Bald eagles are all about Fresno. Who knew? Points off to the SF Chronicle for this dig at our lovely city:

They weren't the first bald eagles I'd ever seen in the wild, but they were by far the easiest. Instead of journeying to an icy fjord in Alaska or some rainy, pine-scented forest in the North Cascades, we were on the outskirts of Fresno.

Yes, that Fresno.

To see some bald eagles outside of the Chaffee Zoo, head over to the Millerton Lake State Recreation Area in Friant in January or February.

Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered. This message has been brought to you by The Collegian.

A weekly updated list of pet service agencies runs in The Bee most Saturdays. And if your problem isn't too many pets, but one or two too few (i.e., your pet is lost), help is on the way.

From your nominations, The Fresno Bee selected several individuals and families in need of a little holiday cheer. We bring you their stories, in glorious multimedia. Macromedia Flash Player required.

Little Jimmy is going to be so disappointed. He had the prettiest dress all picked out. But then they went and cancelled Cross-Dressing Day at school...

This year, Fresno County dropped from second place in the nation for auto theft to sixth place. And clearly we have Rockstar Games to thank. With last month's release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, expect us to drop as far as eighth -- or maybe even as low as ninth -- place in next year's competition, as Fresno's buggy burglars discover that ripping off top-of-the-line virtual cars is a whole lot better than stealing over-the-hill real ones.

You gotta love Berkeley. When city officials run across an unattended shopping cart filled with stuff that might belong to one of the city's homeless residents, they put the cart's contents into a freezer to keep them safe until the owner can claim them.

People are moving to the Central Valley in droves, says the Public Policy Institute of California, which has just released a new report telling us where these folks are coming from and why. The report lays out statistics for the type of immigrants attracted by each of the four areas of the Valley (the four areas, north to south, are the Upper Sacramento Valley, the Sacramento Metro region, the North San Joaguin Valley, and the South San Joaquin Valley). For the most part, Sacramento brings in higher-educated migrants, while the new Fresnans have a more international flavor.

According to the Bee, the news out of this study is that Fresno and its fellow South Valley counties have got to diversify the economy or risk losing highly-skilled talent. The Public Policy Institute's press release emphasizes that many of these new Valley-ites are coming from other parts of California, especially the expensive coastal cities.

The Stockton Record talks to a couple of these coastal emigrants.

Creative Fresno, the consortium of locals aiming to transform Fresno into a boho paradise, has partnered up with CSUF's Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to survey Valley residents about what their ideal city would look like.

From the press release for the survey:

Creative Fresno hopes that the survey will help Fresno build on its strengths -- such as being affordable for entrepreneurs who are starting new ventures -- so that it can become a center of innovation and a destination for young artists, designers, and other idea people, Stearns said.

"All information gathered for the survey will be used to help Creative Fresno understand what characteristics of a location are important," he said. "No information about specific respondents will be released. The information will be aggregated to show trends that will be useful for community decision makers."

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