Did you hear the one about the ornithologist

who couldn't go to the bird conference?

He had to send his egrets.

That one remains every bit as funny as the first time I heard it (a sentiment that cuts two ways, no doubt), but the reason I bring it up is that describing the deer by the side of the road in Valley Forge reminded me of the egrets on the runway's grass strip as the plane from Albuquerque landed in Houston. Tons of metal bouncing down hard, engines immediately thrusting hard into reverse and revving to slow the plane, the loud sound of brakes being applied--all this not 20 feet away from the egrets, and, like the deer, they never even batted a feather (that sentence doesn't work: deer don't have feathers. how about:) keratinized epidermal projection. (That works both for feathers and for eyelashes :).

"Wild" animals, my asinus.