Spared again from the asteroid

The news of the asteroid the size of a 10-story building whizzing past the earth Monday brings our problems into perspective.

The economy may be in shambles, we may have lost our jobs, we may be losing our homes and our cars may be broken down, but at least now we don't have to worry about an explosion with the force of 1,000 atomic bombs going off in the neighborhood. Armageddon is a problem we can deal with another day.

The news does give me pause. For years I've predicted my own demise will be through squashing by a giant space rock. That will save on funeral expense for my family. Somebody can just take a rock chisel and add my name to it.

"Brian DeNeal's remains are crushed somewhere under this big space rock, at least we think they are, because we can't find him anywhere else," would be a fitting epitaph.

The news of the near miss encourages me to live for today.

Peepers
The weather has finally broken. Spring peeper frogs have been out peeping, a psychological sign of spring, though the past couple of years they have emerged, sang a few nights, then hunkered back down as temperatures dropped to the single digits.

Wintering here in town instead of the woods I'm not seeing the normal signs of spring. Of course, we haven't had much springlike weather to speak of.

There have been more people out strolling around town and birds seem to be a little more active. There seems to be an increase in roadkill skunks, causing me to wonder if this isn't the skunk rutting season.

Kincaid Mounds
I was finally able to see Kincaid Mounds Sunday. A couple of weeks ago the Pope County end of New Cut Road was covered in downed trees from the ice storm and Vicky and I could not drive in. The Massac County end was clear Sunday.

Approaching the river bottoms a bald eagle swooped over the road, startling us both.
Incidentally, Benjamin Franklin lobbied for the wild turkey to be the national bird, touting the species for its beauty, enterprise and cunning. He maligned the bald eagle as an opportunistic scavenger and a lowly eater of carrion.

The mounds were a strange sight in the barren field beside Avery Lake. I presume the lake to have been the old channel of the Ohio River. The mounds were obviously man made ringed around the flat plaza area. I imagined the Mississippian Culture that existed there about 1,000 years ago and thought about their recreation, the game of chunky. I haven't figured out what exactly chunky was, but know it involved a smooth round rock and a stick and assume it was an early form of lacrosse.

I understood that people were supposed to observe Kincaid Mounds from an observation platform with interpretive signs, but did not anticipate the sign that indicated the site had 24-hour surveillance by camera.

Vicky inspected the box that presumably held the camera. It was not locked and inside she found not a camera, but a copy of the New Testament Bible. I presume the point was that God is surveying the area and if you trespass you'll have to take it up with Him.

However, I rationalized the reason people are not to be around the mounds was to deter people who might be poking around for artifacts. I had no intention of digging. I only wanted a decent photograph. Figuring neither God nor the Illinois State Historic Preservation Agency would mind me climbing the mound for a photograph, I huffed and puffed my way to the top of the closest mounds and took several photographs more dramatic than the view from the platform.

I imagined myself as the village chieftan, granted the position through the power of the sun, surveying my village of chunky stone chucking agrarians.

The mound had been burned off. Another mound had tall yellow grass growing on it.
There was a surprising amount of traffic on the brown gravel road that passes between Brookport and Bay City.

On the way out, I was saddened to see a large brown bird with white on it dead on the road. Convinced it was the eagle we had seen earlier I turned around and drove back to it to take a rare and sad photo.

It turned out to be a farm turkey with white wings very recently struck. The wind blew its down feathers at me. I did not take that photograph.

-- DeNeal is a staff writer for the Daily Register in Harrisburg, Ill., and the Daily Journal in Eldorado, Ill. He receives e-mail at bdeneal@yourclearwave.com.