Have you ever read something so good, so powerful, and so important that you immediately wanted everybody else to read it? And it’s not just for children–it’s for all of us.

Meantime, on a totally different note, lesson learned: a big heavy empty glass jar of peanut butter put outside for the squirrels to clean up for recycling is a hoot to watch, but the small plastic one? Not so much. One good taste and the thing knew he had to hide this treasure immediately and it was small enough that he could. Amazingly fast with it up the tree, across the shed roof, and maybe leaping to the redwood from there? Blink and he was gone. I really didn’t want him stowing plastic.

He’s just lucky he let go when the raven spotted it. I found it half-floating in the rainwater at the curb in front of the house, one long viciously-stabby black beak deep inside, a scavenger hunt won and not a bushytail in sight daring to challenge.

So that’s why it swooped across my yard…. They never come here.

We don’t feed ravens. They harass my hawk. And now that that one knows what the stuff in there tastes like, no more squirrels sneaking up on each other’s exposed backsides and wild leaps away. No more peanut butter jars.

(To the neighbors: I’m sorry I put it out there. It was wrong to have my trash show up in the street we share. In the future I will stick to birdseed. And hopefully you didn’t see that.)