My little sister Lizzie is such a pain in the butt.   This week she dashed my hope of going to the beach when she got out of the nest and sent everyone on a wild crazy chase.

Like me she got to the edge of the nest but unlike me she actually flung herself off.   I was a little bit more cautious and ended up falling out of the nest.  How embarrassing that she has better balance.  To save face I said that she must have learned from my misadventure.

Her little first flight was pretty dang good I have to admit.  She landed a couple branches over from the nest.  Mom and Dad were close by watching.   Surprise surprise the first thing she did was cry for a bite of food.  She is the worst beggar and it seems she never shuts up.

After a snack that was when she started the crazy chase.  She is such an irresponsible little thing, flying from branch to branch.  If we had not been tagging along she would have been lost very quickly in the maze of madrona trees.  Before I knew it we were in a place I hadn’t seen before.  It had some old dead trees that stuck out of the forest next to a trail.   Also close by was a wood structure that Uncle said the humans built to rest on.   It had some odd railing thing and a thing he said they sit on, whatever that means.

That was when we heard the most awful high pitched screech.   It made me shiver down to my little toes it was so frightening.  I must have known it was something bad because that was when I saw it.   It was really big, white and with a bandit black mask around a set of yellow eyes.  The beak was huge and it had landed on that old tree branch we were near.   My family was beside themselves because Lizzie was right there too.  All of them started cawing and cawing at the thing.   Mom was screaming at the two of us babies to get away.  She called it “The Osprey”.   Now the monster had a name and I was so scared.

We flew away not really sure where we were going but ended up next to that structure Uncle said the humans had built.  From there we watched the family dive bomb the monster and caw at it so loud.  They did it over & over being so brave and actually very intimidating.

The Osprey just sat there eyeing them with those piercing yellow eyes and took his time deciding if he wanted a crow for a snack.   Then I guess he figured it would be more trouble than it was worth to eat one of us and just flew away.

Mom & Dad herded us back towards our nest trees saying we need to find shelter from big birds like that.  The beach was out of the question until we learned to obey our parents’ orders and became stronger flyers.

I fell asleep on a branch dreaming of the beach’s lapping water and the sparkling sky I can see peeking through the branches.