I have always been intrigued with eccentric people, those so different from me. My favorites are people who have twenty cats, or little old ladies obsessed with feeding pigeons in public parks.
I wasn’t much of an animal lover in my youth. I was a little disappointed in my new hubby when he wanted to spend an entire day of our honeymoon at a zoo. He took more pictures of the animals than he did of me. He appeared to have traits of one of those eccentric people and I wasn’t sure I wanted my husband to be one. It was years before I would agree to a dog or a cat.
Many years later when we moved up on a mountain, a new world opened up to me—a world shared with wild creatures. My first encounter woke me in the middle of the night. It sounded like a woman screaming outside my window. With my heart racing, I sprang from bed and slammed the open window shut. As I got my wits about me and listened, I could tell the cry was not quite human. Hubby, who has a degree in Wildlife Biology, was halfway across the country, and I couldn’t ask him until the next day. “It was a fox,” he said from a hotel room in Kansas.
As I stepped out of our basement one afternoon, I came face to face with a momma bear and five cubs. I needed no help with identification. The cubs and I were terrified. I ran back inside the basement and the little ones climbed a tree right outside the door. I cracked the door open a bit and heard the baby bears crying like kittens. Trapped inside, I thought about crying too as I waited for Big Momma to convince her babies to come down and journey on.
The following summer as I sat on my front porch putting in my evening, I heard the strangest owl call. It sounded like a human trying to do an owl imitation. Hubby was out of pocket and didn’t hear it, but he played YouTube videos of owl tunes for my selection. It was a Barred Owl. So I spent my evenings on the porch anticipating Hootie’s call. He hooted all summer long— then mysteriously stopped. Channel 13 did a news piece on a Barred Owl being struck by a car up on the parkway above my house. I knew it was Hootie. With specialized care, the Nature Center believed the owl would survive and could return to the wild. I have only heard that call a few times since—I prefer to believe it is Hootie.
This past fall, I became acquainted with a tiny furry fellow donning a brown coat with black and white stripes. Chippy—the chipmunk began making his daily appearance storing nuts and seeds along the rock wall in view of my kitchen window. As I made breakfast I watched—back and forth he went dashing from one end to the other—his tail raised straight up like an antenna, crisscrossing the gravel drive. Chippy grew accustom to my presence and continued his work even when I was outside.
On one of Chippy’s visits, I was on the porch watching when a hawk flew over, descended, and began screeching and circling overhead. I ran inside to Hubby. “Do something! The hawk’s after Chippy.” Hubby raised one eyebrow and smiled. Outside he went and stood in the middle of our driveway. Chippy disappeared among the rocks and the hawk moved on. Hubby’s such a good man.
Soon after I was returning from a walk up the mountain, Chippy was waiting with his wife beside the front porch. How did I know she was his wife? It was fairly easy to recognize they were consummating their relationship. Thoroughly embarrassed, I scurried inside. There has to be a few boundaries within a friendship, I thought, as I untied my shoes.
Then I began to laugh—clear as day—I had become the pigeon lady!