I talked Adam into going with me and picked him up at about 4:30. We stopped and got coffee at Micky D’s and hit the reserve about 6:00, just as the sun was coming up. Took about ½ hour to get out to the third platform, the highest overlook platform in the park. The platform has three separate viewing levels with the top one at about 60 feet above the ground. Great viewing site. We set up our tripods and starting looking for shots. By that time there was lots of activity.
We’d been at it a couple of hours and everything was starting to settle down when I saw this real pretty little wren. Adam identified it as the Carolina Wren, the state bird. Since I’d just
moved into the state, it was a new and kind of neat opportunity. I started concentrating on the wren, taking smart shots with a brand new 8GB memory card. The bird was flitting around just at the tree line, no more than about 50 feet back from the platform, while Adam was facing about 180 degrees the other way, looking out over the impoundment for water birds, beavers, muskrats and other water critters.I’d been watching the wren, which I had named “Carolina Charley-bird,” about 10 minutes when I began to get this notion that something about the bird was wrong. The notion turned into an itch I just couldn’t scratch ... and then I had it. The thing was flying sideways. Oh not all the time, but enough of the time to make you wonder about hummingbirds and bumblebees. Every so often the little thing would just zip and slip sideways. Not turn and fly, but more like, face you and move in a 90 degree sideways direction, without turning. And he kept bumping into things. Branches, leaves, and even once a tree trunk. It was like the thing was either drunk or on drugs. It was the oddest thing…
I finally mentioned it to Adam. He thought I was kidding him but he finally turned around, found the little culprit, and after a minute or two said, “Wow! You’re right! He’s flying sideways.”
And just about then is when it happened. BAM! The little thing flew right into a tree trunk hard enough for us to hear a faint “thunk,” fell about 6 inches to a fairly large limb, bounced off of that and fluttered to the ground.
I stood there debating whether or not I should climb down and render assistance, about 15 seconds probably, when he popped up, took off and flew up about 6 feet to a limb in an adjacent tree. And here’s where it gets really weird.
Carolina Charley sat on this limb just vibrating. In fact, the whole limb (not a big one mind you, but one about the size of my thumb) clear out to the last leaf, was shaking. Not a lot, but enough to notice. Adam and I were both mesmerized by the whole thing. “That’s just nuts!” was Adam’s comment.
Then the thing’s head popped off. Yep, you read it right. Charley-bird’s entire head just flew off. The whole thing reminded me of those military films where a tank gets hit just right and the turret flies up about 30 feet into the air. Straight up. Charley-bird was playing tank turret. We even heard a little “POP!”
The head ended up in the leaves but the body stayed on the limb. Cept now, no vibrating. But you could see into the body with my long lens and Adam had a nice set of binoculars that also showed the inner workings.
That little bird seemed to be made of metal. Looked like gears, wires, chips, and all the rest. The thing was some kind of little robot. Me and Adam started to argue.
“But we gotta go get it. It’s obviously worth something to somebody,” I suggested.
“No way man. You just know we don’t wanna meet whoever owns that thing. Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you nuts? Don’t you want to see into the thing?”
"Man. We’ve already seen too much. That thing belongs to the CIA or NSA or Green Beret or somebody who’s not gonna like us getting involved. I’m otta here dude!”
“Adam? Adam! ADAM!”
But he’d have no part of it. He was packed up and off that platform in record time. “I’ll meet ya at the car in 20 minutes, man. Let’s GO!”
I packed up my gear and walked down to the bottom of the platform. But I couldn’t just walk away. So I stacked the stuff where I could easily see it from the tree line and went adventuring.
The body was easy, even though the whole tree line was different from that angle. Had to shinny up to about the 7 foot level to get that tree to bend over enough to grab the right branch. Wasn’t a very big tree. Charley-bird… well at least Charley-bird’s body, was still hanging on to that branch pretty tight but I managed to pry open the little toes and pull him off without doing any discernible damage. Little toes were metal and yep, all of the innards were not God’s creation, unless vicariously.
The head took a little longer to locate only because of all the leaves. But I found it about 8 feet from where I started looking. By the time I got back to my gear my 20 minutes was up. But hey! I had the car keys so no problem.
I walked out towards the parking lot and met Adam, coming back at me, about 10 minutes away from the cars.
“Come ON man. You LOOKING for trouble? Let’s GO!”
