On the west side of Midway, south of Hegan Lane and north of the Midway entrance to Glen Oaks Memorial Park cemetery (http://www.chicowiki.org/Glen_Oaks_Memorial_Park), there is this mixed-media creation screwed to a wooden stake and stuck into the ground close to the cemetery's shrubbery. As you can see it appears to be a bird. The body of the bird looks to be made out of something like home-made brown papier-mache material. There are feathers (some obviously fake, and some possibly real), sparkly dots and paint. The eye of the bird is a stick-on "googly" eye. It appears to be on heavy card stock and is inside a plastic page-protector sleeve. On the back side of the card is written a name that looks like "Tomes" in nice, possibly female, adult handwriting in the upper right corner.

This does not appear to be a typical roadside memorial, such as you often see for accident victims - there are no crosses, flowers or any of the usual accouterments. A Google search of "Tomes AND Chico" reveals very little, except that there was an alumni of Chico State with that last (married) name who is now deceased (http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/cs/spring_03/in_memoriam.html#80), leaving a husband and child, but she did not live in Chico at the time of her passing, apparently in 2003. There is no "Tomes" in the telephone directory.

If anyone has any idea what this object is supposed to be, or its meaning, please let us know.