When Whippoorwills Call

Orlando Airport
N 28.432355 W -81.308967

I'm here at the airport to pick up my friend Pete. I was about to write how odd it was that I find myself in the same airport, in the same lounge, sitting in the same seat, plugged into the same plug and checking my email, for the third time this year. I was about to write that when I realized that this time I am in Terminal B rather than Terminal A. Everything looks the same but it is not the same place.

On the waterway many places look like other places, but I suspect if I were suddently plunked down in an unknown spot, that I could guess the right location within 15 minutes.

It's like old home day for Libby and I in Vero. We bumped into old friends, Reggie and Terry, and Bob, and George. I also rode on the city bus and I recognized almost all the local passengers who ride the same bus every day. But despite the feeling, this isn't home. We're heading for the Mohawk Valley which is really home for us.

In a mangrove tree right next to our mooring, there lives a bird who starts calling at sundown and continues all night. We concluded that it mus be a Whippoorwil because of the sound of it's call. After all, the song goes, "When evening is nigh, and whippoorwills call..." Anyhow, I think it is annoying. The bird call I love to listen to when in bed is that of the mourning dove. At least they confine thier calls to daylight hours. Our friend Mari has the opposite reaction, she doens't like them.

The worst bird I remember was a pheasant who visited our yard when we lived in Sweden. In the summer there, the sun came up as early as 01:00. This pheasant would hang around right under our open bedroom window. At dawn he would let loose with a shrieking crow that scared me to death. I really wanted to wring the neck of that pheasant.

In the winter, we did not get bothered by a pheasant, but we had a giant hare, about the size of a goat, who came to our yard and ate our sapling apple trees. Every year we would plant new trees and erect some kind of wire barrier to keep the hare away. Every year, the hare beat our defenses and ate the trees right down to the roots.