAT WAS THAT NOISE??

COLUMN: Bike Thief

Just the other day I was thinking I should pick up a new hobby to while away the hours in our new virus-riddled reality. Well, it didn't take long. I appear to have found that hobby. I just never thought it would be true crime cinematography.

Maybe I don't have to tell you the story. If you were watching TV Sunday night, you might already know it. My sexy masked mug was plastered all over your nightly newscast. We're in the middle of a pandemic, civil unrest plagues our nation, and a good portion of the country is presently either on fire or underwater. But Sunday night's top story? "FAT GUY LOSES BIKE: FILM AT 11." (Or, more accurately, at 6, 10, and 10:30 after the football game.)

It all happened Friday night. I found myself enjoying a rare weekend free of plans, chilling at home watching TV. It was actually kinda nice. I was even thinking about turning in early. Well, at least until the

BANG!

What was that? It was definitely a bang. Not a super loud bang, but a bang nonetheless. I love this town, and my neighborhood has always been relatively safe, but let's be real: random ominous bangs in the distance after dark these days sadly isn't that uncommon. I was sitting on my couch with nothing better to do than investigate. 

Last spring, I upgraded my security system with some additional cameras in front and back of my house. Anytime I fancy, I can watch the happenings outside in real time. I was rewinding the feed to listen for the bang when I noticed the thumbnail pic of my back camera -- and the open garage door.

I'm an easily distracted human being. On the way home from work that night, I'd been giving a first spin to the fantastic new album by the Flaming Lips. I saw the Lips on New Years Eve Y2K, and it was a great show. SO great that, as I was walking out of my garage, I was trying to remember which song they opened that concert with. Was my brain so distracted that I forgot to close my garage door? 

Nope. My garage door wasn't just open. It was off its frame, a fact driven home when the "INTRUDER ALARM" sounded on my phone. The bang I heard wasn't a distant gunshot. It was a burglar kicking in my garage door, and I was watching him rob me in real time.

Now, I realize there are two distinct paths one can take in a situation like this. One would involve me running out the back door and confronting the dude. I chose the safer path of calling 911. I would hope most people would agree with my rationale. 

911 already knew the guy was in my garage -- my security system had already alerted them. The camera outside was flashing red and sounding an alarm. Yet none of this stopped my uninvited houseguest from commencing with Robberython 2020. If someone's desperate or stupid enough to brazenly burgle despite those deterrents, what's to stop him from doing something even MORE desperate or stupid had I marched out there? Not to steal a line from the great Robin Williams, but what would my next move have been? "Stop... or I'll say 'stop' again!"

Instead, I stood there in my kitchen providing play-by-play commentary to 911 as the guy made off with my 10-speed bike and a lawn chair I always hated. Clearly this guy didn't care -- as he runs away on tape, you can see every motion light in the neighborhood turn on as he makes his well-lit escape into the distance. I've never felt more proactively helpless in my life.

The police arrived four minutes later, and I got some great footage of them surrounding my garage with guns drawn. They were helpful and calming, and marveled with me at how ludicrous of a robbery it was -- not only do I have the entire thing on tape, but he even left a perfect muddy shoeprint on my door as a parting gift. Still, I've spent the whole week having a ton of feelings, none of them good. I'm less mad about my stolen stuff than the complete violation of the safety and sanctity of my home. Stuff can be replaced. My sense of well-being is a little tougher to fix. Plus spending the weekend installing a new (and MUCH more fortified) garage door wasn't exactly on my to-do list. 

Let's be honest, I'm not exactly a cycling enthusiast. At best, I took that thing out a handful of times a year. Still, it's the bike I've had since junior high and it's still in great shape. I honestly hope whoever has it appreciates its awesomeness as much as I always did. 

The video of the theft was captivating, so I uploaded it to Facebook for my friends to ooh and ahh over. Within a half hour, I was getting calls from TV reporters wanting to interview me. I think they just wanted cool break-in footage for the news, and I was happy to provide. It's just not quite as cool when it's YOUR garage getting burgled and YOUR bike getting jacked. All I know is I sure looked like a dork on TV.

So breathe easy, pro riders, for it sadly looks like I'll be forced to pull out of next year's Tour De France. In the meantime, if anyone sees a vintage midnight blue 1983 Schwinn Sidewinder rolling around town, give a shout -- especially if the rider's all hunched over in pain. That lawn chair's absolute hell on your back. I would've warned you, Mr. Thief -- but, well, you didn't ask.      

COLUMN: Car Wash

The older I get, the less patience I seem to have. I hate waiting for things, and that hatred's become more and more palpable as my days tick on.

