Last Friday evening I visited with xocobra and LD.  As luck would have it, I didn’t have my camera with me.

Nevertheless, I did want to share a bit of interesting news.

Remember the mourning doves who had commandeered a hanging planter on their patio?  They nested in it, of course.  The news reports indicate a healthy brood of two young’uns started their lives on the patio, grew up under the watchful eyes and gentle tutelage of mother and father, and eventually joined the big world as independent birds.

But that didn’t mark the end of the hanging planter or its use as a nest.

While xocobra and I talked a bit early on in my visit, the conversation turned to their experience watching the parent birds rear their young right there outside the back door.  That’s when my dear friend told me to take a quick gander at the dangling plant container.

What do you know!  Another pair of mourning doves has moved in and made themselves at home.

We laughed about how the first pair had obviously mentioned as part of neighborhood gossip how they had discovered this protected place that offered a wonderful habitat for those in the family way.  So along comes the second shift.

This pair of avian creatures is a bit smaller than the first, perhaps younger birds starting their first try at parenthood.

As I stood and looked at the one sitting in the nest, I marveled at how magical it all seemed, how splendid and remarkable the odds were that another pair would find the same spot and take advantage of its protective environment.

Could there be a third set of parents in waiting?  As I explained to xocobra, that seems terribly unlikely considering how late in the season it will be when this second brood finally leaves the nest area.  That’s not to say it couldn’t happen; it’s just highly improbable.

So I’m excited that there will be another set of offspring for yet another pair of mourning doves.  They’ll enjoy the same security as the first parents did, and they’ll nurture their children and use the cover of the patio to ensure a future generation’s well-being.

I hope to get some photos in the near future.  I especially am reminding myself constantly to keep the camera with me and to plan accordingly so as to offer some images of the little ones when they finally start making appearances.

I can only promise to do my best in that regard.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

— Samuel Butler

The pet food recall continues to expand, and now it seems a second—and much larger—avenue into the human food supply has been identified.  Chickens:

The Food and Drug Adminstration said Tuesday that as many as 3 million chickens that may have been given contaminated feed containing melamine have already been eaten by consumers, according to NBC News.

In addition to those used as food, even more used for breeding are now being quarantined.

Meanwhile, scientists have discovered the probable cause of death for dogs and cats:

Scientists from Canada and the United States say they have new evidence for why dogs and cats died after eating contaminated pet food.

Owners of more than 4,000 pets have complained to the federal Food and Drug Administration that their animals died after eating food that was later recalled.

Inspectors found melamine in the tainted products, but not at levels that would normally kill. But researchers now say that it may have mixed with another compound — cyanuric acid — to produce crystals that may have been deadly.

“What we’ve done is experiments that show if you take cat urine and you add melamine to it and cyanuric acid, the crystals will form in the cat urine in a test tube as we’re watching them, so it happens within a matter of hours,” said Alan Wildeman, vice president of Canada’s University of Guelph, which is renowned for its veterinary research center.

The crystals are suspected of contributing to kidney failure in pets.

Oh, and did you catch that?  At least 4,000 reports have been filed with the FDA by pet owners saying their dogs and cats died after eating the poison.

To be more precise:

The FDA said Friday it had received more than 17,000 consumer complaints about the tainted pet food, including the deaths of 1,950 cats and 2,200 dogs.

I think we’re still counting in that regard.  I think the news will be even more severe and grim than it is now.

Yet our government still has not stopped imports from China despite knowing several products from that country were intentionally adulterated before being sold to American companies.  While the FDA says they might suspend shipments for human food, what they obviously are too dumb to realize is that what’s imported for animal consumption will end up in the human food supply.

But that’s not even what I think is so intolerable.

We’re willing to take a stand to protect people while continuing to import products that have already killed animals.  I guess thousands of non-human deaths simply aren’t that important.

Their priorities are all messed up.

And let me be a broken record one more time: See the FDA’s pet food recall page for the latest.  More brands have been added, more companies have announced recalls, and more information is being posted about the intimidating reaches and impact of this event.

I continue to think we’ve yet to see the full reach of this.