I apparently have a sense of humor as dry as the Mojave Desert, leaving me to wonder where I might get some laughter irrigation for those special occasions when I believe the insertion of humorous content possesses some level of cleverness, while others don’t always seem as enthusiastic to tolerate my insertion (of either the comment or maybe just my personal presence, in general).
Exhibit A – An Ill-eagle sense of humor:
We have a pair of bald eagles in our city, Elliott & Eloise, of which an Eaglecam was graciously (okay, stealthily) installed at their nest, so our entire population can gawk at the creation of eggs until and beyond they hatch and produce fledglings. Of course, early in the process, a crowd of unseen stalkers simply gawked at Mama Eagle sitting atop the eggs this spring until something magical finally happened. One hatched — and then, a day and a half later, the other. Both eaglets have triumphantly survived this year! (which was not the case last year, unfortunately). After hatching, we saw significantly more of the eaglets, as the pair of parents doesn’t hang out much now – just coming around to throw a fish in the nest occasionally. (Their nest is, consequently, on the golf course on our lake. Eagles obviously know how to pick out prime real estate.)
So anyway…one day I’m checking on the pair and notice that one of the eaglets keeps looking directly into the camera, very curiously – over and over again – leaning one way and then the other, to which I (most cleverly, in my own mind) wrote the riddled comment: “Which one is Truman?”
Almost immediately, I received a reply back from one of the round-the-clock nest-gawkers experts: “Jody, not aware that the chicks were named.”
Since it was obvious that my dry humor had turned arid, I quipped something back to the effect of, “Well, since I named this one, why don’t you go ahead & name the other one?”
At that point the truth came out. They had, in fact, been named – and she knew it! I was then directly reprimanded by the online resident expert with, “I believe the one to which you are referring is HB2.”
“Hmm, I like Truman better.” I added a smiley, but I don’t think it made her like me any better.
For the record, even hoity-toity nest-gawkers experts aren’t always correct. Prototypes HB1 and HB2 were last year’s failed attempts. This year, it’s the newer models – HB3 & HB4. R2D2 & C3P0 would be proud. HB0 might have a legally registered trademark complaint.
(Consequently, I hope it’s a two-way camera and this eaglet is having just as much fun trying to figure out what kind of birdbrains we are.)
He’ll always be Truman to me (as I’m pretty sure he is onto us).
Life is serious enough already. My days come filled with serious challenges – often regarding the outcome of people’s lives. The lives of these eagles are serious too, as it hasn’t been that long since their species was on an endangered list towards extinction and even much less time since someone killed two of them in our own state.
I get it. Some people take their nest-watching (and other jobs) very seriously. But important work should never be done at the expense of robbing oneself (and everyone else) of the joy that life also brings. We need to install some laughter irrigation along the way. We need to share the oohs and ahhs of life, in general. We need the opportunity, too, to name our joys – because they can sometimes be so fleeting.
So, what if my Truman is your HB4? I can live with that. Just let me do it with a little smile. 🙂
***
Truman: The early bird gathers no moss! The rolling stone catches the worm!
Going to soar with the eagles!
-jody
Offered up in response to this week’s Trifextra writing prompt:
humanTriumphant 