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The resident hawk at my library. Any closer and he would have carried me away

Well, it’s been quite a week at Griffin Free, my library, out there on the edge of Lake Massabesic.

We had a big ol’ hawk out back, floating around, looking for dinner no doubt. (One of the librarians had dragged an unalived rabbit out into the general park area, but the hawk wasn’t interested in frozen dinners apparently.)

He’d settle himself at the top of one of our story trail signs and sit there like a king. From a distance he resembled a tremendous owl, or so said Rudy, one of our teen D & D club players who sat at the window of our teen nook, which gave everyone a straight shot view of the bird.

“Go on out and see if you can get a better look at him, Rudy,” I’d say. But Rudy wasn’t buying it being that he was a tiny kid himself and didn’t want to get carried away by a hawk.

Plus, with a bobcat that’s been roaming around out back for the past couple weeks, we’re thinking of charging a wildlife fee to take patrons back there - a kind of bedroom community library safari. Might have to set a weight and height limit soon if critters keep showing up.

Meanwhile, back around the front of the library, a pick up truck pulled up with an enormous donation delivery to be put toward our annual book sale in July - hundreds of excellent condition mystery books. We were rightly thrilled, of course, but with every gift comes a sacrifice and so it was this time as well.

The donor explained that the books were stacked for years in an old mill… and covered in corn starch. Well, that was a new one to us. We considered just recycling the whole thing, but one of the librarians brought in some gloves and face masks and I got a whole couple packages of wet wipes and we went to work. It took a while to clean ‘em off but we managed. We managed like we always do.

There’s a fella by the name of Bob Villa who swears that you can refresh musty old books by sprinkling corn starch on the binding, and maybe that’s why these decades old volumes were in tip-top shape. Bob Villa or not, we don’t recommend this method.

In retrospect, and given the state of affairs in the dairy aisle these days, perhaps we could have gathered the corn starch together and sold it as a egg replacement for baking.

At the very least maybe the hawk would have enjoyed a corn starch snack. Do wild animals eat corn starch?

That’ll have to be the topic for another time, because for now, that’s the news and views from Griffin Free, the little library where all the patrons are smart, all the librarians are helpful and all the children are above average.

Imagine that times 200, welcome to our work!