A Receding Squirrel's Nest, Perhaps?

You know how sometimes your eyes deceive you? Like when, perhaps, you see a cow lumbering across the two-lane blacktop at dusk, and say out loud, within the confines of your T-Hoe, "Hurry up, you stupid cow, before I hit you!" Only to find, as you draw closer, that it's a woman in a brown sweatsuit crossing the road after picking up her mail? Well, this is not one of those stories.

Yesterday on the way home, still in town, something caught my eye. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Not my eye. I can put my finger on that quite easily, though it's not something I practice on a regular basis, because that's a good way to pick up a virus or a bacterial infection. I just knew something was different.

My subconscious was being contrary. It was something about a tree. Hm...what's different? Did all the leaves fall off overnight? Were the limbs trimmed? Up there. Near the top. I saw it now. A bald eagle? Naw. I was past it too soon. Probably just a big-ol' squirrel's nest. Big nest, that is. I have no idea how big the squirrel might be. I drove on.

This morning, coming from the other direction, before we got to that tree, I saw another giant squirrel's nest. Right in the top of a different tree. I was slowing for a stop sign. "Look!" I commanded The Pony. "It's a bald eagle."

The Pony contorted himself to get a glimpse. "Wait. I'm going to take a picture with my phone." He snapped two. They were kind of blurry. But when he zoomed in, there it was. A humongous bald eagle. "Mom. I think he saw me. He turned his head to LOOK at me!"

"Where do you think they get the term eagle eye, anyway?"

I have no idea what a bald eagle was doing in that neighborhood for two days, impersonating a squirrel's nest. But he was gigantic. I'll never look at a squirrel's nest the same way again.