Some people like to shop online. I've never understood the appeal. I suppose it's nice to compare prices and browse things from the comfort of your couch. That part I get. But where's the fun in impulse shopping if you can't get immediate gratification? If I buy something stupid, at least I HAVE that stupid something when I walk out the store. If I buy something stupid ONLINE, all I have is a week's worth of guilt while my stupidity gets boxed up and shipped from Timbuk 2. But even when I shop in person, sometimes just the delay of having to drive back home with a trunk full of stupid-somethings is enough to make my blood boil.

And its not just shopping -- I abhor waiting for ANYTHING. I hate waiting for clothes to dry. I detest going to concerts and having to stand around while a dozen scraggly dudes tune and re-tune guitars. There is no interminable solitude worse than the time between the nurse checking you in and the doctor finally walking into the exam room. Anticipation is a young man's game.

I'm waiting right now, in fact.

As I type this, I'm sitting at a car wash while my ATH (All-Terrain Hyundai) gets a good primping. In a nearby garage bay, a team of four is hard at work wiping and polishing away life's ick from my mobile command center. If all goes well, maybe for a few days I'll be able to pretend I'm not a garbage-producing heathen who routinely drives around with the decaying remains of a dozen fast food bags from lunches of yore. I've decided today is Hyundai Appreciation Day. I'm getting the car washed and detailed, and my next stop is an oil change from a business whose signage insists that customers "STAY IN YOUR CAR!" with an exclamation point that reads more like a threatening command than a consumer benefit. I love going to STAY IN YOUR CAR!

Oil changes and car detailings are necessary (especially when your car's details are as filthy as mine,) but it doesn't make for the speediest of afternoons. Every time they hook me by saying "it'll be about twenty minutes" -- which, when translated from the native Carwashian tongue, actually means "it'll be sixty minutes if you're lucky," and that's BEFORE they actually see the current state of my car, so I'm expecting about a ninety-minute stay here in the lobby.

Except I'm not IN the lobby. I'm outside because the world has cooties. I could be enjoying this, one of the last sunny days of summer, soaking in fresh air and sunny optimism. Instead, I'm already bored, so I'm laboriously typing this column on my teeny tiny iPhone keyboard for something to do, making so many typos my editor would have an aneurysm if this was the final draft I turned in. Still, it's better than patiently sitting around and (shudder) being left to my thoughts. Besides, there's a wasp flying around and I swear I can ignore it if I just keep staring at this screen.

Honestly, there's no reason why impatience should even exist in our modern age. How dare we say "I haaaate waiting!" when most of us have a device in our pockets connecting us to all of the information in all of the world? I've been here for five minutes and I'm already at the brink of terminal boredom. But just from the apps on my phone alone, I could:

* Watch a kabillion different movies and TV shows

* Send a tweet to the Kardashian of my choice

* Watch any number of random idiots lip sync to obnoxious hip-hop songs

* Read any of the 37 books on my Kindle list I haven't gotten to yet

* Crush unlimited amounts of candy

* Order a pizza and have it delivered right here

I have an app that'll tell me where the plane flying overhead is going. I have another I can point towards any bird and it'll tell me what it is. I have an app that will identify the song playing from the car wash speakers right now, which I don't need because it's Hanson's "Mmm Bop" because I am clearly in hell. The only app I DON'T have is one that will help me talk to the pretty girl who just sat down six feet away. She's wearing a shirt that says "COFFEE!" which means she's my kind of people. Sadly, though, I think she's also someone else's kind of people, based on her family-friendly SUV being detailed. And now I want coffee.

To summarize, I think I've figured out life and the answer to everyth-- OH NO, SOME GUY IS TRYING TO TALK TO ME. BACK IN A BIT --

Whew. Okay, I'm back. Also, I'm home. Burying my head in a smartphone stopped me from talking to the pretty girl, but did nothing to stop some random guy from talking to me about his motorcycle for the better part of a half hour. I have nothing against motorcycles. They look fun. But I also know the limitations of my own hand-eye coordination, enough to know I'd be kissing pavement within minutes of climbing aboard one of those two-wheeled deathtraps.

But I smiled and hopefully nodded in all the right places as I learned all about aftermarket pipes and whatever "competition fishtail baffles" are. At one point, I took a huge risk and said, "Wow, you don't see those every day!" Frankly, I had no idea. Maybe you see those daily -- whatever "those" are. He smiled and kept babbling about baffling, so I think I lucked out. I can tell you with some degree of authority that his bike was definitely shiny -- and hey, maybe if I had competiton fishtail baffles, I'd wanna tell strangers, too.

