Many days the thought of coming up with new content for the blog is so taxing that the stress can only be alleviated by consuming chocolate and wine.
Today our blog topic was figuratively dropped into our laps and literally dropped into our swimming pool. The way to recognize that good fortune turned out to also be with chocolate and wine but with a celebratory, not consoling, spirit.
Mid-morning we were sitting on the balcony of Brunette’s third story condo which overlooks the Marco River in Florida. There is a tall pine on the property a little past the end of the swimming pool and in that tree is a nest of ospreys.
When one of the parent ospreys starts to make yackety yack bird noises we know something interesting is likely to happen. On previous days we’d seen one or the other of the parents fly by with fish or squirming pinkish rodents in its talons and make a food delivery to the nest. (We had been mulling if we could train an osprey to bring us pizza in the evenings but feared the toppings falling off en route.)
Today we heard the official osprey noise and looked up just as a huge one flew by with a large stripped fish grasped in its talons. We were amazed and sympathetic to the fish as we thought its eye that was facing us was trying desperately to signal a plea for help. We had barely registered the fly-by kidnapping before the osprey, while flying over the swimming pool, somehow lost its grip on the fish which then crash-landed in the pool!
The osprey, the fish, dumbfounded sisters and the various building residents lounging around the pool were all united in a sudden spontaneous WTF??? experience.
As we scrambled about the condo putting on suitable attire to attend a fish dropping event we later learned that one of the men near the pool had grabbed a net that’s at the end of a long pole and somehow managed to scoop out the fish.
The osprey had flown back out over the water – he wasn’t going to face his woman so soon after such an aerial humiliation. She was probably going to tell him she’d told him not to wear talon oil today or that he can never deliver or something else that would have only further wounded his self-esteem.
The fish retriever who had amazingly managed to scoop up the fish (it may have been a tad on the stunned side at that point) had decided it was too good to waste. As dinner was hours away the man took the fish over to the pier, stuck a hook through its mouth and tied it from a rope that dangled in the water. (This only seemed weird to us and maybe the fish.)
As soon as we learned the fish’s fate your eager reporters went to the scene for photographic evidence. Before we got to the pier someone told Brunette that it had been a “sheepshead” that the osprey had dropped. She looked amazed (not uncommon) and said “You mean like baa baa”? Blonde removed her from the scene before the authorities ask that she be removed.
Upon observing the fish dangling in the water off the pier we felt very sorry for it. First it had a near brush with death in an osprey’s talons, then thought it had cheated death by landing in a pool only to find out that it was still going to be dinner – just for a person instead of an osprey family. That poor bugger couldn’t win today!
Because we hadn’t seen the fish actually being retrieved from the pool Brunette generously agreed to do a dramatic reenactment for your edification.
Although we assume the fish was eaten by a person for dinner we devised an alternative ending to prolong the fish’s fate as an entree.
Perhaps when it was being cleaned on the counter near the pier a pelican grabbed it and the pelican had it for dinner. If that was the case it will have the pool lounging crowd abuzz tomorrow but it’s probably too much to hope for. As it was several pacemakers were probably shorted out by the fish plopping drama.
Brunette is quite small so for the rest of the week when we’re outside we’re going to be sure she’s well oiled so an osprey (or even an aggressive pelican) doesn’t make sushi of her.