My Heroine of the day

No, not heroin. That is an opiate distilled from poppy flowers. I'm not into inducing hallucinations. A spicy pizza just before bed will do that to me without the risk of addiction, hep c or jail time.

Heroine. As in, an extraordinary Lady.

Dawn has blogged today about an experience that She had during an ordinary drive. Please spend a minute in Her dog house and tell Her how awesome She is.

She stopped to help some cops save a dog's life, a dog that was running on a highway. A strange dog, possibly not even a friendly dog. To paraphrase hip lingo: Freakin' awesome, dude!

I think about the times that I have stopped to help and the times that I have rationalized and kept going. "It's on the shoulder, it'll probably get home safe, blah, blah, blah."

Once or twice, I've stopped to move an errant turtle, too. Once, I was trying desperately to save a grouchy old snapping turtle near the coast -- hey, they have their place in nature too -- when some bonehead in a UPS truck rolled right past me and ran it over. May that jerk be cursed with irritable bowel syndrome and bad breath for the rest of his thoughtless life.

Perhaps the most uplifting experience I had in this sort of thing was when I pulled into a turn lane on a busy highway and realized that a baby bird was floundering around on the asphalt. I whipped open the door while the light was red and scooped it up and took it to a wildlife rescuer. I hope that it is soaring the skies today as it was meant to do.