Got up this morning, looked out the window.
And there on the edge of the neighbor’s roof close to our back yard stood a four foot tall Great Blue Heron. Now that is the way to start a day.
I looked at it. It looked at me. It turned its head to one-eye me for a better view, bird style, and considered the unexpected company, while me, I noted that the bird feeder was emptied of finches. Sillies. It’s not going to eat you.
The heron shifted to give me a better view of that dark swoop over its shoulder, like the upper half of a question mark, that the brilliance of the morning sun had been obscuring. It lifted one foot off the ground so as to relax–twitched slightly, considering, and gently slowly put it back down again.
There were no fish and no pond in my yard. Not even a frog.
It turned the other way then and started doing that impossibly long-legged, puppet-mastered walk that they do, and as its body disappeared behind the toyon tree its head and neck continued above, suddenly snakelike.
While I was thinking, the koi are down around the other side of their solar panels, you’re going the wrong way. Oh wait. Don’t tell it.