We had reserved the Starlight Room for several days in the Blushing Rose B&B, in Hammondsport, New York. The room name comes from the myriad tiny lights in the four-poster bed's canopy. (This professional-looking photo really is – it's from their website.)
However, we hadn't known that it would also be the Maternity Room, thanks to a robin and her four nestlings on the window ledge. The babies were so plump that it's a wonder they all fit. Perhaps that's part of the grand design—eventually one, then another, has to leave. Conversely, the mother's ministrations had left her fairly gaunt.
Although we didn't see the first one go, we were on hand when the second one just soared away—I had expected a sort of plunge and leveling off before disaster occurred. By the time we left, only one remained.
One morning a front-page story in the local newspaper, the Elmira Star-Gazette, recounted a tale of amazing stupidity. Two brothers, 26 and 32, were driving down a rural road late at night when their aged pickup truck broke down. Several possibilities of what to do must have presented themselves. The one they chose was to let the truck remain where it stopped, straddling the centerline, and, the night being chill, to curl up on the still-warm hood. They did place, conveniently within reach on the roof, the remainder of their 30-pack of beer.
When police came upon the scene at 2:10 AM, the brothers were asleep, each with a can of beer in his hand. In those parts, public drunkenness charges are often handled through the mail. However, one of the brothers, it is not revealed which, belligerently replied that he wouldn't respond to a citation, and that police would have to "come and get him."
The police, being no dummies, realized that, in fact, they already "had them" and placed them in jail until a reasonable hour to take them before a judge, who fined them $200 plus costs. And allowed them to set up a payment plan.