Bad Omens

Last Sunday afternoon, our new neighbours contacted us, wondering if we wanted to go kayaking with them. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so Ken and I agreed. We launched at one bridge outside of town, with the intention of getting out at the next bridge which, by car, was less than two minutes away. It was a gorgeous day, and after paddling for ABOUT AN HOUR, I said, “Hey, how long is this going to take?” because my shoulder was still not 100% despite the 4 shock wave treatments I’d had. And let me clarify for everyone right now that it’s NOT electroshock—it’s sound waves and has nothing to do with my brain at all, although if it did, I might have been able to think twice about a kayak trip that looked like it would take half an hour as the crow flies, but in fact took over two hours as the river meanders.

Anyway, we’d been on the water for a little while and it was very peaceful. Suddenly around the bend, we saw a giant bird. It was a green heron, sitting on the bank. As we got closer, Ken tried to get a picture of it, but it took off, flapping its giant wings. We were sad, but not too much farther upstream, there was another green heron. And then a blue heron. And then a WHITE ONE. And what I had forgotten is that herons are not so much a breathtaking natural wonder but a very bad omen. Once, many years ago when I was still teaching, I had a department head who was an earth mother type. She and her husband had just installed a huge pond in their backyard, and stocked it with very large and expensive koi fish. One morning, she came into our office, breathless with excitement.

“I looked out my kitchen window,” she said to all of us gathered around, “and there, shrouded in the morning mist, stood a heron. It was so majestic and wonderful!” (We were English teachers and talked like this all the time).

“Oh!” said a young ingenue. “I just looked it up and herons are a sign of good fortune and progress. Lucky you!”

Everyone mooned about the heron, all of us wishing we had one too. But then the next morning, our leader returned, dejected.

“What’s wrong?” we asked.

“The heron ate all my koi,” she replied tearfully.

So herons are basically harbingers of doom, and if I’d remembered that at the time, I would have paid more attention to the obviously dire message that the string of heron sightings was meant to convey and I wouldn’t have found myself caught up on rocks in a section of rapids, with my kayak rapidly filling up WITH said rapids, screaming to Ken for help. We managed to tip my kayak and drain most of the river out of it right then and there, but the water was moving so fast that I lost my balance several times, causing both my flipflops to come off, leaving me hopping around barefoot on very sharp rocks. I spent the rest of the trip, which took ANOTHER HOUR, sitting in 4 inches of water sans shoes. Still, the weather was charming and the company was good, despite the herons and their pall of ill fortune.

And I would have been well to have remembered that on Wednesday, when I turned from my desk and caught a glimpse of something strange on our front porch railing. From where I was sitting, it looked like a large animal hunched over. My tolerance for things has become remarkably low since the lockdown started so my first reaction was, “What the f*ck is on my porch at 9 o’clock in the morning?!” I was additionally trepidatious, having already been terrorized the day before by a psychotic squirrel that had slammed spreadeagled into the window inches from my head during a meeting, causing me to jump and shriek, which in turn caused my team to jump and yell, “What’s happening?! Should we call 911? Qu’est ce qui se passe? Appelle la police!” And then I had to explain that it was only a squirrel. Outside.

So I very cautiously crept to the front door and peeked out the window to see A HERON perched on my railing. I still hadn’t put two and two together with the bad luck and whatnot, so I was like, “Cool!” I texted Ken: Come down quietly—there’s a heron on the porch.

Slight tangent: Ken and I have always owned houses with two stories, and because I don’t want to damage my voice by constantly yelling up at him, and because Ken has terrible hearing (Ken: No, I don’t! Me: What? I can’t hear you.) we’ve always had either an intercom system, two-way radios, or other means of communication between floors because—and you may be surprised to hear this—I talk a lot. Luckily now we can just text each other.

Ken tiptoed downstairs and we were both amazed at this giant bird just sitting there. We got some pictures before it suddenly spread its massive wings and took off. But then I remembered those ill-fated koi from many years ago and insisted that we go out and check our small pond to make sure the goldfish were still intact. They were. But as we were patrolling the garden, we found a tiny mourning dove with a broken wing in the bushes right below the heron’s perch. After doing some research, we discovered that herons will also attack and eat smaller birds, which explains why it was hovering like a f*cking vulture on my porch railing. Ken called a rehabilitation centre for wildlife in the next town over, and drove the dove there. We haven’t heard if it survived, but I hope so.

Long story short, herons are assholes.

 

66 thoughts on “Bad Omens”

  2. Some people I know put screens over their ponds which can be both discreet and protect against herons. I don’t blame the herons, though. They look at the bird feeders people put out—my wife even has a hummingbird feeder on the window next to her desk and hummingbirds come right to it. Anyway the herons understandably think the ponds are aquatic birdfeeders.

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    • Luckily our ponds, and our fish, are too small for a heron to dive into:-) I just felt so sad for the little dove–the woman at the rehab centre said it was only a fledgling. It probably didn’t even know what hit it.

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  7. So these neighbors, are they Wolfstein’s owners? And other than those mishaps, I hope you enjoyed the outing. I mean I wish there was somewhere I could go kayaking around here that was close.

    I did not know this about Herons, I suppose every section of the country (countries) have its share of predatory assholes. Herons are pretty big, and now that I know they carry bad luck assholeness with them, I don’t like them, lol.

    They are probably related to the Mockingbirds of doom that seem to live everywhere here. I’ve seen so many mockingbirds at work, it’s weirdly ridiculous. Lucky for us, there are also a lot of cats on campus too, the student association catches them, has them fixed, chips them and lets them roam campus free to do whatever they please. They also have cat houses on campus and volunteer students to go and feed and water them everyday. So I feel that the mockingbirds are not feeling safe with the Campus Feline Army roaming around, lol.

    Did you ask about Wolfstein? Just wondering 🤔

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  11. Yeah right, people put the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet offer in their gardens and it’s the heron that’s a baddie? 😉
    Like a good kayak myself, although I’m most often in the sea…well, in a kayak ON the sea… no actually, right first time, in the sea quite a lot!

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  15. They may be assholes but I refuse to think bad omen. We have them dine at our pond often. We also have dicks and geese stop by for a snack not and then. We have had hawks, racoons and coyotes kill our chickens and deer, rabbits and squirrels destroy trees and garden plants. None are bad omens – just nature doing what nature does. 🙂

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  25. I’m not sure we need a heron to warn us of bad tidings when every single day of the current year has been an ever-escalating sh!tshow! Whatever it is you have planned, assume it will go wrong; whatever it is you want to do, just assume it’s a bad idea. The heron is clearly the official bird of 2020.

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  29. Pingback: Sunday Paddle: Huron River/Island Lake Part 2 - kathleen howell

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