It’s after midnight. Restless. Maybe it’s the biz trip I leave for early Wednesday morning to Charlotte for four days. Maybe it’s some residual over-thinking about a couple aspects of my behavior on what was an otherwise awesome bike ride upupup essentially to Descanso Gardens then back down to Eagle Rock around to Highland Park with a stop at King Taco and then home. Maybe it’s just because the cats were restless and agitated tonight after I went to bed. Maybe it’s the cup of TiGeorge’s espresso grind Haitian coffee that I had at 8 p.m.
Whatever, I can’t sleep. So with that, and with counting sheep out of the question, instead I’ll share something new I learned today and it doesn’t have to do with how defensive and vocal I can be on a bike or how troubled Bink the cat was, or how things will go in North Carolina next week, or how strong the coffee is.
I discovered that blue jays have a carnivorous side. First hand. Out in the backyard this morning. The jay up in the tree caught my eye because we don’t get many jays around here. Not sure why that is. Mockingbirds, yes. Jays, nope. But then I saw the jay was eating a lizard it had caught — really going at it — and I was amazed enough to gawk at it and call Susan over to show her before I ran in to grab my camera.
Of course the bird had relocated with its breakfast to a much more higher up and much less visible location by the time I got back outside, but I still managed to relocate it and get off a couple snaps of it with the lizard remains, neither of which are very clear in the darkness of the tree and the morning’s diffused light, but nevertheless offer up muddled proof of the predatory and meat-eating aspect of the jay’s ominvorous nature (click thumbnails for full size):
 
I was 12 when I killed a jay once. Accidentally. In Hollywood. With my eyes closed. And a slingshot.
Sweet dreams.
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