I heard the light knocking on the door, just moments after the wife had left for work.

And me, still laying in bed in pajamas. It's hard to get up to a clock when all you have to look forward to is office stuff. I don't now how the rest of you do it every day.

So, it's our new police chief at the door. Surprised, but apologetic just the same, for getting me out of bed.

He's got a dead nighthawk. Found smashed in the street in the north end of town. Someone told him we like to check out birds of prey when they die.

Well, that's true, but about all a nighthawk preys upon is mosquitoes. That and juicy moths, or ant alates, when they're in season. But yeah, I'll take the nighthawk off his hands. (Or, more exactly, out of his trunk.) We'll bury it in the garden with the robins that the cat's been killing.

And there it lies now, buried between the nectarine and the plums.

Chief asked if nighthawks were really hawks.

Nope. Actually related to whippoorwills, in the goatsucker family. (I have no idea how that family got that name.) Which seemed to please him for some reason.

I'm guessing he's a transplant from the East, and has been missing his whippoorwills. Now, every summer evening as he makes his patrols and watches the nighthawks swooping above town, he can think about home.

And whippoorwills.