Today's lunch is brought to you by Mother Nature

The suburbs around Milwaukee, like those everywhere, have been slowly expanding over the years. My route to church each Sunday takes me through the heart of the oldest suburbs, to the near fringes of the outer edge of the expansion. I pass the biggest mall in the city, huge shopping plazas and apartment/condo developments before reaching the area where houses are a bit more spread out and one can spot an occasional field of undeveloped grass.

The line of demarcation between the two is fairly clear; up to Rawson Avenue, things are pretty congested; afterwards, retail establishments disappear and the houses are further apart. Just south of Rawson the road also narrows from two lanes each direction to one.

I'm tooling along this morning, practicing pronunciation of French greetings along with a CD, wondering if the car in the lane to the right of me is going to try to merge in front of me before the road narrows, when the car directly in front of me swerved over into the right lane. Once he was out of the way, I could see why: a flock of twelve to fifteen geese occupied the left lane and the median, and were clearly not interested in moving. I hit the brakes and just sat there laughing for a minute. The geese stood there, not looking at what little traffic there was, not picking at any road kill, just...stood there.

I had almost forgotten this encounter with fois gras on the hoof webbed foot, but on the way home, the second course presented itself. It looked as if something round was sitting near the right edge of the road, right in line with the passenger side wheels of the car. I moved over a bit - the last thing I need is a flat tire - and then started laughing again. A fairly large turtle was hotfooting (as much as a turtle can, anyway) its way across the road. I didn't stop to ask why.

All that's left for the day is to spy a deer in someones backyard.