Attribution: Photo by Ben Lande on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in noting on this Easter morning that maybe one of the reasons he has lived so long is to give him time to make amends, or at least apologize for some of the thoughtless things he did as a farm boy growing up where woods meets fields in northwest Wisconsin.
One of those misdeeds involved eggs–three marsh hawk eggs after the wandering keeper flushed the hawk off her ground nest back by Upsal’s swampy pothole.
In a grand display of young ignorance, the keeper carried the eggs home and put them in the warming oven of Mom’s kitchen stove assuming that they would hatch and then???????? He hadn’t thought beyond that point–what it took to parent young hawks, and was spared that challenge when after several days Mom tossed the hawk eggs out, telling the keeper they were not going to hatch.
The marsh hawk is a beautiful long-winged bird that hunts with graceful zig-zags close to the ground and the keeper remembers watching it’s performance with boyhood fascination.
On this “hidden egg” Easter morning the keeper extends a belated apology to the marsh hawks for finding and destroying their eggs, and if he had it to do over he wouldn’t do it. He vows as much to Phyllis and tells her yet once again about the marsh hawk nest back by Upsal’s pothole.
HAPPY EASTER!
