Colliding Realities
I was walking down the trail to the picnic area when I heard a big, deep, "UnGuh" sound, like when my dog yawned, only much bigger and deeper. I turned to look behind me and sure enough, there was a black bear sitting in the woods looking sleepily at me. I don't know why, maybe it was a youthful look in his (her?) eyes, but it looked like a giant cub, at least two years old. His fur was shaggy and matted looking, and more dark brown than black, with an 'awkward puppy' look on his light-colored face. This bear wanted no part of me. It appeared that I may have disturbed his nap and he'd sat up to see what the ruckus was - me running down the trail. I watched him stare at me for a few moments, but he wasn't nearly as intent on watching me, as I was in watching him and kicking myself for leaving my camera at home. He finally lost interest and got to his feet, lumbering up and over the hill beside the trail. I returned to the picnic with something that nobody else had; an early summer's sighting of a sleepy black bear.
Two days later we went to the beach. The weather was too good to stay home; I'll bet it reached seventy degrees fahrenheit here! Again, we had a picnic - who wants to spend all day outside without food, after all? Food just tastes so much better - even hotdogs - when you eat out of doors, and Eagle knows this. Jessica had left her second hot dog on a log while she ran to see what Katie was doing in the tide-pools and when she'd come back her hot dog was gone. She suspected her father had eaten it, but we pointed to the trees and told her, "That eagle swooped down and took it." She didn't believe it, but we'd watched the whole thing. Finally she looked into the tree and shook her little fist.
"It's bad manners to eat from someone else's plate!" You see, Eagle had taken the last hot dog...
In the afternoon she thought she'd seen a Cecil and Beanie style sea-serpent and pointed it out to us. We laughed at her interpretation of seeing the porpoises traveling in single-file. They surface for air and dive as they go, one right after another, and they did resemble one long creature snaking it's way through the narrows. She was excited, as she was sure she'd seen a serpent.
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