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Sunday will be a super day in America
Are you ready for some Super Bowl?
Did you pick up some of the 1.25 billion chicken wings that will be eaten tomorrow? How about one of the 5 million new television sets, or 14 million pieces of team apparel that will be bought for the big game? Will you be one of the 47 percent who thinks the most important part of the game is the game itself? Or are you watching for something else, like the commercials, or the 8 percent who just want to see Madonna at halftime?
These numbers, from the National Chicken Council and the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, offer a glimpse into our obsession with the big game. One more figure: The New England Patriots have been favored by about 2 points against the New York Giants. In other words, there’s no safe bet.
Now if the bird can just make it back
No doubt embarrassed about hitchhiking on the wrong vessel, a Laysan albatross who wound up in the back of a pickup truck in Los Angeles is presumed to be on the way back to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The seabird with a 7-foot wingspan is assumed to have landed on a cargo ship somewhere in the Pacific and remained a passenger all the way to the West Coast, where it hopped on the pickup to extend the voyage. The driver noticed the albatross and took it to the International Bird Rescue, which extended its journey away from Cabrillo Beach, where it was aimed and let loose for the self-propelled flight home.
Comrade albatrosses back home are not likely to believe the traveler’s tale, especially its four-day vacation spa at a California wildlife rescue center, ending with a clean bill of health.