Blue Heron Homicide

I have been thinking about this great story lately. It is not great in the traditional sense like Dickens or Hemingway, or even in the sense that you will rush to tell all of your friends my great story.. actually now that I've put some thought into it maybe the word should be awful or tragic instead of great. Count yourself lucky if you aren't curled up in a ball rocking back and forth and sucking your thumb by the end of this story. And crying. And channeling your thoughts through your friend Tony who lives in your finger.

Let's start out by talking about the blue heron. As you can tell by the title of the post, this story does not end well for the old boy. I went to Wikipedia, my 2nd love, to find out more about this majestic bird. Wouldn't you know it is actually called the GREAT Blue Heron? Man. What the hell. Well anywho, the Wikipedia page doesn't really tell me what I want to know, but I think what I'm looking for is somewhat intangible. Maybe it is an Eastern Shore thing, but blue herons are practically worshipped down there. My apartment in Salisbury was next door to a museum dedicated to waterfowl... in layman's terms - BIRDS. These people love their birds, and I think the blue heron is right at the top of the list, like the bird king.

Now that you have a little background, I'll tell you that the story starts with a trip to PA or something. A trip home from PA, more specifically. Dennis had been driving my cute little Honda Fit for most of the 8 hour trip when he finally asked me to take over the wheel for the last hour. I was a good sport (read: new relationship, accommodating gf) so I obliged. Maybe it looked something like this:

Probably looked more real-lifey though, but that's beside the point. The point is, don't we look great in my fly-ass whip? So we're driving down the highway, when we see this...

And Dennis used his super keen observational powers.

I was so focused on my driving that I didn't even see the heron. I had seen them enough on the shore that I didn't try TOO hard to look for the aforementioned heron; that is, until Dennis broke out his super keen perceptibility powers.

I feebly attempted to locate the heron in my sights but again, I just wasn't that interested. Until Dennis suggested that the regal bird acting weird = acting drunk. Hmm. So I finally saw the bird in all its glory..

This is all, of course, a recollection from almost 3 years ago, so forgive me for not remembering the specific brand of 40 that he was drinking.

There was probably 5 or 10 seconds from the time that I first saw the heron and the time it merged paths with my life, but it seemed like even less than that and I honestly don't remember what that path looked like, but I will still attempt to recreate it for you.

Bird rolls like tumbleweed across median.

Bird eats shit, takes impact to the face.

Bird makes misguided attempt at flight.

Bird misjudges velocity of the oncoming Fit.

Last minute assessment of his surroundings...

And splat.

This bird loop-de-looped around in the air, drifting from the median straight into oncoming traffic. Before I had time to react, this bird was face-planting directly into my windshield.

The sound was so loud I couldn't believe that my windshield hadn't broken or even cracked at all. My rearview mirror snapped from the windshield and landed in the backseat. The bird's body succumbed to the aerodynamic design of my car and rolled over the top, then off to the side of the road.

Dennis and Darick started laughing insanely and calling every person in their contacts while I continued to drive in shock and horror.

I had just killed a blue heron. A priceless treasure of a bird. But to be fair, he was most definitely intoxicated, whether the remains of the alcoholic beverage he was consuming were ever found by the police or not. I hope you won't think me a bad person, although to this day I harbor a deep resentment for herons and other alcoholic waterfowl.