Aaah, my very first blog post – what to write, what to write….with too many inappropriate stories to mention for my first ever introduction here, I think I’ll start with my recent interaction with a Great Blue Heron. Who, as the late great comedian Mitch Hedberg mentioned about ducks, is probably only interested in me if I catch a fish.

“I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread.” – Mitch

Anyway, after a very lengthy home buying adventure (that’ll be for another post) I ended up buying a house just minutes away from a few trout rivers that my uncle and I used to fish at years ago. I love exploring nature in general, so being back at these rivers was like a kid on Christmas morning. When I got to the river, which was adorned by an old abandoned train trestle and rustic barn-like cabin on pilings in the water, I noticed the Heron pretty far away, just hanging out on some rocks looking for fish. I paid him no mind but liked that he was there. Gave me something to focus on while I wasn’t catching anything. After an hour or so, I catch a pretty decent Smallmouth and kneel down on the rocks to get the hook out of his mouth. I look up for a split second and the 3 and a half foot tall Heron is a couple feet away, lunging his beak at me and the fish and frantically dancing around me in circles. Sounds cool… actually pretty terrifying. Every possible scenario went through my head within seconds. 1, he would gouge my eye out with that long beak of his that was wildly stabbing at the air. 2, he would eat the fish straight off my line with the hook still in it, and now I’d have a hook and fishing line in the throat of an insane 3-foot bird. I start yelling at him to “Take it easy!” and “Just chill!”, which in hindsight is pretty funny to me, and I start swatting him away with my fishing pole, which of course is still attached to the poor Smallmouth. Definitely not an easy thing to do taking a hook out of a pissed off fish while a large pissed off bird is circling around you, flailing his giant wings and making noises that you’ve never really heard before. But I eventually prevailed and he was not very happy when I tossed the fish back in the river. Pretty sure he wanted to stab me in the face with that beak. However, he must’ve gotten over it and decided to hang out with me for the next 2-3 hours while continually doing the same crazy end-of-the-world dance every time I caught another fish. I unfortunately tossed him a Crappie once for his troubles. Kind of like a tip I guess for all his effort. I told myself that he was probably going to catch a fish at some point himself, so I though I was kind of helping him out a bit. I say “unfortunately” because I’m not sure if I should have encouraged him to terrify people every time they catch a fish in that river. Maybe he’ll tell his other similarly lunatic friends and now this army of Great Blue Herons will wreak havoc on the fishing community in this new great place that I just moved to, and it’d be all my fault.

I see him now and again and I know he remembers me. I’ve caught a few more fish in that same location and always have some lingering fear that when I bend down to take another hook out, he’ll be there ready to stab me in the face again, but he must’ve been busy elsewhere during those times.

Not a few weeks after this meeting, I took my daughter to a craft shop nearby where they sell local artists work. One woman creates beautiful hand-cut art in shadow boxes and this pretty intricate piece happened to be of a fisherman catching a fish right next to a Great Blue Heron. It’s in my living room now, next to my Mad Magazines, and makes me laugh every time I see it…