Kingfisher

I had a pleasant and quite unexpected surprise as I drove into work this morning. Driving a rush-hour-crowded road I’d traveled a hundred times before, I was stopped for a red light on a small bridge that crosses over a tiny creek in the middle of an industrial complex. A blue flash caught my eye, and I looked up at the wires across the street from where I sat. There sat a belted kingfisher, puffed up gathering morning rays and looking every bit as grumpy as a baby robin awaiting its next worm feeding. Apparently, kingfishers are not morning people.

It’s been perhaps five years or more since I’d last seen a belted kingfisher in these parts. My area has become so developed, and the creeks and streams so diverted and tamed, that I’d assumed they’d all left for greener pastures. Kingfishers like open lakes and streams, with meadows and woods nearby. Less and less land of that description remains around here, as developers build their half-a-million-dollar mansions on quarter acre lots for city folk who want to move to the country, changing the country into an annex of the city in the process.

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What could be a real-life conversation in these parts:

Madge: I adore our new house. Jimmy, Johnny, Aimee and Tiffany all have their own rooms now, and I have a room for Herb’s library and a room for our borzoi Boris as well.

Buffy: You and Herb have been the best neighbors! I can’t thank you enough for helping with our petition to get rid of that smelly dairy farm down the road. Can you imagine? Six generations of people raising cows on that land. The smell is probably going to take years to go away. At least we don’t have to deal with those slow moving tractors on the road anymore.

Madge: And getting rid of that farm and their unhygienic vegetable stand will make room for a new shopping complex with a real grocery store and some upscale stores. It will be a relief when they finish all that construction and I won’t have to run to the Main Line for every little thing.

Buffy: I’m working on a new petition to get rid of that unsightly plot of trees down at the end of the road. I figure if we can get those all cut down, we can have a new playground put in for the children, and set up a doggy park so my precious Muffin won’t have to do her duty in my back yard.

Madge: Wonderful! When you have it ready, I want to be the first to sign. Make a second copy and I’ll help you canvas the neighborhood again.

Buffy: I’ll bet we can even get that nice young Mr. Finkelstein, the lawyer, to help us out again as well.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

But I digress.

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I’ve never seen a kingfisher hanging about a heavily developed area in these parts before. That’s part of the beauty of kingfishers, though. They do their own thing. With a crest that looks like a badly executed punk haircut, an unlikely build that makes them look as if they are all head with no legs, and a raucous laughing call that makes it sound as if they believe the world is a bad joke but they can appreciate the humor anyhow, kingfishers are the epitome of bird-with-attitude. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I could do worse than come back as a kingfisher.

This one was just hanging out, watching traffic go by as he tried to warm himself in the frosty morning rays. I was hoping he’d look down on my car especially, but I was just another one of the inedible, oversized fish swimming inexorably upstream on an asphalt river, so far as he was concerned. None of us looked much like a trout or a nice, fat salamander breakfast, and so all we merited was some minor disdain. Bird-with-attitude. You know where you stand with a kingfisher.

Regarding yesterday’s entry:

From: Lilith Date Posted: 5 Nov 2002

Does the concern have anything to do with turkeys?

Well, it certainly comes from having to deal with turkeys, I’ll grant you that. I continue to stay hidden in my office on the other side of the building. There are a lot of unhappy people in my department, and I’m choosing not to be one of them at the moment, which means staying out of this mess.

From: AQuietEvening Date Posted: 5 Nov 2002

Shhhh, I’m going to tell you a secret….Outback’s curb take-away system is AWESOME.

I’m sure it is. Unfortunately, that isn’t something the local Outback offers. More’s the pity.

From: coolkids Date Posted: 5 Nov 2002

Should have eaten at the local vegetarian restaurant…no wait!!

One problem – they don’t have steak at the local vegetarian restaurant. And it’s against my ethics to kill an innocent eggplant for eggplant parmesian.