Heidi's Fascinations

Today I discovered a very cool place near the San Francisco Bay where there are tons of birds and very few people. It's out at the end of a really long berm, in a national wildlife refuge. It's way past the end of the Stevens Creek trail. Anyway, I biked out there and watched a ton of cool birds, including some funky black and white duck-like birds that make funky noises.

Out in this area there are a ton of little wooden 'cottages' (okay, some might call them duck blinds) out in the water. During duck hunting season, evidently this area is fair game (I don't know if that includes the wildlife refuge!?). Looking out over the water there were so many 'cottages' really close together that I wondered how often people get shot in this 'urban hunting ground'? And what would it feel like to be shot with a ton of little buckshot bits? Normally this would not make it into the blog, but check out the following news story:

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was "alert and doing fine" in a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday after he was shot by Cheney on a ranch in south Texas, said Katharine Armstrong, the property's owner.
...
Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, aged 78, was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest during the incident which occurred late afternoon on Saturday.
...
Armstrong, the property's owner, said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
...
"It broke the skin," she said of the shotgun pellets. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."