Pigeon talk

I am mildly obsessed with pigeons, yet for all my years of close observation I'd never seen them mating...UNTIL TODAY!

Whenever I see a pigeon puff up his neck, I invariably stop to take a gander. The puffed up neck and quick rushes toward the female usually indicate he's ready to get it on. However, it seems to me that the puffed up neck can sometimes be used to show aggression - territorial, food guarding or otherwise. I can't begin to count how many times I've watched the puffy neck advances, but I have never ever seen it work out for the poor guy. Anyhow, I digress...

So, instead of the traditional puffed up neck, today I saw two pigeons seemingly kissing! Lulu, Pony and myself stopped in our tracks to watch. I couldn't tell if they were passing food between their beaks or just kind of locking beaks, but I was fascinated. As I watched, the female squatted down into a little brown bundle. The male hopped on her back, arched his back and flapped his wings. It was strangely adorable, and I realized that I'd just witnessed some pigeon copulation.

In related news, on a previous walk I saw three (3) different pigeons collecting twigs for their nests. I watched one of them fly onto a third story window ledge, hobble under an air-conditioning unit and present his twig to the mama pigeon lying in their nest. Then, later on that same walk, we watched a squirrel abscond from a garbage can with a taco shell. He kept a close eye on us from the safety of a tree while nibbling away. City critters!

What's Happening? Good TImes.

The aftermath of MoCCA has left me mostly doing boring stuff like updating my mailing list, sending out review copies of new books and sending out lots of orders.

I've moved my mailing list to MailChimp.com which will allow me to send hi-faluttin' fancy-pants email blasts that look like webpages. The only drawback is that they're not keen on my manually entering contact information (they want the recipients to do it themselves to avoid being accused of spamming), so help a guy out and sign up here, even if you were on my previous list: link to mailing list form
I'm also working on a new comic that will collect some of my dreams involving celebrity cameos (Roseanne Barr, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Henry Rollins, MC Hammer, Tom Waits, Dick Cheney, (sort of) Bill Cosby, Chris Ware, The Golden Girls, and yes, another appearance by Snoop Dogg!). If you liked "Tales of Good Ol' Snoop Doggy Dogg", you'll probably like this one, too.

Otherwise, we're just kickin' it with Lulu Mae-hem over here at the Yost household. She got her first kiss(es) last week, which was documented and is available for viewing on FaceBook. It's an understatement to say that she was into it. Here's a photo of her giving you the finger.