Fish and burgers

Sitting on the beach I just watched  a boat go by in the distance. People fishing from the boat.  A woman just tossed her line into the water. Some shiny bait. The ocean is so vast. Billions (trillions?) of sea creatures just swimming right along browsing for something to eat. I’m curious how a fish can fall for the “bait on a hook” trick. I guess they’re just always hungry and not very suspicious or discriminating as long as it looks tasty. I imagine myself in a world where I’m just walking along, in my neighborhood, dum-de-dum. And I round a corner and there’s a picnic table with a Five Guys bag on it. Nobody around. I check out the bag. It has a fresh hot cheeseburger inside. Still nobody around. I should be suspicious. But it smells so good. I imagine I would eat the burger. Then I might get snatched up in some snare and transported to some ocean in the sky where I drown. And then I’m eaten (though I’m unaware of that part). 

Bait! It all makes sense. 

I was wrong.

 

 

This photo illustrates mankind's understanding of the universe. The way a man views his surroundings and shapes that which he believes based on what he sees with his own eyes and what he hears, touches and feels. That which he experiences with both his physical senses as well as his best attempt at logical perception, applying all his knowledge to what he hopes is a grounded understanding of the world around him, and especially that of human nature. If for no other reason than the survival of his kind. 

 And then one day it all comes crashing down. 

There were exactly 65 tissues. As advertised. To my utter dismay and disappointment. I will not be suing Aldi Corporation for fraud as I had anticipated. 

More importantly, I fear I am being called to question more of my own strongly held beliefs. Is it possible I attribute unfair motives to those with whom I disagree? Might a person who expresses his or her doctrine, which I may see as utterly dishonest, loathsome, coercive, and destructive of that which is good have a point? Could that which I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, and could words both written in bold print and spoken loudly and clearly in public spaces be entirely misconstrued?

Nah.

Cranes

Late last year there were a pair of sandhill cranes wandering around on the driving range at a local country club. An errant golf ball struck the female in the head and she was killed right there. Golf course staff scooped up the dead bird, carted her off to another spot on the property and dug a hole, the male crane fussing and harassing them the whole way. Shooing the male bird away, the workers placed the dead female in the hole and covered it up. The male bird lingered at this spot the rest of the day and was gone the next morning.


Recently, for a couple of months, this lone male crane

has been showing up at the country club at the same time every night. Around 9:30 in the evening he emerges through a gap in a hedge, crosses the parking lot, and stands in this very spot for hours. Around 5:30 in the morning he walks across a little grassy area in the parking lot, around the building, and off onto the first fairway where he vanishes into the darkness. At 9:30 the following evening, he's back.


Employees speculate he's the same bird from the driving range, perhaps hoping his mate will return.