by Rick posted a link to this story in the comments section. Thank you for doing that. And what?? No pictures?? Seriously though, thank you for saving that little bird. (Although the squirrel leg!!)
The picture below is an older shot from my roof at dusk. I haven’t been up there since I stopped feeding the pigeons. I can’t face them. (I feel so bad. Sigh, sigh, sigh.)
In other news: I’m always terrified of facing a new chapter and for weeks I’ve been hemming and hawing about starting this new chapter where I hope to show what a conductor does. And talk about Joseph Haydn the slut. I’ve been researching, making to-do lists, and collecting articles about the science of singing, but I’ve only written a paragraph. It’s a BIG paragraph, but still. It’s just a paragraph. I’ve got to go in there now and really get going. Now. Right this minute.
STACY STOP WRITING THIS POST. GET IN THERE. (<——Talking to myself. Okay, shouting.)
Stacy,
I was so focused on saving the kestrel & never considered taking the camera from my desk. Dumb! She was beautiful! There are no vegetarian birds of prey – but fear not, those of us who drive 3 hours every day find plenty of fresh roadkill that usually gets wasted (I hate seeing dead creatures on the roads – but its even worse to allow it to go to waste). A co-worker leaked this story idea to Candy Thompson, a Baltimore Sun outdoors reporter who called me for my dumb quotes.
We got 13″ of rain the day after the kestrel rescue – by then she was safely dry & eating squirrel parts in the falconer’s house. The day after the flooding, I rescued a massive snapping turtle (30 lbs+) from the road. There were other cars stopped but they didn’t know the “snapping turtle grip” in which you slip your left hand up over the top shell (carapace) and under – right behind the head, while the right hand grasps the back of the shell above the tail, thus avoiding the jaws and sharp claws. Once again, no pics. A good week for rescues – but a lousy week for photos!
I hate the hurtful term “slut” when used for either sex, but always thought the male equivalent of the term was “satyr” – not a word in current usage.
Yes, I’m stalling getting out there on the road again…sigh, sign, sigh here too.
What a great shot that is. Makes me think of cold.
I start every morning by playing the mandolin for a bit. I think it starts the wheels turning somehow, because I will typically come out of my morning stupor much faster. Maybe banjo time?
Rick!! A snapping turtle!! Snapping turtles were the terrors of my childhood. I used to swim in a pond that had them. But thank god for people like you. (Scary things deserve to live, too.) You really must get photographs though. I want to see the creatures you rescue.
Steve, that is such a lovely, lovely, idea.