I can still clearly picture the first time I remember seeing a bald eagle. I was riding in the passenger seat as my dad drove home from my Uncle Bill and Aunt Jan’s house in Leamington. We were in the middle of nowhere on a grey spring afternoon, and as we came around a curve in the road the eagle flushed from the ditch only a few feet from the car. I was small, it was big. It made a lasting impression.
Since then it seems to me that eagles have become more populous. They’re fairly common along Iowa rivers and lakes in the winter time, and in the Boundary Waters we saw eagles almost every day. They’re a neat bird. Stately. Regal. Magnificent.
But as we stood around our campfire a few months ago in Minnesota, Ed shattered the mystique when he exclaimed, “Eagles. They’re just vultures with good PR!”
Come to think of it, I think that Leamington ditch eagle was in the middle of a roadkill lunch.