Birds

Suzanne and I went jogging on the river trail this morning. Songdog came along. He was a handful — I haven’t had time to walk him much lately, so he was full of pent-up energy — but we had a good time anyway. I sprinted with Song all the way across the pedestrian bridge to work some of the goofiness out of him. On the way across, I saw a couple of herons near a sand bar or something in the middle of the river. They were beautiful. We also saw plenty of Canada geese along the west bank of the river. Song was disappointed that I wouldn’t let him chase them.

I wish I’d had my camera to get a picture of the seagull that went gliding over the river under a cloud that was sort of splitting the sunshine into all these distinct shafts of light. It was really beautiful. So were the redbuds in the arbor garden.

We encountered a huge flock of mallards with shiny green heads somewhere near the spillway, and we were just about finished with our run when Suzanne pointed out a bright red cardinal flitting across the path ahead of us.

By the time we finished our run, Songdog was so tired that he wouldn’t even look at me — he just curled up on the passenger’s seat and looked pathetic as I drove home. I gave him a drink of water and then sent him off to take a nap in his crate.

Ron and I grabbed lunch at the Blue Dome Diner, which has awesome food, and then we went to the Country Store — ostensibly so Ron could ask some gardening question, but mostly so I could pet the ducklings and goslings and chicks that were all huddled up under heat lamps in there.

You can’t believe how cute those baby birds are. I’d have taken one of the goslings home if not for the fact that all goslings are defective: They start out all cute and fuzzy and sweet, and then one day you look up and they’ve turned into big, hissing, biting, noisy, obnoxious geese.

When I was little, my parents would take me to the city park to feed crackers and stale bread to the ducks. Unfortunately, the pond was also home to a flock of nasty-tempered geese that would come running at us with their heads stuck way out in front of them and their mouths open like they wanted to bite us. They’d hiss and charge at us until I ran away, screaming and sobbing hysterically for Mommy and Daddy to make them go away.

Nasty creatures. I’m glad we don’t have any geese.

Emily