When the Cat’s Away . . .

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When the Cat’s Away . . .

Hi Friend,

When the cat’s away . . .

the honkers land on our roof.

Actually, they care little if the cat’s around or not. Or if humans or dogs peer at them from below. If you’ve ever been around these birds, you know they’ll commandeer docks and golf courses, ponds and shorelines and ridgelines as if they held title to them.

Large waterfowl, they’re often numerous—and when they’re raising goslings, they’re downright formidable. When threatened, they’ll take on eagles—or me. They’ve chased me more than once.

I was in the crosshairs of the one above when I snapped her pic.

A Canada goose. Best not to look her in the eye.

But what you choose to call her is another matter entirely. In his journal entry on May 26, 1805, Corps of Discovery explorer William Clark referred to one of her kind as a Canadian goose, though in most bird books, she’s a Canada. The species’ call name has been a point of contention for as long as I can remember.

What do you call these birds? Canada geese? Canadian?

Having spent much of my life near the Canadian border (and surrounded by honkers), either name works for me. I write about them, regardless. They appeared in my first book over twenty years ago, and now they’re in the opening lines of Leaning on Air, where a snatched gosling sets the protagonist—and her story—in motion:

. . . rousted her brood through reeds of yellow iris toward a floating gander. On the opposite shore, Celia Burke leaned against a fat alder tree and watched the goose family cross the pond like a giant centipede.

Over them all, its white head a beacon in the green-black needles of a Douglas fir, an enormous bald eagle aimed its beak toward the paddling geese. Celia raised her binoculars slowly, anticipating the apex bird’s strike, her eyes peeled for the twin metal leg bands her grandmother had spotted during repeated sightings of this aging raptor.

She didn’t wait long. The eagle lifted its wings in feathered angles, flapped, swooped, and snatched a downy chick from the swimming spine of birds. The gosling’s parents—their honks frantic, necks extended—launched their heavy bodies after the attacker. But the eagle rose nimbly out of range, the chick in its talons.

Celia dropped her field glasses and sprang from beneath her tree’s leafy cover. The raptor passed overhead, swift and low and parallel to the narrow road beside the pond, the gosling a mere ladder’s reach away.

She sprinted after it, her ridiculous urge to prevent the baby goose’s demise as reflexive for her as breathing. For the next few seconds, she chased the eagle, propelled by the illusion that she could mob the raptor like a crow, that she could startle it into dropping the chick. She ran with abandon, watching the bird, not the ground, prepared to catch the baby when those wicked feet let go.

Instead, a rise in the country road caught her sneaker edge and sent her sprawling. Midair, she twisted, then hit the road’s rough surface in a skid. From her outstretched right arm to her ankle— wherever her tee and jean shorts weren’t covering skin—gravel, secure in its tarry substrate, scraped her raw. The spectacular tumble entered her memory in vivid, agonizing slow motion.

A goldfinch sang from a nearby field. Celia lay in the road, listening to it and a distant rumble . . .

*****

I’ll include Leaning on Air in giveaways later, but this week you can enter drawings for two books from two COMPLETELY different genres—science fiction and historical fiction.

The first GIVEAWAY: A Kindle edition from the Children of the Consortium series.

I became acquainted with author Cathy McCrumb’s work when Recorder, the first novel in that series, was honored as a Christy Award finalist. Though I rarely read science fiction, the award committee’s recognition of her excellent writing intrigued me. Within days, I dove into Recorder, and, like so many others, entered the well-crafted series many have called “sci-fi with heart.”

Since then, she’s released the second book—Aberration—to equal enthusiasm. The third book in the series, Guardian, arrives February 20. If you win, you can choose ONE of these books, and I’ll have a KINDLE version sent directly to you.

Click links above for each book’s description (and reviews).

In the second drawing, I’ll give away a paperback copy of Laura Frantz’s new historical romance The Seamstress of Acadie!

Published last month, Seamstress is already dunking readers in a compelling tale set in 1750’s Canada—and drawn from author Franz’s own ancestry.

CLICK the link above to learn more.

Interested in any of these books? If you’re a subscriber here who’s reading this letter in email format, write me by February 9 with “SCI-FI,” or “SEW,” or “BOTH” in your reply and I’ll enter you in the drawing(s) for the book(s) of your choice.

Reading this on WordPress? Write me HERE and I’ll enter you, too!

And now, friend, a few of my snapshots from around home here. Heart food for you, I hope.

Sulphide Glacier.

(Looking east at the North Cascades’ Mt. Shuksan, WA)

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over . . .”

—Luke 6:38

***

Flash mob, and man oh man was it noisy.

“. . . since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us . . .”

—Hebrews 12:1

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