The Boothbay Region High School team is the team to beat! On Friday, March 14, at 7 p.m., join the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library's third annual Adult Spelling Bee, and take on the BRHS team, which includes my neighbor Nathalie Gorey, the defending two-year champions. The fun takes place in the Boothbay Region High School gymnasium. Nothing more suspenseful than watching someone grapple with a really difficult word. One you know how to spell, of course.

Laudatory Lane: Draco Peaslee, for his 14.25-inch brook trout, first prize winner at the recent Boothbay Region Fish and Game Association's Kids' Ice Fishing Derby, and Barbara Belknap, performing in “The Pirates of Penzance,” coming up Friday and Saturday, March 7 and 8, at 7:30 p.m., matinees Saturday and Sunday, March 8 and 9, at 2 p.m. Tickets can be bought by calling 207-563-3424 or stopping tomorrow or Friday at the box office, 2 Theater Street, Damariscotta, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

This in from the Edgecomb Eddy School PTA: “You won't want to miss our spring book fair! It's Thursday night, March 13. As well as books for sale, there's going to be a fun family event for all ages.” The school can be reached at 207-882-5515 for more information.

Nature, on the whole, is seldom courteous. My neighbor Susie Stephenson was just over with the sad news that her alpha ewe, heavy with twins, had to be put down, as not able to deliver them. Since Susie had medicated her with penicillin, it was deemed not safe to use the meat, and so, a shallow burial in the woods beyond the house. But there comes an odd kind of triumph in the wake of tragedy. She observed a most lordly bald eagle, high in the naked branches of a winter tree, supervising a number of crows already at work on the carcass.

Writing this on the last day of this almost interminable shortest month of the year at 234 River Road, 207-633-2978 and jocam@tidewater.net.