I heart giraffes....

That's what the bumper sticker said on the back of the car I was following through the rain today: "I (then one of those Red Hearts) Giraffes".

I chuckled all the way home.

It's a wonder to me what people put on the back of their cars and trucks. I have four stickers myself: the state seal of West Virginia; a compass looking thing with the longitude and latitude of Oak Island, North Carolina; the red, white and blue seal of the Episcopal Church and a big old Obama '12 magnet.

I used to have a gold and blue magnet with the stylized WV of West Virginia University. But someone stole it when we were in Baltimore. You would expect such behavior in Pittsburgh, but not Baltimore. But then WVU is now in a athletic conference with teams from Texas, Oaklahoma and Iowa while the University of Pittsburgh is in a conference with teams from the Carolina's, Georgia and Virginia. Go figure. Don't get me started on the demise of college sports because money drives natural rivals (like Pitt and WVU--60 miles apart and connected by a river as well as an Interstate) to engage in competition with teams they hardly know. If you get me started on that, I'll lose the train of thought about stuff we put on our bumpers....

I'm fascinated by the little stick figures that must represent all the members (human and animal) of a family, usually on the window of SUV's. But I've also seen a sticker on a car or two that says, simply: "I HATE YOUR STICK FIGURE FAMILY'.

Some people, usually in Toyota Forresters, it seems to me, cover the whole back of their hatch back with left-wing, environmentalist, feminist, multicultural bumper stickers. I have come close to rear-ending them, trying to read as many of the 'equal pay', 'pro-choice', 'save the whales...and everything else', 'US out of ____', wherever we're IN at the time, "tax the rich" bumper stickers.
Whenever I find one of those tree-hugging, ultra-liberal Toyota's in a parking lot, I read them all and chuckle a bit at most of them.

Whatever you think of liberals, they have a much deeper and more expansive sense of humor than conservatives when it comes to bumper stickers. The best right-wing folks can do is "My German Shepherd is smarter than your Honor Student."

And when I see a car (or, more likely a truck, though I hate to label people: with one of those coiled rattlesnakes and the phrase, "Don't Tread on Me" on the bumper, I brake and drop back. No way I want rear-end a Tea Party member. That could get messy quick.

But I must say, "I heart Giraffes" is right up there with the picture of the earth and the phrase "Love Your Mother".

I heart giraffes too, now....