Fly, little birdie, please fly
AH, THE BALD eagle, that most majestic of birds, the soaring symbol of all that is noble, independent, fierce, and far-sighted.
There really couldn't be a more awe-inspiring beast.
Or so I thought, until a pair of the iconic animals packed up their U-Haul and moved to a towering tree a couple hundred feet behind our lake cottage in Maine.
I'm wiser now. As Lord Acton might have said, had his subject been the natural kingdom rather than the political world, great creatures are almost always bad neighbors.
After some months of enduring the nest of the noxious nettlesome natterers, I can safely say I'd prefer having a motorcycle gang living nearby, if only for the relative peace and quiet.
When it comes to early rising, Benjamin Franklin had nothing on young eagles, who wake without benefit of an alarm clock sometime around 5 in the morning - and proceed to warn the world of the impending day.
The eagle, it should be noted, is not a song bird. In fact, the eagles I know make your average crow sound like Barry Manilow. The closest I can come to replicating the cry of the fledglings is this: "Scree! Scree! Scree! Scree!"
Repeat that oh, say, 2,000 times, and you have the talons-on-blackboard sound that's come to mar our Maine mornings. For those interested in learning to speak eagle, it appears to mean: "Two, four, six, eight, today's breakfast is late, late, late." As Hillary Clinton might put it, it wakes a village to raise an eaglet.
And don't be deceived by the adult eagle's stately appearance. Eagles are not tidy beasts. One recent morning as I sat near the lake, there wafted my way an odor that, but for the navigational impossibilities, seemed to announce the arrival one of those garbage barges that sometimes find themselves wandering the coast in search of an hospitable landfill. Following the olfactory trail to its source, we discovered a large fish one of the eagles had dropped on our beach. Judging from appearances, the poor fellow was some three days gone before we happened upon the crime scene.
Still, I prefer a decomposing piscine specimen to - how to put this delicately? - the digested fish products the eagles release with depressing accuracy just as their flight plan vectors them in over our dock.
What's equally vexing is the unanticipated consequences of their arrival.
Phoebe, our barely-graduated-from-kittenhood cat, had previously sat benignly atop our island property's truncated food chain, spending delightful days pouncing on ants and stalking dragonflies. But now, with the eagles casting their baleful shadow earthward, she hesitates to go outside during daylight hours without a police escort. Most days, it's only after sunset that she ventures through the cat door and off alone into the world.
Every change has consequences, and this new shift has brought her into close contact with the extended family of bats who have established a condo community under the cottage's shakes. Fortunately for the bats, Phoebe lacks a true killer instinct. Unfortunately for us, she has proved surprisingly adept at snaring her fluttery prey.
Whatever to do with a bat one doesn't have the heart to kill? Why, bring him inside so your people can enjoy him too.
Emily, our former feline, used to pluck frogs from the lake in the wee hours and proudly deposit them, annoyed but usually uninjured (save for their pride, that is), on Marcia's pillow. It's hard to say who was more startled by the nocturnal nose-to-nose encounters, the kidnapped frog or my suddenly waking wife. However, I can confidently declare that it didn't rank high on either's list of life-enriching experiences.
Nor, for that matter, was transporting the disgruntled frog back to the moonlit lake my favorite task.
Still, that rescue mission was eminently preferable to waking up to the far more complicated job of shooing an agitated bat out of the bedroom.
Others might blame the cat. Myself, I blame the eagles.
In sum, while in theory I celebrate the bald eagle's resurgence, when it comes to one particular tree, empty-nest syndrome can't arrive soon enough for me.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 