“WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM . . .”

JUNE 16, 2019 – Beth and I are at the lake where we go to commune with nature—when we’re not pre-occupied with projects, which is much of the time.

At just past 11:00 yesterday morning, Beth was installing hostas in the garden behind the cabin, while I was working on deck repairs. Suddenly, the nature channel jumped to life with an unmistakable distress call. We dropped our tools and strode to the front to tune in more closely.

As we approached the dock, we heard big time static—to be precise, a loud cackling sound emanating from one of the lofty pine close by. I recognized the noise immediately as the unlikely war cry of the great American bald eagle. We reached the dock just as the eagle’s target, a loon swimming less than 30 feet away, rebroadcast its distress call. The call was acknowledged by another loon farther out. With its sharp, red eyes acting as a kind of periscope, the dockside loon took one more look around before it made an emergency dive. We then turned to look for the eagle . . .

What we saw were two eagles, each of them huge. On high alert, they were perched side by side on a sturdy branch barely 20 feet up the big, nearby Norway pine that bows over the water. We had a birds-eye—strike that; we had a humans-eye—view of these creatures who keep American democracy safe: lethal beaks, angry eyes, talons like claws strangling the branch but ready to strike a fish—or a loon. If you’re prey, all you can do is pray.

A serious photographer (i.e. a person with a five-pound camera in one hand, an enormous zoom lens cradled in the other, and most important of all, a three-inch-wide camera strap around the neck) would’ve had time for a Pulitzer Prize-winning close-up of the biggest fighter-bombers in nature’s arsenal. As United Nature observers, however, Beth and I had only our smartphone (Beth) and “point-and-shoot” camera (me) to memorialize what we would observe.

In the time it took me to untangle my camera from project hardware inside my pocket, one of the eagles took flight. The bird swooped directly over the submerged loon, then flapped its wings—a good six-foot span—and soared upward toward the sun. A few seconds later, the flying beast banked hard to starboard and flew a bee-line, I mean, as the crow flies, I mean, as only a bald eagle can aim, directly for the western shore of the lake. Its wingman or wingwoman back on the Norway branch near our dock watched while it posed for my (lame) photo.

In short order, the lingering eagle got clearance for take-off. In no time more it was flying over Williams Bay a straight mile away.

The loon resurfaced, safe for the time being. Beth and I returned to scheduled programming.

[See “Nature as Baseball” – April 20, 2019]

© 2019 Eric Nilsson