Drew Barrymore gets me.

For that reason alone, I wanted to watch ``The Big Miracle.'' And we finally did when my daughter picked it out yesterday for our weekly Friday pizza and movie night.

A gray squirrel bolted before the meathead and I were even off the porch this morning.

``The Big Miracle'' is the tale of three gray whales trapped in rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle near Barrow, Alaska.

I figured it was a classic anti-hunting movie and I would get enraged. Oh, it had some of that in it.

Let's face it, it would have made more sense for the whale-hunting Alaskan natives to harvest, eat and utilize the whales rather than the international effort costing millions of dollars that rescued them.

Half a dozen Canada geese came off the cornfields and landed on the town pond as the meathead and I rambled up. They joined another four tucked out of the wind on the east shore.

I had expected to hear gun shots as we did our ramble. The waterfowl seasons in Illinois' central zone opened today. But I didn't.

Despite it's leaning toward the anti-hunting side, I find the movie very appealing in how it drew together sides diametrically opposed--Greenpeace and oil companies, the military of the Russians and Americans.

The movie made this out as being a great news event in 1988. I didn't remember it at all. Of course, I was single and 30 and rarely watched the news in those days. Plus, I have always favored newspapers.

Five doves, first I had seen on the morning rambles in weeks, flew off as we came from the end of the old rail bed and headed back toward town.

I wish I understood why Barrymore pulls at me so. She is not a classic beauty in any sense. Yet I am drawn to her like I am to no other actress. Maybe it is simply that she seems more complex, more filled with the oddities of being fully human.

Oh, there's a little bit near the end of the movie I just loved: Sarah Palin as a small-market TV sportscaster.

So many squirrels ran around that I quit keeping count. There were even multiple black squirrels.

Frost coated the windshield of my neighbor's car. I didn't realize it was that cold. Not a good sign when I get used to fall or early winter chill this quickly.