A couple of weeks ago, RegularDad and I were sitting on the back porch together. He was putting together some toy or other, and I had my camera out and was waiting patiently to get that shot of the cardinal I posted not too long ago. I was so focused on the trees on one side of the yard that I wasn’t able to change gears fast enough to take a picture of the moment when this enormous hawk came floating over our yard and dove into the top branches of a tall tree a little further off in a neighbor’s yard.
The hawk emerged seconds later with another bird (black and obviously young) struggling in its beak. The hawk turned in the air dramatically and shot away, back over our heads and off towards the creek area, followed closely by a large crop of Very Pissed Off Blackbirds who dive-bombed this hawk and attacked it ferociously, trying to get it to drop the young bird. The screeching was incredibly loud. RegularDad and I watched this whole thing go down in amazement. In truth, the whole thing took maybe ten seconds tops.
“Holy shit! Did you see that?” RegularDad said to me. “Did you see that?”
I nodded, and then lamented the fact that it all happened too fast to get a picture of it.
“I can’t believe that,” RegularDad said. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“No,” I said. “Never.”
For the rest of the afternoon, RegularDad existed in a state of utter amazement. At least twice an hour, he’d turn to me again and say: “Unbelievable! Seriously unbelievable. I never knew birds did that kind of thing.”
Finally, I said to him, “Why don’t you look it up on the Internet and see what you find?”
“Yeah,” he said, still in awe. “Yeah. I’m gonna.”
The next day I asked him, “So, did you ever look up that bird-thing online?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Really? What did it say?”
“It said: birds do that.”
Yeah sure, he looked it up! Too funny.
We saw crows attacking a squirrel the other day and it seriously looked like they were trying to get it to cross the street in front of our car. My husband was convinced that they knew a car was coming.
The other day we saw an eagle swoop down and grab a huge sea gull! I mean really!? We were dumbfounded…I should write about that because my goodness we were just like RegularDad all day…amazed and in disbelief….”they do that??” And there was quite a struggle let me tell you…
So, this is totaaly gross, but DH had a hawk drop a dead rat right next to the BBQ the other day. Thump. So many questions, primarily, why would it drop a meal, and why there? Next to our meal? Nothing like a dead rat from the sky.
ROTFL!
That is so funny! That’s about how Mom #2 researches anything.
Actually she sends me a text message from work saying “When I get home I want to talk to you about (whatever subject). That way I’m forced to do research on it during the day so I can have an informed conversation later on that evening.
Once dinner is served and I ask, “So, what did you want to discuss about (whatever)?” Her response almost always is . . . “I wanted to know what (whatever) is. Do you know?”
What kind of crap is that?
Mom #1, I’m LOL with you…because I SO totally understand.
And now we all at least have a nice stock answer to those perplexing bird questions. “Yeah, birds do that.”
I WISH my husband would look stuff up in that way. Instead, he reads gobs and gobs of geeky stuff online, and then wants to tell me all about the neutrinos and Saturn’s 137th moon and how they changed the carbeurators for the Honda Goldwing in 1986 to the X-33 model and how some guy is building a spaceship in Tokyo…
..and my eyes glaze over and I really just wish he would start a blog. I WISH I got “birds do that”.
LOL! Or perhaps…”yeah, neutrinos do that.”
LOL! Birds most certainly Do do THAT! Just ask our friend Mark! Now Mark likes to race pigeons! He just loves them to bits! Imagine his surprise/horror last week when he drove miles and miles away to let his sweet pigeons go so they could fly away home in a big hurry of course as they are “champion racing pigeons” (Yes they are!) A big hawk, was feeling a slight bit peckish and decided to take not one, but four of his prized pigeons for dinner!
Lets just say this grown man was almost in tears! And lets just say, I was so glad not to be there to see it! Ohhh! Its both sad and majestic all in the same!