Plumage and Pooh
I was sitting at breakfast this morning. I’m kind of the mystery man up here. Everybody, kind of knows my name, but most people can’t figure out why. I think the junior staffers are more intrigued as to why all the senior staff know me. The junior staff can't seem to figure out why I will go home at the end of the week. It's hard to explain to a sixteen-eighteen year old that is all about camp for the summer, why you don't come up for a whole summer anymore.
In preparation for another day of wallowing in bat pooh I headed into to town to pick up a 20 Amp circuit breaker and a few other electrical items we didn’t have in the camp warehouse. On the way out a female California quail walked across the road in front of me. I stopped to let her pass. –And I do mean I stopped. I was sitting in the truck on the road looking at her cross thinking about how silly the little feather is on quail, when a baby quail ran across the road, fluttering his wings in all the hurry of saying. “Moooommm, wait for me.” It was one of those personification moments that make you laugh. So I chucked a bit and raised my head in the process and spotted a red tail hawk sitting in a tree 20 feet away. He was facing away, surveying the lake and valley below, his read tail folded down and prominently displayed. He looked like a prince decked out for a little morning hunting, but still trying to decide if he wanted to bother. He turned, gave me a look, and then went back too looking at the lake, moving his red tail feathers around, saying “Hey, look what I got and you don’t” to me. It was about fifteen seconds into his little show of plumage that a black bird popped out of the sky and pecked him on the head. He never saw it coming. It kind of disoriented the hawk, and he lost his balance on the tree top and then his footing and he had to finally resort to opening his wings and flapping to keep from falling completely out of the tree. The black bird circled round for another attack and the hawk took flight across the meadow down to the lake, black bird in pursuit. I watched the blackbird chase the hawk for a quarter mile or so before returning to its nest. Having had my non-video entertainment for the day, I drove in to town.
Like I said, a lot of people have asked me over the years, why I gave up being camp director, in a word: Blackbirds.
In preparation for another day of wallowing in bat pooh I headed into to town to pick up a 20 Amp circuit breaker and a few other electrical items we didn’t have in the camp warehouse. On the way out a female California quail walked across the road in front of me. I stopped to let her pass. –And I do mean I stopped. I was sitting in the truck on the road looking at her cross thinking about how silly the little feather is on quail, when a baby quail ran across the road, fluttering his wings in all the hurry of saying. “Moooommm, wait for me.” It was one of those personification moments that make you laugh. So I chucked a bit and raised my head in the process and spotted a red tail hawk sitting in a tree 20 feet away. He was facing away, surveying the lake and valley below, his read tail folded down and prominently displayed. He looked like a prince decked out for a little morning hunting, but still trying to decide if he wanted to bother. He turned, gave me a look, and then went back too looking at the lake, moving his red tail feathers around, saying “Hey, look what I got and you don’t” to me. It was about fifteen seconds into his little show of plumage that a black bird popped out of the sky and pecked him on the head. He never saw it coming. It kind of disoriented the hawk, and he lost his balance on the tree top and then his footing and he had to finally resort to opening his wings and flapping to keep from falling completely out of the tree. The black bird circled round for another attack and the hawk took flight across the meadow down to the lake, black bird in pursuit. I watched the blackbird chase the hawk for a quarter mile or so before returning to its nest. Having had my non-video entertainment for the day, I drove in to town.
Like I said, a lot of people have asked me over the years, why I gave up being camp director, in a word: Blackbirds.
posted by Stan at 9:53 AM
3 Comments:
this proves your a puss. at willits, we rack up how many quail, kangaroo rats, and bunnies we can run over on the camp road. yes, we know you make 200k a year, you can shut up now.
A puss, nobody calls me a puss. You puss.
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