...crossed the road.
Last week on my day off--and when the sun was shining brilliantly, I decided to go for my favorite walk. After breakfast I packed my lunch, got into my hiking boots, spritzed on some insect repellent, and set off.
I can't help but take pictures of the wildflowers. I have about skadey-eight shots of Fireweed in various phases of bloom, but when another stalk backlit by the sun glows in front of me, I stop, turn on the camera, and snap another picture.
After one such photo op, being bent double trying to get the best angle for the picture, I heard a very strange noise. I think noises are stranger when you're bent double out here in the wilds of the park, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, I straightened slowly, turned more slowly, heard the noise again, and looked.... Zip. Nothing. I moved and heard said noise again. This time there was a rustle in the underbrush; the noise maker could probably hear my heart beating at this point.
Long story short, there at the side of the road, under the grasses and shrubby willows, was a Ptarmigan! With the unknown noise resolved, I felt much braver, and turned the camera toward the State Bird. Then there was more rustling, more of that strange muffled raspy cluck, and.... Chicks! First there were two, then across the road there were more little cheepy whistles, and more chicks, four...five. Seven in all. As I've related before, these are not the brightest of our avian friends. They cluster in times of peril (thus maximizing their chances of dispatch), and at other times, they scatter will-nilly in as many directions as there are birds in the brood. And sometimes, they just plain stand still and look at you.
Back about a mile I'd passed road work. Large Park Service maintenance vehicles busily dumped gravel, and while the grader spread it out, the dump truck--a huge dump truck (my head came about to the floorboard of the cab)--would zoom off for another load down at the south end of Wonder Lake. As I stood there watching the mama Willow Ptarmigan stand there in the road, I could hear the truck returning. As it came around the curve it slowed (they have a no-dust policy when encountering pedestrians), and then slowed some more, and came to a halt just as one of the chicks toddled onto the road to see what was going on. Talk about winning a game of Chicken! A natural world Ptarmiganimen Square.
The ptarmigans stood there and looked at the truck. The driver and I sat/stood there and looked at the birds. This went on for the better part of ten minutes. Finally, the female ptarmigan shooed her chick over to the other side of the road, I walked on, the truck slowly passed by.
Huge truck. Tiny birds.
That's what I like about things here in the Park. It's about the animals, not the humans. Large trucks and women out for a walk stop and let the locals move freely--it's where they live. We give way to them.
And that's why the Ptarmigan crossed the road: to move her chick to safety--at her own pace, without having to dodge anything.
