You’ll never believe what coolness happened to us this past winter. We had an eagle viewing. Not a spotting, but a twenty minute show! We were sitting at our kitchen table and I saw this GIANT eagle swoop down over a flock of coots and buffleheads. Not ten minutes before that Victor had said, “look at all the coots, I’ve never seen so many at once” and I said, “it’s the coot buffet” (meaning for an eagle). Anyway, in my infinitely cool way, I started shouting “AAAHH!!! AHHHH!!! EEEEHH!!!” and waving frantically at the water. The eagle continued to sweep over the coots (and geese) and everyone was diving under water and bobbing around and the geese were honking and it was crazy! Then the eagle finally decided that he needed a break so he landed IN OUR OAK TREE! Victor’s outside measuring how far that is just so I can tell you. It’s somewhere between 80 and 90 feet from our kitchen! He did that in a very scientific way. He walked in a straight line toe to heel and counted his steps.

Anyway, the eagle sat in our tree while the coots and buffleheads hauled ass to get out of there. The geese stayed however, and this is where my story and Victor’s story collide, the eagle started attacking a goose! Victor (and Herb, our neighbor) say no way, a goose is too big and it must’ve been a stray coot or some unlucky duck. But I have way better eyes than those old coots and I could see the goose it was attacking. Do you know how a goose protects itself? It waits until the eagle is just about to attack and then it puts its head down and starts flapping its wings like mad, sending water spraying up into the eagle’s face! It didn’t take long for all the other geese to circle the one under attack and then they all protected each other. This is another reason I know it was a goose. Why would the rest of the geese protect it when they just watched the eagle coot-fishing? Hmmmmm??????

Anyway, the eagle landed in our tree again for a while. And later we saw him swooping across the lake and being chased by a couple of crows (they fly right behind it so it can’t catch them) and then we had to go to town for groceries. This all took place over about an hour, but the main show was twenty minutes long. It was kind of weird because part of me was rooting for the eagle, you know, so it wouldn’t go hungry and also so I could see it fly away with something, but the other part was yelling, “DIVE DUMMIES! DIVE!” We locked the cats in the house, except Mr. Fatboy. He’s lost weight, but he still weighs 20lbs.