35—Trying To Keep Up With the Herons

A widow, Dorothy was a small white-haired woman in her eighties. Soft-spoken and grandmotherly in her navy-blue polyester pants and pink smock, she was fragile but in no way brittle or timid. Her old green beach house was filled with the clutter of a woman more interested in experiencing life than imposing order in it. 

“He was such a handsome fellow,” she said like a dreamy teenager while sliding a plastic baggie of feathers from the drawer of an old buffet. “He shed these over the years,” she explained then handed me two: One long and charcoal from that powerful umbrella wing, the other wispier and full of the salmon-pink flush of the mating season. Holding them, I could feel the great bird in my hands.

Out back on the deck, Dorothy laid her fingers tenderly on the railing where Heron had come every morning and evening for more than seven years. She explained how on the first of every month, she’d buy two packages of frozen smelt at the local bait shop. “Thirty to a pack,” she noted. “Breakfast and dinner for the month. “I'd lost my husband unexpectedly,” she said, “so didn't have much. But the expense was worth it.”

“When I had to go away,” she went on, “Heron went to the neighbors two houses down. They gave him hot dogs, and I worried about all those chemicals. It got so I hated to leave.” She paused, then confided, “I loved him. Really loved him.” Blinking back tears, she smiled. 
“The neighbors called him Harry. But it wasn’t right. He was Heron.”

“How did you and Heron become acquainted?” I asked. “Is there a secret to . . .”

“Why now that you ask,” Dorothy exclaimed, “I don’t have the slightest recollection! It just seemed to happen. But I do recall it took a while for him to trust me enough to take the fish directly from my hand. And that’s the strange part,” she said. “I was never afraid of him. I mean I knew a heron can be quite deadly, poking out an eye or worse. But it never once occurred to me that I might be in danger. Like the time he showed up with a wire wrapped around his beak, and I called the vet. I just knew he would understand we were there to help free him. And that’s exactly what happened. Another time, I had the vet out to mend his wing. He allowed us to put him in a coop. A couple days later, he decided he was well and broke out.”

“It was shortly after that,” she said, her eyes welling up, “that one evening he didn’t come.” She paused. “He never missed. And I knew in my heart that was it. The worst was, still is imagining what happened. Some local fishermen out on the lake had been complaining of a heron making off with their catch. I always wondered about that wire and his wing. . . .” 

When it came time for me to leave, Dorothy walked me out to the car. "You were so lucky to have Heron in your life," I said. 

“And for all those years,” she said. 

We were hugging like old friends when a shrill and familiar KWWAAAAAAK intruded on our final moment. Dorothy rolled her eyes and explained—not without a hint of disdain, “The people next door just have a gull. . . ." 

I felt a twinge of shame like static shock. 
“Be careful now when you back out," Dorothy warned as I opened the car door. "The driveway has that odd line to it. The fellow who put it in had only one eye.”