Sometimes you get a Yesterday to make a story…
And sometimes you are lucky enough to get Another Yesterday for another story.
Such is as it was with me.
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Yesterday.
Yesterday was a fine day. But this yesterday was a Saturday yesterday.
We woke early, as we do most days, but what sets Saturdays apart from our other days is Saturdays we meet our friend Margaret for breakfast at the Golden Corral.
But in the morning’s, before I do anything else, I put a cup of water in the microwave. Two and half minutes later, I’ll set Mike’s green tea to steeping. Another cup of water goes in the microwave for my first cup of instant coffee. (Stop yucking me. I love it.) Then I take our two little Yorkies out for a morning pee.
The sunrise was especially colorful this morning.
“How’s that go?” Mike asked. “Sailors delight?”
“Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morn, sailors be warned,” I recited.
I didn’t know that this is actually in the Bible. Although it’s not attributed to sailors in the Bible, it is in Matthew 16:1-3. See what you learn from reading the Bible!
My coffee water is a good temperature when I come back in from walking the dogs and I spoon a scant teaspoon of coffee in and give it a good stir. I don’t like it strong but what it lacks in strength I make up for in volume. I drink coffee all day long with my final cup being just after supper. Then it’s no caffeine tea for me after that if I have anything else.
Instant coffee gets a little skim of foam on top after stirring and I sip it off as I make my way to the computer desk. I set my coffee on the side table, not too close to the computer, not trusting myself to not spill it.
I slide into my seat. Open the lid of my laptop. Wiggle the mouse to wake up the computer. Hook up to the internet and navigate to Yahoo and my email account.
Every morning I type out a quick love letter to my sister, a habit I got into after the death of our sweet girl some six months ago now.
On this fine Saturday morning I had bacon on my mind. I don’t buy bacon anymore. We eat it once a week at our Saturday breakfast and that’s often enough for us.
Bacon! I wrote. And I thought of the dog treat commercial where the dog comes tearing down the stairs and through the house for a Beggin’ Strip and he’s thinking, Bacon! Bacon-bacon-bacon! So I wrote Bacon! a few more times.
Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!
We are going for breakfast
Love you a bushel and a peck!
Okay, maybe my bacon got away from me.
“What’s the deal with a bushel and a peck?” you ask.
A Bushel and a Peck was a popular song in the 50’s and Doris Day recorded a version of it. It was even in a movie. But I didn’t know any of that because the very first time I heard it was when my beautiful daughter-in-law Kandyce sang it to Andrew, just a newborn babe at the time.
“What is that song you’re singing?” I asked.
“A Bushel and a Peck. My mom used to sing it to us when we were little.” And since then I’ve asked her to sing it for me a couple of more times. Kandyce has a beautiful voice and I love to hear her sing.
I think about things sometimes.
I think about loving you guys.
I think about writing you stories and how it makes you feel connected and loved. I hope it makes you feel connected and loved!
I think about the little love notes that I write to my sister. It makes her feel loved. And I know it makes me feel loved when she always takes the time to reply to them. Especially knowing how busy she is.
I make a daily phone call to my mother. Sometimes we talk for a long time, sometimes we only exchange an “I love you.” And there are others too who are dear to my heart but what I was thinking was this.
Isn’t it funny how we all need different things to make us feel loved?
Okay, so I start my days pretty much the same way. Only on Saturdays, as I go about my morning routine, I watch the clock and make sure I’m ready to go by seven-fifteen. Golden Corral is only five minutes up the road and they don’t open until seven-thirty but Mike likes to be standing there when they unlock the doors.
After seeing the same faces Saturday after Saturday after Saturday you start to talk and you even become friends.
Chuck and Doris are just such a couple. They have been married over fifty years.
“I’ve been taking my bride to breakfast every Saturday mornin’ for the past fifteen years,” Chuck told us, still obviously in love with his wife.
And you miss them when they are not there. “Where were you! We missed you last week!”
“We had to go see a friend in North Carolina who’s dying of cancer. It’s probably the last time we’ll get to see him.”
