Crapped on by an Eagle
<p> It was a very low tide around noon today at Denning's Point. So low that my sister Diane and I walked out onto the mud flats on the bay side of the Point to take a picture of the ruins of the old Denning's cider mill. We were standing under the great oak tree that abuts the mill when suddenly I heard, "Oh, Yuck! Bird Poop!" A huge SPLAT had hit the back of both our coats, and some had run down the back of Diane's neck. I looked up and saw the culprit: an eagle perched near the top of the giant oak.
Was this a purposeful, mischievous act on the eagle's part? It must have watched us for some time from high above as we slowly worked our way across the sand and muck towards its perch. Its dropping was perfectly timed whether by dubious motive or not. Perhaps the eagle just was getting even for all the times humans had disturbed its watchful lookouts. Or perhaps an innate memory or instinct recalled all the wrongs done by men to eagles in the past on Denning's Point.
In my mind I recalled a book written by a local author, Edwin C. Kent, who reminisced about days in the late nineteenth century spent hunting eagles on Denning's Point. The book is called "Isle of Long Ago: Sporting Days" and was published in 1933. In it he wrote
"When the ice in the river broke up, generally about the second week in March, the eagles came in numbers to Denning's Point on the west side of the marsh where the Fishkill Creek flows into the Hudson. I have counted twenty sitting on the trees overlooking the marsh, at low tide bare mud flats. Of course, it was incumbent of me to shoot an eagle .... [though] I am not proud of the feat or the method I used. The eagles on the Point would not permit a man on foot to come anywhere near them but paid no attention to a wagon, so enlisting the services of one of my brothers and of an old mare who was indifferent to the report of a gun, we drove under an eagle sitting on a tree at the narrow neck of the Point. The bird, sorely wounded, fluttered down and lit on a cake of ice in the river some twenty yards out. Over my waist in ice water, in no pleasant frame of mind, I took my gun and slew him with a vengeful shot. He was a good-sized specimen, seventy-eight inches in spread of wing."
Edwin Kent lived long enough to see the eradication of the bald eagle on Denning's Point and elsewhere. He was not surprised by that fact. He wrote, "They had a market value. I was told by a man who killed some 10 or 15 of them that he received ten dollars for each bird."
A species may have long memories and the ill deeds of our forefathers sometimes fall upon our own heads. I did not really mind being pooped on by an eagle, though. In a way, you feel special ... maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket.
