If the ancient wisdom found in Hollywood movies has taught us anything, it's that every hero and monster has at least one weakness, an Achilles heel that can lay low even the mightiest of them.  Superman has Kryptonite, vampires have wooden stakes and an aversion to sunlight, Austin Powers can lose his mojo, etc.  But until recently, we thought Bernie bin Laden was nigh invulnerable.  An unstoppable force of destruction that could be survived only by curling up in the fetal position and shrieking "Not in the face!"  But that was before he met his match at the beach, in the unlikely but deadly form of... a feather.

In fairness, it wasn't an ordinary feather.  It had a shifty look about it, as if it had fallen off the wing of a thuggish seagull from the wrong side of the harbor who had been raised on a diet of rancid bait stolen from sleazy fishermen (like Eliott on The Deadliest Catch).  It was the kind of feather you'd forbid your daughter to date.  The kind of feather you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.  The kind of feather Bernie bin Laden wasn't sure he wanted to tangle with at all.

The other dog in the video is Bernie's beach buddy Dewey (short for andouille, as in sausage), whose mom lives close enough to the beach that he gets to go there almost every day.  Bernie's inseparable partner Linda was there too, but doesn't appear in the video because she had more important things to do, like hoping Dewey's mom would feed her something.

This video shows only about thirty seconds of a skittish two-minute inspection, full of cautious sniffs, furtive pokes, and plenty of jumping a foot backward at the slightest hint of movement on the feather's part.  But I'm pleased to report that in the end, Bernie was victorious.  ALL HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO!

At least until he went to the beach again a few days later, and freaked out over every feather Dewey's mom made sure he saw...