run for the trees

Today I was nearly savagely murdered by a hoard of eagles because they wanted my sweet puppy for lunch.

Not really. But what actually happened was kind of creepy.

My attention was first drawn to the fact that large birds of prey enjoy feasting on small dogs in the wonderful romantic comedy, The Proposal. (Which was disappointingly filmed in Boston with a fake mountain backdrop, instead of in Alaska or Canada with a real mountain backdrop.) I didn't think much of it because at the time, the only dog in my life was an eighty-pound labradoodle who was not exactly in danger of being snatched by an eagle.

It didn't come up again until I brought Charlie home for the first time. We took him on walks around our neighbourhood, where there is a lot of forest, and consequently a lot of hawks.

"Keep him on a leash," my mother warned, "lest he be picked up by a hawk." So I did.

Then recently, while Charlie was playing with a small dog in front of my apartment, the owner of that dog commented on how he one time saw an eagle STAB A CAT and then wait for it to die, because the cat was too difficult to abscond with while among the living. I stared at the man in horror, because I dislike hearing stories in which predators are eerily clever. I like it when they are like the bad guys in cartoons: not too bright.

Which brings us back to today. It was a lovely day in Campbell River, so I decided to take Charlie to the beach. We walked merrily along, him playing with seaweed and me trying not to fall over all the rocks. Then I heard an eagle, and I looked around until I saw it sitting in the tree, with three of its pals. "Neat," I said to myself. "I've never seen that many eagles at a time."

Then I noticed another eagle in a tree not too far away, and I swear it was watching us. It watched us until it decided to join its brethren in the tree that was closer to us than its previous tree. "Cool," I said to myself. "It's like an eagle party."

THEN I noticed two eagles sitting on the beach by a stream, and I am 100% POSITIVE they were staring at us. I froze, while Charlie continued to play with his seaweed, oblivious to the giant, creepy birds that were watching him. At this point, I remembered how in The Proposal the bird wasn't scared of Sandra Bullock, and snatched her phone right out of her hands. Maybe, I realized, seven eagles wouldn't be afraid of me.

I was, admittedly, torn for a moment between seeing how close I could get to the two sitting on the ground, and relocating Charlie to the safety of the path, but obviously I ended up choosing the path. We continued our walk, and the two eagles continued to watch us, until I noticed ANOTHER EAGLE in the sky above us!

So we went back to the car and went home, leaving eight eagles to plot for the next time.