SPITBULL

We have a new hamster at day care!

[My father in law] hauled his family to a cabin with little heat in sub zero temps, no plumbing, [my mother and brother in law] had colds so it was more then just the mice spreading germs and he served a bonafied road kill turkey. yes that's right, [My father in law]'s boss saw a wild turkey get hit by a car, pulled over, picked it up and thought "I bet [My father in law] would like this" and [My father in law] turned around and said "I think I'll serve this to my family".

I'm home, warm and clean and thankful for all the things I have in life that challenge me and give my life color!

Hope you had a fun weekend.

In April, Will Millington was riding his dirt bike down a narrow trail in Norman, Okla., when he stopped before a flock of wild turkeys. The hens scattered, but two toms flared their feathers and stalked toward him. Then they suddenly leapt in the air, beat Mr. Millington with their wings and tried to scratch him with the sharp spurs on the backs of their legs.

Mr. Millington frantically revved his bike's motor. Thirty yards down the trail he looked back. "They were running after me," says the 46-year-old property manager. "That was kind of spooky."

A passing friend stopped her pickup truck and Ms. Kosheff ran around it several times. The turkeys kept up the chase, although she says "they were too stupid to split up or change directions" to trap her. Finally, Ms. Kosheff got in the truck, where, she says, her friend "was laughing so hard she almost choked on her Dunkin' Donut."

Wild-turkey flocks have a pecking order. If they live around humans, some of the dominant toms may begin to include people in that order -- at a level below themselves, says Jim Cardoza, a turkey expert at the Massachusetts wildlife agency. Wild turkeys "get used to people and incorporate them into their view of society," he says. Some behavior, such as putting out bird food and slinking quietly away, can encourage these lordly males to think that humans are a subservient life form, believes Mr. Cardoza.

Biologist James Earl Kennamer, senior vice president of the National Wild Turkey Federation, an Edgefield, S.C., hunters' group, has studied wild turkeys for 40 years. "When they think you're one of them, they'll fight you to show who's dominant," he says. "If you turn your back, they'll take it to mean they're dominant."

• "carry an umbrella to poke at the turkey"
• "get your broom and swat the turkey away"
• spray them with a garden hose
• yell or bang pots and pans
• get a dog

Four year old: Why couldn't the jar of jelly ride its telephone?
Eight year old: [look of puzzlement]
Four year old: This is an easy one!

Four year old: [Turns to me] Why couldn't the jar of jelly ride its telephone?
Me: [look of puzzlement]
Four year old: Think! Do you give up momma?
Me: Yes.
Four year old: Because telephones don't have wheels! Bikes have wheels! Cars have wheels!

I did notice that at this moment, MAWB Squad and Dementee are neck and neck. Now, if I wasn't a little paranoid about Dementee coming over and burning down my house and turning my dog into a shish kabob, I would point out that he has contributed to the DFL under a false name and has a picture of Hillary in the glove compartment of his car. He sent flowers to Norm Coleman to thank him for his ANWR vote. He uses bath salts.

Of course, I would not point that out to the general public because Dementee likes to field dress kittens and eat sewer caps. A guy like that...well, you just don't want to have him for an enemy.

Or mayor.

The French government recently announced a raise in its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide". The normal level is "General Arrogance", and the only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate".

Employees at Nuzwerk, in the eastern German town of Leipzig, are required to sign a contract binding them to arriving at work in a good mood and leave at home the gripes about colleagues and work conditions.

"We made the ban on moaning and grumpiness at work official after one female employee refused to subscribe to the company's philosophy of always smiling," office manager Thomas Kuwatsch said.

"She used to moan so much that other employees complained about her complaining.

Many women now do not think of domestic life as a "comfortable concentration camp," as Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique," where they are losing their identities and turning into "anonymous biological robots in a docile mass." Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass. They dream of being rescued - to flirt, to shop, to stay home and be taken care of. They shop for "Stepford Fashions" - matching shoes and ladylike bags and the 50's-style satin, lace and chiffon party dresses featured in InStyle layouts - and spend their days at the gym trying for Wisteria Lane waistlines.

At a party ... a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?

Could there possibly be another reason that the attractive, successful Dowd has not settled down? Something that is not in the zeitgeist, or the political climate, but some ineffable quality of her own psychology? It would seem wrong to raise this question about a woman writer, and in fact about any writer, but Dowd uses her experience with men as template for her theories so often, and marshals her failure to marry as evidence so frequently, that she herself raises the question in her reader's mind.