Early Bird Gets Revenge
One day in early March I was out on my usual morning walk along the lake trail, soaping up the silence and the solitude, when an inhuman screech startled me. I was standing on a section of path that overlooks the lake from an tree-lined embankment that drops about 25 or 30-feet to the water. I stopped and scanned the skies. There it was again. It was shrill and guttural, somewhere between a throaty squawk and a high-pitched scream coming from the lake.
I peered through a clearing in the trees and saw what I thought was a goose paddling around about 100 feet from the shore. I could make out a slender neck moving like a piston. Geese are prevalent in the area. They’re in all the usual water places—rivers, lakes, ponds, but you can also find them strutting around on baseball diamonds and soccer fields and basically anywhere they damn well please. Geese are real dicks, second only to Blue Jays who are bird Cosa Nostra. I love birds, but I stand by this. Sorry any National Audubon Society readers here! Then again, your organization is named after a racist enslaver, so many let’s not get a little too high and mighty, okay? I’ve had geese hiss and spit at me for no other reason (that I know of!) than because I had to walk just a little too close to them on an already crowded park or bike path. Hey geese--this is why Disney never made you the star of one of their animated feature films. Jerks.
So I almost moved on thinking it was just a goose up to some usual drama queen nonsense when the bird let out another yelp and, this time, rose up from the water shaking its enormous wings. A great blue heron. I’m lucky to live in an area with a robust heron population. Both great blue and night herons are easily spotted in lots of rivers and lakes and funky estuaries all over. Great blue herons are among the most common, totally recognizable by their freaky, beautiful prehistoric features: a long neck like a pipe cleaner supports a small, angular head with two, yellow reptilian eyes, which if you could actually get very close would bore into your soul. Its beak is both tool and weapon; it is slender, sharp, and lethally precise as a fencing foil. The heron has stork-like legs, a body draped in blue, grey-green, and white feathers, and wings that can unfurl up to 7-feet wide. Watching a heron in flight is grace in earthly form.
Herons typically hang out close to shorelines, banks, or outcroppings either standing like statues or picking their way stealthily through the water like ninjas. I’d never seen one that far out in the water or in such an agitated state.
She sounded again-that distinct, ugly cry that sounded like a Model-T car horn crossed with a saxophone that’s out of tune. But this time I saw what had her feathers in a twist. A bald eagle was coming in toward her as hot as a torpedo. Eagles are often sighted around the lake. I’ve had the enormous fortune of seeing them every so often sitting at the top of a 60-foot pine, looking like they owned the damn world, which, they kind of do. Their thick bodies and murderous talons are built for war. Their wings look like they could crush a small Volvo. The fierce awesomeness (in the literal sense of that word) of their physiques alone makes you feel instantly humbled and small. As you should.
The eagle spiraled downward in concentric circles as if taunting the heron. Her approach was never in question even as she appeared to take her time making her move. She came in low and close to the heron’s head. The heron shook her wings furiously, weaving, and glancing. The eagle propelled herself up again, completing another loop, but this time she came in lower, faster. Narrowly avoiding a strike, the heron lifted herself a bit out of the water and faded to one side. She squealed. The eagle wailed in reply.
I followed the eagle on her third ascent. I bit my lower lip. Three is a magic number, like the Schoolhouse Rock song taught us. Three wishes, three little bears, third time is the charm—it establishes a pattern. In comedy this means escalating to bigger and bigger laughs with some kind of satisfying funny pay-off. And what was the patten building to in this scene? Nothing to joke about, at least, I suspected and feared, not for the heron.
Firing on all cylinders, the eagle repeated her track, banking even more sharply as she came in, angling for the heron’s elegant jugular. I could barely watch. Here were these two majestic, beautiful, powerful animals in a battle of primal instinct and survival that had already been playing out in some form or another for eons. It was like Ali and Frazier. How could you root for just one? Damn the circle of life and Natural law and cosmic architecture bigger than we can ever see or know.
The heron sensed that perhaps she had overplayed her hand. In the urgent moments as the eagle, once again, soared up and around, gathering even more strength, speed, and determination, as if to say, “Go ahead water bird, I could do this all. damn. day,” the heron appeared to make some quick, calculated decisions. She began actually swimming back and forth, probably trying to figure out the fastest way to get the fuck out of dodge (finally!). Her incredible wings rose completely out of the water, droplets cascading down her plumage. In seconds she was in flight. She glided low to the water for a few feet before making a sharp right turn back toward the sandy stretch of public beach. The eagle continued on course, giving the heron a little bit of chase. If you’ve seen the movies, you know you don’t just crash the escape car through the gates of the cursed murder house and then stop. You keep going. You drive until you’re out of gas and then you run. The heron slid past the length of the beach. The eagle barreled right towards her before pulling up and lighting on a high branch in a nearby pine. The heron kept going (SEE? YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIES, TOO!), cruising along the shoreline before coming to a remarkably graceful stop where she tucked herself into the shelter of a stand of trees and underbrush basically underneath where I stood. Her head swiveled on her lovely neck with terrified vigilance. I could feel both our hearts racing.
I imagined the eagle felt pretty smug, satisfied, a lot of GOAT energy happening up in that pine. I was just about to turn away when additional movement in the patch of woods at the far end of the beach caught my eye. Three more eagles appeared, two that seemed slightly smaller. They soared over the water, circling around a little before joining the first eagle where she sat in the tree. Kind of late for back-up, I thought. But then I realized, no, not reinforcements: family.
And me, the lone witness; a nearly unreliable narrator if not for a handful of seconds that told an entirely different story.
Lens Zen!
It’s Window Box Rocks season! Something I just made up. I love window boxes so much! They add such zippy character and charm; it’s like staging a whole scene in minature. AND—they are really hard to muck up. This criteria is important to me who is the Destroyer of Plants and Flowers. But window boxes give you the home decore/gardening confidence you (I) definitely need!
Love this story. I've seen herons, and I saw egrets all over the place in Taiwan. I've never heard a heron, though - I was expecting maybe an immature barred owl (such an eerie cry). Also foxes. You don't want to know (hear) what the fox says.
P.S. The caption to the Pride Window Box was spot on.
What a great story, with a surprising twist ending! The natural world is lit!
Though I know animals kill each other all the time, I'm secretly relieved at how this played out. Can't we all just get along??!