Clarence Page on Tom DeLay.

From the high to the low...
I'm perusing the historic obits in the NYT website, and come across this fine bit from Edward R. Murrow's (born Egbert, but changed the name as a college sophomore.)

As news chief for C.B.S. in Europe he hired the men who were to become the network's famous roster of war correspondents--among them Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Cecil Brown and Larry LeSueur.

"I'm hiring reporters, not announcers," Mr. Murrow told "the shop" (as he usually called New York headquarters) when C.B.S. executives complained that he was hiring men who sounded "terrible" on the air. Their on-the-scene reports reached into farm and city homes from New England to the Pacific states, bringing the realities of war close.

One former staff member recalled the instruction Mr. Murrow gave to his newsmen. The reporter must never sound excited even if bombs are falling outside, Mr. Morrow said.

Rather, the reporter should imagine that he has just returned to his hometown and that the local editor has asked him to dinner with, for example, a banker and a professor.

"After dinner," Mr. Murrow counseled, "your host asks you 'Well, what was it like?' As you talk, the maid is passing the coffee and her boyfriend, a truck driver, is waiting for her in the kitchen and listening. You are supposed to describe things in terms that make sense to the truck driver without insulting the intelligence of the professor."

This morning, I'm sitting at my desk, and the squirrels are making a ruckus outside. That chit-chit sound you hear most often when they're quarreling. They keep at it, so I head out to toss a cup full of peanuts, even though it's beautiful out and they should have no trouble finding something on their own.

So guess what they're clucking at in the bushes? Wild turkey. Big one too, long beard, oily dark feathers. Well, I'll be... It heard my approach and made a few noises of its own as it walked down the buffer zone between properties. Looked healthy. It's season, in some zones, so where this creature is coming from, who knows? I followed it after it walked away, but it must have slipped under some parked cars because once it went up the embankment, it was gone.

If I hadn't heard the squirrels, I would have missed it too.

I've got a few other feral animal stories, more than just sightings, but they probably can't be properly retold here with accompanying detail. It's powerful, in a quiet kind of way, to stumble upon other animals sharing the same ground, particularly if you both pause and make eye contact for a few frozen moments. You almost forget sometimes the others are out there.