Magic and Mayhem

We had a few errands to run in a nearby “big city” (they have traffic lights!) so we drove the 30 miles over there today. We dropped off homemade cards for a HS friend who’s had her tonsils out, picked up some groceries and let the kids play at some parks. I even picked up 5 little containers of Haagen Daas ice cream on sale for the way home. Sweet!

Only the way home wasn’t so much that. It was more the loopy wandering that ends up happening when Daddy is a bird watcher intent on spotting 100 kinds of birds and only has 71.

We’d be driving along when all of the sudden someone would notice a new looking hawk by the ditch or a strangely colored bird on a wire. Ooh! Daddy would grab the binoculars, check up and down the highway for traffic (pretty rare out here) and back up or turn around, whichever worked best.

Then everybody would use various binoculars and argue about whether its head was white or gray and whether it had black wing tips and was really that big after all. Daddy would flip through the bird book. Was it this one? What did everybody think? Look! It’s turning, look at its underside.

Then we’d get going again, after deciding that either we already had it or we didn’t get a good enough look to tell which of these 3 kinds it was. Then Daddy would see a side road that led to a lake or a pond or some other likely bird hangout. Screech. Off we’d go.

We are so lucky the kids are good car travelers. Victoria did her math workbook, Anna drew pictures, Jack played Pixter and Alex mostly slept. And they all looked at birds for their crazy daddy.

I had frozen veggies in the cooler in the back of the van, so I finally told Daryl we really needed to at least point in the right direction towards home.

We had almost made it when we passed the waterfowl preserve area. Daryl rolled down the windows so I could hear the frogs. I love to listen to the frogs in spring!

Then we saw it. A beaver. Calmly washing himself by the side of a pond, just a few yards from the highway. And Daryl saw it. A Wilson’s Phalarope, a ridiculous looking little bird that was frantically swimming in drunken circles, cocked sideways, pecking at the water.

I called out “a beaver!” and the kids all enthusiastically rushed to see. Daryl called out “I think it’s a Wilson’s Phalarope!”. Bless his heart. I said “Who cares, it’s a beaver, right there! Look!”. Daryl answered, “Yeah, but I don’t have a Wilson’s Phalarope!”

Groceries thaw. Sometimes they even get ruined when you leave them a cooler all day while you go galavanting after silly old birds and beasties. But this was a really mellow beaver and an apparently rare bird, and, well, it was only frozen veggies.

So we stopped the car and the kids and I got out. We stealthily crashed through reeds and spooked the beaver to the other side of the pond. Luckily, it was a small pond so it wasn’t long before he rose up and pretended to be a log again and we still got a good look at him. Victoria sat down, ready to patiently earn his trust and get him to get close enough that she could really experience him. Unfortunately, it turns out the pond was owned by an elderly gentleman whose dogs were annoyed at us, and he wasn’t nearly as impressed by the fact that there was a beaver there as we were.

We took off again, all in agreement that it had been pretty cool getting that close to a beaver. And yeah, the phalarope was pretty neat too.

We got close enough to home that we could see the city water tower before Daryl had to loop the van around and see if that was a new kind of hawk in the field. Daryl volunteered at that point that if it made me feel any better I could punch him once for every time he turned around. It’s tempting, but I think that would set a bad example.

We did finally make it home, and Daryl dropped off me and the groceries so he could take the kids to the park and give me time for a bath (um, yeah, what kind of nut blogs instead????).

Upon getting home, I discovered that the man down the street mowed loops into our back yard lawn. Loops. I dashed back there to see if he’d mowed the new cherry trees and blueberry bushes (he once mowed down all of my raspberry bushes and roses thinking he was clearing our “brush” as a nice surprise!).

He missed all the planted things, the garden hose, the little table and chairs from the kids’ tea party, everything. There are just crazy wanderings in our back yard. Daryl went and asked him if it was his work and he happily said yes, he was just being helpful. Oy. Daryl very politely asked if he could maybe not be so helpful anymore and blamed me. I’m okay with that.

So while we were wandering back roads in search of undiscovered birds and beasties, our crazy neighbor was wandering our back yard. It’s a surreal life.

We have a really goofy looking back yard at the moment but I’m okay with that too. It’s been a very nice day.