Thanksgiving Snowy Owl

Yesterday morning I saw a snowy owl--at least, near as I could tell by matching up pictures I took of it with pictures of snowy owls I found online.

A snowy owl has no more business in this little corner of Missouri than Michele Bachmann has in a presidential race, so I was initially doubtful. Unlike this writer, snowy owls thrive in seriously cold places (think “inside the Arctic Circle); while it can be cold in the winter here, it never gets much below minus 20. Snowy owls like it a little cooler, from what I gather.

How the bird managed to find her (I THINK it was a “her”) way down here to my neighbors’ rooftop will likely remain a mystery to me, given what I’ve managed to find online so far. No migratory maps I’ve come across show them venturing much farther south than southern Minnesota or maybe northern Iowa, quite a ways north of where I hang my hat (or would, if I ever wore a hat). She was clearly lost.

Have to give her credit, though, for making the best of her situation. She perched very patiently on that rooftop for at least an hour, probably a good deal longer, yet she obviously never lost sight of the need to hunt, the need to survive--this breed of owl apparently will pick some high ground and settle there, scanning the country around it, for as long as it takes until it spies a potential lunch and goes immediately, hungrily after it.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for having the chance to see the bird, so far from where it “belongs;” I am thankful that I have neighbors thoughtful enough to call me and let me know the bird was there; I am thankful that there was still a little room left on the SD card in my camera to allow me to photograph it.

Come to think about it, I am thankful for so many moments.

When I was about 10, it was coming up to the lip of a ditch crossing our farm and seeing a red fox (rare then, rarer still now) lapping at the ice far below me. Around the same time, it was driving to a grocery store and being startled by a deer leaping across the street in front of us, right in the middle of town.

A year or two later, it was making my way around a pile of brush in some woods separating two ponds I used to fish, and coming face-to-face with a mama skunk and two or three or more of her babies--I froze, didn’t stop to count, just backed off and ran away, but I can still see the skunk and her brood in my mind’s eye, my memory.

Much later, it was the possum lumbering in its odd, almost hunchbacked way toward me on a dark walking path early one morning, and the hawk with whom I came face-to-face when going out on a smoke break in the middle of midtown Kansas City; the hawk was resting in a tree at the edge of the parking garage, I was on the second floor, just about at eye level.

There were the baby raccoons, four or five of them, huddled 15 or 20 feet up against a tree trunk in streetlight, around 4:30 a.m. when I was engaged in my morning walk.

The humongous river otter that appeared one morning in a pond near my house, a long way from the nearest river (the Mississippi, actually).
The enormous beaver that waddled into the headlights, down by “Goose Pond” (not its actual name) in Kansas City North one night when we drove down there just on a lark.

I won’t even mention the rattlesnake stretched out on a rock, a squirrel in its mouth (well, I guess I did just mention that).

The world can be full of unexpected wonders, if we are open to them.

To borrow a line from Bob Seger, “these are the memories that make me a wealthy soul.”

Please allow me to introduce myself . . .

I'm a man of no wealth and little taste, to paraphrase the bard of wherever he's from, Mick Jagger.

My day job (well, more accurately, early afternoon/evening job) is medical transcription:  I transcribe medical reports dictated (spoken) by doctors and others (nurses, social workers, et al) who live and work a thousand miles away from me, in a place I've never been and to which I likely never will go, which is kinda weird, when I think about it, and NOT, at the same time--I number among my Flickr friends and Facebook acquaintances many people who live and work multiple thousands of miles away from me, in places I've never been and to which I likely never will go.

Physically, I live out in the country, 9 miles from the nearest tiny town, 18 miles from a town somewhat larger, yet probably not quite qualifying as a "city," no matter what it calls itself and no matter that the local university has a nationally known (among universities of a certain size, that is) football team.  I'm dead smack in the middle of what people on the coasts like to call the "flyover zone," and I like it here--keep right on flying over, thank you very much.  When the light hits them just right and the sky is blue enough, the contrails of your jets are wayyyyy cool!

Somewhat surprisingly, I don't miss living in the "big town" ("still hayseed enough to say, hey, look who's living in the big town!"  Thank you, Mr. Mellencamp).  Sometimes I wish I could get a pizza delivered, or Chinese, and sometimes I wish there were someplace I could go to walk where there were actually other people to gawk at and wonder about, try to imagine the lives of, but those wishes come less and less frequently with every sunrise I view from my front porch, in the company of my dogs and cats, especially when I've accidentally made a good cup of coffee and it is steaming in my hand.

I haven't figured out yet what this blog is going to be "about."  When I first set out to do it, I had a pretty clear idea (well, for me it was clear):  The "Occupy Wall Street" movement, or whatever it is, had set me off on a soul-searching meander through my working past and working present, and determined me to turn on my inner rant--and we all have "inner rants"--let "my voice be heard," etc.  We all want our voices to be heard, right?

But then it occurred to me that my ranting voice, while valid and all that, is not my only voice, or even my main voice.

While there would be no shame or embarrassment, or whatever, in being defined by my ranting voice, neither would I want it to define "me," any more than I want to or can be defined, as a person, by the job I do.  My ranting voice is part of me, my job is part of me, but neither one is "all" of me.

So I've decided that,  yes, I will rant sometimes (eloquently, I hope, but at least with all the words spelled right), but other times I will talk about dogs and cats and wayward possums and maybe the occasional bald eagle.  My job, my status as a worker in a decidedly worker-unfriendly age, is a part of my life, but the other stuff--the dogs and cats and possums and eagles--is what fleshes it out, what makes life matter to me.  The "other stuff" is my life; work is just a helpful way to structure my day (and pay the mortgage, of course).