coke n pigeon

first the pigeon. yesterday was a very nice day (and a nice day to have off as well) so after a morning of errand running i decided to give "my" pigeon a little time in the fresh air and sunshine... he tried to fly away, but still too hurt to do himself any good, ran into the roof of the house and landed with absolutely NO decorum on the ground in front of the flower box. seeing as how he was feeling rather feisty, i decided to have a look at his feet (which we had assumed to be the only problem) and flipped him over. the poor thing was a MESS... yes, his feet were sore, one was injured, and his entire chest and part of his belly were covered with a mess of dried dead leaves, bird food, and errant feathers... where he HAD feathers. so, I decided to try to clean him up and see if I could assess the damage... at the same time, my mom was calling our local vet to see if they knew of any local wildlife refuges (I still hadn't heard from anyone i had already contacted) and they directed her to DNR's website where there was a list... from there my husband made some calls. bird is hurting... he has at least one place on his chest where the skin is worn away down to the muscle... that's where I stopped looking and started crying because i KNEW that he was beyond my reach.

the rehab lady came by last night at about 5, she looked him over, noticed that his feet were bad and the injury to the one... she saw the mess of feathers and mess, and she assured me that she would clean him up, give him some antibiotics and care and a nice safe place to recover, and that she thought that he would end up just fine after some very serious T.L.C.

i'm not sure she said that for any reason other than the fact that she didn't want to make me cry on my front porch in front of my newly 2 year old daughter... but after some serious soul searching on the matter, i find that whatever her reason, it helped me to feel better about the fate of the bird - - and about the fact that i cared. crazy bit is, while the bird is out of my hands, he's certainly not out of my thoughts.

* * * * * * * *

coke.
buggers - coke is a bunch of buggers.
i got all giddy by the prospect of hitting 150+ coke reward points today (i had been hoarding caps because, mostly, i had been too lazy over the past few days to enter them). i was even more geeked when reading my email i learned that i had been awarded 5 bonus points just for playing along.
then i went to my "wishlist" where the stuff i want is cataloged for me, along with the number of points it takes to actually get it.
ALL THE REDEEM POINT VALUES HAD GONE UP!!! by almost 50%.

yes, the rules say that coke can be a bunch of chickie-pop's and change the values at any time, but for f***'s sake... 50%!!?!?!?

i'm disappointed. at this rate, by the time i collect enough points to get what i had been hoping for, between redemption point increases and the stuff i want selling out, i'll be lucky if i can get a promotional door knob hanger that says "I drink coke" on one side and "Just Kiss me First" on the other.