Honestly, though, it was kind of a hoot. Life in pandemic-ville is mighty lonely, and waiting around by yourself sucks. Talking to strangers about things I barely understand turned out to be an ideal way to shorten the wait. After all, talking to strangers about things I barely understand is mostly what I do in this column every week.

Ain't life grand? (Don't make me wait for an answer.)

COLUMN: Ugh.

Dear 2020, I'm out of patience. It isn't funny anymore. Stop it. Just stop it.

They say every man's got his breaking point. I may have finally hit mine.

I think we've all pretty much had it up here with this pandemic party, this unrest, and this year.

When things first started going south, I was as just as flummoxed as anyone. But if I'm being honest, being forced to quarantine and spend a few weeks at home wasn't much of a stretch for me. Growing up an only child backed with years of sedentary living was just the life experience I needed to soldier through the spring. 

"Oh no, you mean I have to sit around at home by myself with nothing to do but watch endless amounts of TV, listen to whatever music I fancy, and play video games all the live-long day? CURSE MY HORRIBLE LUCK!"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a total picnic -- mostly because picnics involve leaving the house -- but for the most part, I was quite capable of entertaining myself.

But I was one of the lucky ones. The pandemic has hurt us, badly. Small businesses are struggling to survive without much in the way of assistance. I have many friends in the performing arts community -- actors, musicians, DJs, and club owners -- whose lives have been upended by this fiasco of a year. 200,000 more people have died in the US in 2020 than in 2019, and that's just staggeringly awful.

At the same time, troubling acts of violence and racism have led to civil unrest and a social upheaval the likes of which I've never seen in my life. People are taking to the streets to protest while others take to the streets to protest the protestors. You'd think events like this would lead to REAL dialogue and REAL change. Instead it's led to businesses being burned to the ground, suburbanites packing heat, and teenagers thinking they're action heroes.

Meanwhile, the internet has pretty much just gone insane. I bet the people who invented the world wide web (and I'm not talking about you, Al Gore) were really proud of their accomplishment. I reckon they triumphantly sat back thinking the world finally had open doors to global community, connection, and communication. I bet none of them thought those doors would open and a dude would stroll through accusing Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey of harvesting the blood of missing children in a Satanic plot to live forever -- or that enough people would believe him to make it newsworthy.

2020 has split our country even further in two, and turned everything -- and I mean everything -- into a political fight. Did we ever think we'd live in a world where telling someone their life matters becomes a political talking point? Or when a doctor says you should wear a mask to avoid spreading germs and you instead want to debate him about your constitutional right to be infectious? Or when any reporter says anything and is greeted by half the country calling them "fake"? 

And then there's this past weekend, when I made a rare venture into the toxic haze of public life to DJ at a club in the District -- and ended up having a front row seat to a show no one on Earth should ever have to see. An act of ignorant violence that night claimed at least one life, changed many others, and struck a blow that our nightlife community may never recover from. They say "thoughts and prayers" aren't worth much these days, but everyone affected by this senseless act has mine. Not that I've got many coherent thoughts to give -- I've barely slept since Friday.

I'm almost out of room and we haven't even touched on Iowa hurricanes, murder hornets, Kanye running for President, Chadwick Boseman dying, or the taco place tonight that gave me a DIET Coke by mistake that I didn't discover until this very moment (UGH!) Honestly, though, I'm running out of optimism. Now we can't even watch a TV show without an ad where some ominous voice tells you how so-and-so is going to ruin the country if we vote for them. No matter which way the upcoming election goes, I'm afraid angry people may take to the streets.

Once upon a time, I dismissed political strife and social conflict. "We're America," I'd reassure myself. "We're awesome and we're gonna figure it all out." I'm honestly not so sure anymore, and that's scary. We need light. We need hope. We need compassion. I used to roll my eyes at namby-pamby stuff like Hands Across America, but maybe that's what we need right now (well, except holding hands with strangers right now could theoretically kill you.)

We need to remember what truly makes America great. Hint: It's not guns. It's not having the freedom to yell at some poor restaurant manager for asking that you wear a mask. It's not a Facebook post or a 3 a.m. tweet. It's people. It's us. It's everyone working together for the common good. It's about talking, and sometimes even disagreeing, with other people without it devolving into name-calling or shade-throwing. It's about taking off hats that say "Make America Great Again" and actually doing it.

I'm no activist. I'm way better equipped to lay here on my couch and poke fun at the world. But it's tough to poke fun at a world that's rapidly becoming no fun whatsoever. So if somebody could please fix everything, that'd be swell. As for me? I'm going to enjoy my (ugh) diet soda, pet as many cats as I can, maybe watch an episode or two of Sesame Street, and try to find my optimism again. I'll have a better chance of seeing it once the sun comes out tomorrow. I have it on good authority it's only a day away.