And now Chuck and Doris tell us when they won’t be there for breakfast and of course, we do the same for them.
We enjoy our Saturday breakfasts with Margaret and all our Golden Corral friends and I know that our little dogs know when Saturday rolls around too because I always save them a little somethin’-somethin’ from my plate. A few scrambled eggs and a little chicken.
“Chicken?”
Our Golden Corral makes the best fried chicken and it’s on the breakfast buffet. I’ll eat the crispy’s and just bring some of the meat home for the girls. Once in a while Margaret will have a little too much bacon and rather than throw it away I’ll bring it home for them but bacon is full of nitrates and not really good for them. Mostly I try to stick to the things that aren’t too bad for them.
Itsy and Ginger have come to expect this Saturday morning treat and can be pretty insistent if they think I’m not getting my coat off fast enough. And sometimes I make them wait a little longer until I put another cup of water in the microwave too.
I give the girls their treat and even Macchiato, our tabby cat, shares in the booty. I make my coffee and head back to the computer to see if Phyllis has answered my morning love yet.
Yep. There it is. I open it up.
I like bacon a lot, she writes. But maybe not as much as you do.
And I laughed and laughed. She really tickles me.
I planed on spending the rest of the day writing so I thought I’d take the girls out for a walk first. It was cold but walking warms me and I head for the campground below the dam. I’m going to look for eagles again today.
I hadn’t gone far when I see a flag flapping from a dried brown weed. Is that a feather? And I stop to take a picture. If it is a feather the wind has pretty much shredded it. More likely it’s fluff from some plant or another.
On we go and I can hear the insistent yammering of a nuthatch long before I see him.
Sometimes I think the critters want me to take their pictures.
Around Baby Blue’s corner and we head into the campground.
When I wrote Yesterday I Googled eagles and found out that it is NOT legal to possess one of their feathers.
No matter. It didn’t stop me from uttering my little prayer.
Lord, it’s just man’s law that says I can’t have an eagle feather, not Yours. I’d really like to have one.
Now, let me just say that I know God commands us to obey man’s laws too, so long as they do not conflict with His, but we are not talking about a speed limit here, we’re talking about a feather.
“A law is a law,” you say.
True. But... and there’s always a but... speed limit signs are to keep us all safe. Not possessing an eagle feather keeps the eagles safe. People would kill eagles for the feathers. I would never do that.
“Peg, that sounds like justification to me,” you say.
It is, but I truly didn’t believe I was doing anything wrong.
Past the pond and into the campground we go.
There’s the deer remnant.
See, I told you there wasn’t much left. Ginger thinks she has to go smell it but I hold her back. I don’t want her to pick up any bugs or diseases.
“Peg, you didn’t have to show us that!” you admonish.
“Whatever!” I say. I know. It’s not nice to say whatever, it’s dismissive. But if you hate that, you’re really going to hate what’s coming up.
A lot of times we leave the roadway and walk along the edge of the woods. And that is what I decided to do on this day. We’re walking along the edge of the woods and as we get near the dam I see the high water mark from our recent flooding. The first thing I notice is all the trash and beer bottles! The second thing is all the dead fish. Oh my goodness! They were all over the place! If they come in with the water, why don’t they go back out with the water? I wondered. Then I come upon an ancient species of fish called a paddlefish or spoonbill.
Aww. He’s broken.
These fish can get big, commonly five feet long and sixty pounds but this one was only a couple of feet long, not counting his bill.
You would think there would be birds all over the place eating this smorgasbord that the flood served up, but there wasn’t. I guess there was too much of it.
I keep walking and I spot a driver’s license.
I pick it up, wipe the dirt from it and look at the picture. A girl. Then I look at her name. Margaret Katherine. I’m Margaret and my daughter was Kathryn. Spelled different. I look at the date of birth. August 25, 1981. My Kathryn’s birth date, just a year later. I see the license is expired. Five years ago. I wonder how it came to be there among the debris where I found it. I tuck it in my pocket. I’ll see if I can find her on Facebook and ask if she wants it back.
A little further on and I see ice! It was hanging from everything! It was mesmerizing.
A hundred and forty-five photos later we move on.
Birds catch my attention. There’s three or four of them flitting from one branch to another. Then this one stops.
It’s a bluebird!
I hardly ever get lucky enough to capture one of these beauties and he posed for me for so long that I moved on before he did.
“Thank you,” I tell him as I go.
I know.
I’m silly.
A plastic grocery bag, stuck in a tree, the water freezing as it dripped out a hole in the bottom.
To me, this is more disgusting than a dead animal. At least the dead animal will be food for another critter or bugs or in the very least will go back into the soil to nourish the earth.
A plastic bag?
A plastic bag can take anywhere from twenty to a thousand years to decompose. But the most disquieting thing about a plastic bag is that they can become serial killers.
Now I am at the place where I normally see the eagles and there are no eagles here. There are fishing boats on the river today and I am guessing that they are keeping the eagles away. I decide to walk deeper into the campground. My neighbor told me that he has seen as many as twenty-five eagles at the other end of the camp ground.
Twenty-five!
My route to the back takes me along the flood line and I see a second paddlefish! This one twice the size of the first one.
Then I see one of these things laying there. How does that happen? How do you lose your bra?
“I can think of one way, Peg!” you say.
Yeah, well, how do you just go off and leave it. Those things are expensive!
On we go and I come to some old trees with their roots exposed. If I ever knew there was a hole through the middle of this one, I’d forgotten.
We keep going and I’m almost to the end of the campground and as far as you can go until you hit water and that’s when I see it.
Look!
Is that…
Is that…
Is that the mottled feather of a juvenile eagle?
Truly, I do not know if it is an eagle feather or not, but I am going to chose to believe it is.
And I smile at my God. I asked for an eagle feather and I got an eagle feather. Now I’m thinking I should have been a little more specific in my prayer request. Although I envisioned the feather of an adult, I only asked for the feather of an eagle.
Thank you Father.
I look around to see if there are any more feathers. That’s not being greedy, it’s being thorough. I don’t find any but I did find something I never thought I’d see.
“What’s that?” you ask.
And that is a fish in a tree.
I get to the end of the campground and I see three juvenile eagles in a tree across a feeder creek and I was as close to them as I was able to get.
I didn’t see twenty-five eagles but I got a feather!
The girls and I head back out and I see a tree eating what looks like a light fixture.
You either shrink back from the challenges in life and become scarred and deformed or you absorb them and go on to be strong.
Our walk continues and a splash of yellow catches my eye.
Look at that, would ya!
Even in the mist of the destruction and debris left by the floodwaters, a lone dandelion struggles to hold on.
And you can eat those things too!
We get back out to where I normally do my eagle watching and I see a juvenile on a branch tearing at something he grasped between his talons and the branch.
His head came up and I see a piece of flesh as he tosses his head back and gulps it down. We are at the dam; I assume it’s a fish. I picked Ginger up so she wouldn’t run ahead and spook him and he sat there on the branch and ate a few more bites. He watched me but didn’t take off. I get around to the front and he isn’t all that concerned about me as he uses a branch to clean his beak. At least I think that’s what a bird is doing when they scrape their beaks back and forth across a branch.
When I get all the pictures of him I think I want I turn my attention to another tree and there sat six eagles, four of them juveniles.
I get a few photos of them but not being close enough to get anything really nice, I turn to go and what do I see! Three more eagles sitting in a tree!
Gosh, what a day! I saw more eagles at one time then I’ve ever seen before!
Feeling very pleased I head for home when another eagle comes in for a landing and lands on a branch almost over my head!
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Sunday I sit in front of my computer, my coffee close by and I write my love to my sister.
I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!
Extrapolating from yesterdays response…
You love me too but maybe not as much as I love you? I wrote.
Nope! I love you more! She writes me back. And I smile.
<<<<<>>>>>
And so my Another Yesterday went and is gone a week ago now.
I have been asking Momma to proof my letters and stories for me before I send them out and after reading this one my mother had a little talk with me about the definition of illegal and who is exempt.
“It doesn’t matter if you intend no harm Peggy! It is illegal!”
And you know what?
She’s right.
I went back to the internet and learned that if you find an eagle feather you are to leave it alone or contact the conservation department. They will most likely have you send the feather to them.
Okay. So be it.
I did it, I owned it.
I sent the feather picture to the Missouri Department of Conservation for identification and have been waiting all week to hear from them.
“The ornithologist believes this to be a body feather from a gull,” Kristie from the MDC let me know just yesterday.
No more wishing or praying for an eagle feather for this girl!
Lesson learned.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Hi everyone!
My current desktop photo is taken from Yesterday, the last story I wrote. I really like this picture and think it would be pretty blown up and printed on canvas. Will I do that? Probably not.
Mike and I got to keep Andrew for a whole work day one day.
Kandyce’s mom Pat had to have back surgery. She has a herniated disc and is in a lot of pain. So the decision was made to have the operation and the date was set.
As so often happens, Murphy’s Law kicked in and Kandyce’s substitute babysitter backed out for the day of the operation.
“What are you going to do with Andrew?” I asked Kandyce when she told me.
“I’ll have to take him with me.”
Operations, no matter how many times they have been performed or how ‘safe’ they are, always have a risk factor. Just waiting for word is very stressful. Who needs the added stress of a toddler?
“Mike and I will watch him for you,” I volunteered us both.
Kandyce was thoughtful for a moment. “Are you sure you want to? I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, it could be all day.”
I had to think about that for a second. “All day? Oh. Wait. You mean just until Kevin gets off work at 3:30 and comes to get him?”
“Yeah.”
“Heck, that’ll be a breeze!”
The morning of Pat’s operation Kandyce dropped Andrew off on her way up to the hospital in Jeff City. Andrew headed for his toy box and played all morning. He’s got a crane with a hook on it. When he was here a week or so ago I picked up a little pink ring (left over from the Halloween party) and hung it on the hook. Since then I’ve hung other things on the hook but Andrew considers the pink ring the right thing and that’s all he wants on it.
“Take a picture,” Andrew says and puts the lizard on the table in front of me.
I took a picture.
“What’s the matter Andrew?” I asked when I saw his face all scrunched up.
“That,” he says pointing at my camera. I think the flash bothered him, what do you think?
The morning went smooth and drama free. At lunch Andrew ate a little cucumber but mostly just wanted his apple. I think he might have eaten just one piece of the chicken I put on his plate so it’s lucky he had help with his lunch.
I’m sitting at the table and I see some stuff on the rug. I should get out the dust buster, I think then I remember that it’s noise scares Andrew.
What would happen if I let Andrew do it? I wondered.
“Andrew,” I called to get his attention. “You see that thing on the rug right there?” and I pointed to it.
“Um hum,” he says with his mouth closed.
“Why don’t you get the little vacuum out and pick it up?”
Andrew starts looking for the vacuum! Wonder of wonders! It was working! I pointed to the bottom shelf of the rack where the dust buster lives. “It’s right there.”
Andrew came over and picked up it up. He had to use two hands.
Now the moment of truth. “You have to turn it on,” I told him. “Right there,” and I showed him the slide switch but he couldn’t manage it. I turned it on while he held it and I wouldn’t have been surprised had he dropped it and ran away but he didn’t. Once on, he went around and picked up all the little bits of stuff off the carpet.
Maybe being in control of the beast made it less scary?
Ginger didn’t care who was on the end of that noisy monster, she didn’t want anything to do with it and took shelter on her daddy’s lap.
Finally nap time rolls around. “Let’s take a little nap.”
“No,” he says vehemently shaking his head. He was holding a little dinosaur and started rolling it around in his fingers.
“Come on. Let’s change your bottom and lay down for a little bit.”
He screws his little face up, his eyes start to get red, his chin quivers and he’s trying hard to hold back the tears.
“No.” And the tears spill down his cheeks.
“Yes.” I got a dry diaper and changed him, talking to him the whole time. “After you nap we can play in the water,” I tell him. Andrew loves to get up to the sink with all the little plastic dishes Pop-pop and I bought him. Unfortunately pink and white was the only color scheme I could find but Andrew doesn’t seem to mind.
“No,” he sniffles and wipes his eyes on his arm.
I get him put back together, pitch the diaper, wash my hands and turn to Andrew who just sat there looking miserable at the prospect of a nap.
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Andrew let’s go lay on Pop-pop’s bed.”
“No,” and the tears start again.
“Yes, just for a little while. You don’t have to nap but let’s lay down for just a few minutes.”
“No, no,” he says as I reach for him.
I take Andrew in the RV and set him down. “You wanna lay down under the table in Itsy’s bed?” I ask him.
“No.”
This was not getting us anyplace! “Okay, where would you like to lay down?”
He turns and points at the drivers seat. Okay, I think to myself, he wants to lay on the floor under the steering wheel. I get a blanket and a little pillow and Andrew sits down on the step by the seats in the front of the RV. “There you go,” I said when I had a bed made. I thought it was what he wanted and expected he would just climb into the little nest.
“No,” he says shaking his head.
“Yes. You have to lay down for a little bit.”
Andrew points at the drivers seat. “You want to sit in Pop-pop’s seat?”
“Yeah.”
Finally!
“Okay, come on.”
Andrew, still holding his dinosaur, climbs in the seat, still a little weepy and wiping at his eyes. I turned off the lights and sat in the other seat, in front of my computer and as I work I watch out the corner of my eye as he quiets. Before long he shifts a little and slumps over. That does not look comfortable, I think and wait a little longer until he’s really sleeping then I get up, take his picture and move him a little so he is more laying in the seat. I found a little blanket and covered him and he slept for two hours!
When Andrew woke up we got out all his little dishes and I put the step stool up to the sink. Andrew stripped down to his diaper, I put the stopper in the sink, got a nice slow flow of water going and he filled the tea pot and dumped water into cups then filled the teapot again and again even drinking from the teapot. Once the sink was full I shut the water off. He got down and got his dinosaurs and made plates into floating islands. Then he got down again and came back with some little cars and trucks who found islands of their own. Andrew is clever and creative and I enjoy watching his antics. Forty-five minutes later his daddy came to get him.
“How’s Pat?” you wonder.
Later on that evening there was an update on Facebook. Pat came through the surgery, was in a lot of post-op pain but maintained her sense of humor. And just so you have a face to go with a name, this is a pre-op photo that Krysten, Kandyce’s twin, took of their mom.
Andrew gave me my name, Mimi, his other grandma, Pat is Ma-ma and his Aunt Krysten is Chichi.
Now speaking of children…
Let me introduce you to the newest member of our family.
Kaydence Ann Coe came into the world on January 11th at six-o-six pm weighing eight pounds, one ounce . Kaydence’s parents are Tylar, our grandson...
and his woman Maddison Bylerey.
Isn’t Kaydence a beauty!
And with that, we shall call this one done.
Lots and lots of love,
Peg and Mike
Yesterday.
Yesterday was a fine day.
Our new tenant Kathryn was here last week and saw the purple butterfly that I made for cousin Stacey.
“You made that?” she said.
Of course I glowed. “Yes.”
“You cut the glass and everything?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t know people could do that,” she said. Then she started to back-peddle a little. “Of course I knew that people did that, but I didn’t know that just anybody could do it.”
I smiled. I knew exactly what she meant and I didn’t think she was stupid for saying it either. “At least you are finding out now when you are young. I didn’t know people could do it either until about ten years ago,” I told her. And I remember the first time I saw someone cut glass and make beautiful things and that someone was Cork, Mike’s brother. He handled the glass so casually it seemed almost reckless to me and I was freaking out. But I am going to blame that on my Momma. All the time we are growing up our mothers warn us about glass, and I found those warnings coming out of my mouth as Cork demonstrated glass cutting for me. “Oh my gosh! You’re going to get cut!” I’d say. Or, “Be careful!” I can look back now and laugh at myself.
“Would you like to come and make something?” I asked Kathryn.
Her face brightened, “Can we?”
“Sure!”
“I’d love to make an owl,” says the girl with an owl tattoo on her forearm.
“Ok. An owl it is!”
We made a date for the following Wednesday and that Wednesday was yesterday Wednesday.
After doing my morning chores I spent the rest of the morning looking through projects and photos for a simple owl pattern. And what catches my eye? A very elaborate and gorgeous owl that I’d love to make for one of the beautiful ladies in my life. (I can’t say who, it would ruin the surprise, besides, I may never make it.)
Oh, I’d love to make that one, I think to myself when I see a simple white owl.
It wouldn’t be too hard to make. Then I found an even simpler owl, sitting on a branch with a big full orange moon behind it. He had a brother piece that was a bat flying in front of the same full orange moon. Boy wouldn’t Kandyce (lover of all things Halloween) like those, I think.
But for this day, for teaching Kathryn, I couldn’t make up my mind which one to choose. Maybe I’ll pick out a couple and let her choose. So I picked out a couple of owls and made the patterns to save us time and as I sat here cutting the pieces I’m thinking about the amount of time it will take a beginner to cut, grind, foil and solder five to twelve pieces. Time. Hmmm. It will take a lot of time. Then I’m cutting out one of the owls and it has just two pieces, a body and a beak. They use glass gobs for eyes which the pattern called for them to be foiled and soldered on top, and I’m looking at it and I’m thinking, It would be a lot easier to just glue those pieces on. They make a glue called E6000 that will glue glass onto glass and it’s really strong. I’m not going to give her a choice, we are going to make this one.
Once I made up my mind and had the pattern cut, I set about the business of getting the equipment out, set up and ready to go. The only place I have to work right now is my kitchen counter and even though it takes me a little bit of time, I don’t really mind doing it.
I had everything ready to go and it was still an hour until Kathryn was supposed to be here.
I think I’ll make one so she can see what it’ll look like.
I cut and ground the glass, chose scalloped foil, bent my wire for wings, picked the eyeball color and put it all together. It didn’t take me long and it turned out really cute!
Then Kathryn came and we worked through all the steps of making these cute little guys.
She broke her first one and had to start over. She was apologetic.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’ve broken lots of pieces. It just takes practice.”
Then my twelve o’clock alarm went off.
“Kathryn, that’s my alarm to call my mother. So, if it’s okay, I’ll go call her while you cut that one out, okay?”
“Sure,” she said.
I figured standing over her shoulder wasn’t helping any. I’d already given her the principals and now I would give her a little space. I walked away and made my daily call to Momma.
“How ya’ doin’?” I asked Kathryn when I came back.
“All right. I broke his ear a little right here but I kinda like it. It gives him character,” she said.
All in all Kathryn did well, only cut herself a little, and her owl was every bit as cute as the one I made and she loves it.
“I think I’ll give it to my grandmother,” she said.
“Want to try another one sometime?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said and we made a date.
“I can even pay you for it,” she said.
I truly enjoy making and giving and sharing and as long as it’s just a few little pieces, I don’t mind, and I told her so.
After Kathryn left I decided I had enough time to take Itsy and Ginger out. The weather was mild and we’d head down to the campground and look for eagles. Gosh those birds are so beautiful. So majestic. “And I’d really like to find an eagle feather,” I told Momma on the phone.
“It might not even be legal to possess one,” Momma said.
I don’t know.
I start down the hill and Ginger takes off on a deer path. Normally I’d rein her in and bring her back to the road but on this day, on this fine Wednesday, I decided to follow the path a little ways just to see what I could see.
Hey! There’s Angie’s Bucket.
“What’s Angie’s Bucket?” you ask.
Years ago I took a picture of an old rusted bucket, on this very hillside, nestled in the leaves of fall and Angie loved the photo!
“Can I print and frame it?” she asked me. Being as she is the mother to my very handsome grandson Cody, I gave her permission. Every since then I think of the photo of this bucket as Angie’s Bucket.
Maybe Angie would like to see where her bucket is now, I think and snap a few photos of it.
A little ways down the path I see another bucket!
Well now I don’t know which one is Angie’s Bucket! And I take a picture of that one too!
This time of year there really isn’t very much to photograph but if I look hard enough I can usually find something. Today, however, I had an agenda and that agenda was taking eagle photographs at the campground below the dam. I was a little bit under the constraints of time. I needed to be home in time to start dinner and if I find something interesting, I can spend a long time taking photos. I know this about me so I decided to not even look. If there were eagles to photograph at the dam, I wanted to spend as much time there as I could so I didn’t dawdle overmuch, got back on Valley Road and set our course for the dam.
We get to the curve right before the campground and I think of Baby Blue. This is where I went a little ways into the woods and made her a bed and laid her to rest. I wonder how she’s doing? I know. I’m weird. I’ve seen dead animals before. Lots of them as a matter of fact and I’ve seen them in all stages of death. No matter what she looks like I’ve probably seen it before.
“Ginger!” I call to the little dog who normally leads me on the end of a sixteen foot leash. She stops, turns and looks at me. “Let’s go this way.” Ginger didn’t hesitate as she came running back to me and her little nose picks up the scent of the deer path I’m standing in front of and I keep her leash short as we head into the woods. I keep scanning the area ahead of me, looking for glimpses of white fur amongst the dead brown colors of winter, prepared to turn and go back if I find the sight too disturbing, but I didn’t see anything. We get closer and closer and still there were no signs of Baby Blue. Then I am there. Standing right over the spot I left her. She’s gone.
Sigh.
Ginger, always ready to push on, has to be told if there is a direction reversal. “Ginger! This way!” I give a little tug indicating I wanted her to come back and she complies.
Back on the road, around the corner and we are there, at the pond, at the head of the campground. There is still a skim of ice on part of it despite the fifty degree temps.
A fresh bloom of bright green algae at the edge of the ice in the shallows catches my attention.
I only take a few pictures as I again turn my sights to the dam and much hoped for eagle pictures.
“And your eagle feather, Peg. Don’t forget about that.”
I didn’t forget about my eagle feather. In fact, I offered up a little prayer.
Lord I’d really like to have an eagle feather.
What are you going to do with an eagle feather?
I don’t know but I’d really like to have one.
It’s the wrong time of year. They don’t drop their feathers in the winter.
You could arrange it for me. You could have him reach back and pluck a feather and drop it to the ground for me to find. Surely he won’t miss one feather?
The Bible says we are to ask for what we want. It may not be in God’s will to give it to us, none-the-less we are to ask.
I asked.
The road into the campground below the dam takes us past the remnants of a small deer. Not much left but bits of hide, hoof and bone. (Yeah, I have pictures but I will spare you.)
After this I become aware of a great rushing sound.
Are the gates open? I wonder. They weren’t the last time I was there. We get past the trees and I see that indeed they were. Some, if not all of the flood gates of the dam were open. Not as far as when we had the flooding but they were open.
We get closer and I see all of the gates are open and I see a rainbow! A dam rainbow! A dambow! All thoughts of eagles go out my head as I start taking photos of the refraction and dispersion of the sun’s light on the misty waters falling from the dam. I zoom in and see the birds swooping in and out of the turbulent waters, fishing I assume.
A hundred pictures later I again think of the eagles. The trees where they normally perch are a little further into the campground.
“Ginger!” I call. “This way!” And I head her away from the dam.
There’s one!
My heart always soars when I see these huge birds of prey.
I zoom in as tight as I can go and I see he’s looking at me and I feel a hint of fear.
“Peg, you’re silly. With all the food around they’re not going to bother you!”
I know, right! That’s what I think too. However you would be stupid if you didn’t respect the strong talons and sharp beak of this mighty predator.
Then I see another eagle. This one still has the mottled feathers of a juvenile. I see him land on a tree not far from me. I snap a couple of more pictures of the adult and as I head to the other tree, the young’n takes flight.
I snap pictures as he turns and glides on currents of air, mesmerized by his grace and command of the elements.
Then he lands back in the tree he took off from.
Yeah, he sees me too. They have eagle eyes, you know.
These birds can reach as much as fourteen pounds. Do you think they worry about the branch breaking under them?
No.
They don’t trust the branch, they trust their wings.
I scan the ground under the trees where they perch and I see their droppings, but no feathers.
Oh, well.
Time to head for home.
We are heading out of the campground and I see an armadillo before either Ginger or Itsy do.
I snap a few photos and that catches the girls attention. Itsy and Ginger perk up their ears and look in the direction my camera is pointed but they didn’t see him until he moved. Then they bark and the only pictures I get after that are armadillo butt and who wants to see armadillo butt!
On we go and we are walking past the pond when a floating spot catches my attention. I bet that’s a turtle nose, I think and zoom my camera in as far as it will go and snap a few pictures.
I can’t tell, with these old eyes of mine, if it really is a turtle or not. Many times I’ve photographed things I thought were critters only to find out after seeing them on the computer that it was a stick or twig or leaf or bit of garbage or whatever.
On we go and a few feet further on I turn and look. The floating spot was gone and I smiled. It was a turtle!
I have dawdled much too long so I decided to take the shortcut, across the grass and up the hill to the Strip.
Ginger starts pulling.
She smells something, straining at the leash to get to it.
“No!” I tell her and pull her back. Judging from past experience the only thing she finds in the grass is something from the south end of a north bound animal! I glance at where she was headed and saw a gray blob. Sometimes poo from some critters is gray or maybe it’s just old, I don’t know. It might be a puff ball, I think and I decide to investigate. If you step on puff balls little clouds of smoke puff out. Does it help them disperse their spores? I don’t know but I try to do my part.
I kicked it with my foot first, just in case it wasn’t a puff ball and I could tell it wasn’t.
What is that!
And I bent down, looked at it a little closer and picked it up. I’ll be darned! I was so excited that I just had to tell someone! I dug my phone out of my pocket and who do I call? My mother.
Momma picked it up on the second ring. “Hello,” she says.
“Momma guess what I just found!” I exclaimed.
“I can’t imagine what you may have found.”
And I knew she wouldn’t guess what it was but sometimes she’s a good sport and makes wild guesses.
“I found an owl pellet!”
“You did!”
“Yep! It’s the first one I’ve ever found in the wild.”
“Where did you get those that you gave me before?” she asked.
“Oh, that was when we were in Arizona and the owls were roosting in an abandoned building. I knew there would be pellets there.” The man who was showing us around the property thought it was owl poop and I explained to him that it wasn’t, it was an owl pellet.
“I don’t know how it came to be out here in the middle of the field though,” I told her.
“I can’t either. I thought they expelled the pellet when they roosted.”
“Peg! What’s an owl pellet?” you ask.
Owls can’t digest the fur and bones and claws of the rodents they eat so it comes back up - in pellet form.
“How in the world did you know what an owl pellet was?” you wonder.
Often times I’ve heard the owls hooting in these woods and I’ve mentioned it to Momma a time or two while talking with her on the phone. She told me when she was a little girl she used to go looking for owl pellets and that’s when I found out what an owl pellet was.
“Technically Ginger found it,” you say.
Man! You guys are tough! Ginger didn’t know what it was either so I get to claim it.
What a day! I didn’t get my eagle feather but I did get an owl pellet. Oh that reminds me…
Thank you Lord. I couldn’t be happier if it had been gold!
I know.
I’m silly.
