How I Wish I Could Fly!

  Wouldn't it be the grandest thing to be able to take off in flight under your own power?  Just imagine if we had wings and could soar across the horizon!  Well, perhaps I would not be doing a lot of soaring as I prefer to have good solid ground beneath my feet.  While I am not particularly afraid of heights, I like to be..ahem...well-grounded. It is definitely not being high up that scares me...it is more the falling that causes me to get jittery!  (heehee!) Falling and hitting the ground is not on my list of fun things.  It would, however, be positively wonderful to have wings as a backup means of transportation even if that need for transportation is just to get me back to the ground.

  Out behind the shed, there is a dead pine tree that serves as a roosting spot for so many birds.  The ospreys especially like the tree since it is devoid of needles that have a tendency of getting in the line of view when they are scouting fish.  The tree has started leaning at a precarious angle causing all stubs of limbs to also tilt at weird angles.  An osprey decided to perch itself on one of these slanting broken limbs.  As I photographed the bird, I pondered just how uncomfortable that spot would be for me.  My fear of falling would have had me clinging to that tree like cat hair to a sweater!  

  Birds do not have this problem since they can just swoop off the tree and glide to another spot.  Still, that perching spot did look as if the bird used poor judgement.  I cannot imagine sitting at a tilt for any length of time and yet, that bird stayed there for hours.  I would have been frozen with fear!