« April 2002 | Main | June 2002 »
At 10:01pm Pacific Time a 5.2 earthquake hit just south of San Jose. Consequently that is where I currently am. Sitting in my hotel typing this message while a 4.2 aftershock is happening. I am fine. This is just California reminding me I grew up here.
Every once in awhile a person touches you life when you are not expecting it. This is one of those stories. This has been a bumpy spring in the emotion life of Dan. A couple of weeks ago someone reminded me that I am loved. I am not sure if the person even know how touching her actions were. You see I have a fan. A little red haired girl who thinks the character I play is the greatest. Now you have to understand I do not play an overly notable person. His name is 'bob' and he is a hopeless simpleton. But to one 12-year-old girl he is the bomb (To use the vernacular.)
Why do we call someone who rides a motorcycle a ‘biker’ and someone who ride a bike a ‘cyclist?’ What this has to do with today post I have no idea. I actually sat down to talk about ducks and bears. Sometimes my post just run off on their own.
Now about ducks… I can tell you with out a doubt the toughest land animal is a baby duck. I have always been impressed with baby duck for their ability to withstand abuse. Watch them some time. The sheer number of times in an average day that a baby duck falls two it’s own height is stunning. Think about it if I dropped you 12 feet 10 or 20 times a day how beat up would you be?
The real proof in my mind happened about eleven years ago. I was working at the Zoo in Oregon in the drive thru Bear area. This area had 10 Alaskan Brown Bears in an exhibit you could drive your car thru. The Alaskan Brown Bear is the worlds largest land carnivore. At 9-10 feet long and a record 2200lbs it is a small economy car with claws and teeth. One would think a 3 ounce baby would be no match. You would be so wrong.
The Bear area is a 2 acre round exhibit with a big pond in the middle. The pond is Bearland central. Everything the bears can pull off, dig up, or drag to it’s doom go to the pond. I could not hide a pin in the pond with out the first bear out in the exhibit finding it in two seconds. The first day the bears were let in to the exhibit one of them found the pond and hopped in for the first time. The bear submerged for about 3 seconds an came up out of the chocolate brown water with a glove one of the workers had lost weeks earlier before the pond was filled. The pond was their land. Or so we all thought.
One morning about this time of year around 9:30 am as was the routine I check the fences and the gates and let all 10 bears into the exhibit. I did not check the pond. If I had I would have seen a duck, mallard female, in the pond. With her was 6 down fluffy baby ducks. She had found a wonderful place for her ducklings first swimming lesson. That was before the nice keeper boy let 10 Alaskan Brown Bears loose on them.
It took the bears no time to find the ducks. The adult duck bolted having full flight feathers, her ducklings had no such escape. They were stuck in a 20foot pond with 10 very interested bears. By now I have seen the whole this and am in a jeep watching in horror. The bear were not going anywhere as long as they even remotely thought a duck may still be in that pond. The baby duck could measure their life expectancy in heart beats.
As the bears pounced the baby ducks dove! The bears followed. Both bear and duckling full submerged for what seem like hours. I was in the process of writing field note about the bears eating ducklings. Then something like a miracle happened, a duckling popped out of the water and just bobbed there. As causal as kid at a baseball game. One of the ducks was alive! All the bears were in the process of digging you another two feet of depth on the other side of the pond looking for ducklings. This duck has swam the length of the pond under water and dodging bears. The one of the bears soon to notice of the lone duck and was off in pursuit. Once again the duck dove followed by the bear.
This same event was to happen dozens of time over the next six hours. Sometimes it would be two ducks or even the remote three. I started to time the amount of time the ducks spent submerged. Time have lost the records but I do remember it was well over ten minutes on the average. I had written down that 5 of the ducks were lost. Then scratched that when I had seen 2 and again when I saw 3. About 3:30 in the afternoon I saw something I did not think was possible, the bears lost interest in the ducks and the pond. One by one bears would get out of the pond and find a place to sleep. Every once in a while a bear would wake up and go and look though the pond again, but it never lasted long. I could tell that they were demoralized. It was kind of sad really, here they were the most feared animals in the western hemisphere and the could not even hunt down all the ducklings in a 20 foot pond.
About 30 minutes after the last bear gave up three ducklings surfaced and got out of the pond and walked out of the exhibit. I was in the process of documenting and eulogizing the tail of the brave lost ducks when the second group of 3 baby duck did the same. All 6 baby duck had survived more then eight hours of confinement with 10 Alaskan Brown Bears in a 20 foot pond and walked out untouched. To this day I have no idea how the baby ducks did it… I just am impressed.
I am staying at one of these executive-apartment-suite types of hotels. Instead of just having a bed, bath, and TV, I have a Kitchen as well. That is not the depressing part. The depressing part is they included a dishwasher. Why would a dishwasher depress anyone you say? Well it is simple this place is not big enough to eat in let alone dine with friends or even one friend you know really well and do not mind using the same plate with. But, if you did you have the comfort of knowing you would not have to actually wash the dish. So you are miles from home, alone and on top of it you have to do dishes. There is also a couch… but do not get me started you know how it get.
Why do we do not take the glass of water. We have all had this experience you have been invited in to someone's house and the offer you a glass of water. If you are like me you say 'no thank you' as a matter of course. I hate that about me. It is just a glass of water. You need water, and I like drinking water. Still unless I am dying of thirst I will say 'thank you I am fine.' Why is that?
After thinking about it for a while here is what I have come up with. We as people believe that it is polite to not burden our hosts. It is polite for them to ask and polite for us to decline. As a host you would be horrified to know that a guest of your was in need of something you could freely give. As a guest you would feel awful if you took something the host ended up needing latter. Welcome to the perils of social etiquette.
But water is not what made me think about this. It is something far easier to give and much harder to accept. If I walk up and told you how nice I thought your smile was, what would you do? If you are like most people I know you would either make light of the compliment or flat contradict it. These are the things I have done and I hate it. What is wrong with me that I cannot just accept something I want and need so much? Positive reinforcement is so easy to dismiss.
So I awhile back I made a decision. I was going to come up with a responds that had no humor and completely accepted the compliment. I think I have a good, let me try it on you and see what you think… "Thank you."
What did you think? Original and creative? I have found it is easier to give as well as receive compliments now that I have come up with a responds. Now too work on that glass of water….