“OK, OK. Hold your shorties on for crying out loud.”
We tossed all of our gear into the trunk, willy-nilly, me with two parts of Carolina Charley-bird in a green lens backpack, thinking of all the money I was going to make. I was figuring on holding him for ransom.
The reserve overlook tower is about 7 miles down a dead end road, along a short spit of land. Don’t get me wrong. The road wasn't there just for the reserve. In fact, there were lots of houses, several access roads to the water and even a couple of businesses along the way but that road was the only way in or out of the reserve and the surrounding country. We’d made it about ¾ of the way back to the main road when we got stopped. A state police car was actually parked diagonally across the narrow road. We rolled up to the cruiser, slowed, stopped and were ordered, by loudspeaker, “Out of the vehicle!” Not sure what she’d been told but she got us out, spread eagled on the ground, then handcuffed us and sat us up, leaning against my car, in about 2 minutes. Then she went back to her cruiser and just sat there, driver’s door open, watching us. Never asked for my “driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance,” like you see on COPS all the time. Just, “OUT! FACE DOWN! HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK! Sit Up. SHUT UP! STAY!” Maybe nobody had told her about Miranda or the Supreme Court. Anyway, good Cop, bad dogs. "STAY!" I noticed she was sorta hot, in a female cop kind of way.
We sat there for about 20 minutes while she turned away incoming traffic. She wouldn’t even talk to us.
The helicopter landed pretty close. All black, no numbers. Short little squat-bug of a copter.
Two guys got out. Camo outfits but without any patches, badges or insignia. Just vanilla camo. And of course, the sunglasses. Probably worth as much as the chopper. One of the vanilla sunglass wearers walks right up to me, leans down into my personal space, and says, “Where is it?”
For about a nanosecond I thought about playing dumb. But then the enormity of the situation hit me. “Trunk, green backpack.” I told him where the trunk popper was, next to the driver seat. He popped the trunk and dragged out the backpack.
“Got it.”
Then he opened up every bag in the trunk, popped the memory stick out of every camera, including Adam’s gear (which I will replace!) and stuffed them in his shirt pocket.
"Hey man! You can't so that!" I was sure I had some rights to my own gear.
He just walked over, bent into my space again and said, "Wanna bet?" All I could see were those big black sunglasses. Nothing in there, just a long deep black.
That was all. Go ahead. Call me a weeny. But you weren't there. The arguing ceased.
He generally shifted all the trunk occupants to make sure that everything had been searched. While sunglasses One was doing that, sunglasses Two was doing a pretty good pat-down search of me and Adam.
“Ouch! Not so hard, man,” said Adam, squirming just a little from the abuse.
“Just want you boys to get the message.”
Even made us take off our shoes and dump them out. Nothing. Cept some bad smells. Then the socks and a look at the bottom of our feet. (There are some jobs I just wouldn't want.)
And then they were gone. Poof. Never existed. (Bye bye black helicopter with no numbers and vanilla camo sunglasses guys.)
The Smoky Bear waited in her car until she got a radio call. Took about 10 minutes. Then she came over, stood us both up, un-cuffed us and turned us around.
“You boys don’t want no more of that kind of trouble now, do you?”
“No ma’am.” “No sir, er … ma’am. No officer.”
“Have a nice day, now. Ya hear?” Back to the cruiser, back down the road. Goodbye sorta hot Smoky Bear. Free at last. (Maybe I could exceed the speed limit on my way out of here and meet her again. Get her phone number?)
“You dumb ass. I told ya there’d be trouble!” Adam was not a happy camper. He grumped all the way home, imaging all sorts of more dire consequences. I did not speed.
So today my question is, what should I do with the memory card that I had in the camera? Not the one that I’d stuffed in there while I was walking back to the cars. But the one with all the pictures of old Charlie-bird flitting around. The one that for some reason I’d put back in the plastic case and left under a particular rock on my little sojourn out of the valley of tank turret popping? The one with all the shots I took of Charley-bird flitting sideways. And down the little suckers open neck. And up into the little sucker’s head. The one with very clear shots of all that hardware and the great cosmetics on that little bird. What to do, what to do?
I did notice that it seemed that a lot of birds were paying particular attention to me this morning when I took the dogs out. Right now I’m in the basement with the curtains on all the little windows closed. And I’m wondering. Birds ... and what else?
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