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Where is the eagle?

It hasn’t rained in a very long time and a bit farther away from us the forest fires burn, as we noticed when we flew from Atlanta, Georgia, into Jacksonville, Florida.  Here in Starke, only the firefighters’ helicopters flying overhead once in a while remind us of the fires in the distance.

So today we are enjoying a calm day; relaxing, swimming in the pool, reading a bit, and chatting with the owners of the motel, Halina and Lester.  They are from Poland and, together with their sons and Halina’s mother, immigrated into the US twenty years ago.  Halina’s mother is very kind and she smiles often.  She spends the better part of her days quietly sitting on a chair in front of the motel, looking at her “garden” of plastic potted plants and watching Coochie, Halina’s dachshund-who-thinks-he’s-a-shepherd.  In all those years in the USA Halina’s mother has learned one sentence in English:  “I don’t speak English.”  We carry on our conversations mostly through gestures, which doesn’t really get us very far, but that’s okay.  We like and understand each other.  Behind the motel Lester keeps goats and chickens.  The goats keep the grass short under the watchful eye of Daddy Buck.  Every now and then the herd runs to the front of the motel, where the grass appears to be tastier, while bleating loudly.  It’s that time again and Coochie, who thinks he’s a shepherd, noisily chases them back.  Peace and quiet returns in the garden, but not for long, since motels are usually located along highways with a constant stream of traffic passing by.  On the other side of the road, far in the distance, we see a freight train moving along the track.  Day and night we hear its shrill warning whistle.  There is a variety of sounds in the motel garden; the traffic, the train, the whinnying of a horse in a coral not far away, singing birds, a crowing rooster, bleating goats, and the loud barking of Coochie.  This motel in Florida is our “second home” and Halina is happy to have us as her guests again.  This time when we arrived, Lester was awaiting us.  It was midnight and Halina was already asleep.  We were late because our domestic flight had been overbooked so we had been bumped to a later flight.  We had the choice of either staying at a hotel in Atlanta at the expense of the airline or leaving on an 08:30 PM flight.  Although it meant that we wouldn’t arrive in Starke until late, we chose the latter.  Halina was moved when she heard that, “You wanted to sleep here with us and not in some strange hotel,” she said, tenderly.  And that was right.  We like to come here and feel at home. 

Now we are sitting in the garden, listening to all the sounds, enjoying the green scenery and the beautiful clouds in the sky.  Above us, an eagle flies and I quickly take a picture of it.  We often see eagles here and there probably will be another one around, as they usually travel in pairs.  Sure enough, from behind the motel another eagle appears and together they soar through the sky, the last one disappearing behind the motel while the first one hovers over the highway.  Oh please, I think, don’t let that animal think that there may be prey around there.  On or along the roads there is often road kill, but eagles don’t really feed on that, do they?  For a moment it’s very quiet on the road – there’s no traffic at all.  It is still, except for the singing of the birds in the palm trees.  The eagle circles around, approaches for the landing and disappears from sight.  Moments later, a heavy Mac truck roars by, followed by a stream of traffic.  We scan the sky.  The eagle landed and by now should be ascending again, with our without prey, but we don’t see a sign of him.  Then, from behind the motel, the second eagle reappears and it looks as though he is searching for his partner, but he doesn’t dive down and eventually disappears behind the motel once more.  We keep looking up.  Where is the eagle?  He should have been visible again a long time ago.  But there had been this Mac truck…..  The beautiful morning loses its luster.  Had “our” eagle been hit by the truck?  No matter how long we keep looking up into the sky there is nothing to be seen; no eagle, no other birds, and even the fire fighters’ helicopters stay away.  We go back to our day’s activities of relaxing, the writing of a letter, swimming, and text messaging, and afterwards we go for a car ride.  As we merge into the stream of traffic, there, on the right side of the road, is a large, dead bird that’s been flattened by traffic.  Is it an eagle?  Our eagle?  We’ll never know for sure.

That night, we sit outside again.  The evenings in Starke are beautiful.  It smells good and the crickets are engaged in a free chirping concert.  The goats are bleating but Coochie doesn’t have to watch them because they’ve been locked up for the night.  Halina’s mother is outside as well.  In the distance the forest fires are still burning and we are talking about the fire fighter who rescued a bear cub from a sea of flames.  He is the hero of that day.

It’s getting dark, Halina’s mother goes inside and we decide to go to sleep. Inside, I look at the photographs I took with my digital camera that day.  There’s Coochie, the goats and Daddy Buck, the chickens, the swimming pool, and the garden.  And then there’s the eagle – high in the sky, captured for eternity by my camera.

Text: Dini Commandeur,  Translation Maria O’Neill