Things That Move...

Startled a buzzard the other day. I was taking my morning constitutional and had to detour across the street because this suburbanite was getting his pool pumped out at 8 a.m. and the pool pumpers had run a hose (we're talking 5-6 inch diameter flexible accordion hose here) from the backyard out to the street where they were recreating the original pool only 3 inches deep and a lot wider. As I moved along the shoreline, a dark shape jumped from the grass and launched itself in that long, slow, shallow awkward ascent typical of large birds, bombers and jumbo jets. It was a good hundred feet down the road before it was able to clear the roofline of a stucco ranch and disappear on the other side. Ungainly, with a long neck, so not a hawk despite the five foot wingspan. I'd seen vultures feeding on roadkill on previous trips (they'll step aside to let a car pass, but won't abandon their prize). I didn't see anything for it to feed on but I didn't exactly search the grass either.

Speaking of vultures, it's a little unnerving to be walking along, noting the occasional hawk/vulture float overhead and disappear, wonder where they disappear to, turn around and realize you're being followed by two dozen of the things. A couple days ago I looked straight up after losing track of a couple of them and found myself at the bottom of a swirling vortex of raptors/scavengers at least 500 feet high. Must have been thirty of them. Toto at the base of a bird tornado. Now I know how Tippi Hedren felt.

Speaking of big ungainly birds, I drove up to the mythical town of Cocoa Beach (geezer reference) to watch the last night-time launch of the space shuttle. Ever since the moon landings we have been slowly cutting back our goals, dreams and capabilities with regard to manned space flight to the point where we can barely get 200 miles above the surface of the planet with rickety technology we will now retire not having any replacement in hand. Needless to say, NASA did not disappoint: five minutes before blast-off they cancelled the launch leaving tens of thousands of us stranded on the beach out in the cold (literally). It succeeded as metaphor, if nothing else.

It took over five hours for traffic to clear out enough to drive home. I took back roads pretty much the whole way, around the north of Lake Okeechobee, a pleasant, flat drive through subtropical forest, farm fields and cattle pastures with occasional clumps of small identical standardized 1940s-era plastered-cinder-block ranch houses each with a broken front window, kitchen appliance in the front yard, and late model vehicle (SUV or truck) in the dirt driveway. Probably built for migrant labor originally, there'd be a half-dozen of them at one spot and then miles before the next bunch. Nothing that could be called a town for forty miles in any direction.

Speaking of the ragged edge of civilization, my eldest nephew called the other day. He's being sent to Iraq. To guard prisoners. Which is perfect military logic because not only is he in the Navy, he spent the first half of his career in Hawaii as a nuclear tech on a submarine and the second half in Charelston, SC teaching nuke tech. I say we send all of our people with nuclear skills and knowledge to Middle Eastern war zones. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway, he starts 90 days of either Army or Marine combat training next month and then Baghdad for nine months. The younger nephew is probably jealous. He's been to the Gulf a couple of times but never been off his ship (that I know of).