God, I Wish That Were Me

The Rams and Seahawks played each other last night, in a game that gave us a weird double-punt and a Geno Smith sighting. That's what we call Thursday football, baby. But none of that is of any concern to me. What matters is only this: A big frickin' bird landed on a guy's head and I really, really wish I had been that guy.

That's Taima, the official mascot of the Seattle Seahawks, taking a detour during her in-stadium flight to land on one lucky Seattle fan's head and hang out for a bit.

There are few experiences more miserable than attending an NFL game, which more often than not amounts to spending an ungodly sum of money to stand around in a frigid bowl while watching your team get its ass kicked and hoping that you don't end up getting trampled in whatever brawl inevitably breaks out in your section. It is for these reasons that I have attended very few football games in my life, and yet now I am filled with a desire to fly to Seattle, buy a ticket to a Seahawks game, and enter the stadium with various bird-of-prey-attracting grubs stashed in my hair.

If I have one quibble with the Seahawks allowing Taima to zoom around in their stadium, it is only that Taima, an augur buzzard, is not a "seahawk" by any definition. The augur buzzard comes from eastern and southwestern Africa, and is known to make its habitat in woodlands and deserts. This bird does not even hang out near the sea! What's more, the osprey, a fish-eating bird of prey that is also quite handsome to look at, is sometimes referred to as a sea hawk. To be clear, I am not implying that the Seahawks should replace the noble buzzard Taima with an osprey, but rather that they should also acquire an osprey and allow that bird to be a secondary mascot, as this will increase the chances of a giant, glorious raptor landing on my head when I finally make it to Seattle with my grubs and fishes.