PARK THAT METAPHOR!

So I wrote a piece a couple of months ago, “A Park Bench” which revolved around a park I go to, the natural beauty of the park, and a park bench with a plaque that tells a tragic story. The sentiments I expressed were all genuine.

I also rhapsodized about a certain personal connection to hawks. One small problem: I haven’t been seeing hawks all over the place. I did some research online and discovered that the birds I’ve been seeing are turkey vultures, not hawks. Kind of a difference. Kind of an embarrassing difference.

That’s right, kids. While I was thinking I had some kind of semi-mystical connection to hawks, vultures were circling overhead. (You’ve heard of the Sioux medicine man, Lame Deer? Meet his pathetic white counterpart, Lame Ass. Chief Sitting Bull? Sitting Bullshit, that’s me, right over here.) I’ve never thought of myself as an optimist, but only an optimist—or a complete idiot—would see vultures circling overhead as a positive development.

Now I have seen a hawk or two up at that park. As soon as I get within fifty yards of one, the hawk’s reaction is to fly away immediately to some trees on a hill and give some indignant piercing cries, probably something along the lines of, “Look at this moron who thinks turkey vultures are hawks! Turkey vultures! Are you fucking kidding me?!”

I can say that after a lifetime of indifference to birds, in the last few years I’ve had some strange encounters with them.  I have a heavy bag stand with a hundred-pound heavy bag on my back patio at my apartment complex. I was back there one day, whaling away on the bag when I noticed a bird on the fence about two feet from me. Not only was he undisturbed by the commotion, he was kind of doing a comic goose-stepping walk as I pounded away.

In the spring, there are young birds playing in the bushes and I’ve had them tumble out at my feet like kittens.

I was drinking a cup of coffee and eating a muffin one day outside the grocery store and a small bird was foraging around for crumbs. Nothing strange about that but when I got in my car some fifty yards away and started to drive away the same bird flew over my hood as I drove down the street.

Before I took a trip back East, I had a bird hover in front of my bedroom window and a bird hover in front of me on my balcony. The same bird both times? I couldn’t say. But it was much larger than a hummingbird.

Speaking of hummingbirds, I had a close personal encounter with a hummingbird last spring. There are small gnarled trees outside my building that have pink blossoms in the spring. (I’d call them cherry trees but given my track record on identifying things in the natural world, I better not.) A hummingbird took up residence in a tree right in front of my house. In fact, the branch he nested on hung right over my walk and I could look at him eye-to-eye from about a foot away. I‘d say, “Hey buddy, how you doing today?” and he’d stare right back at me. The same thing when I walked out on my balcony,  I could look down on him on the branch and make eye contact from ten feet away or less, and I’d say hello to him.

The hummingbird was lime-green with a splash of crimson around the throat, although in dim light he seemed to fade into a dull brown, almost invisible. I could hear him all day outside, a kind of twittering, not musical, more like a loud insect sound. And he was fiercely territorial, he’d chase away much larger birds that intruded into his area that contained all the flowers and blossoms he seemed to enjoy. I was proud of him. I also was amazed that he found a knot on the branch that was the perfect size for him to nest in.

Then one day I was walking into the house and I looked up to see two beaks in the nest. The hummingbird was a she, and a new mother, and she didn’t find a knot on the branch, she had built a nest that perfectly blended in with the branch. So I watched as she raised her baby hummingbird, which grew up pretty fast, faster than I would have expected.

One afternoon, I walked outside on the balcony and Mama Hummingbird flew up at head-height a couple of feet away. First she hovered to my left, then directly in front of my face, then to my right, making eye contact all the while. Then she flew away and I never saw her again.

“She was saying goodbye,” my sister said when I told her the story.

I like to think so, but I’ve learned since to beware reading omens and signs into the natural world, especially if you are woefully ignorant like myself.