Home Again

I never type that without hearing the kid’s rhyme, “Home again, home again, higgelty pig.”

My ex, Beth, and I used to disagree over the wording, she’d learned it as “diggity dog,” but it was clearly “higgelty pig.”

It was not as pretty a drive back as it was down, though it wasn’t bad.  It was very windy for the first 60 miles or so, or about the first third of it.

The leaves were whipping around the highway, that last sort of rattle of Autumn saying, “No, really, I’m serious, he’s RIGHT behind me.”

It was still warm, but it didn’t look so much like fall anymore, it looked a lot more like winter.

About 30 miles from drew’s house, I saw a bald eagle snag a bird in mid-air about 20 feet in front of me.

It was certainly swooping low enough to clearly see it wasn’t a hawk.  It was too big and had a white head and tail, which a hawk does not.  It was also darker, rather than the buff color of a hawk.

And trust me, you do not live with slave drew and not know the difference between a red-tail hawk and a sharp shinned.

It’s size, mostly, and the feathery pantaloons the sharp shinned wears.

It was impressively enormous.  drew tells me they have a six foot wing span, and this one was every bit of it.

I’ve seen bald eagles before, both in that area and elsewhere.  There’s nesting ground there, so eagles are around, though I’ve seen them closer to the lake before.

We drove around another eagle nesting grounds on some trip of ours and the thing I remember most was watching one of the parents sitting on the nest as we drove along the roadway below.

He screamed at us, stood threateningly on the edge of the nest, made it VERY clear that if we dared to come anywhere close to that nest, he knew exactly what to do with those talons and the beak that tears flesh.

Had I not had a metal cage around me, I’d have been pretty intimidated, actually.

Imagine how satisfying it must have been for him as the giant red metal threat drove away and he marched back to the the continued-sanctity of his own home.

So, anyway, I saw a bald eagle, and that is always a cool thing.

I had some time this afternoon to do some catching up with emails, etc.  I checked in on a friend’s cat while he’s away.

I made some lists as I drove – not texts, I really am not coordinated enough for that, scrawls on paper.  I hope I can read them.

I got a couple of the items on my to-do list taken care of tonight.

I unpacked a couple of the last dining room  boxes.  I’m nearly to the point of deciding what goes where, and that will be nice.

And though I missed Lurker’s Day, it’s still kind of Lurker’s Weekend, so feel free to continue to lurk, or speak up and say something.

Agree with me.

Disagree with me.

Or just sit there quietly, that’s ok, too.