I walked into the study this morning to find my wife and youngest daughter watching an eagle on a wildlife webcam. They asked me if male eagles sit on eggs. No sooner had I said, “Pfft, I seriously doubt it,” than another eagle appeared. The one sitting on the eggs flew off, allowing its partner to take over. Hey, roosters don’t sit on eggs! Where would conservation (a major branch of environmentalism) be without charismatic wildlife? Speaking of which, Luna, the killer-whale orphan, was just killed by a boat.

Later, while poking around on the webcam site, I discovered a cool video of a black snake making short work of a nest of baby robins (click on the picture of the robin). I watched the exact same thing happen on my uncle’s farm when I was a kid in Indiana. Black rat snakes can get up to six feet long. They are the generalists of the snake world, known to eat just about anything: rodents, amphibians, birds, other snakes, and even eggs. I was glad the webcam owner, obviously a bird lover, allowed nature to take its course. I bet that wasn’t easy.