The Quest For Cooper's Hawk

 The machine at Walmart refused my debit card the other day, so I went to the Credit Union today to determine the problem.  I was given the phone number of the Fraud Department and instructed to ask them about it.  It seems there is a program in the system that detects suspicious activity that is inconsistent with your usual buying habits and locks your card when any is detected. 

After listening to the recorded instructions, I pressed "3" and got through to a real person.  He was polite enough, but I had trouble understanding him because of his accent.  It wasn't Asian, Hispanic, Black, Slavic, or Southern.  I am guessing something from the East Coast, possibly New York City.  He asked me if I had bought any "Cooper's Hot Wine" lately, at least that's what I thought he said, and I told him I had never heard of the stuff, which was the truth.  After asking him to repeat himself several times, I determined that what he really was saying was "Cooper's Hawk Wine".  What threw me off was that he pronounced "Hawk" like "Hock".  I told him that I had never heard of that stuff either, which was also the truth.  He then announced that my card had been compromised so he was permanently disabling it.  He told me to go back to my credit union and apply for a new card, which I will.

Thinking about it afterward, I remembered that I know what a Coopper's hawk is.  We see one around here from time to time, and I looked it up once in my bird book.  I've got a nice photo of one somewhere, and I'll see if I can find it later.  I supposed that someone had named a brand of wine after it and resolved to look it up this evening.  A short search revealed that it's not a brand of wine but a whole chain of winery/restaurants, several of which are in the Chicago area.  If you go there, tell them I sent you.  Just kidding, those people are likely as unaware of my existence as I had been of theirs.  It's kind of spooky, though, that some computer program that I didn't even know about knows all about me, including the fact that I have never been to a Cooper's Hawk restaurant.  I suppose, if that card hacker had just bought a case of beer at the Walmart, he would have gotten away with it.