Early last evening at the Norwich campus, I came out to my car parked
near a stand of  pine trees.  There was an American Robin sitting on my
driver's side mirror.  As I approached it, the bird just held its ground
and stared at me intently.  I chuckled and asked what was up, took
another step forward, and it flew off.  I got closer to my car and
realized it had been thoroughly trashed.  Both of my outside mirrors had
peck marks all over them.  The side windows were pecked and smeared, as
well, as was the driver's side of my windshield.  There was bird offal
in huge blobs and streams running down the doors, covering the handle to
the driver's door, and deposited here and there on the entire car.  I
know that birds are doing their territorial thing right now, but I never
imagined car vandalism of this magnitude might happen to me.  This pales
in comparison, though, with the huge black bear (most likely young
bruin) who decided coming into my house for a midnight snack about ten
days ago was just the ticket after a long, cold, hard winter in the
den.  It partially dismantled the screen porch before we were able to
finally dissuade it with increasingly loud noises.  We had taken in the
feeders ten days before that after he broke the metal pole in two.
Early bird.  Guess there has to be a first time for everything, but I am
starting to get a little uneasy...

Paula Gills
Norwich Univ.