Last we heard about Violet the NYU hawk mommy, she was in trouble. Her leg was seriously injured and it looked like she wouldn't survive. Luckily, as City Room reports, Violet has been captured and is receiving treatment for her necrotic foot. Violet is described as being in "good spirits."

Little does she know that Bobby, her mate, was seen in Washington Square Park with a different mature female a day after Violet's capture.

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Unfortunate news for followers of the plucky hawk family that had a miracle baby named Pip at NYU's Bobst Library last spring: Violet, the mother, is having serious problems with her leg. The leg has a band around it and has been bothering her since before the Hawk Cam days, and City Room reports that it is now in seriously bad condition. Watch the video from wildlife photographer Lincoln Karim:

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​Mifflinville, Pennsylvania's most famous resident has been chopped down and is now in place, "hoisted," as it were (is that what we're calling it these days?) and waiting to bring you Christmas joy and excessively festive tidings at Manhattan's own world holiday (Rockefeller) Center. He/she is 74 feet tall, and hails ethnically from Norway, and spruces. Soon, 30,000 lights and five miles of wire will cover his/her branches. Gorgeous, dahling.

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People who dislike treehouses are clearly not to be trusted.

​While we are somewhat irritated with the title of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith's classic and wonderful coming-of-age novel, being co-opted for anything imaginable related to Brooklyn, we have to say that Alexandra Meyn's Brooklyn treehouse, which appears in the New York Times with the of-course-they-did headline "A Treehouse Grows in Brooklyn," is pretty awesome, and Smith herself might have enjoyed it. We would go there, and drink some wine, and dish, if she were to invite us, in a hot minute. We would even bring the wine.

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​A tax on Christmas trees -- Christmas trees! -- has been approved by the Obama administration, to raise $2 million to pay for an ad campaign that will explain the benefits of live trees over fake ones. Does anyone really need to be explained the benefits of live trees? In brief, they smell better, and then they die and leave needles everywhere. But at any rate, the tax has been approved, the advertising will commence at some point, and, unless the tree growers pick up the tax (which is euphemistically being called a "charge"), you will pay 15 more cents for your Christmas tree -- or perhaps you will buy a fake one to save your 15 cents, and the effort of cleaning up all those damn pine needles.

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"Upon whom shall I defecate?"

​Birds can do it all. They fly, have hollow bones, eat worms all day, and live in houses made of sticks and spit. If you think birds can't get any more amazing, think again. Researchers at the University of Kyoto have found that Bengalese finches follow a pitch pattern in their tweets that is essentially grammatical. Danielle Perszyk writes in Scientific American that the study found "the birds responded strongly to tunes ordered with certain structure, even when this structure was artificially constructed." Birds may be the only species that can drop a dookie on you from one hundred feet in the air while correcting your use of a split infinitive.

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New York Shitty

​Before occupying Wall Street, before bedbugs, before the summer of the rat, there were vicious raccoons, who would just as soon swing into your garden and destroy it, or come in through your window (and, somehow, manage to decapitate themselves in a suicide mission within your kitchen cabinets) as they would look at you. Now, via New York Shitty, the raccoons are back. And they want to look at you, creepily, through your window! They are everywhere! They are terrifying.

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​This just in to add to your terrifying end-times-esque tales of animal takeover (see also: Crabs in Antarctica! Mountain lions in Connecticut! Ladybugs on Long Island!). Thanks to climate change, so say the scientists, the ole armadillo, 'dillo for short, is moving on from his Texas home, where he arrived in the 1880s, to seek out more scintillating eastern territories (he has already appeared in southern Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri). Next stop: Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, and possibly even New Jersey. Can New York City be far off, then?

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​Necessity is the mother of invention, and we need a 6-foot terra cotta flower planter that looks extraordinarily like Texas Governor/wannabe presidential nominee Rick Perry. It is for sale on eBay for $4,500 (local pick-up offered in Blanco, Texas). "The outline of his hair is surprisingly accurate, with holes throughout to grow lush grass, flowing ivy or flowering plants. Prayer plants might be appropriate," writes the eBay seller, Momdogger.

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This video recently released by the National Park Service shows what it was like inside the Washington Monument during the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Virginia, sending vibrations up the Northeast coast, last month. It is unexpectedly scary!

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