from the pen of icarus blake

One morning, you take yourself out on your morning walk and notice the birders have descended. Their telescopic lenses are trained on a cluster of black-brown-white birds squabbling on the ice in the far distance. You squint, you can’t tell what they are. Hawks, maybe? Geese, you guess? ‘Tis the season, but the shape is wrong. Your husband offered osprey a few weeks back, but they lack the white bellies.

So you stop and ask a birder when they lower the barrel of their camera.

“Eagles,” she says, “someone counted 14.”

14 fucking eagles on a suburban pond in Colorado. The throng is mostly adolescent, lacking the white heads. You’ve seen the adults — the local pair, you assumed. You figure they’ll be gone in a few days because, you know, a suburban pond can’t sustain 14 large predatory birds without violent conflict.

But it has been a week.

And there are still 14 eagles.

They chitter in the trees. They drop eviscerated fish on the walking paths. They terrorize small dogs left to fend for themselves in backyards. They crown power lines and shit on balconies. They coexist in raucous harmony in and around the suburban pond, and no one dares complain about the blessing of 14 fucking eagles.