Some birds that were hungry too

Published 2:21 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Thanksgiving has come and gone for another year, and you folks that can’t wait for another holiday, Christmas is exactly fours weeks after Thanksgiving and New Year’s is one week after Christmas.

Within five weeks, there are three major holidays.

The kids are out of school for about a week at Thanksgiving and another two weeks at Christmas and New Year’s. Most of us enjoy a few days off around the holidays also. It is a very good thing and gives us time to recharge the batteries to get through the rest of the winter season.

Email newsletter signup

If you live long enough, you will see some nice things and in some of those things you really wouldn’t expect to see. All I saw was a picture, but it was a great picture. On Monday, I saw a gentleman in Blakely that had seen a bald eagle in the ditch of the highway eating an animal he had caught. This one was fully grown and tall as a grown turkey, but a lot more menacing. The man taking the picture did a good job, especially as he was expecting the eagle to fly away. It didn’t fly and hung in there eating the meal as the man drove on away.

It is not often that any of us get to see a bald eagle, so we should treasure each sighting. This picture was taken at less than 30 feet and for the eagle not to fly away, it must have been hungry. And he was ripping hunks of meat from the unfortunate small animal that was unlucky enough to have been sighted and taken for a meal.

Another thing I have noticed in the last couple of weeks are countless buzzards. A bunch would be circling in a given area and miles farther along another bunch would be seen. Most likely they had located dead deer that had gotten away from a hunter and having been wounded died later on. The scavengers having found them cleaned up the area. It is disgusting, but the buzzards do serve a purpose. I know one ole boy that shot a pretty good buck and lost it. He went back for almost two weeks before he located the buck. It was the smell that really helped him find the buck and then he brought the stinking thing home. His wife did take a few pictures of him with the buck and then ordered him and the deer out of the yard. I am not sure that my wife would have allowed me in the yard long enough to hear the story much less take a few pictures.

Ducks season has been in and folks are going to the lake and backwater ponds. They killed enough before the holiday to have duck dressing for Thanksgiving and looks like they are going to try and make it a double and have it again at Christmas. Dressing with oysters is not bad either, but then dressing made with turkey legs and wings taste mighty good also. My mother prefers to use a fatted hen. I don’t hardly see how anything could taste much better than that. And big Dave thinks that nothing is better than corn for the Thanksgiving meal. I kinda like it myself along with the dressing that is.