David Geary must be crying in his beer.

Alan Pugsley must be inconsolable.

Rob Tod must have that deer-in-the-headlights look that precedes disaster.

That’s because Geary, Pugsley, and Tod, three of Maine’s best brewers, have been beaten soundly in a beer-tasting competition.

By Budweiser.

I suspect my neighbors are terrorists.

I base this assessment mostly on keen insights, sharp deductions and paranoid delusions, plus the fact that the American flag sticker on their car (an import!) is getting tattered.

This weekend, hundreds of volunteers will spread out across southern Maine to count loons. Based on anecdotal evidence, they’re likely to find a lot of them.

And not just at the State House.

I have a deep and inexplicable affection for anything that’s been taxidermed.

Birds showing off their gorgeous plumage.

Deer displaying their impressive racks.

Bears flashing their fierce dental work.

Expired legislators posed as if they were sleeping through a lengthy debate.

Before I begin this week’s in-depth analysis of the important issues of the seven days just past, let me confess to a stunning and shameful inadequacy.

I am not a hockey fan.

I pay so little attention to hockey that I get it mixed up with other ice-related sports, such as curling, figure skating, and ice road trucking. But I’m pretty sure hockey isn’t the one where you drill holes in frozen lakes, sit on ice blocks in little shacks and drink heavily until somebody catches a fish or freezes to death.

That’s lacrosse.

Replicas of Christopher Columbus’s ships arrived in Portland Harbor this week. The Nina, the Pinta, and the Edmund Fitzgerald offered an authentic glimpse into the past (according to the Sarah Palin Institute for Revisionist History) by sending a landing party ashore to claim Maine in the name of Spain. Or Italy. Or one of those debt-plagued places.

It now seems likely that Maine will soon have to declare war on the People’s Republic of China.

That’s not a course of action anyone in this state wanted, but it has been forced upon us by Beijing’s belligerence, intransigence, and by those commies saying nasty things about Millinocket.

They could have disparaged lobster. We’d have let it slide.

They could have insulted the moose. Like that beast, we have thick skins.

I don’t like boring street names. Particularly boring street names that are also misleading.

For years, I lived on Pine Street in Portland.

No pines.

Spruce Street in the same city.

No spruces.

I moved across town to Prospect Street, but it didn’t result in any noticeable improvement in my prospects.

I also lived on Park Avenue in the same city. While Deering Oaks was right across the street, there was no place for residents to park their cars during snow storms, so that name was only half-accurate.

I’ve just returned home from spending Memorial Day weekend watching the Portland Sea Dogs play baseball. Or some rough approximation of the sport.

On the whole, my experience at Hadlock Field wasn’t unpleasant. The weather was warm. The beer was cold. The ballpark food was satisfyingly unhealthy. I should have been contented.

Instead, I wanted to punch somebody. Preferably, somebody in charge of assembling this team.

What do the following words have in common?

Eastern pipistrelle, eastern small-footed myotis, northern myotis, big brown, little brown myotis, eastern red, hoary, silver-haired, Bruce Wayne and Louisville Slugger.

That’s right, they’re all names you wouldn’t give to your newborn child.

Also, they’re all species of bats found in Maine.

I mention the bat connection not because I’m fond of bats (although I am), but because some of these night-flying creatures face a hideous threat: