Eagles!

          You know, I saw something once, on FaceBook I believe, that said something about Nardone Bros. Pizza. It was something like, "You know you grew up in Pennsylvania if you've ever had this pizza." Or maybe it was, "If you love this pizza, then you grew up in Pennsylvania." Or maybe it was a combination of the two, I don't remember now. But I spent the first 19 years of my life in Pennsylvania as well as the last two years and I'd never had it.

          Since then I've noticed it in several stores in our area. I'm sure it's always been there, Nardone's have been in business since 1942, but Mike and I don't normally buy take-and-bake pizzas and Nardone's is fresh, never frozen (although you can freeze it — says the package). If we buy a pizza at all, it's usually the frozen variety. Finally, last week, I did it. I bought one.

          So! I'm standing in my kitchen, the oven is preheating, and I'm reading the package. That's the first I realize the crust is... what? Pre-cut? Pre-scored? I don't know exactly what it said because I didn't save the box and I'm never-ever-never-no-not-ever buying another one!

          "Peg! I can see right on the box it says 12 cuts," you say.

          I know, right! But I thought that meant I could cut it into 12 slices.

          Bake on the rack, it says, if you want a crisper crust. Place on a greased cookie sheet for a softer crust. Well, that's a no-brainer for me. Crisper. I don't like soggy pizza crust and I don't want a lot of crust either!

          I took the pizza out of the box and it started to come apart. As carefully as I could I got it into the oven but the pizza came apart, the cheese fell through the cracks, and sizzled as it hit the bottom of the oven.

          Sigh.

          By the time it was done I knew I'd have to clean my oven.

          "What do you think?" I asked Mike after he took a couple of bites.

          "It's alright."

          I ate a few bites and agreed. It was just okay. We both ate a couple of slices.

          "I'm probably not going to eat any more of it," I told Mike. "If you will I'll put it in the fridge."

          "No. I don't think I want any more of it either."

          I tossed the rest of the pizza out into the weeds for the coons and possums and any other critter that wanted it.

          I did a little research on Nardone Bros. pizza, that's how I know they've been in business since 1942, but what I didn't know was that they supplied many area schools with pizza so I may have eaten their pizza before.

          "How did you like the pizza when you were in school?" you ask.

          School is the first place I'd ever had pizza. It just wasn't anything that my mother ever served us. I know a lot of kids loved pizza day but I don't remember having any special feelings for it one way or the other. 

          Monday Mike and I started the day working on the ceiling in the kitchen. Over our lunch break we sat and played a game of cards. We heard a noise up in the rafters of the undone ceiling and we both looked. It stopped. A minute or two later a Starling comes diving down and took a spin through the house, attracting the attention of Smudge who'd been napping in the recliner. The Starling made for the light and smashed into the window of the kitchen where he frantically beat his wings. Smudge came from the other room, low to the floor, and in one leap he was on the windowsill.

          "OPEN THE DOOR!" Mike is yelling.

          The Starling got away from Smudge and zeroing in on the light from the front door, he headed that way. He didn't hit it. The door has internal Venetian blinds and he must have seen it was a solid barrier. He came back out to the kitchen and I thought he was going to hit the window again but he saw the open door and out he went. It was a very intense three minutes. I wouldn't have been surprised if things on the windowsill had been broken but when I straightened it out, nothing was.

          Later, when we were back to work and Mike was on the ladder, I asked him to see if he could see where the bird had gotten in. "I'll turn off all the lights and see if you can see any light coming through."

          Mike looked and looked. "Nope. I don't see nothin'."

          Even though I called the Starling a he in my story, I suspect it was a she looking for a nesting site.

          Tuesday brought us more snow. I love the snow. I don't necessarily like to be cold, but I do love the snow.

          "That's because you don't have to drive in it," I hear my best girl Joanie say.

          And she would be right. I don't have to go out in the snow unless I want to.

          I don't know how much snow we got. When I went out to feed the cats I took a picture of the bird feeders covered in snow.

          The beautiful bright-red of the male Cardinal stands out against the fluffy white stuff.

          Late that afternoon I had three deer scavenging under the feeders for dropped seeds. I know the Kipps have deer at their bird feeder almost every night but this is the first time I'd ever seen any at mine.

          Standing at my kitchen window, I looked out and saw a whole herd of birds in the trees around my feeders.

          "Holy cow!" I exclaimed to Mike as I took the binoculars from the shelf. "Look at all those birds!"

          There are two Starlings in the shot, one on the suet feeder, one on the branch just over the first one's head. The rest are Red-winged Blackbirds.

           Wednesday we had to run to Dushore on an errand so it gave me a chance to take some road pictures for you.

         Linemen on the poles. Some areas had been without power for over a week at this point.

By the time we came back up through they were climbing down.

           It's maple syrup time! They are tapping the maple trees. In several places you can see the collection wagons parked beside the road.

          I almost missed this shot.

          The icicles hanging from the eaves are melting and blowing in the wind.

          Thursday was a grand day! Mike is measuring for the very last piece of knotty pine! My ceiling is up! Yay! O happy day!

          

          I looked around, admiring my ceiling and I spot a sticker hanging from one of the boards. I couldn't imagine how a sticker came to be stuck on the ceiling but whatever. I got the ladder and climbed up only to realize it wasn't a sticker at all. It was a white moth. A Virginian Tiger Moth or Yellow Woolybear Moth. Guess what kind of a caterpillar he comes from.

          "Ummm... a yellow woolybear?" you guess.

          And you would be right!

          Friday we went shopping. More road pictures?

          Our first stop was to drop off our recyclables.

          On to Scranton we went. A dam I've been trying to get a decent shot of for a while, but it's close to the road and the guide rail keeps getting in my way.

          This is another shot I've been trying to get. It's a three-dimensional skull on the side of a building. I Googled The Skullworks in Factoryville, Pennsylvania and found out they make shadow plaques. 

           Instead of having your trophy stuffed, you can have one of these made and mount just the skull. Here's an example I pulled right from their website.

          Speaking of shooting things, this green semi, left in the weeds to die, looks like he's been shot a few times.

          One of the places we went to in Scranton was the Lowe's store. Mike wanted a few pieces of round duct to finish the furnace run into the utility room and the Home Depot, where we'd just been, was out of the six-inch size. I was glad to have a reason to go back to the Lowe's store because at the self-checkouts is one of the most captivating ladies you could ever want to meet. Miss Nancy was not a bit put off by Mike's teasing. She's quick-witted and gave it right back to him. He laughed and kept up a running conversation with her as she rang us out.

          "She rang you out in the self-checkouts?" you ask.

          Yep. They'll do that for you and a lot of times the cashier there is less busy than any of the others.

          When Nancy announced the total Mike pointed at me, standing there ready to insert the credit card into the machine. "She's got all the money. Isn't that how it is in your house too?" he teased.

          "Well, since I'm a widow, I guess it is," she replied with a hint of sadness in her voice.

          "Oh I'm so sorry," I told her and meant it sincerely. "What happened?" I asked before I thought about my manners. "If it's okay to ask."

          "Sure. Cirrhosis of the liver," she said.

          "I'm sorry," was all I could think to say.

          "He did it to himself. I begged him to stop drinking and every time he took a drink I told him he was putting another nail in his coffin." Miss Nancy shook her head and was quiet for a moment. "Now we won't get to enjoy our golden years together... And now I have to find someone else to go fishing with me," She got a far-away look in her eyes and laughed a quiet little laugh as she remembered good times fishing with her husband. "We just loved to go fishing together."

          "I'll go fishing with you!" Mike volunteered.

          Nancy agreed. "Sure. We'll go fishing together."

          I asked Nancy if I could put her on my People's page along with this story and she said I could. "Only don't take a picture of me," she begged.

          "How about if we just use your pretty ring?" I asked.

          "It's a Mother's Day ring," she said and agreed.

          Other people needed Nancy's attention so we bid her a good day and I gave her a quick hug her as we left.  

  

          At home, after we unloaded the car and rested for a bit, we got to work putting the rest of the ductwork together. It was then that we discovered one section of duct was seven-inches in diameter instead of the six that we needed. We went as far as we could go and stopped.

           I also discovered that I was almost out of birdseed. Dagnabbit! That's a fine time to discover you're out of something, isn't it? When you get home from shopping?

          "Mike," I started hesitantly. "Let's go to Sayre tomorrow."

          "Why?" he asked.

          "You could take that one back and get the right size," I said of the ductwork. "And I need some birdseed," I added.

          He thought about it. "McDonald's has Sausage Egg McMuffins two for four dollars," he said. "We could go early and have breakfast."

          "Okay, but not too early. I want to stop at Rainbow (thrift store) and they don't open until ten."

          "We can do our shopping first and then stop at Rainbow on the way home," he suggested.

          It was all set and we were out the door by 7:30 the next morning.

          More road pictures.

          I love the view of this train trestle. It's probably the third or fourth time I've shown it to you and it probably won't be the last. We have four seasons here in Pennsylvania.

          As we rode along I got to thinking about the last time we made this trip. Just on the other side of a small town named Ulster, people were camped out, on the other side of the guide rails, with their camp chairs, tripods, and cameras with extra long zoom lenses. The terrain sloped down steeply affording a great view inside the eagle's nest.

          "Do you think the eagle is sitting on her nest?" I wondered out loud.

          Mike answered me anyway. "I don't know. Do you want to stop?"

          "Sure."

          I took a few shots of her and at one point she turned her head and studied me for a moment, then she turned back and didn't pay me any more attention.

          Back in the Jeep I texted my handsome cousin Justin. "The eagles are nesting just outside of Ulster," I told him. I knew that he had eagles at his summer cabin. "Are your eagles nesting?"

          "Yes. The neighbor says the pair are maintaining their nest. I can't wait to see if this year will be one or two eaglets," he texted back.

          I asked if I could go see them and Justin called me. "It's just easier to talk than to text," he told me. "Sure. Anytime. I'm down here now. I could show you around."

          I was in a store at the time of our conversation so I couldn't commit. "We're in Towanda right now," I told him. But when I got out to the Jeep I told Mike of my conversation with Justin.

          "We could shoot on down there," Mike said so I called Justin back and he said he'd wait for us.

          More road pictures?

           "Is that it?" I asked getting out of the Jeep at Justin's. "Is that the eagles nest?"

          "I guess so," Mike answered.

          "Hello!" Justin called from his back deck.

          We spent the next hour visiting.

          "You can't really see the eagles," I observed.

          Justin shook his head. "Not really. I think the nest is like bowl-shaped and most of the time they sit down in it so you can't really see them unless they stand up or get up on the edge."

          The average Bald Eagle nest is four to five feet in diameter and two to four feet deep. Although the largest recorded was in Florida, was nine point five feet in diameter, twenty feet deep, and weighed almost three tons! Eagles come back to the same nest every year, adding more material to it each year. Some eagles will have a second nest in their territory. They may use one nest for a few years and switch to the other one for a period of time. Justin tells me that this pair does have a second nest although he doesn't think they've ever used it.

          The average clutch is one to three eggs. Most of the time the female will sit on the eggs and the male will bring her food, but he may also sit on the eggs giving her a break to hunt for herself. Eagle eggs hatch in 35 days and they will fledge — they will leave the nest, around 10-12 weeks.

          "We can walk down there," Justin offered.

          I lit up, I know I did. "Yeah!"

          We get to the banks of the Susquehanna and there sits this immense tree. I mean it was absolutely huge!

          "Justin, let me take your picture beside that tree." I'm sure I wasn't ordering him although it may have sounded a bit like an order. "I'll use you for perspective." Justin made his way down the bank. "Can you wrap your arms around the tree?" I called.

          Michael scoffed. "He can't get his arms around the tree!"

          "Okay. Justin, hug the tree!"

          Justin is such a good sport and I love my cousin. Now isn't that a huge tree!

          "There it is!" Mike exclaimed, the excitement evident in his voice. "I just saw the eagle go in the nest!"

          I cursed my luck for having missed it but a few minutes later he pops up on the side of the nest. He must have been dropping off lunch for his mate.

          He stood there and looked around for a minute or so.

          He stretched his mighty wings high...

          

          And jumped. I could hear his powerful wings as he took flight.

         

          There were a lot of branches between him and my camera. By the time he came to a clearing my camera was still focused on the branches and I only got blurry shots of him as he left.

          Down on the river were geese. Mike saw them.

          "I think they're Canadian," Justin said.

          I think I was still in awe of the eagle because I didn't even notice the geese. "Where?" I asked bringing my focus back to the present.

          Justin pointed. "Right there."

          The geese here are like the geese everywhere. They make messes in people's yards and they aren't all that happy to see them. "The neighbor has a dog that will chase them off if he sees them," Justin told us. "The geese have learned that he won't follow them into the water so they stay in that area down there, near the water."

          On the way back up to the cabin I asked Mike to take a picture of me and Justin in front of that humongous tree. We look like we're related, don't we.

          We continued our visit by having a bite of lunch together. I took one more picture on the way home.

          I have to tell you that it was a good way to spend a Saturday. A very good way indeed.

          Let's call this one done!