Oh Death, where is thy sting?… Ouch!

It was a cool morning for this time of year. Not a genuine frosty morning, more of a shrink-your-package-while-walking-to-the-tub type of morning.

It was time for my playdate with Steve. I was cavorting with him, turning the jets on and off while the heater was running. His lights were blinking rhythmically and he would shudder when the pump started and splash, foaming the water more and more as we played together. By now the froth was clinging to the vinyl walls at the pool’s edge The water was heating up more than usual too, and then I had a disgusting thought. STEVE!! What’s going on? We don’t have that type of relationship! Steve had been burbling more lately when Carol had joined us in the early evenings, and after watching how our phones and tablets acted on vacation together… well, let’s just say it was time to cool his jets.

You know you’re a real British Columbian when you’ve been shat upon by an eagle, or come close at least.

I was mentally writing my memoirs after settling Steve down, staring up towards the north. High up in a Doug fir tree a few doors down a bald eagle landed near the top, bending the branch considerably as he was a mature adult. A convocation (group) of eagles was in the area lately, centralized around the main aerie (nest) about five houses away from us. Suddenly a second male appeared and landed near the first, arcing the branch earthward even more. They chattered as eagles often do with their high-pitched voices, sounding more like a pair of guinea pigs whose primary school handler had just arrived home from school with some french fries from the cafeteria. You would expect something more commanding to come from their hooked beaks but being the apex predator, at least in the sky, they could sound anyway that they choose.

As I’m often wont to do I would try to engage them from my soggy, seated area just to see if they would turn their gaze my way and acknowledge me. I decided that I am actually their superior as I have it in my power to blast them to smithereens if I should so decide. Human males are the dominant species on the ground around here, unless an aggressive bear or wife should show their face, and then it’s run like hell.

I pursed my lips and made a guttural smirching sound that I pulled from the bottom of my throat that I felt should catch their attention, and also prove my spot in the pecking order of backyard life. No response. I know they’re eyesight is supreme but maybe their hearing needed a little tweaking. So I repeated the sound only at twice the volume. Still nothing. They were obviously snubbing me. If I wasn’t naked and if it wasn’t so cool I would stand up and shake my fist at them to announce my displeasure at their disrespect. When I was just about to gape in a different direction at a long-horned beetle with giant mandibles that was sidling a little too close to Steve’s base I saw the impudent feathered egg warmers turn my way.

The largest of the two leaned forward and leapt from the branch, bouncing it skyward but the remaining creature was nonplussed and just rode out the impromptu see saw effect with just a deadeye stare towards me. Well, if I would have been able to focus the 200 yards to make eye contact I would have given him the hairy eyeball treatment myself. Meanwhile the first white-headed carrion-slurper was cruising my way, caressing the outer branches with his wings on the nearest 120 ft. trees gliding ever closer to what to him must look like a puddle with a bobbing pile of flotsam near it’s edge. He was directly over me now and he launched a bomb that grew larger in size as it careened towards us (Steve was now determining that no amount of chlorine was going to solve this issue and a complete reboot would be in order). But, just as I have been blessed with God’s favour most of my adult life, a freak gust of wind pushed the hurtling blob one foot to the left and it exploded onto the patio blocks that I had so meticulously cleaned only the day before. Even without the near miss it almost caused a chlorine/water exchange reboot from beneath where I was seated also.

I had no previous reason to ponder the size of the rear exit port of an eagle but the sheer volume of detritus that landed beside us (Steve’s pump restarted immediately) conjured up visions of sink holes and garbage trucks. I bent over the edge just to see what the refuse make up might include.

There were what you would expect to find, small seeds, some grass for colon ruffage, and a squirrel femur. But as I poked the slurry mixture around with a stick I saw something else. It was a sizable chunk of grey scalp with some tendons attached with an eyeball at the end.

Oh! aw… I recognized the last remains of Mia, a neighbor’s elderly dog. Petite and scrawny, blind in one eye (maybe the one that I was looking down on at the moment) and recently incontinent, which would have hastened her demise by Greg anyways, even if the unthinkable hadn’t already happened.

Poor, poor Mia. Actually, poor Linda; she’s probably scouring the neighborhood for their animal child of the past fourteen years, moving old tires, and digging under abandoned chunks of plywood laying against sheds, quietly calling her name but not expecting a response.

I thought back a couple of days ago while I was soaking and did notice a pair of eagles doing a flyby while one clutched something substantial in it’s talons, but just figured it was Mittens or Tabby, both of whose visages have appeared on local hydro poles under the Missing/Reward Offered label recently. ‘Till death do us part’, is an all-too-common occurrence in the human/pet alliance around these parts.

My fingertips have reached the raisin-like shape that an hour in a hot tub will produce and after scanning the skies and getting the all clear, I leapt out, slammed down the lid, and hurried back to the warmth of the kitchen. Mental Note: Get Carol to pressure wash the patio again.