LIFE-DEATH -- ACTIONS-PERCEPTIONS

Through my youthful years between the plants, animals and people in my life I absorbed the reality for each that existence was a continuum of living for varying spans of time evolving ultimately into death.  This lifelong awareness of life/death as a given relationship has spared me some of the death angst expressed by others. 

At the point of dying the life force can be explained as changing into some other form of energy, but we humans haven’t really deciphered those specifics yet.   Science and religion each offer their perspectives while for some the two are plausibly integrated.    I’m reminded of this life continuum when events on both ends of the spectrum enter into my daily awareness with both extremes quite prominent presently, birth then death when a phone call conveys another’s departure from this earth.     

The advent of spring accentuates birth and rebirth, bringing much change here in Southern California with the abundance of rain we’ve received after our drought years.   Greenery and colorful flowers including our California poppy cover previously drab deserts and mountainsides, some that had been blackened from fire.   The poppy’s brilliance can be seen from creme, white to pink, yellow, orange, red and deep plum blooms. 

The mixed poppy seed package I planted has produced only a delicate crème and lemony yellow, plus bright orange blooms that have spread like a blanket covering my parkway – the area between the sidewalk and street that had been filled with bark to replace the water-thirsty grass.  I’ve read the California poppy contains chemicals that might cause relaxation and sleepiness, is also sometimes mixed with other herbs for medical treatments.         

New life in my community emerges again as a relatively new neighbor awaits the birth of their first newborn.  I also look forward to the next stage in our Big Bear Mountain Bald Eagle couple’s story awaiting the hatching of their two eggs.   Refer in the archives to my two immediately previous blog posts for the timeline from fertilization, to egg laying.

The two eggs are expected to hatch about April 10^th – imminent this week! 

You can check for the latest developments at the Big Bear live camera focused on the nest 24/7:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b2dUgK6VV4

My continued interest having been captured by these eagles, I discovered a few other facts I hadn’t known before.    I always knew the Bald Eagle was depicted as representing strength and officially our nation, but I didn’t know much else about the bird.   Incidentally, the founding fathers in the process of debating the birds selection had also considered the turkey which has since been given a unique characterization of its own – not exactly a bird visualized as soaring majestically over our country.   

Seems that maybe much like each of us and our country, we may not be quite like how we believe ourselves to be, or may represent ourselves, whether or not knowingly or intentionally.   I don’t know that the Bald Eagle has misrepresented itself to us, but we have projected on to the bird how we prefer to perceive it.  I think that happens with what we do with people in our lives sometimes, too. 

We can certainly say very different perceptions about the country’s leader prevail among our nation’s people, for example.   But questions people of any persuasion might want to consider:

 – has our leader misrepresented himself ?

 – have we projected on to him how we prefer to perceive him rather than recognizing the  person he is ?

Take the Bald Eagle we have characterized in such a way that we hold it in high esteem for example. But some have described the bird as being rather dirty, given to being lazy and attracted to landfill sites, carrion, or other less desirable foodstuffs and possibly capable of spreading disease by dropping trash in suburbs such as in Seattle, Washington as described recently in the New York Times.

Also, as I’ve already noted in my previous post with sound links, that the eagles voice has been judged to be weak, so another bird’s sound believed to sound fiercer is dubbed into movies and TV.

I read just briefly about some other eagle pairs who in the past have really botched their family responsibilities.   One instance, instead of alternating egg-sitting the parents-to-be would both be off the nest simultaneously.  The result was on more than one occasion another bird type, a raven, took an egg.   Later, the parents apparently not having learned the lesson were both off the nest again and another creature was able to take their remaining egg.   Were they inexperienced parents,  did they not care, or couldn't they figure out what happened?   Then there was the eagle pair where the male just didn’t return to his mate one day.   Did he simply abandon her or did he meet with some tragedy?  

Now that I’ve learned some of these shortcomings, I laud this Big Bear Bald Eagle pair as they seem to be ideal parents-to-be so far.   We do know Jackie laid only one egg last year that successfully hatched, but later the eaglet died.  Those monitoring the nest think she has returned again this year, but with a different mate they named Shadow.  We could only speculate as to what happened to the previous mate. 

Anytime I’ve ever looked in on the nest after the two eggs were laid, one or the other eagle has been covering the incubating eggs in some pretty cold sometimes wet, snowy, or windy weather through the stormy nights.  We're due still for some weather and temperature variations with periods of increased heat.

So, I await the eggs hatching with this projected date “about April 10^th “.  The second egg was laid three days after the first so there may be some variance in eaglet arrival times.   Expect I’ll want to keep tabs on the eaglets until they actually leave the nest. 

I don’t project on to these Bald Eagles any greatness other than just what they are demonstrating.    I think my perception of this pair is that they are competent, reliable parents based on their actions to date. 

That really is what we have to rely on since actions most clearly define them just as is true among human beings.   We would be wise to consider actual actions as we form our perceptions of others including those with whom we make friends and those we choose as desirable nation leaders.