LETTERS FROM WHITE BIRD
	Sunday June 15
	Click to see last week's letter, White Bird Chronicles, or Leaving the City

Well, this week I really got lucky...with my camera, that is. Chance favors the prepared mind--and, I'll add, the camera at hand. I should have been in Reno because the gods were smiling.

For several weeks I had been catching glimpses of a local osprey. I'd seen him off and on perched or flying near the river, and a couple of times in the top of a dead cottonwood beside the creek 100 yards behind our house. Two mornings I had even driven to the river specifically to see if I could find him, but it wasn't to be. Until...

I had just driven through town, on my way to empty the garbage (This may sound an odd way to do an ordinary thing, so I'll explain about the garbage after I finish with the bird), when I glanced up and there he was, 50 or 60 feet in front of me, on top of a utility pole. With my long lens already loaded on the camera beside me, I just turned off the car, rolled down the window, leaned out and clickety-click.

This photo takes my overall prize for the encounter (and assignment as my current Windows wallpaper, hee-hee-hee) but it needed a series of others to flesh out the story (oh, my).

You can see in the first two shots below that the sorry fish, some sort of sucker I'd guess to be 16-20" long, is still alive. He flops about wildly, trying to release himself from the talons on one foot of his attacker, while the bird stands on the other trying to balance himself and the flopping fish--on the top of a damned utility pole! Right there in front of me! Is that amazing, or what?. Where's Lori when you need her?

Desperation isn't working so the fish settles down, maybe figuring to play dead. His vision will soon be affirmed, of course, because the bloody bird immediately tries to eat him--no virtue goes unpunished.

Eventually the osprey flew off, fish tucked securely in his bomb bay--missing a few bites but still kicking. Even got a picture of that, although not very good. The very next day I saw the same raptor in the snag behind our house. Snapped more shots of him but it was too far to get any detail.

I love this stuff! Hell, we don't need TV. We've got our own Discovery Channel, right here in White Bird.

The hard part was having to wait until I could get the film developed. We had planned to go up to Lewiston when Jane got home, which was only a few days away by then, so I just could not justify a second 85-mile (one-way) trip. Damn near went anyway, though; it was a tough moral/fiscal tussle.

I suppose it sounds like this sort of thing is all we (I) have to do around here. Don't I wish. Some things don't change, though. I'm spending Father's Day mowing the lawn (and we were trying to eliminate these ego-bound drudges).

Got nice E-mails from Debi and Juli today, a call from Lori and talked with Tami yesterday. Debi also sent some pics of her urchins, one of which I share with you here. A pretty complete Father's Day, I'd say.

But that was not the end of it. John called from Singapore, where he had flown to from Guadalajara, via LAX (and Montezuma's revenge). Yuck to all four. I like to travel but that's way too brutal for me anymore. Anyway, he had sent me an early birthday gift that almost made me cry--really. It was just a balsa model airplane--but like the ones I used to cut out and assemble as a kid--only bigger. There's a story here but I have to confess sins to tell it. Oh, what the heck...

In high school I would occasionally skip a day. At first I would try to get away with it--lying, forgery, anything--but I simply could not do it. Always got caught. So I gave up, surrendered. Now I knew that my mom would restrict me to the yard for a week when she found out, so on my way home from school, after receiving my PINK SLIP, I would stop at the Hobby Hive, buy one of those models--which took about a week to finish--and prepare to face my punishment. Hey, my mommy never raised no turnip trucks yesterday.

After I opened John's package I just sat looking at the instruction sheets--with those illustrations of how to deal with the balsa struts and bulkheads, aelerons, flaps, cutouts etc--and flew off to another time. Pretty damn nice! I gifted like that for a while in my life, but then I lost it. I don't know what happened. As much pleasure as this gift gave (and will give) me, I used to get at least as much from finding that perfect gift for one of you. I'd really like to recover that gift of gifting. Bless my friend for accuracy, he nailed this one.

Jane had her own adventure last week. She left Minneapolis Monday morning. That evening she called from Billings and said something that activated my adrenalin ..."My truck blew up." After determining that Jane was not calling from a hospital or police station, I calmly asked what she meant by "blew up", all the while visualizing car-chase movies, molten engines, terrorist acts against my wife--anything my serene and supportive mind could conjure that was terrible. But my fear was not to be eased. The Dodge dealership had closed and wouldn't be able to look at her truck until morning. Sleep well, you two.

At least I found out what happened to Jane. About 60 miles east of Billings the truck went "Bang" and stopped. There she was, stranded alone, nothing between her and Billings, Montana. She flagged a guy down and asked him to call AAA when he got to town. Two and a half hours later they arrived. In the meantime she didn't know if the guy had even called, so it's twiddle her thumbs beside the freeway, with an eye on the mirror (for Triple-A or the I-90 Strangler).

I spent the night constructing scenarios about how we'd get her (and a broken truck) back home. In the AM we talked again but they hadn't checked the truck. More serene waiting. And it was a good thing we hadn't worried because it turned out to be a blown distributor and some little computer chip--to the tune of $130, which we happily paid. Knew it all the time.

Katie drove over Friday night to deliver Jordy for three weeks. And we are looking forward to several other guest appearances this summer. Right?

As to the garbage...how it works here is THE CITY leaves dumpsters at strategic locations, then picks them up every week. We just visit any one we care to and do our garbage thing. Cool. Recycling is not as efficient as in Portland but we can take stuff to Grangeville where some organization separates and distributes it. And a certain amount of recycling gets done directly, by local dumpster dippers.

Love to all 'til next time, TCC